What was 4th ed like and why doesn't it get mentioned much?

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**BlackLobster**

4th edition was okay as I remember. A little bland. What I remember most about it was that it was the era of massively overpowered Forge World units and assault armies outflanking on from the table edge, and then assaulting. I seriously hated my nephew's genestealer list because of that!

**A Town Called Malus**

CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
I think I've heard of 'Fish of Fury' before. Wasn't it something to do with disembarking in front, shooting and then flat putting the devilfish in front of the fire warriors as cover?

Not quite. In 4th, your own skimmers didn't count as blocking Line of Sight, though they did for enemy shooting (under the rationalisation that it would go high for your guys to fire then come back down). So you'd drive a Devilfish up to the enemy, drop out Fire Warriors behind it in double tap range and open up on the enemy. Then, due to the shape of the Devilfish, the 6" move and 6" charge whilst not being allowed to move within 1" of an enemy model without charging it, your fire warriors would count as out of LOS for the enemy shooting phase and the enemy wouldn't be able to charge them as moving around the devilfish took more than 12" of movement if you were staying 1" away from it.

It was very effective if you could make it work, but getting your placement wrong left you sitting pretty vulnerable to a countercharge.

Might have got the skimmers blocking line of sight for the enemy wrong, don't have my 4th ed rulebook on me to check.

**MechaEmperor7000**

No they blocked enemy LoS. They also couldn't be charged if they moved a certain distance. Cue people moving their devilfishes in a V formation; too wide to circle around and they moved far enough that you couldn't charge. Oh and all pen hits became glancing hits so even shooting wasn't that good of a solution (and honestly, you want to try and out-shoot the TAU!?). However skimmers in general were problematic. A Space Marine Landspeeder would send shivers down people's spines, especially since it could mount either a multi-melta or an assault cannon (which had the old rending rules that worked on To Hit instead of To Wound).

Ironically I think the only skimmer that wasn't feared was the monolith, since you could flat out ignore it and shoot the necrons and it would disappear with the crons when they dropped below 25%.

**hoya4life3381**

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
No they blocked enemy LoS. They also couldn't be charged if they moved a certain distance. Cue people moving their devilfishes in a V formation; too wide to circle around and they moved far enough that you couldn't charge. Oh and all pen hits became glancing hits so even shooting wasn't that good of a solution (and honestly, you want to try and out-shoot the TAU!?). However skimmers in general were problematic. A Space Marine Landspeeder would send shivers down people's spines, especially since it could mount either a multi-melta or an assault cannon (which had the old rending rules that worked on To Hit instead of To Wound).

Ironically I think the only skimmer that wasn't feared was the monolith, since you could flat out ignore it and shoot the necrons and it would disappear with the crons when they dropped below 25%.

Skimmers were definitely considered better than their land-based "tank" counterparts for all the reasons you listed.

Was 4th roughly the time that the games started increasing from 1500 to 1850? Or was that later? Again my memory is hazy.

I remember 1500 exclusively in 3rd and an occasional 2000 point game if people wanted to play Terminators, Landraiders, Monoliths, and other super goodies.

I mean it just come down to preference. 40k was a lot more skirmish, more unit based, and only allowed 1 faction. Small-scale war. There was a certain charm to that setup or perhaps it's just all nostalgia. We all imagined and wanted multi-detachment armies that we have now though.

To me pre-Forgeworld and post-Forgeworld really changed the scale of the game itself.

**TarkinLarson**

Wasn't there an edition that removed movement statistics? Was that 4th?

I think I quit the game then. I played 2nd ed and a bit of 3rd and then must have left. I continued to buy some models around 5th edition and paint them though, but didn't bother with the game again until now.

**Unit1126PLL**

Insectum7 wrote:^ you mean the biggest tank was the Monolith, the nastiest MC the Nightbringer, and Space Marines could supplement themselves with Inquisitorial Stormtroopers/Adeptus Arbites.

The biggest tank was a Baneblade (since they've been in 28mm 40k since 2nd Edition ...), the nastiest MC damn near anything with spammed Tyranid upgrades, and armies could include Sisters of Battle, Space Marines, Imperial Guard, and Inquisitors all in one blob.

hoya4life3381 wrote:
Deadnight wrote:
I started in third. In some ways, fourth was a big step forward - gone was the 'rhino rush' of third ed, and screening, for example. However, fourth had some issues in the core rules - skimmers were a bit bonkers (tau skimmers did quite well in fourth, but eldar skimmers were ridiculous), independent character status could be abused a bit, and consolidation into cc ('rolling up a flank') from cc basically meant that 'deathstar' assault units almost had free reign, unless yo could take them out in the one or two turns it took for them to get there.

Overall though, the rules were 'ok'. Not terrible. Not brilliant. But workable.

Some of the codices were ridiculous though (typical for a gw game). There were some eldar builds of that era (especially spamming holostone falcons) that were ridiculous, and iron warriors broke the back of the edition. Other codices suffered at the other end of the power spectrum.

One big difference to the current era though, and one I miss, is there were No allies. You got what was in your codex. And that was it Your marines couldn't supplement themselves with guardsmen etc. The power curve was a lot less as well. The biggest tank on the board was a land raider, the meanest monstrous creature was a carnifex, or maybe a wraithlord. And probably the biggest gun available was either the bright lance or the rail gun (mathematically speaking, both cracked the hardest armour on a 4+).

Different era in a lot of ways.

Ah yes the pre-Forgeworld days! I remember being scared and wowed by a Landraider, a Monolith, or multiple Carnifexes. Granted, we were in high school and early college so couldn't afford crazy kits like we can now. I remember people hating on my friend taking 3 Wraithlords in his army. That seems quite tame this days doesn't it? Also forgot about Iron Warriors and Obliterator spam as well in 4th. Them getting a 4th heavy choice when everyone was limited to 3 and one of them being a Basilisk in combo with the Defiler which was also indirect fire. I remember my Tyranids in 4th edition getting crushed by Assault Cannon Marine spam or Iron Warrior spam so not all is rosy. However, there was a charm to 4th in that the overall power level was lower and there was no allies. It was more a skirmish game and more thematic. Although what was the biggest complaint back then? Everyone wanted to play cross-faction armies/detachments like today

It all comes full circle haha...just live and adapt!

I bought my first Baneblade in 3rd after the Imperial Armour Volume 1 floppy book came out. It wasn't that expensive - certainly moreso than any other 40k kit ever, but for a beautiful centerpiece model I was able to save a couple of paychecks worth of spending money and then grab it.

**MechaEmperor7000**

hoya4life3381 wrote:
MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
No they blocked enemy LoS. They also couldn't be charged if they moved a certain distance. Cue people moving their devilfishes in a V formation; too wide to circle around and they moved far enough that you couldn't charge. Oh and all pen hits became glancing hits so even shooting wasn't that good of a solution (and honestly, you want to try and out-shoot the TAU!?). However skimmers in general were problematic. A Space Marine Landspeeder would send shivers down people's spines, especially since it could mount either a multi-melta or an assault cannon (which had the old rending rules that worked on To Hit instead of To Wound).

Ironically I think the only skimmer that wasn't feared was the monolith, since you could flat out ignore it and shoot the necrons and it would disappear with the crons when they dropped below 25%.

Skimmers were definitely considered better than their land-based "tank" counterparts for all the reasons you listed.

Was 4th roughly the time that the games started increasing from 1500 to 1850? Or was that later? Again my memory is hazy.

I remember 1500 exclusively in 3rd and an occasional 2000 point game if people wanted to play Terminators, Landraiders, Monoliths, and other super goodies.

I mean it just come down to preference. 40k was a lot more skirmish, more unit based, and only allowed 1 faction. Small-scale war. There was a certain charm to that setup or perhaps it's just all nostalgia. We all imagined and wanted multi-detachment armies that we have now though.

To me pre-Forgeworld and post-Forgeworld really changed the scale of the game itself.

4th was the one that started promoting 1850 but I think it was in 3rd that 1500 was made the "standard". I remember one online article mentioning that the game itself was ideally balanced (when they actually cared about balance) for 1500 at the time, and even 2000 was stretching it a bit.

TarkinLarson wrote:Wasn't there an edition that removed movement statistics? Was that 4th?

I think I quit the game then. I played 2nd ed and a bit of 3rd and then must have left. I continued to buy some models around 5th edition and paint them though, but didn't bother with the game again until now.

3rd edition was the one that removed it I think, 4th was essentially a patchjob on top of 3rd.

**BaconCatBug**

Yeah 3rd removed the M stat from 2nd and standardised everything into 6"-12"-18"-24" bands.

Marines used to only move 4"

**MagicJuggler**

One of the main issues with Skimmers was their near-indestructability, combined with Tank Shock, combined with other vehicles being weak. An Eldar player could go second, own one objective, and use Tank Shock to contest enemy objectives (or even claim them if the enemy was pushed off).

Such shenanigans were technically possible in 5th but in practice they didn't work since it was the edition of massed light mech.

**shortymcnostrill**

MagicJuggler wrote:
Basically, 4th had two different phases of codex design.

There was the late 3.5 phase with lots of customization, including the Space Marine codex with chapter traits, and the "buildabear" Carnifex Codex Tyranids...then there was the Gav Chaos Codex.

Not just buildabear fexes, buildabear almost any unit in the codex! It was glorious. Want melee warriors? Cool, keep them BS2 (5+) and save some points. Do you want them as elite shock troops or as melee chaff, options aplenty. I still have a squad of metal gargoyles lying around that I was going to equip with devourers. And then along came the true great devourer, cruddace with his 5th and 6th codices. Nid players don't speak of 4th because the memory is too painful

Although I am really happy with the current buildafex!

**Insectum7**

Unit1126PLL wrote:
Insectum7 wrote:^ you mean the biggest tank was the Monolith, the nastiest MC the Nightbringer, and Space Marines could supplement themselves with Inquisitorial Stormtroopers/Adeptus Arbites.

The biggest tank was a Baneblade (since they've been in 28mm 40k since 2nd Edition ...), the nastiest MC damn near anything with spammed Tyranid upgrades, and armies could include Sisters of Battle, Space Marines, Imperial Guard, and Inquisitors all in one blob.

Gonna pull the Armorcast/ Forge World card, huh? Well I'll pull the "technically the biggest tank in the game is whatever you built using the Vehicle Design Rules."

My brother built an Ork monstrosity we call the "Battlemansion", which dwarfs a Baneblade.

I would be surprised if a roided-out Tyranid MC could take the Nightbringer though. Also worth mentioning the roided-out Daemon Princes, some of those could get pretty nasty. But the C'tan's had the hefty advantage of being T8 and ignoring all invuln saves.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
No they blocked enemy LoS. They also couldn't be charged if they moved a certain distance.

I'm pretty sure skimmers did not block LOS. I think you could charge them but they could only be hit on 6's.

**MechaEmperor7000**

Amusingly a dirt cheap Dreadaxe Daemon Prince could floor the Nightbringer. The Dreadaxe essentially had the old Poison rule on a 4+ (completely negating the Nightbringer's T8) and also ignored invul saves. Combined with the DP's innate MC rule, it gave the Ctan no saves. And the DP could be modded to go before the ctan.

**hoya4life3381**

shortymcnostrill wrote:
MagicJuggler wrote:
Basically, 4th had two different phases of codex design.

There was the late 3.5 phase with lots of customization, including the Space Marine codex with chapter traits, and the "buildabear" Carnifex Codex Tyranids...then there was the Gav Chaos Codex.

Not just buildabear fexes, buildabear almost any unit in the codex! It was glorious. Want melee warriors? Cool, keep them BS2 (5+) and save some points. Do you want them as elite shock troops or as melee chaff, options aplenty. I still have a squad of metal gargoyles lying around that I was going to equip with devourers. And then along came the true great devourer, cruddace with his 5th and 6th codices. Nid players don't speak of 4th because the memory is too painful

Although I am really happy with the current buildafex!

As a 3rd edition to 4th edition Tyranid player, i wholeheartedly loved that codex and probably to me was my favorite Codex ever. Giving your own Tyranids their own unique paint scheme, then being able to customize which bio-morphs they had to your heart desire, then modeling the bio-morphs onto your models really made for totally unique armies. It truly made you feel like the Hive Queen and shaping your force in your own image.

Plus I don't remember it ever being considered horribly overpowered. I mean the Flying Tyrant was good but no invulnerable save meant it was reasonable back then with so much armor piercing. Carnifexes actually were good with Devourer dakka or with Venom cannon builds. The rest of the codex was honestly pretty average since bolters killed the rest of your army including Genestealers, Gaunts, etc. Warriors had a weird niche and Zoanthropes were okay but not great. It was really limited line of models so I am quite happy how they have expanded Tyarnids so much since then. I remember Raveners came out and that was like the first new unit Tyranids had in a long time...

I know others may have horror stories about Eldar skimmers but I guess I never did as a Tyranid player. Venom cannons could only glance anyways! What's the difference

. So a Strength 10 Venom Cannon with 2 shots at BS3 was pretty much auto glancing a ARM 12 Falcon/Wave Serpeant every turn. This pretty much mean the vehicle was not shooting and even with Holostones you would eventually get an Immobilized or Weapon Destroyed roll. I probably would have been more frustrated shooting at Eldar vehicles with Lascannons/Missiles though I admit. Corner case for Tyranids back in the day!

**Insectum7**

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Amusingly a dirt cheap Dreadaxe Daemon Prince could floor the Nightbringer. The Dreadaxe essentially had the old Poison rule on a 4+ (completely negating the Nightbringer's T8) and also ignored invul saves. Combined with the DP's innate MC rule, it gave the Ctan no saves. And the DP could be modded to go before the ctan.

Ooh, that's a possibility. Better give that guy Eternal Warrior though in case that Nightbringer lives and gets a hit off at S 10. I don't recall how many attacks the DP could get with the Dread Axe. NB had 5 wounds.

And a 24" Lascannon.

**MechaEmperor7000**

I think a Statured prince started at 4 and could slowly go up depending on what you gave him. However that wouldn't make him that dirt cheap I guess (although still cheaper than the NB, due to at the time everything having an absolute top limit to how much points they can spend in the armoury, and I think the Chaos Lord/DP could only go up to a total of 250 points I think).

The Dreadaxe though made the DP ridiculously powerful for the cheap cost, since if I remember you could comfortably make a 160-ish point prince with wings, axe and stature and it can pretty much delete anything up to twice it's point cost and had a good chance of actually surviving. Combined with the "Consolidate into combat"rule and you can see why the 3.5 dex was considered one of the most broken ones.

**Insectum7**

That might have still been a fight. I forget the comparative WS but Daemonic Stature I think meant the character could be picked out for shooting purposes.

**MechaEmperor7000**

With Runes, wings, mutation (more attack), CCW, Stature and the Dreadaxe, a DP above would have been 171 points (the 1 is for the CCW). Rune is the EW gift so that would basically let him tank hits, but it would still be a close match as both sides (due to having the exact same WS) would be basically nickle and diming each other (the DP has slightly more attacks to offset the Nightbringer's higher To Wound roll). The Nightbringer has a slight edge as he has innately more wounds and the DP only has marginally more attack.

The DP can offset this by taking the Mark of Khorne and Daemonic Essence. In which case it's more or less a tossup to who'd win, although the prince is still cheaper than the Nightbringer.

However both still die to ratling snipers.

**Actinium**

I really liked the terrain rules, true line of sight has probably been the number 1 most argued about issue i've seen going on at tables and being able to just whip out a laser level and see if the line goes through the terrain base or not without any talk of tree branches or what part of the tyranid counts as a weapon or a limb, i loved that.

It was otherwise mostly just third edition but with a big chunk of the new improvements creating new problems. For instance i think 4th was the edition that let you scum wound allocation with diverse loadouts. As in, a unit of 4 wraiths could take one with whip coils, one with a particle caster, one with both, and one with nothing, and assign 2 wounds to each before allocating a lethal 3rd wound to remove a model because each unique loadout counted as a separate wound pool like an attached character.

It was also when they first got on the cycle of doing editions roughly every 3 years, where as 3rd went on for 6 years, so it felt like we were moving on to 5th before we really spent a ton of time in 4th.

**amanita**

I really liked 4th Ed and felt it was an upgrade to 3rd, and felt the company genuinely was trying to improve its game. So I looked forward to 5th but was sorely disappointed. Sure, many of 4th's problems were fixed, but in typical GW style many more stupid rules were introduced (wound allocation shenanigans, bizarre true line of sight changes, overreaction in fixing the vehicle damage tables from to harsh in 4th too ridiculously resilient in 5th, etc.). Since then my group realized that GW changes things for change's sake, and so we've made our own rules set taking bits out subsequent editions as they've come.

I don't believe there is anything from 8th Ed we have adopted.

**Formosa**

malamis wrote:
I started in 4th and still have the 4th edition rulebook on my shelf after chucking everything since into the recycler. 4th was alright; 8th is better, the bits between were the teething problems we had to get to it.

8th is 4th with the following improvements:

Characters can actually be killed
Turn 1 charge is possible but a serious challenge, as it should be
Consolidate into combat doesn't shut down an entire gunline
Blast Weapons that aren't a total chore/waste of time to resolve.
Chaos Close Combat isn't unbeatable
Scoring/Objectives much more sensible
VASTLY better internal balance per codex, which is saying something about how bad 4th was, not how good 8th is. It's likely that the only non mono-build army of the era was Chaos, which is part of why they liked it so much
Pre-measuring ranges is allowed
All kinds of vehicles are useful
The AP System doesn't render entire codex options irrelevant
SPLIT FIRE

And the following regressions:
The Cover System
The loss of outflank
The loss of comparative weapon skill (I do miss this)
Loss of Reserves walking on (this too)

As for close combat, i've gone on a proper good rant about it here. The Big deal to emphasise is that shooting attacks and meelee at the initative step were all resolved together, but the player who owned the models being targeted assigned the *weapons* that scored wounds to his own models; so you could take high strength, good ap wounds on ablative shields, and bolters on 2+ armour saves all the day long. In CC this was even worse as power weapons were straight up ignore armour saves meaning PWeps were a very expensive gamble. This was also the era before challenges, where characters could simply swap entourages whenever they liked and never take a wound during the course of the game.

Just to clarify

Chaos was not mono build infact it was the least mono build chaos ever made, when you got to tourney level then yes it got mono build, but the sheer amount of choices and options and viable units were a conversion, player and painters wet dream, it is the standard by which every codex should be set.

**ZebioLizard2**

4th edition Chaos? The Lash Prince, Plague marine, and Obliterator edition? It was one of the most mono-build codexs! I genuinely am confused by what people are saying about the 4th edition Gavdex.

**Vaktathi**

ZebioLizard2 wrote:
4th edition Chaos? The Lash Prince, Plague marine, and Obliterator edition? It was one of the most mono-build codexs! I genuinely am confused by what people are saying about the 4th edition Gavdex.

I think maybe there's confusion in that the 3.5 Codex ran most of the life of the edition, the Chaos codex that was actually released during 4th edition was only released about 9 or 10 months before 5E dropped.

**Formosa**

ZebioLizard2 wrote:
4th edition Chaos? The Lash Prince, Plague marine, and Obliterator edition? It was one of the most mono-build codexs! I genuinely am confused by what people are saying about the 4th edition Gavdex.

Ah 4th ed chaos, not 3.5 gothca

**Insectum7**

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
With Runes, wings, mutation (more attack), CCW, Stature and the Dreadaxe, a DP above would have been 171 points (the 1 is for the CCW). Rune is the EW gift so that would basically let him tank hits, but it would still be a close match as both sides (due to having the exact same WS) would be basically nickle and diming each other (the DP has slightly more attacks to offset the Nightbringer's higher To Wound roll). The Nightbringer has a slight edge as he has innately more wounds and the DP only has marginally more attack.

The DP can offset this by taking the Mark of Khorne and Daemonic Essence. In which case it's more or less a tossup to who'd win, although the prince is still cheaper than the Nightbringer.

However both still die to ratling snipers.

Ah hah! I didn't think it would be easy.

Here's hoping they do a daemon-primarch sized C'tan shard and beef it to all get-out. I miss my Crons.

**Infantryman**

I remember liking most of the 4e rules, though I do remember griping about a fair number now long forgotten to me. People keep mentioning the terrain rules, but I don't remember what they are - in 3e, you got Cover Save OR Armor Save, depending on which was better. I never liked that approach, and I don't think it changed in 4e. I know some of us had a local house rule letting you do both.

I do remember liking the Guard "Doctrine" system in the 3.5e/4e codex. Wasn't supremely well designed but the idea was Good. Liked that we had more customization options, too.

I stopped playing in 4e, sometime around late 2006 if I recall correctly. Just wasn't very many locals playing, and I started to explore a number of different systems.

As a general thing I'd say I liked how I remember 4e doing many things over 8e, though 8e has some improvements compared to what I remember 4e being.

I just really miss a number of the old 4e era Forge World models, now :(

Nevelon wrote:From a personal POV, I just didn’t get in many games of 4th. My FLGS had closed, and it was during a rough patch in my life financially.

Same; I did most of my play in 3e; the FLGS was struggling pretty badly even then - both financially and with how bad their playerbase could be. Very much an "in" crowed.

hoya4life3381 wrote:Was 4th roughly the time that the games started increasing from 1500 to 1850? Or was that later? Again my memory is hazy.

I definitely remember 3e and 4e having a lot of 2k lists on this very forum.

**Vilehydra**

5th was the first edition I started playing. I was in middle school at the time and was drawn in because of dawn of war dark crusade, and seeing mods like the Tabletop Round-Up mod. Others may of also been drawn in, which would've put them into 5th ed as well.

**corpuschain**

Vaktathi wrote:
ZebioLizard2 wrote:
4th edition Chaos? The Lash Prince, Plague marine, and Obliterator edition? It was one of the most mono-build codexs! I genuinely am confused by what people are saying about the 4th edition Gavdex.
I think maybe there's confusion in that the 3.5 Codex ran most of the life of the edition, the Chaos codex that was actually released during 4th edition was only released about 9 or 10 months before 5E dropped.

Agreed: there wasn't really a 4th edition CSM codex . There was the 3.5, then the next was a blue cover, and hence most people think of it as a 5th edition codex (even though it dropped before the end of 4th edition).

**CthuluIsSpy**

corpuschain wrote:
Vaktathi wrote:
ZebioLizard2 wrote:
4th edition Chaos? The Lash Prince, Plague marine, and Obliterator edition? It was one of the most mono-build codexs! I genuinely am confused by what people are saying about the 4th edition Gavdex.
I think maybe there's confusion in that the 3.5 Codex ran most of the life of the edition, the Chaos codex that was actually released during 4th edition was only released about 9 or 10 months before 5E dropped.

Agreed: there wasn't really a 4th edition CSM codex . There was the 3.5, then the next was a blue cover, and hence most people think of it as a 5th edition codex (even though it dropped before the end of 4th edition).

It was sort of the same with the 4th ed Ork codex. It was released so close to 5th ed I thought it was a 5th ed book for a while. In fact, both the codex and 5th ed were released in the same year - 2008.
In fact, 4th ed is also marked by several armies going without codices.
Dark Eldar were stuck with the 3rd ed codex until 5th ed
Necrons were stuck with the 3rd ed codex until 5th ed
Witchhunters / SoB were stuck with the 3rd ed book and had to wait until 5th ed
Daemonhunters / grey ditto
Imperial Guard did not have a 4th ed codex, but they did have a 3.5 dex

**ZebioLizard2**

Dark Eldar went so long without a codex that people honestly thought they were going to get squatted, then lo and behold a bunch of model updates and a codex later they improved.

**BaconCatBug**

ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Dark Eldar went so long without a codex that people honestly thought they were going to get squatted, then lo and behold a bunch of model updates and a codex later they improved.

12 YEARS!

I am still angry about them removing rules for Vect.