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 Polonius wrote:
Fifth edition was a nice big house with an open floor plan... and shag carpeting everywhere. The thing is... that's a pretty simple fix.

Fifth edition has a few things bad about it, but some are corner csaes (wound allocation really was only a big deal for Ork nobs and GK paladins). The vehicle damage chart is likewise simple to house rule around (either by giving +1 for every subsequent roll, or by giving all rolls a blanket +1).

Don't get me wrong, overall 5th was ok. And every edition has its oddities (that can be house-ruled away). But IMO 4th is a better foundation, and the codexes of that era are top notch. Daemonhunters book vs. Ward GK is a no brainer. The IG doctrines, custom chapter rules, Chaos 3.5, Tyranid mutations, Kroot sub-codex. Speed Freaks. A great time.

Yeah, none of these were perfect editions, and each had issues both with core rules and separately with codex design, and none ever had much meaningful errata or rules cleanup done to them with mostly only relatively light FAQ. I think everyone would have preferred some sort of hybrid of each compared to any single distinct version. For myself, I think early 4E was probably the height of the eras cool factor in terms of options offered and general story feel (armories, doctrines, legion rules, chapter traits, etc), with mid-5E broadly being the most playable for the widest array of factions and unit types (e.g. Jump Infantry weren't all almost 30pt models, transports of all kinds actually functioned, everyone's drop pods and assault cannons finally all worked the same way, etc), with core 3E being the easiest to just pick up and go with if you bought a couple squads of basic dudes of whatever and want to throw down.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Daemonhunters book vs. Ward GK is a no brainer.

It's been a while but I seem to recall that 1000pts of daemonhunters was approximately a GM with minimum retinue, three bare minimum squads of power armour, and a las/missile dreadnought.

19 infantry and a vehicle. Curiously my old 1k 3rd edition dark eldar list also had 19... dark lances.

A.T. wrote:

 Kroem wrote:
Haha I remember that, where half the points of a Chaos army would be in their lord with loads of deamonic gifts and weapons!

And the other half would be in daemonettes being summoned directly into close combat...

Unless you played Night Lords. We only got to take furies, and they sucked.

A.T. wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The 3E 40k core rulebook is literally the only Games Workshop produced Warhammer 40,000 related gaming publication I have never found, seen, or heard of existing as a PDF.

It is out there, though the only one i've seen recently was lacking the army rules section. Hidden in a directory listing amongst other seeming lost files as 3e errata and faq.

Slightly different formatting to the old FAQs - i.e. "Errata - Ork Q&A v1.0.pdf" on the subject of an army list from white dwarf answered 'Karl Renwick screwed up his army list'

They exist. I downloaded a pdf of the 3rd edition rulebook complete except for the cover along with several old IA books three weeks ago. Now the URL for the site shows up as "not found".

Edit:
Sorry, my bad. No army lists. Must be the same one A.T. was talking about.

A.T. wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Daemonhunters book vs. Ward GK is a no brainer.

It's been a while but I seem to recall that 1000pts of daemonhunters was approximately a GM with minimum retinue, three bare minimum squads of power armour, and a las/missile dreadnought.

19 infantry and a vehicle. Curiously my old 1k 3rd edition dark eldar list also had 19... dark lances.

I dunno, but you could take Stormtroopers as Troops and you only needed two Troops in those days. Conversely, you could just ally in a single GK squad into your IG or SM army. Plenty of ways to get around their expensive Power Armor GK squads.

Even the codex itself noted that running pure grey knights was... a challenge.

 Insectum7 wrote:
I dunno, but you could take Stormtroopers as Troops and you only needed two Troops in those days. Conversely, you could just ally in a single GK squad into your IG or SM army. Plenty of ways to get around their expensive Power Armor GK squads.

Absolutely - I was an old DH player until the GK book came along and ruined it and the best way to play grey knights was to not play grey knights.

Though they (and sisters) did have the handy perk of being immune to the effects of the siren power.

They had some amazing abilities for fighting daemons though. The Grimoire of True Names I remember being amazing on your GM against Greater Daemons.

Flavor trumped game balance in the DH book in particular. But it was such rich flavor.

I'm also a guy who prefers that the GK not be a standing army that regularly deploys against non-daemons, which is what they turned into. So for me, the DH codex was fantastic. It was far more of a narrative book than a tourney book.

The 3E DH book was a spectacular piece of worldbuilding art, that entire era of codex writing with the DH/WH/CSM/IG/etc books was probably GW's peak of writing awesome atmosphere pieces.

As a gameplay supplement for a tabletop miniatures wargame however, the DH codex was really bad at its job, a great example of what happens when someone has a bunch of cool sounding ideas but doesn't really play them. GW produced these gorgeous miniatures (the metal terminators are some of my favorite GW models ever, I'm literally working on some right this moment) for an army they designed to fight against one enemy faction (out of a dozen plus) who wasn't even their own actual distinct army at the time (not until just before 5E anyway), making them wholly uncompetitive in a general gaming sense. On top of that, they gave Daemons so many bonuses to counteract the GK abilitiles, like recycling dead units right back onto the board, that games against Daemons often were even worse, while outside of GK units there wasn't really enough of an army to make much of anything. It made owning a collection of Daemonhunters as something other than a display piece rather difficult to justify for many.

Then the Ward dex came along in 5th, and while the quality of the writing dropped through the floor straight into bad internet fanfic territory, and for all its balance problems, it did make owning a collection of Grey Knights miniatures much more playable in a general "pick a faction and play games with your toy soldiers against whoever shows up on league night" sense. That slides into my earlier point about that 3.5E/early 4E era being the peak of some cool detail and worldbuilding, with later 5E being kinda the peak of general playability.

I loved the DH (and WH) book. Never played Grey Knights. Just used Inquisitors.

 Insectum7 wrote:
They had some amazing abilities for fighting daemons though.

They were, weirdly, better at fighting Eldar though. S6 weapons that ignore Invul saves.

 Insectum7 wrote:
They had some amazing abilities for fighting daemons though. The Grimoire of True Names I remember being amazing on your GM against Greater Daemons.

An HQ with a high strength I5 force weapon, protection from psychic powers, and penalties to instability tests.

Did not age well with 4e daemons. Though list tailored inquisition DH vs 4e daemons remains perhaps the closest to an 'auto win' matchup in 40k - there wasn't anything you could do if a couple of inquisitors in transports roll up on the objectives and cast sanctuary.

Though it's interesting looking back at 3e and how close the statlines of the 'monster' units were, and how relatively fragile.

5th edition over-toughened vehicles and was the start of inflating invuln saves and propogation of too many high AP weapons.

So you are totally not seeing the correlation in game design there? make vehicles harder to kill but balance it out by allowing more anti-tank weapons in the game? it was part of the strategic play, knowng which fight to fight with which units. also it only helped non-skimmers. 4th ed was the heyday of eldar/tau tank lists. that was a bit overpowered and thats coming from a tau player at the time(although i am glad 3rd ed crystal targeting matrix went away even in 4th).

What was "overtough" and superior by all measurements from 3rd -5th was monsterous creatures. some small arms could hut them but they could not be stunned, pinned, or otherwise hampered unless they were dead. and against the so called "toughened vheicles" they were can-openers. even my landraiders rarely survived being assaulted by a bloodthirster, carnifex or hive tyrant.

Fifth edition was a nice big house with an open floor plan... and shag carpeting everywhere. The thing is... that's a pretty simple fix.

Fifth edition has a few things bad about it, but some are corner cases (wound allocation really was only a big deal for Ork nobs and GK paladins). The vehicle damage chart is likewise simple to house rule around (either by giving +1 for every subsequent roll, or by giving all rolls a blanket +1).

There was actually nothing wrong with the damage chart. cumulative damage still destroyed even the biggest vehicles who effectively also only had 1 wound and could be insta killed as well.

It's good to remember in the age of 8th that back then there were alot less shots/CC attacks being fired/swung, alot less wounds to soak up said shots and a much easier game to keep track of with fixed movement/charge ranges by unit type and USRs limited to 3 pages in the BRB that applied to all factions, not stacks of special books full of stratagems for each and every faction. even faction specific special rules were limited in scope and not as extreme as now.



On "fixing things"
That's pretty much what our group did years ago as we still play core 5th. we sat down for a few hours and started with 5th as the base game and pulled the best rules from 3rd-7th that would fit well into 5th. and them codified them in a list of modified rules (PDF)

Also allowing your favorite version of the codex for your army to be playable in accordance with 5th ed rules if it is from 3rd-7th as the compatability is pretty straightforward.
As examples-i prefer to use the 3rd ed Dark angel minidex for playing ravenwing/deathwing, same with grey knights as it made them incredibly lore specific (and the fact a small force of GKs/WH codex units could join any imperial force making their stand alone viability not such an issue). at the same time i find the 5th ed IG codex(even with the lost of doctrines) and the blood angel codex to better represent the options and lore of those factions.

For other rules modifications we did things like so-

.We still use the assault to hit VS vehicle rules from 4th(minus the skimmers always glancing bit) ,
.the rules for psykers from 4th/5th (not that mess that is 6th/7th attempting to import the WHFB magic phase into the game),
.CC weapons having a flavorful AP value from 6th/7th,
.fearless USR from 3rd (auto pass LD checks save pinning),
.snap fire from 6th/7th to make moving heavy weapons and stunned/shaken vehicles be able to at least attempt to contribute something
...among other things (like i said i have a 1 page PDF list ).

I still play 3rd Ed. currently. Posted a bunch of battle reports on this site linking to classichammer.com where the batrep is written.

I echo that the Armageddon codex is a good grab to add. What I'd DEFINITELY recommend is sitting down and making a Summary page for your Orks. They were the only book to my knowledge that didn't have the summary where it listed all stat lines for models and ballistic weapon stats.


I'm curious about the whole "Unkillable skimmer" thing, though. It's not something I've experienced.

 Insectum7 wrote:
5th edition over-toughened vehicles...

Wasn't 5th Ed the advent of Hull Points? That made vehicles weaker.

Just Tony wrote:I still play 3rd Ed. currently. Posted a bunch of battle reports on this site linking to classichammer.com where the batrep is written.

I echo that the Armageddon codex is a good grab to add. What I'd DEFINITELY recommend is sitting down and making a Summary page for your Orks. They were the only book to my knowledge that didn't have the summary where it listed all stat lines for models and ballistic weapon stats.


I'm curious about the whole "Unkillable skimmer" thing, though. It's not something I've experienced.

In 4th skimmers could only take glancing hits even if they did not move and the only way they died from a glance was a 6-immobilized result.. it really only became an issue with tau and eldar. SM land speeders for example got eaten pretty easily especially if they could not move. Tau had a disruption pod upgrade that forced a re-roll on glancing 6s, eldar holofields made you roll 2d6 and take the lowest result. eldar had the additional bonus of being able to ignore stunned or shaken results on a dice roll thanks to spirit stones. this made tau and especially eldar tanks near impossible to outright destroy.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
5th edition over-toughened vehicles...

Wasn't 5th Ed the advent of Hull Points? That made vehicles weaker.

No that abomination didn't start until 6th. it was horribly implemented and i refuse to play any game that uses them. DUST uses a comparable system but does it right. assigning HPs based on the size of the vehicle from 2 health all the way up to 11 (not blanket 2/3/4, mostly 3 even for a russ) without a critical hit chart (well there is an optional one in the newest edition if you want to use it). that combined with the facts that dust is alternating activation so you don't have a hail of fire from an entire army at once, coupled with the success rate for normal shooting/swinging in dust is 33% it balances out much better.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

I'd recommend starting with bare bones 3rd edition with the BBB lists, and only add in the later codices if you have the TVR/TAR.

THIS. Unless someone really wants to play Tau or Necrons, keep it to the BBB and the lists printed inside. Corehammer 3rd is the most balanced version you'll find and a really good introduction to newer players since it lacks the flashy, gamey aspects the Codexes bring in.

Spot on. I'd love to go back and just play 3rd edition big rule book lists. Balanced, and all in one book. Also no scale creep, no titans. The game knew what it was, a platoon level game..

One of the best things about the 3rd edition is the Rapid Fire rule, it makes players make a choice, unlike now where units can move and still fire at maximum range.

Sadly I doubt I'd find anyone wanting to play the older edition around here.

I'd love for Rapid Fire to go back to the 3rd edition version (though at half range instead of 12").

 BaconCatBug wrote:
I'd love for Rapid Fire to go back to the 3rd edition version (though at half range instead of 12").

That one change would I think cut down on how quickly things die in 8th edition. No more moving, running and shooting at full range with Rapid Fire weapons. A Space Marine can have a threat range of 36", which is too much.

 stonehorse wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
I'd love for Rapid Fire to go back to the 3rd edition version (though at half range instead of 12").

That one change would I think cut down on how quickly things die in 8th edition. No more moving, running and shooting at full range with Rapid Fire weapons. A Space Marine can have a threat range of 36", which is too much.

The problem is that now Heavy Weapons become too good, move and fire at full range with a piddly -1 to hit. But it might work

What if Heavy Weapons fired at half the model's BS (rounded down) if it moved?

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 stonehorse wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
I'd love for Rapid Fire to go back to the 3rd edition version (though at half range instead of 12").

That one change would I think cut down on how quickly things die in 8th edition. No more moving, running and shooting at full range with Rapid Fire weapons. A Space Marine can have a threat range of 36", which is too much.

The problem is that now Heavy Weapons become too good, move and fire at full range with a piddly -1 to hit. But it might work

-1 to hit... but re-roll 1's, and other such shenanigans.

3rd edition was less about list building and more about choices players make in game. 8th edition's depth is all in list building. 8th edition could have been GW's chance to create a good system as they had 7 previous editions to choose the best bits from... but now they made a car crash.

To the OP, enjoy 3rd edition, it is 40k at its best, play all the missions and if you can do some battle reports.

I know have the urge to track down a 3rd edition rule book, templates, and artillery dice.

 vipoid wrote:
What if Heavy Weapons fired at half the model's BS (rounded down) if it moved?

I'd rather have an additional -1 if fired beyond half range if you moved. But then again I'd prefer to have alternate action and D12 system, so if we're fixing stuff might as well go whole hog.

Personally, I don't think Rapid Fire weapons are a huge issue, and at least my recollection through earlier editions was that most thought they were far too restrictive in their functionality in 3E and 4E (and everyone wanted Assault type weapons if possible since they had no restrictions on their use), getting a half dozen bolter or lasgun shots after moving at a target at 24" in 3E probably wouldn't have broken the game and would have given a lot of units something more to do than babysit a static lascannon.

In 8E, it's hard to see a direct issue with Rapid Fire weapons inherently as a weapon type, though as with most everything else they can be enhanced and buffed to levels impossible in previous editions, and that many weapons now sport significantly more shots than they did in previous editions (e.g. Hurricane bolters and Storm Bolters). Additionally, LoS allows shots that wouldn't have worked in 3E or 4E due to the Area Terrain rules.

Shots that couldn't have been taken due to LoS or that would have only likely killed a single marine or a couple guardsmen in 3E can now be taken much easier or may be able to be passively buffed to such a degree that now they may slay three marines or half a dozen guardsmen. It's not really anything related to the fundamental Rapid Fire rules though.

Thanks all for the input - I've got the core rules, chapter approved 03/04 and ork/chaos dexes inbound over the next two weeks. In the meantime I need to hunt down a set of templates.

Reading the 1st/2nd edition ork dexes was kind of a shock as to how much detail the game has lost in favor of speed. Just the rolls for a shokk attack gun sound like they'd take ages to resolve.

2nd Edition was 50% wargame and 50% role-playing game.

While I don't know if it was ever officially put down in writing, the information I have heard from a number of sources was that the design team was busy revising 2nd edition for a 3rd edition in a similar vein....before getting the project axed and being ordered to go far simpler/faster for future streamlining. This was right around the time GW went publicly traded, etc. I believe they said they did 3rd edition in 5-6 months as it was more or less a complete surprise to the designers.

A game such as 2nd would never support the size of armies that 3rd edition and onwards started to encourage. Smaller armies = less sales, etc.

It was this massive shock from 2nd to 3rd that eventually made me stop playing 40K for a good 10-11 years (around 4th is when I bailed). I wasn't enjoying it anywhere near as much as I had enjoyed 2nd edition. It was very much like going from a PC game ...to find out the sequel is an app game for your phone. It was that level of surprise. Now the designers and GW did as well as they probably could given the time constraints, but it definitely soured a lot of people - but overall probably attracted far more customers in the long run.

Financially the simplification was a positive move, I believe. For every person, like myself, who wandered away from the game, I'd imagine 3-4 came into it.

CptMendoza wrote:
Thanks all for the input - I've got the core rules, chapter approved 03/04 and ork/chaos dexes inbound over the next two weeks. In the meantime I need to hunt down a set of templates.

Reading the 1st/2nd edition ork dexes was kind of a shock as to how much detail the game has lost in favor of speed. Just the rolls for a shokk attack gun sound like they'd take ages to resolve.

Yeah that is one of the great things about the older codexes. i think the 3rd ed dark angels mini dex has more fluff in it than all the full codexes that came after it.

the ork codex in 4th/5th was also still fun with the ramshackle table for trukks and the random effects of the shokk attack gun for example . always fun to see a big mech turn into a warp grenade of random size.

The 3rd ed codexes were very rules dense, fluff light. Maybe the most extreme skew on that until the Indexes dropped at the start of 8th. Still a few gems in them, but it wasn’t just in comparison to the glorious 2nd ed books. They were very mechanical.

The background was delivered differently in the 3rd edition codices than it is today though, instead of saying "Ork culture is X, Eldar history is Y" it had much more in-universe information. An Archon's interpretation about how Commorragh functioned, an Imperial bureacrat's findings about how Space Marine Chapter's were organised or the court martial of an Imperial Guard commander who had fallen victim to a surprise attack by Orks.

Not only was this a cleverer way of delivering the background info but it left more room for interpretation and creativitivity.

 aphyon wrote:

5th edition over-toughened vehicles and was the start of inflating invuln saves and propogation of too many high AP weapons.

So you are totally not seeing the correlation in game design there? make vehicles harder to kill but balance it out by allowing more anti-tank weapons in the game? it was part of the strategic play, knowng which fight to fight with which units.

It was the start of an offensive-defensive escalation cycle that reduced the effectiveness of common troops, and I'm not sure dropping Plasma Sternguard on anything/everything was amazing strategic play.

 aphyon wrote:
What was "overtough" and superior by all measurements from 3rd -5th was monsterous creatures. some small arms could hut them but they could not be stunned, pinned, or otherwise hampered unless they were dead. and against the so called "toughened vheicles" they were can-openers. even my landraiders rarely survived being assaulted by a bloodthirster, carnifex or hive tyrant.

None of the MCs of 4th edition was particularly over-tough. Toughest MCs were the C'tan at (I think) T8 5W 4++, and they were unique, slow and cost 300+ points. Bloodthirster might have been T6 5W 3+ 4++. And yes, if a Bloodthirster or Carnifex gets to your Land Raider your Land Raider should be dead. I'm 100% fine with that paradigm.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Personally, I don't think Rapid Fire weapons are a huge issue, and at least my recollection through earlier editions was that most thought they were far too restrictive in their functionality in 3E and 4E (and everyone wanted Assault type weapons if possible since they had no restrictions on their use), getting a half dozen bolter or lasgun shots after moving at a target at 24" in 3E probably wouldn't have broken the game and would have given a lot of units something more to do than babysit a static lascannon.

In 8E, it's hard to see a direct issue with Rapid Fire weapons inherently as a weapon type, though as with most everything else they can be enhanced and buffed to levels impossible in previous editions, and that many weapons now sport significantly more shots than they did in previous editions (e.g. Hurricane bolters and Storm Bolters). Additionally, LoS allows shots that wouldn't have worked in 3E or 4E due to the Area Terrain rules.

Shots that couldn't have been taken due to LoS or that would have only likely killed a single marine or a couple guardsmen in 3E can now be taken much easier or may be able to be passively buffed to such a degree that now they may slay three marines or half a dozen guardsmen. It's not really anything related to the fundamental Rapid Fire rules though.

You are missing the point. 3rd edition Rapid Fire rules put players on a position where they had to make hard choices. 'do I advance this unit into that objective and forego shooting at that enemy unit that I won't have range on... or do I stay still and shoot the enemy unit and take the Objective next turn if I cause enough damage to the enemy unit to break it.'

Hard choices like this are what should be the main point of strategic play in a miniature wargame. A player who has lost should be able to look back and pin point what choices they did wrong. Sadly 8th seems to have erased that element.