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Slipspace wrote:

 TheFleshIsWeak wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

Or you just co-opt 8th edition WH's magic phase, which included all of the elements you need.

Or we could cast psychic powers by dipping our hands into tubs of sulphuric acid, which would be significantly less painful than 8th edition WHFB's godawful magic system.

The basic mechanics were fine. The execution was not because GW is terrible at balancing things in general and the spells in 8th were all over the place.

Alright, let's take this a different direction - which of the 8th edition's magic system's mechanics would you consider core or basic?

I'd consider the dice generation and the general casting/dispelling mechanics to be the core of the system. Something closer to that would be vastly superior, IMO. It involved both players making decisions about what to stop and what to allow through. There's probably need to be some modification of how many powers psykers know and can cast if you adopted this system but the groundwork has already been laid.

Seabass wrote:
Wow, so I think I am like, one of the three people who actually like this game.

8th edition is the best the game has ever been in my view. There is a lot of talk comparing it to 2nd edition. I also played in the second edition, and it was a mess of chart after chart after chart, and the AP system was something...really something...using every different die under the sun. It was a fun game, but this was also the edition with the jump pack apothecary with a vortex grenade that came in at exactly 49 points so he wasn't worth a VP if he died, but a vortex grenade could kill anything...or super exarchs with a bionic leg, warp jump generator, web of skulls, and a host of other stuff, that was impossible to kill and murdered everything...don't get me started on virus bombs, rad grenades, or the elusive ablative armor wargear card...

the point is, is that every edition has its ridiculous things, but 8th edition has been good enough to revitalize the game in a lot of areas and GW has really done a pretty good job. yeah, problems exist, but the game is getting better and better, and with GW actually taking a position on competitive play and getting involved in balancing the game, I think this edition is shaping up nicely.

then again I'm weird, I like to enjoy my hobby and not mourn it.

Apothecary wearing a jump pack and tossing vortex grenades around the place? For 49 pts.

Dude, have you ever played 2nd? I guess not and you just spout nonsense here which you have read somewhere on the interwebz. So let´s enlighten you, how the cookie crumbled back in those days.

Apothecary costs 40 pts, the grenade 50 pts. and the jump pack costs 10 pts. Total is 100 pts. Which is NEARLY identical with 49 pts.

Next issue with your example would be that the grenade and jump pack was equipment which came along in the form of wargear cards. How many of those cards could the Apothecary have? Just ONE. So the equipped Apothecary in your op example is illegal.

And finally the dreaded vortex grenade was a 1.5´´ template and for it to kill ANYTHING it had to cover the WHOLE model in question. Hmm, how big was a Rhino or Land Raider in those days?
Chart after chart? You mean the vehicle damage chart? Geez, an average army list would include two vehicles. And all those different dice were only used when you tried to damage vehicles. Oh, it was so difficult!

I love when people who try to bash 2nd have absolutely no idea what they are talking about and just make a fool of themselves when posting such trash. I would like to know from you why your example with the “op Exarch” is also complete bogus.

 Strg Alt wrote:

Seabass wrote:
Wow, so I think I am like, one of the three people who actually like this game.

8th edition is the best the game has ever been in my view. There is a lot of talk comparing it to 2nd edition. I also played in the second edition, and it was a mess of chart after chart after chart, and the AP system was something...really something...using every different die under the sun. It was a fun game, but this was also the edition with the jump pack apothecary with a vortex grenade that came in at exactly 49 points so he wasn't worth a VP if he died, but a vortex grenade could kill anything...or super exarchs with a bionic leg, warp jump generator, web of skulls, and a host of other stuff, that was impossible to kill and murdered everything...don't get me started on virus bombs, rad grenades, or the elusive ablative armor wargear card...

the point is, is that every edition has its ridiculous things, but 8th edition has been good enough to revitalize the game in a lot of areas and GW has really done a pretty good job. yeah, problems exist, but the game is getting better and better, and with GW actually taking a position on competitive play and getting involved in balancing the game, I think this edition is shaping up nicely.

then again I'm weird, I like to enjoy my hobby and not mourn it.

Apothecary wearing a jump pack and tossing vortex grenades around the place? For 49 pts.

Dude, have you ever played 2nd? I guess not and you just spout nonsense here which you have read somewhere on the interwebz. So let´s enlighten you, how the cookie crumbled back in those days.

Apothecary costs 40 pts, the grenade 50 pts. and the jump pack costs 10 pts. Total is 100 pts. Which is NEARLY identical with 49 pts.

Next issue with your example would be that the grenade and jump pack was equipment which came along in the form of wargear cards. How many of those cards could the Apothecary have? Just ONE. So the equipped Apothecary in your op example is illegal.

And finally the dreaded vortex grenade was a 1.5´´ template and for it to kill ANYTHING it had to cover the WHOLE model in question. Hmm, how big was a Rhino or Land Raider in those days?
Chart after chart? You mean the vehicle damage chart? Geez, an average army list would include two vehicles. And all those different dice were only used when you tried to damage vehicles. Oh, it was so difficult!

I love when people who try to bash 2nd have absolutely no idea what they are talking about and just make a fool of themselves when posting such trash. I would like to know from you why your example with the “op Exarch” is also complete bogus.

+1 for callout on bogus 2nd edition stories. I saw that 49 pt. Apothecary too and said "Nope!"

My personal favorite tool against "un-hittable" Exarchs was to light them on fire and watch them dance around.

2nd was still a dumpster fire. Shooting the closest unit was easily exploited. Cc took forever. And turn 1 tablings.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:

Seabass wrote:
Wow, so I think I am like, one of the three people who actually like this game.

8th edition is the best the game has ever been in my view. There is a lot of talk comparing it to 2nd edition. I also played in the second edition, and it was a mess of chart after chart after chart, and the AP system was something...really something...using every different die under the sun. It was a fun game, but this was also the edition with the jump pack apothecary with a vortex grenade that came in at exactly 49 points so he wasn't worth a VP if he died, but a vortex grenade could kill anything...or super exarchs with a bionic leg, warp jump generator, web of skulls, and a host of other stuff, that was impossible to kill and murdered everything...don't get me started on virus bombs, rad grenades, or the elusive ablative armor wargear card...

the point is, is that every edition has its ridiculous things, but 8th edition has been good enough to revitalize the game in a lot of areas and GW has really done a pretty good job. yeah, problems exist, but the game is getting better and better, and with GW actually taking a position on competitive play and getting involved in balancing the game, I think this edition is shaping up nicely.

then again I'm weird, I like to enjoy my hobby and not mourn it.

Apothecary wearing a jump pack and tossing vortex grenades around the place? For 49 pts.

Dude, have you ever played 2nd? I guess not and you just spout nonsense here which you have read somewhere on the interwebz. So let´s enlighten you, how the cookie crumbled back in those days.

Apothecary costs 40 pts, the grenade 50 pts. and the jump pack costs 10 pts. Total is 100 pts. Which is NEARLY identical with 49 pts.

Next issue with your example would be that the grenade and jump pack was equipment which came along in the form of wargear cards. How many of those cards could the Apothecary have? Just ONE. So the equipped Apothecary in your op example is illegal.

And finally the dreaded vortex grenade was a 1.5´´ template and for it to kill ANYTHING it had to cover the WHOLE model in question. Hmm, how big was a Rhino or Land Raider in those days?
Chart after chart? You mean the vehicle damage chart? Geez, an average army list would include two vehicles. And all those different dice were only used when you tried to damage vehicles. Oh, it was so difficult!

I love when people who try to bash 2nd have absolutely no idea what they are talking about and just make a fool of themselves when posting such trash. I would like to know from you why your example with the “op Exarch” is also complete bogus.

+1 for callout on bogus 2nd edition stories. I saw that 49 pt. Apothecary too and said "Nope!"

My personal favorite tool against "un-hittable" Exarchs was to light them on fire and watch them dance around.

You are welcome.

Yeah, setting people on fire would ruin their day unless they had a few buddies around to douse the flames. The Exarch in question would benefit immensely from either a power field (2++ save vs. shooting only) or a displacer field (3++ save & scatter). These dudes were nasty but people forget that even a humble heavy bolter could inflict multiple wounds from only a single shot and the Exarch had only two wounds and 3+ save. One unlucky save against such weapons and the tree hugger was usually toast.

Slipspace wrote:
I'd consider the dice generation and the general casting/dispelling mechanics to be the core of the system. Something closer to that would be vastly superior, IMO. It involved both players making decisions about what to stop and what to allow through. There's probably need to be some modification of how many powers psykers know and can cast if you adopted this system but the groundwork has already been laid.

I could potentially get behind that, albeit with a dozen or so qualifiers.

8th ed WHF actually had the best magic system GW has ever devised. It gets a bad rap from 6th level uber spells. But the mechanics are sound.

The only issue was that it didn't scale with the game size and some of the spells were absurdly powerful. Something that could be changed.

It would actually benefit 40K more because not every army has access to psychers, and this system put a hard cap on number of power dice able to be used per turn, and gave the defender on average more dispel dice to protect their army, and even use dispel dice regardless of whether or not they had a magic user.

This system would allow players to decide what powers would be more beneficial to them per round, and allot a number of dice to each spell in an attempt to get them through, or dispel them successfully.

It also forces you to make tough decisions about what needs to be cast and what doesn't through dice management and the high risk/high reward nature of the system.

Martel732 wrote:
2nd was still a dumpster fire. Shooting the closest unit was easily exploited. Cc took forever. And turn 1 tablings.

One wonders how much effort you have actually put into the game in order to make it fun.

If that were what GW was to do, I would think it would need to encompass not only actual Psyker Powers, but Canticles and other "pseudo" Psykery stuff as well. Part of the risk and reward of Canticles is that while you can't Deny any Psyker Powers, your own abilities cannot be Denied either. Allowing these Factions to Deny, without also giving others the chance to Deny them, would make for lopsided play.

Yeah, magic in 8th ed was pretty solid, its just that the spells weren't well thought out.
Purple Sun of Xerxes, for example, was just insulting to lizardmen players.
"Oh, that's a nice regiment of Saurus you have there...and its gone"

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
8th ed WHF actually had the best magic system GW has ever devised. It gets a bad rap from 6th level uber spells. But the mechanics are sound.

The only issue was that it didn't scale with the game size and some of the spells were absurdly powerful. Something that could be changed.

Those weren't the only issues.

- High-level wizards had a ridiculous advantage over lower-level wizards in terms of casting and dispelling which was never reflected in their cost.

- Although the odds of getting a Miscast increased with power dice used, the actual Miscast result was entirely unrelated to the number of dice used. So a wizard could throw 10 dice at a spell, Miscast, and basically get nothing more than a light slap. Meanwhile, another wizard plays it safe with 2 dice, gets unlucky, and is killed outright along with everything around him.

- It had similar issues to 7th edition 40k in that any sort of disparity between wizards basically eliminated one player from the magic phase, as his opponent could practically auto-dispel him at no cost or risk.

Put simply, 8th edition's magic system was a little more involving than that of the current 40k system, but it was also horribly flawed even in terms of its core mechanics.

 TheFleshIsWeak wrote:

- Although the odds of getting a Miscast increased with power dice used, the actual Miscast result was entirely unrelated to the number of dice used.

I don't see how this is an issue with the game. Seems more like a personal thing you wanted to see added than a game problem.

Darsath wrote:

 TheFleshIsWeak wrote:

- Although the odds of getting a Miscast increased with power dice used, the actual Miscast result was entirely unrelated to the number of dice used.

I don't see how this is an issue with the game. Seems more like a personal thing you wanted to see added than a game problem.

Because it removes both player agency and the whole idea of risk vs reward?

 flandarz wrote:
If that were what GW was to do, I would think it would need to encompass not only actual Psyker Powers, but Canticles and other "pseudo" Psykery stuff as well. Part of the risk and reward of Canticles is that while you can't Deny any Psyker Powers, your own abilities cannot be Denied either. Allowing these Factions to Deny, without also giving others the chance to Deny them, would make for lopsided play.

Piggy-backing on this. I've always wondered (I have only played in 8th. always isn't very long) how Tau playstyles would change if Markerlights and ethereal abilities were treated as a psychic phase ability.

 flandarz wrote:
If that were what GW was to do, I would think it would need to encompass not only actual Psyker Powers, but Canticles and other "pseudo" Psykery stuff as well. Part of the risk and reward of Canticles is that while you can't Deny any Psyker Powers, your own abilities cannot be Denied either. Allowing these Factions to Deny, without also giving others the chance to Deny them, would make for lopsided play.

Easy. Just treat them like Bound spells that things like Warrior Priests had. They are auto cast at a set power level and can be dispelled as normal. Back in the day these were the ones you waited until the end to cast when your opponent had ran out of dispel dice.

To go even further with it, the ad mech would be perfect to put it the old hieratic heirachy thing the old tomb kings had with them having similar dogmatic processes done the same way over millennia.

As an adition to what I said earlier, 8th is simple enough that I was able to teach my 9y/o nephew how to play with relative ease. Which is good, cause he's really in to collecting and assembling, too.

Oh that is very nice. Can't have a store support a game, if there aren't any new players coming.

Those weren't the only issues.

- High-level wizards had a ridiculous advantage over lower-level wizards in terms of casting and dispelling which was never reflected in their cost.

- Although the odds of getting a Miscast increased with power dice used, the actual Miscast result was entirely unrelated to the number of dice used. So a wizard could throw 10 dice at a spell, Miscast, and basically get nothing more than a light slap. Meanwhile, another wizard plays it safe with 2 dice, gets unlucky, and is killed outright along with everything around him.

- It had similar issues to 7th edition 40k in that any sort of disparity between wizards basically eliminated one player from the magic phase, as his opponent could practically auto-dispel him at no cost or risk.

Put simply, 8th edition's magic system was a little more involving than that of the current 40k system, but it was also horribly flawed even in terms of its core mechanics.

Actually high level wizards only got 2 more spells to cast and +2 to their casting and dispelling rolls. Thats literally it.

Additionally, you could throw a maximum of 6 dice at a spell to cast not 10.

Have you read the miscast table at all? Those miscasts were insanely punishing, one of them could destroy half of a unit and then suck your caster into the warp.

And it was more punishing for high level casters because they were usually a huge points investment, and occasionally your army general. Lord help you if it was your Vampire Lord.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:

Actually high level wizards only got 2 more spells to cast and +2 to their casting and dispelling rolls. Thats literally it.

And that +2 made a huge difference.

Seriously. There was a reason why no one ever passed up the chance to fully upgrade wizards.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:

Additionally, you could throw a maximum of 6 dice at a spell to cast not 10.

That doesn't actually chance the point I was making.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:

Have you read the miscast table at all? Those miscasts were insanely punishing, one of them could destroy half of a unit and then suck your caster into the warp.

Yes, I know one of them could destroy half a unit and then suck your caster into the warp. I literally reference that very miscast result.

However, some were far less punishing - e.g. there's one that does a little damage to the wizard's unit but which leaves the wizard himself completely untouched, and another couple that made a single attack against the wizard (a negligible penalty, given the power of available spells).

My point was that the severity of the miscast had absolutely nothing to do with the risk taken. A wizard who miscasts is just as likely to get the worst miscast result if he rolled 2 power dice as if he rolled 6 power dice.

I think the Miscast table should have actually taken into account the number of dice used to cast (e.g. 1d6 + power dice spent to cast) - with the really bad results only possible if you spent 4+ dice.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:

And it was more punishing for high level casters because they were usually a huge points investment, and occasionally your army general.

Except that it wasn't. Because the spells included nonsense like bowling a back hole through the enemy army. Who cares if a 200pt wizard dies if he just obliterated ~800pts of the enemy army?

If anything, the Miscast table actively encouraged you to throw as many dice as possible at the most powerful spell available. There was actually an advantage ti miscasting - because it made it impossible for your opponent to dispel, and there was a good chance your wizard would survive anyway (because, as above, the Miscast table didn't care if you threw 6 dice at a spell or 2).

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
Lord help you if it was your Vampire Lord.

These would be a noteworthy exception (and, not to put too fine a point on it, one I was all too aware of), being one of the few wizards that you absolutely couldn't afford to lose. However, these also tie into my point about the miscast table. Even casting with a mere 2 power dice could result in your 500+pt Vampire Lord being sucked into the warp and there would be absolutely nothing you could do to prevent it.

Half the stratagems should be brought back as buyable equipment.
Especially AA missiles, infact csm and sm missile launchers should just have them considering the pricetag.
Grenadiers should be an upgrade for guardsmen, etc.

The movement orientated stratagems i don't mind, as do i with morale or Reserve (recycling) ones, but why the feth aa missiles are a stratagem and other such nonsense is beyond me.

Honorary mention of ard boyz, just stupid...

Not Online!!! wrote:
Half the stratagems should be brought back as buyable equipment.
Especially AA missiles, infact csm and sm missile launchers should just have them considering the pricetag.
Grenadiers should be an upgrade for guardsmen, etc.

The movement orientated stratagems i don't mind, as do i with morale or Reserve (recycling) ones, but why the feth aa missiles are a stratagem and other such nonsense is beyond me.

Honorary mention of ard boyz, just stupid...

This is also what kept me from really loving kill team, it's a game where given the scale wargear should matter far more, instead they farm everything on to cards.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Half the stratagems should be brought back as buyable equipment.

I can definitely get behind this.

Same goes for artefacts.

 TheFleshIsWeak wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Half the stratagems should be brought back as buyable equipment.

I can definitely get behind this.

Same goes for artefacts.

I mean mechanized IG regiments that are heavily armored do exist yet i can't field them because gw thought it nice making the grenadier stratagem completely useless and not a better armor upgrade?

Csm an army that heavily lacks AA capability has to use stratagems to get missiles for aa use?
Imagine the champion of the havocs running back and forth to ask the Lord or head honcho if he is allowed TO FIRE ONE BLOODY MISSILE? To do his damn Job.

Also daemonengines need permission to go full overheat Mode now..... You know a former usr off all daemonengines

Ard boyz same with the grenadiers, why am I not allowed to run a Troop option with a 4+ armor anymore?

Why is a Daemonic bolt ammo a stratagem? Also are we sure non Warpsmiths should handle such delicate equipment?

Why the feth does take cover exist? Shouldn't that be an upgrade for a light infantry doctrine army?

Why is doubling a attacks of any kind a stratagem, yet pre battle bombardments, are not available for all armies?

______

As for reliques: they can off without a bloody point cost, how come the AL CHAINSWORD is equal in "cost" to the new BL one?

Completly asinine....

My opinion is that I only really like the models, but I enjoy the company of my friends at my local club and 40k is the easiest way to get games and interaction due to its ubiquity. The game itself is a bit of a mess, with far too many different rules sources, located in far too many different places.

But it's a bit like the Marvel films of tabletop gaming: you can generally have a good time provided you are suspending the right amount of disbelief, or in 40k's case, the right amount of expectation management.

Although I and others have attempted to introduce other games here and there, the 40k parasite is alive and well; suckling on the metaphorical teat of money and time that might be better spent elsewhere.

Though I've had some good headway with one or two other games lately, so there is some hope.

My opinion is that 8th started in a great place with their simple rules and the indexes.

It's gone exponentially down hill from there. The sheer volume of documents needed to play a currently legal game is staggering and draconian and confusing as feth for anyone just getting started. GWs poor rules writing has only exacerbated the issues and there is no end in sight. 8th is an ever bloating mess at this point that has grown to large and unwieldy to actually fix.

Put it out of it's misery and try again.

Seriously. There was a reason why no one ever passed up the chance to fully upgrade wizards.

I frequently took multiple level 2 wizards just for utility, and I played pretty competitively. The level 4's were desired more because you had a better chance of getting the highest level spell.

think the Miscast table should have actually taken into account the number of dice used to cast (e.g. 1d6 + power dice spent to cast) - with the really bad results only possible if you spent 4+ dice.

This is a change i could get behind.

Except that it wasn't. Because the spells included nonsense like bowling a back hole through the enemy army. Who cares if a 200pt wizard dies if he just obliterated ~800pts of the enemy army?

But again, thats because of the 6th level uber spells. Not because of the design of the magic phase. This wouldn't be a problem if the spells were toned down.

 Strg Alt wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:

Seabass wrote:
Wow, so I think I am like, one of the three people who actually like this game.

8th edition is the best the game has ever been in my view. There is a lot of talk comparing it to 2nd edition. I also played in the second edition, and it was a mess of chart after chart after chart, and the AP system was something...really something...using every different die under the sun. It was a fun game, but this was also the edition with the jump pack apothecary with a vortex grenade that came in at exactly 49 points so he wasn't worth a VP if he died, but a vortex grenade could kill anything...or super exarchs with a bionic leg, warp jump generator, web of skulls, and a host of other stuff, that was impossible to kill and murdered everything...don't get me started on virus bombs, rad grenades, or the elusive ablative armor wargear card...

the point is, is that every edition has its ridiculous things, but 8th edition has been good enough to revitalize the game in a lot of areas and GW has really done a pretty good job. yeah, problems exist, but the game is getting better and better, and with GW actually taking a position on competitive play and getting involved in balancing the game, I think this edition is shaping up nicely.

then again I'm weird, I like to enjoy my hobby and not mourn it.

Apothecary wearing a jump pack and tossing vortex grenades around the place? For 49 pts.

Dude, have you ever played 2nd? I guess not and you just spout nonsense here which you have read somewhere on the interwebz. So let´s enlighten you, how the cookie crumbled back in those days.

Apothecary costs 40 pts, the grenade 50 pts. and the jump pack costs 10 pts. Total is 100 pts. Which is NEARLY identical with 49 pts.

Next issue with your example would be that the grenade and jump pack was equipment which came along in the form of wargear cards. How many of those cards could the Apothecary have? Just ONE. So the equipped Apothecary in your op example is illegal.

And finally the dreaded vortex grenade was a 1.5´´ template and for it to kill ANYTHING it had to cover the WHOLE model in question. Hmm, how big was a Rhino or Land Raider in those days?
Chart after chart? You mean the vehicle damage chart? Geez, an average army list would include two vehicles. And all those different dice were only used when you tried to damage vehicles. Oh, it was so difficult!

I love when people who try to bash 2nd have absolutely no idea what they are talking about and just make a fool of themselves when posting such trash. I would like to know from you why your example with the “op Exarch” is also complete bogus.

+1 for callout on bogus 2nd edition stories. I saw that 49 pt. Apothecary too and said "Nope!"

My personal favorite tool against "un-hittable" Exarchs was to light them on fire and watch them dance around.

You are welcome.

Yeah, setting people on fire would ruin their day unless they had a few buddies around to douse the flames. The Exarch in question would benefit immensely from either a power field (2++ save vs. shooting only) or a displacer field (3++ save & scatter). These dudes were nasty but people forget that even a humble heavy bolter could inflict multiple wounds from only a single shot and the Exarch had only two wounds and 3+ save. One unlucky save against such weapons and the tree hugger was usually toast.

This exchange is the coolest thing that I have read all day and I read all day.
Bravo.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:

I frequently took multiple level 2 wizards just for utility, and I played pretty competitively. The level 4's were desired more because you had a better chance of getting the highest level spell.

I don't deny that Lv2s had some utility. Usually because you could only take 1 Arcane Item on a given caster, so Lv2s tended to be the ones carrying Dispel Scrolls.

What I said was that Lv4 Wizards were worth far more over Lv2 wizards than they actually cost.

Hell, even with regard to more minor wizards, you explicitly took Lv2 wizards, not Lv1 wizards. This was part of what I was getting at - extra wizard levels (especially 1-->2 and 3-->4) were so trivially costed compared to their benefit that they were basically an auto-take.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
This is a change i could get behind.

Well, that's the main thing I'd argue for. If you're fine with that (and with toning down some of the 8e spells that I think we both agree are nonsense), I'd be happy enough using this as the basis for 40k's psychic phase.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:

But again, thats because of the 6th level uber spells. Not because of the design of the magic phase. This wouldn't be a problem if the spells were toned down.

Sure, but those spells were as much as part of the 8th edition magic phase as the Miscast Table and can't just be ignored when judging it.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:

Seabass wrote:
Wow, so I think I am like, one of the three people who actually like this game.

8th edition is the best the game has ever been in my view. There is a lot of talk comparing it to 2nd edition. I also played in the second edition, and it was a mess of chart after chart after chart, and the AP system was something...really something...using every different die under the sun. It was a fun game, but this was also the edition with the jump pack apothecary with a vortex grenade that came in at exactly 49 points so he wasn't worth a VP if he died, but a vortex grenade could kill anything...or super exarchs with a bionic leg, warp jump generator, web of skulls, and a host of other stuff, that was impossible to kill and murdered everything...don't get me started on virus bombs, rad grenades, or the elusive ablative armor wargear card...

the point is, is that every edition has its ridiculous things, but 8th edition has been good enough to revitalize the game in a lot of areas and GW has really done a pretty good job. yeah, problems exist, but the game is getting better and better, and with GW actually taking a position on competitive play and getting involved in balancing the game, I think this edition is shaping up nicely.

then again I'm weird, I like to enjoy my hobby and not mourn it.

Apothecary wearing a jump pack and tossing vortex grenades around the place? For 49 pts.

Dude, have you ever played 2nd? I guess not and you just spout nonsense here which you have read somewhere on the interwebz. So let´s enlighten you, how the cookie crumbled back in those days.

Apothecary costs 40 pts, the grenade 50 pts. and the jump pack costs 10 pts. Total is 100 pts. Which is NEARLY identical with 49 pts.

Next issue with your example would be that the grenade and jump pack was equipment which came along in the form of wargear cards. How many of those cards could the Apothecary have? Just ONE. So the equipped Apothecary in your op example is illegal.

And finally the dreaded vortex grenade was a 1.5´´ template and for it to kill ANYTHING it had to cover the WHOLE model in question. Hmm, how big was a Rhino or Land Raider in those days?
Chart after chart? You mean the vehicle damage chart? Geez, an average army list would include two vehicles. And all those different dice were only used when you tried to damage vehicles. Oh, it was so difficult!

I love when people who try to bash 2nd have absolutely no idea what they are talking about and just make a fool of themselves when posting such trash. I would like to know from you why your example with the “op Exarch” is also complete bogus.

+1 for callout on bogus 2nd edition stories. I saw that 49 pt. Apothecary too and said "Nope!"

My personal favorite tool against "un-hittable" Exarchs was to light them on fire and watch them dance around.

OK, so I did play in second, and if I have conflated the cost of an apothecary with the cost of the wargear card together, then so be it, I was 17 years old when I played and I am 41 years old now, hell, I can barely remember what wargear cards came in expansions and which ones came out of white dwarfs (which is why I mentioned the incredibly hard to get and often wanted ablative armor). WHOOPS, I'm so goddamned sorry I don't remember identically what those rules are. But it gues it's just easier to insult people. I don't think, even then, that it changes much. I mean, we could go on and point to the Wolfguard terminators with assault cannons and cyclones, and yeah, a host of other things. Also, the stupid super exarch was just dumb, having a ton of attacks, damn near unhittable, it was just bonkers. Or, just look no further than the black codex assassin, or that, at least in my area, after dark millennium came out, no one wanted to play with it because the stupid psychic phase took too long and no one wanted to play a mini card game inside of their game of 40k, so events in my area and players just didn't use it. chart after chart? in the rule book for the core game, i remember there being like 3 or 4 different psychology charts for failing morale checks depending on whether the unit caused terror, or just fear, or other psychological effects, or the hallucinogen grenade (i may have some of the names wrong, im so fething sorry if i do, i dont have it all completely committed to memory like you two clearly do, as the gods of 2nd edition you are/were) which had a d6 result for model after model.

hell, just using jump packs was long and laborious, with scatter for every model, or my personal favorite, the smart ass space wolf player who took 20 blood claws, gave them all jump packs and smoke grenades and then jumped in, and popped smoke, which ended up with about 60+ hours of rolling scatter, and then rolling scatter for the grenade, and then, yup, you guessed it, on the next turn, you had to roll on yet another chart to see what happened with the 20 smoke grenades (whether they went away, drifted (which then incured another scatter check i think. again, not a god of 2nd edition unlike the pantheon that now stands in judgment apparently) so yeah, chart after fething chart. that was a thing. sorry, you don't remember that. i do...wait... did you actually...nevermind...

The point of all of this was that I have seen a lot of pointing to 2nd edition as some hallmark of good game design and it just wasn't. It was a fun game. The story and models brought a lot of my friends into it, as well as myself, (i can still remember being completely enthralled by the last story on the inside of the dark millennium rulebook, which was the first introduction to mckachen and stern) but it wasn't a golden age relic of excellent gameplay and design that so many seem to point it up.

Sure, I've probably conflated a lot more about that edition in my head, but who cares, it was 23 years ago, That doesn't negate my original point. Removed - BrookM