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pm713 wrote:
I'd argue that challenges are thematic for some factions.

Thematic=/=Good. The D table was incredibly thematic and utterly terrible.

I had a daemon army with a pair of bloodthirsters and 3 daemon princes that flew up first turn, so only was hit on 6s and had a jink save, switched to hover, then charged turn 2. The only army that ever gave them trouble was Tau.

I thought you couldn’t charge the turn you switched flight modes...

 JNAProductions wrote:
I thought you couldn’t charge the turn you switched flight modes...

You could in 6th, 7th nerfed that.

Okay-I’m more familiar with 7th. I just assumed, and you know what they say about that.

Yeah, I played a single game of 7th with them, got demolished, put them in their case and so they have sat.

ERJAK wrote:

pm713 wrote:
I'd argue that challenges are thematic for some factions.

Thematic=/=Good. The D table was incredibly thematic and utterly terrible.

Oh man I forgot about that when they introduced Escalation in 2013.

"roll to hit, then ignore wounds/armor pent and saves of all kinds, on a 1 you autopenetrate a tank with a +1 or 2 to the roll due to AP rules, on a 2+ any non superheavy vehicle is automatically exploded"

Very "Michael Bay" thematically, but not very fun to play. Especially when any non vehicle unit could potentially survive unscathed on a 1 or if they had sufficient wounds could survive a 2-5 roll.

Whoever wrote that book in 6E was truly braindead.

LoftyS wrote:
I played only for like half a year in 6th edition, had to quit for a while due to personal stuff (Shadowspear brought me back!)

But as far as I can remember, 6th was the most fun I'd had since 2nd edition. 3rd edition was the worst ever, and 4th and 5th were merely serviceable, often producing "meh" games. (Anyone remember Cityfight™, worst rules garbage ever printed by anyone ever?)

Note that I have yet to have a game of 8th, but I like what I'm seeing in some aspects, like armour save modifiers especially.

What really amped up my fun in 6th were the allies. I had been pining for allies since 2nd edition. It just wouldn't make sense for Imperium and Tau, or anything similar, to keep fighting eachother with a Tyranid invasion landing on their heads.

What was your reason to hate 6th, if you were among those who did?

Because after well crafted 5th edition, 6th made several terribad decisions (deathstars, flyers and super-heavies especially, and killing vehicle viability). Ally system was much better than it was in 7th (or even 8th I guess), but after very well balanced 5th Tau and Eldar took colossal dump on anything resembling parity and it was mostly allying in these two books. You also had start of 'no model no rules' nonsense after perfect 'just convert or count as it' from 5th.

They also introduced AP system to melee, which, while interesting, was done without a single thought being put in, and went out of the window after Dark Angels got AP2 on everything gaking on all armies before them who had to deal with 2+ saves with their AP3 max. Guess who suddenly started winning all duels? Especially with Chaos characters who had to accept any challenge, doubly so because DA got anti-Chaos rules far better than GK ones for some nonsense no-reason?

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Challenges were somehow an interesting mechanic

AKA 'feed 5 pts IG sergeant per turn to delete Draigo/Armless/Swarmlord/Calgar/Kharn/etc out of game forever'

In 6th ed. Flying units where impossible to kill even taking anti air guns was nit good enough. The triple heldrake list reigned supreme. Ok not supreme as vendetta spam and nightscythe spam. It was called the age of the flying circus.

 Irbis wrote:
Because after well crafted 5th edition, 6th made several terribad decisions (deathstars, flyers and super-heavies especially, and killing vehicle viability). Ally system was much better than it was in 7th (or even 8th I guess), but after very well balanced 5th Tau and Eldar took colossal dump on anything resembling parity and it was mostly allying in these two books. You also had start of 'no model no rules' nonsense after perfect 'just convert or count as it' from 5th.

Do people just forget what 5th Edition Grey Knights were? The codex so outstandingly overpowered that it caused 8th edition Grey Knights to be on a level of bad so low that you literally have to exclude them from discussions about power because it skews the entire discussion?

5th was mostly good but was spoiled by the wound allocation shenanigans that multi wound models like Paladins and Nobs took advantage of (there were others but they were the most common examples)

GK in 5th was the peak of Ward's broken writing (his Necrons reboot is a close second).

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Irbis wrote:
Because after well crafted 5th edition, 6th made several terribad decisions (deathstars, flyers and super-heavies especially, and killing vehicle viability). Ally system was much better than it was in 7th (or even 8th I guess), but after very well balanced 5th Tau and Eldar took colossal dump on anything resembling parity and it was mostly allying in these two books. You also had start of 'no model no rules' nonsense after perfect 'just convert or count as it' from 5th.

Do people just forget what 5th Edition Grey Knights were? The codex so outstandingly overpowered that it caused 8th edition Grey Knights to be on a level of bad so low that you literally have to exclude them from discussions about power because it skews the entire discussion?

While true, one codex being grossly overpowered is not the same as having core rules which invalidate fundamental parts of the game, and by extension entire codex'.

So while GK were a massive smear on the face of 5th, it was still a much better edition despite that. And that's without touching on Escalation & Death from Above, which even further skewed things.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Irbis wrote:
Because after well crafted 5th edition, 6th made several terribad decisions (deathstars, flyers and super-heavies especially, and killing vehicle viability). Ally system was much better than it was in 7th (or even 8th I guess), but after very well balanced 5th Tau and Eldar took colossal dump on anything resembling parity and it was mostly allying in these two books. You also had start of 'no model no rules' nonsense after perfect 'just convert or count as it' from 5th.

Do people just forget what 5th Edition Grey Knights were? The codex so outstandingly overpowered that it caused 8th edition Grey Knights to be on a level of bad so low that you literally have to exclude them from discussions about power because it skews the entire discussion?

5E was by no means perfect (e.g. KP's, wound allocation, gun tanks being trivially easy to shut down but 35pt rhinos being absurdly difficult to stop for their cost because as transports they didn't care about most damage results, etc), but in all fairness the GK issues were codex issues, mostly related to certain things (like psybolt ammo) being stupidly cheap, not reflection of the core ruleset.

Another reason people didn't like 6th was because it was a super short edition, it lasted 2 years? before 7th rolled around.

And while people hate 7th...as other posters have pointed out a lot of the bad stuff started in 6th. 6th wasn't even around long enough to go through a full codex cycle, so the game was a lot of have/have-nots.

Those were bad years for GW

Ah, 6th Edition

Adding flyers to regular 40k was a mistake. I will never NOT say that. I think a flying transport, to some degree, has its place- but it should never be on the battlefield for more than 2 turns.

Hull points were stupid. The idea of certain parts of the vehicle breaking were kinda cool, but other than that- nothing sucked worse than making a really awesome vehicle that gets shot 3 times and dies.

Heavy Weapons? Better hope you put them exactly where you need them, because if they gotta move it's gonna suck.

Open topped vehicles made assaulting out of a vehicle easy. It also meant flamers could ravage your ride.

A guy dies when his squad runs through a crater, then the squad fails a morale check after, and 2 more die on the way back when they retreat through the same crater. LOLWUT.

Deep Strike rules were stupid. You could maybe have a chance at making some guys get close to where you wanted them, and get off some shots with them- but that was it.

Drop Pod land on a single tiny enemy trooper? Sucks to be you, it's a mishap now.

Blast templates? Watch me spread my Squads ALL OVER the board so you can kill...two guys.

That Leman Russ with the sponson guns, the turret gun, and the main gun? Yeah, they all gotta shoot at the same thing, even though each of them has a different dude operating on it. So yeah, that guy on the left sponson can't shoot at things the gunner can see, because all of his other buddies are shooting other things.

It also introduced Imperial Knights, because at this point we may as well be able to use ANYTHING at any point level.

The way the rules were, they forced you to ensure that your army had LOTS of anti-armor and anti-aircraft capability.

The rules issues kinda predated this, for the most part. But this was right when GW realized that "If it's good on the tabletop, people will throw money at it" so they had no problem at all making some very obviously broken units.

This is also when people realized that life is full of choices, and in 6th- it was "Play Tau" or "Have friends that play 40k with me".

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

Drop Pod land on a single tiny enemy trooper? Sucks to be you, it's a mishap now.

Drop Pods moved the minimum distance to avoid model-mishap via their Inertial Guidance System. The only way they mishap-ed was by scattering off the board.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:

Drop Pod land on a single tiny enemy trooper? Sucks to be you, it's a mishap now.

Drop Pods moved the minimum distance to avoid model-mishap via their Inertial Guidance System. The only way they mishap-ed was by scattering off the board.

You're right. My mistake. In my defense, I didn't buy a drop pod until 7th edition, and I didn't even bother much with it because it was the most boring model I had.

I do remember, now that you mention it. I never quite got the table edge mishap, either.

It can adjust a whole 5 inches to avoid a tank... but not 1 inch to avoid the board edge. Always seemed like an odd mechanic.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Do people just forget what 5th Edition Grey Knights were?

Custom built to abuse the wound allocation, vehicle damage, and scoring rules of 5th, among other things. Though I feel Cruddace one-upped Ward with his 5e cron codex - quite a few things didn't make any sense on release but were later revealed to be pre-abusing the 6e rules.
Between crons and the helldrake 6e didn't get off to the best of starts.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Irbis wrote:
Because after well crafted 5th edition, 6th made several terribad decisions (deathstars, flyers and super-heavies especially, and killing vehicle viability). Ally system was much better than it was in 7th (or even 8th I guess), but after very well balanced 5th Tau and Eldar took colossal dump on anything resembling parity and it was mostly allying in these two books. You also had start of 'no model no rules' nonsense after perfect 'just convert or count as it' from 5th.

Do people just forget what 5th Edition Grey Knights were? The codex so outstandingly overpowered that it caused 8th edition Grey Knights to be on a level of bad so low that you literally have to exclude them from discussions about power because it skews the entire discussion?

5th edition had some major problems with codex creep, but 6th trippled down on than. Facing 6th edition tau or eldar, or even both at once was not even in the same league as 5th's GK paladins, Corteaz, shunt-autowins, psyflebacks and psyflemen.

IMO the main reason my GK doesn't work anymore is because they took the inquisition out of it. AM would also fall apart if you split infantry and tanks into separate armies.

Necrons and helldrakes spring to mind.

Some codices still stuck in 4th ed for a good while before getting an update.

The mandatory aegis defense line because your army had no flyers to contest the armies which had.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Irbis wrote:
Because after well crafted 5th edition, 6th made several terribad decisions (deathstars, flyers and super-heavies especially, and killing vehicle viability). Ally system was much better than it was in 7th (or even 8th I guess), but after very well balanced 5th Tau and Eldar took colossal dump on anything resembling parity and it was mostly allying in these two books. You also had start of 'no model no rules' nonsense after perfect 'just convert or count as it' from 5th.

Do people just forget what 5th Edition Grey Knights were? The codex so outstandingly overpowered that it caused 8th edition Grey Knights to be on a level of bad so low that you literally have to exclude them from discussions about power because it skews the entire discussion?

5th Ed. Grey Knights and current Marines perform fairly similar actually.

Adepticon 2012 at the height of the Grey Knight craze, they made up 22% of the lists and there were 4 Grey Knight lists in the Top 10.

The most recent Warzone Atlanta had 50 Codex Space Marines lists in 163 total lists (about 30%) and also 4 Astartes lists in the Top 10. According to 40Kstats, Adeptus Astartes is just over 22.6% of lists in the large tournaments they tracked this November, with 4-5 Marine lists in the Top 10 of a tournament not being uncommon (with some spikes like the Element Games Grand Slam with 7 Marines in the Top 10 (though perhaps Grey Knights did similarly well at some 2-day event in 2012ish as well).


Adepticon 2012


Current events



That said, 6th/7th Ed. rules were full of errors, ambiguities and certainly nothing anyone ever want's to go back to, but balance was never as bad as it was with 5th Ed. Grey Knights or 8th Ed. Nu-Marines, if'd want to use tournament data as an indicator (an indicator for something doesn't mean it is the very thing we're talking about it. Indicators are always imperfect).

Again just for the example of Adepticon in March 2017, just before 8th dropped, the Top 10 were fairly diverse with no faction showing up more than twice.

The Top 5 overall (incl. hobby scores and such) were ...

Chaos Marines No. 1
Eldar Scat Bikes No. 2
Marines and Sisters No. 3
Riptides No. 4
Ynnari List No. 5

And Nick Nanavati winning "best general" with mono-Daemons

A spread like that is pretty much unthinkable in a larger Winter 2019/2020 tournament.

Something I also remembered, 6th was the edition when GW decided to go completely black on us, removing all previous FAQs, not providing new ones and having no outside communication whatsoever.

 Jidmah wrote:
Something I also remembered, 6th was the edition when GW decided to go completely black on us, removing all previous FAQs, not providing new ones and having no outside communication whatsoever.

Indeed. These were the Kirby Years. Filled with hilarious investor report preambles but not good for the game at all.

My favorite was the one where Kirby claimed that GW had survived Pokemon and they will continue to survive other new hypes like the internet - two days after a new Pokemon game launched and made more money in those two days than GW does in a year.

 Jidmah wrote:
My favorite was the one where Kirby claimed that GW had survived Pokemon and they will continue to survive other new hypes like the internet - two days after a new Pokemon game launched and made more money in those two days than GW does in a year.

I liked the "But is it true?" one. Still cannot believe that was actually sent to investors.

I was growing cold on 5th before 6th hit, and just seeing some of the rules changes between those editions had me sit it out. I've not played an edition past 5th, and have no intention to.


Though, I do have to genuinely say the OP is the first time I've read someone go postal on Cityfight.

 Just Tony wrote:

Though, I do have to genuinely say the OP is the first time I've read someone go postal on Cityfight.

Yeah, right? That struck me as odd too. I found Cityfight to be a pretty great 40k mod.

 NurglesR0T wrote:
5th was mostly good but was spoiled by the wound allocation shenanigans that multi wound models like Paladins and Nobs took advantage of (there were others but they were the most common examples)

GK in 5th was the peak of Ward's broken writing (his Necrons reboot is a close second).

lets be honest here it more applied to GK who actually had a good book. Orks wounds shenanagins on nobz and nob bikers were really one of the only things keeping the army playable. There was battlewagon bash with nobs, nob bikers or kan wall backed by nobz. they were not a power house but were more a middle of the road power curve in 5th with their 4th edition codex mostly because of those wound shenanagins. Without it they would have been pretty much trash tier.

I still remember flyers being banned or restricted/limited in tournaments until about a year before 8th dropped.

I don't miss having to build my entire list around mitigating flyers and armor.