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 Actinium wrote:
I 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.

That was 5th. The 4th edition wound allocation was not very abuseable.

Yep that was the abomination that 5th brought in. Personified by Draigo paladin build and nob bikers.

 docdoom77 wrote:

 Actinium wrote:
I 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.

That was 5th. The 4th edition wound allocation was not very abuseable.

Yeah, 4th ed wound allocation was pretty straightforward. You just take casualties from the back, controlling player decides, iirc.

4th was super awesome for wound allocation.

Defending player picks who dies, unless the attacking player does more wounds than there are models in the unit, and then the controlling player picks where those wounds go.

So say I'm shooting at a 10 man Guardsman squad with a plasma gun and a lascannon with a bunch of Heavy Bolters.

If I get 16 hits and wounds, then the controlling player allocated the first 10 and I get to allocate the last 6, if I recall correctly.

The rule was called "torrent of fire" and it felt like a good abstraction between "soldiers will pick out the scariest enemy weapons where possible" and "that doesn't mean they won't hit anything else in the process"

Actually it was take casualties from anywhere in the squad unless there were more wounds than remaining models. In that case, the attacker could pick which models (with the number based on the overage wounded) needed to make saves.

EDIT: Ninja'd, basically!

I remember Nob Bikers. They were so good. Being able to take 10 wounds and not lose a single model was dope.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
I remember Nob Bikers. They were so good. Being able to take 10 wounds and not lose a single model was dope.

Yeah 5th edition was pretty rad.

But we're talking about 4th edition, and IIRC Nob Bikers didn't have that problem. Or if they did, they were still garbage. I don't remember them being a thing till 5th.

Nob Bikers were technically released at the end of 4th edition (in fact I think the Orks were the last codex) but gained infamy in 5th due to the change to wound allocation. Before that you had to remove entire models first depending on proximity I think (couldn't remember, I never played with multi-wound units during 4th).

In 4E, with multi wound models, the only issue was that you couldnt spread wounds, you had to keep stacking on one until it died and then you could allocate to the next model. Aside from that there were no restrictions.

Still the best all around wound allocation system the game has ever had.

 Vaktathi wrote:
In 4E, with multi wound models, the only issue was that you couldnt spread wounds, you had to keep stacking on one until it died and then you could allocate to the next model. Aside from that there were no restrictions.

Still the best all around wound allocation system the game has ever had.

To be fair, it's essentially the same as 8th's without the Torrent of Fire rule.

Thank god 8th is back to that. I hated fiddling with individual model placement and characters tanking wounds for units. Waste of gameplay time if you ask me.

One thing I havn't see anyone mention is the restrictions on special characters. You where generally only allowed to field special characters in games of 1500p or more. This was to stop them from dominating low scale games. Also IIRC many special characters only allowed you to field them "with your opponents concent" to justify their power. It was a little weird because no one would say "no, I don't want to fight Calgar, field something else". 5th approximately trippled the number of special characters per codex and put most of the previous army wide rules on characters instead. Giving you a certain character tax on special rules.

That too. In 3rd and 4th, Special characters were never considered for proper play and were more narrative figures intended for special events and such, although most people didn't have a problem with them. Some characters were campaign exclusive and sometimes had even their models discontinued after the event was over (while I can't recall any 40k characters off the top of my head, Valten from Fantasy was one such character where his model was only available for a limited time, and he was around the same time as 3rd and 4th).

In Canada, 4th was the time when they were doing 10% (or more) price hikes every year while the local currency climbed and climbed in value so in the end anyone who ordered online from the UK or the US could get their GW stuff for less what a local store paid for it wholesale. So many game stores either closed or switched away from GW being their primary seller during that period. Many GW stores closed during this time as well. And GW Canada was shut down and folded into GW North America.

They eventually relented and did a price reduction on many items around the time of the launch of 5th. During 5th GW North America would also be shut down along with many European national offices following suit during 6th.

4th was alright as a game, but the prices just made it brutal for anyone who didn't have a new collection or didn't know about ordering from UK online stores.

 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.

Forgot about the monolith - in my defence, I played necrons about once during that edition. Nightbringer wasn't a patch on some of the tyranid mc's especially considering his cost. And just having a 4+ inv.

And you are correct about the 4th ed daemonhunters and witch hunters. They were about the only 'allied' options really, and iirc the 'allied foc' was a pretty cut down stub - 1 hq, 2 troops and one or two of the other slots? It was pretty cool, and not all that overpowered (this was before the ward dex for grey knights), although I remember thinking at the time that some sob 'miracles' were ott - specifically they had one that turned bolters to ap3. Heh, that was 'broken'. How times change!

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 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.

Vect was still in the 5th ed codex, he just didn't have a model, it was the 7th ed codex that removed all our characters.

Vect's Dais technically had a model but Vect himself didn't. In 3rd edition Vect couldn't disembark from his dais so they counted as one model. In 5th Vect was a separate Entry and his dais (which was a Raider with near-land raider armor) was a transport for him.

Again my memory between 3rd and 4th is kind of hazy.

We should mention in 3rd edition you played different missions with special rules. Some missions allowed Deep Strike and some allowed Infiltrate. Terminators had Deep Strike and Genestealers had Infiltrate for example. If the mission didn't have Deep Strike or Infiltrate, then your units were setting up standard like everything else. Imagine the uproar today!

DS and Infiltrate was considered an add-on bonus rather than inherent ability.

Was this the same in 4th or had that changed by then?

hoya4life3381 wrote:
Again my memory between 3rd and 4th is kind of hazy.

We should mention in 3rd edition you played different missions with special rules. Some missions allowed Deep Strike and some allowed Infiltrate. Terminators had Deep Strike and Genestealers had Infiltrate for example. If the mission didn't have Deep Strike or Infiltrate, then your units were setting up standard like everything else. Imagine the uproar today!

DS and Infiltrate was considered an add-on bonus rather than inherent ability.

Was this the same in 4th or had that changed by then?

It's only after reading your post that I realised this wasn't the case in 7th! It was so embedded in my head that I didn't realise I was erroneously looking for this in the 7th mission tables!

 amanita wrote:
Actually it was take casualties from anywhere in the squad unless there were more wounds than remaining models. In that case, the attacker could pick which models (with the number based on the overage wounded) needed to make saves.

EDIT: Ninja'd, basically!

Also the casualties had to be from the range and los of the weapon they were taken from. If you were careful with it you could snipe characters out of units (if they happened to be leading from the front) with short ranged punchy weapons like Meltas.

Lost many a character that way before young me realised why. It was tricky to pull off though due to lack of premeasuring.

hoya4life3381 wrote:
Again my memory between 3rd and 4th is kind of hazy.

We should mention in 3rd edition you played different missions with special rules. Some missions allowed Deep Strike and some allowed Infiltrate. Terminators had Deep Strike and Genestealers had Infiltrate for example. If the mission didn't have Deep Strike or Infiltrate, then your units were setting up standard like everything else. Imagine the uproar today!

DS and Infiltrate was considered an add-on bonus rather than inherent ability.

Was this the same in 4th or had that changed by then?

Half and half. Early 4th edition codexes and 3.5 edition codexes still had "if the mission allowed it", with CSM being unique at the time for having Daemons that always entered via deepstrike (combined with icons and daemons having the unique ability to charge out of deepstrike, this gave the CSM something unique in the only form of teleporting and effective troops, which is why the GKs were made specifically to counter them). Lictors were feared for a similar reason (although their effect was somewhat different from DS and Infiltrate, but being able to count on having it 100% instead of conditionally was still a huge boon). It wasn't until late 4th edition (post Black Templars I think) where they started giving units the ability to infiltrate or deepstrike regardless of the mission specs, before completely getting rid of them as mission-specific rules in 5th edition.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
It wasn't until late 4th edition (post Black Templars I think) where they started giving units the ability to infiltrate or deepstrike regardless of the mission specs, before completely getting rid of them as mission-specific rules in 5th edition.

What do you mean post-black Templars? I know they adorned the front of 3rd, so they must have existed. Was this when they got models? Also, when did plastics become the mainstay of the models?

Black Templars only got a campaign-supplement armylist in Codex: Armageddon during 3rd edition. They did not get their own codex until mid-late 4th edition.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Black Templars only got a campaign-supplement armylist in Codex: Armageddon during 3rd edition. They did not get their own codex until mid-late 4th edition.

It wasn't that late in 4th Edition. Late 4th started with the Eldar, also what I call the "Blue Period". It had been out for a while by then. I had started collecting codices some time after the Templars' release.

CREEEEEEEEED wrote:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
It wasn't until late 4th edition (post Black Templars I think) where they started giving units the ability to infiltrate or deepstrike regardless of the mission specs, before completely getting rid of them as mission-specific rules in 5th edition.

What do you mean post-black Templars? I know they adorned the front of 3rd, so they must have existed. Was this when they got models? Also, when did plastics become the mainstay of the models?

Basically as Mecha had it - they were just a color scheme for marines. I did Black Templar as my very first 40k army, and I ran them just as straight Marines until I stopped playing them to focus on Guard.

n0t_u wrote:Assaults could chain together, you could consolidate into a new combat and start it all again, and genestealers were actually pretty scary and seemed to rip through most things like they were cardboard.

You COULD consolidate into a new combat, but it was a 3" move. Most people forget this, or got it wrong. an advance was 2D6", a consolidation was 3". If you did a sweeping advance, you could be shot by every unit in the opposing army that could shoot your along that pathway. Knowing this, I simply staggered my battle line. ANYBODY who consolidated 2D6" was either woefully ignorant of the rules or was cheating because they knew the OTHER person didn't understand the rules.

 Just Tony wrote:

n0t_u wrote:Assaults could chain together, you could consolidate into a new combat and start it all again, and genestealers were actually pretty scary and seemed to rip through most things like they were cardboard.

You COULD consolidate into a new combat, but it was a 3" move. Most people forget this, or got it wrong. an advance was 2D6", a consolidation was 3". If you did a sweeping advance, you could be shot by every unit in the opposing army that could shoot your along that pathway. Knowing this, I simply staggered my battle line. ANYBODY who consolidated 2D6" was either woefully ignorant of the rules or was cheating because they knew the OTHER person didn't understand the rules.

I never understood peoples trouble with the ability to consolidate into new combats.
It never happened in any game I played/saw for the entire edition, not even once.

It happened once at one of my stores, and it was the talk of the evening. After that, you'd see about 8" gaps between units in an army.

 Just Tony wrote:

n0t_u wrote:Assaults could chain together, you could consolidate into a new combat and start it all again, and genestealers were actually pretty scary and seemed to rip through most things like they were cardboard.

You COULD consolidate into a new combat, but it was a 3" move. Most people forget this, or got it wrong. an advance was 2D6", a consolidation was 3".

It was 3" unless you got a Massacre result which was D6", which could hamstring you or catapult you.

If you did a sweeping advance, you could be shot by every unit in the opposing army that could shoot your along that pathway. Knowing this, I simply staggered my battle line.

This was the original 3E CC implementation, changed during late 3E Chapter Approved, by 4E the overrun move where you could be shot at didn't exist. in 4E, sweeping advance was just a straight initiative test, not the 2d6" move.

Jbz` wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

n0t_u wrote:Assaults could chain together, you could consolidate into a new combat and start it all again, and genestealers were actually pretty scary and seemed to rip through most things like they were cardboard.

You COULD consolidate into a new combat, but it was a 3" move. Most people forget this, or got it wrong. an advance was 2D6", a consolidation was 3". If you did a sweeping advance, you could be shot by every unit in the opposing army that could shoot your along that pathway. Knowing this, I simply staggered my battle line. ANYBODY who consolidated 2D6" was either woefully ignorant of the rules or was cheating because they knew the OTHER person didn't understand the rules.

I never understood peoples trouble with the ability to consolidate into new combats.
It never happened in any game I played/saw for the entire edition, not even once.

Just Tony wrote:It happened once at one of my stores, and it was the talk of the evening. After that, you'd see about 8" gaps between units in an army.

If you guys never, ever, saw a consolidation into a new combat, people weren't playing their armies right. It wasn't as much an issue for relatively elite armies, but for some armies it was monstrously crippling (there are reasons IG were a complete disaster of an army in 4E). There just wasn't enough room to spread out. With my CSM's I could usually manage to do it to an opponent at least once per game, lots of CC units heavily relied on that tactic, there were armies built entirely around its abuse that did very well in GT's during 4th.

Units have to be near each other all the time for various reasons, be they supporting other units, screening other units, forced by terrain or enemy presence, deployment zone, etc. You can't keep everything more than 6" apart all the time. The idea that everyone just did so is rather fantastical. This was also helped by the fact that area terrain would simply completely block LoS and you could sneak up quickly without being shot at units would be clumped to take advantage of what firing lanes existed. Some armies were more vulnerable to this than others, you didn't get a super unit consolidating up an entire line every game, but it did happen, there's a reason GW abandoned that mechanic for a loooooong time.

Consolidation was a fine idea. Being able to chain...well, were it to come back maybe you shouldn't be able to do it twice in a row or something.

Need to catch your wind, see.