The 40K- all things old editions topic.

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**H.B.M.C.**

What does a 500 point 3.5 list look like?

**aphyon**

A tricked out lord and 2 squads. that's all he had, if he wanted to run demons or cultists he could have a horde.

**A.T.**

aphyon wrote:
we did a couple 500 point small games that didn't go so well for him as chaos tends to really suffer at low points

I always found anything below 1000pts was a bit tight for games, even with the combat-patrol style limitations as there were some factions far less limited by them.

Of course without restrictions at 500pts you could bring a siren prince and a pile of daemonettes, and good luck fighting that :p

**aphyon**

I have been wainting to get this game in and it was a good slog.

3.5 grey demon hunters joined some marines in an attack/defend mission against a khorn army. table quarters deployment 2k points.

It was the first game out for the lovely new Scarbrand model. and he did not disappoint....killing a full terminator retinue and grand master.

His obliterators actually had a great scatter and ended up just behind the dreadnought defending my objective, later killing it and sitting on the objective. my counter assault killed the defiler defending his objective but the ironclad that pulled off the feat got immobilized in return and was unable to contest the outcome of the game. Kharn also managed to get locked in combat with a single remaining fellow berserker and out of all his attacks still managed to roll a single 1 killing his ally...as it should be.

Spoiler:

**aphyon**

I ended up running game master on a massive retro hammer game.

On one side we had grey knights (5th) imperial guard (5th) with an aquila strongpoint, and iperial knights (7th)

VS

iron warriors and word bearers from 3.5 with some demons worked in from the 4th ed demon codex.

There was an objective in the guard command bunker chaos was trying to seize.

Some of the funny highlight Scarbrand failed his 4" charge and got punked by Drago, the keeper of secrets turned one member of the guard command squad into a spawn....much sillyness ensued. a single obliterator nearly destroyed the biggest knight on the table with a couple well place power fist hits.

the aquila strongpoint was a hard nut to crack with AV 15 and a couple void shield generators. it took some S10 CC attacks to finally wreck it.

At the end of the game it came down to tie breakers with chaos scoring line breaker but the imperial forces taking fist blood and slay the warlord.

Spoiler:

**Gore Child’s Teeth**

I want a rematch against those knights.

that was a fun game for sure, once the Tank Hunter devastator squads got murdered I knew it was going to be rough.

**Daba**

Were there any FAQs in 2nd edition regarding force field wargear and a model's own unmodifiable save?

**insaniak**

Daba wrote:
Were there any FAQs in 2nd edition regarding force field wargear and a model's own unmodifiable save?

There was an FAQ that bundled together all of the various field-type saves and ruled that a model could only ever benefit from one of them at a time.

**Commissar von Toussaint**

insaniak wrote:
Daba wrote:
Were there any FAQs in 2nd edition regarding force field wargear and a model's own unmodifiable save?

There was an FAQ that bundled together all of the various field-type saves and ruled that a model could only ever benefit from one of them at a time.

Near the end of 2nd ed. there was a massive online compilation called the "Battle Bible" that purported to consolidate all of the various books, articles and rules into a single, massive Word document.

Perhaps in an effort to avoid copyright infringement, the core rules were paraphrased based on the author(s)' misinterpretation of the rules. Similarly, the army lists had some issues.

That being said, the FAQs were faithfully reproduced. Another useful item was the comprehensive list of wargear/vehicle upgrade cards.

**H.B.M.C.**

I still have a copy of the Battle Bible.

Last edit date says 8th December 1998.

**insaniak**

The field FAQ wasn't reproduced in the Battle Bible - I think they tried to incorporate it by rewording the various rules entries for the fields in question. The actual FAQ said this:

ENERGY FIELDS: According to page 66 of the Wargear book a model can only have one energy field activated at a time. How does this work, and what counts as an "energy field"?

The rule is actually quite straightforward, and simply means that a model may only ever have one energy field. With hindsight, Using the word -activated- in the sentence was a poor choice, as it implies that a model may have several energy fields and choose which to use by turning them on and off'. This isn't actually the case at all, and the rule is that a model may only have a single energy field and that's all!  A good rule of thumb as to what qualifies as an energy field is that if the item has the word "field" in its title, and/or the item offers an unmodified saving throw, then it is an energy field. If it doesn't, then it isn't an energy field. The following list includes all of the things which are counted as energy fields at the time of going to print. No model or character can ever have more than one item from the list.  Note that the list does not include suppression shields, holo- suits, or fields produced by psychic powers (other than the Tyranid Warp Field), none of which count as a field for the purposes of this rule. We are also very well aware that this will make characters, especially Eldar Farseers, much more vulnerable, but we think that this is a good thing, as allowing characters multiple unmodified saves simply makes them far too difficult to kill.  

Eldar Rune Armour
Power Field
Yarrick's Force Field
 Refractor Field
Storm Shield
Kustom Force Field  
Conversion Field
Daemonic Aura
Zoanthrope Warp Field
 Rosarius
War Walker Power Field
Tyranid Biomorph Voltage Field
 Displacer Field
The Lion Helm
Tyranid Biomorph Warp Field.

**Commissar von Toussaint**

insaniak wrote:
The field FAQ wasn't reproduced in the Battle Bible - I think they tried to incorporate it by rewording the various rules entries for the fields in question. The actual FAQ said this:

What I liked about 2nd was that it was the last time GW actually took a sensible approach to rules interpretation. This is a great example.

Right after 3rd came out, there was a rules question regarding ork wargear. They had some sort of rocket attachment to vehicles ("boosta rokkit"?) that added d6 inches to its movement, but didn't incur firing penalties for movement (this was when moving vehicle limited the number of weapons that could fire).

So people were declaring the ork vehicle stationary, but firing the rockets, resulting in a "free" d6 inch "creep" forward.

GW could have said "C'mon, use your brains," but instead they parsed the rule to say that if the die roll is a 3 or less, no penalty, more than 3, counts as moved. And that became the way GW operated from that moment forward, rewarding rules exploits rather than appealing to fair play and common sense.

That in turn was a big factor in my decision to quit the "current edition."

**H.B.M.C.**

They also used fluff justification for incorrect rules interpretation in 3rd.

Daemonic Flight was an upgrade CSM characters could get. The description said that it could represent everything from a Jump Pack to leathery daemonic wings. It was most often seen as wings of Daemon Princes.

Someone asked GW if Blood Rage would make a character with Daemonic Flight go faster.

"Being angry doesn't make a Jump Pack go faster."

Well I was certainly afflicted with Blood Rage after that absurd answer. Same damned FAQ where they said T5 Obliterators was a "mistake".

**A.T.**

H.B.M.C. wrote:
Daemonic Flight was an upgrade CSM characters could get. The description said that it could represent everything from a Jump Pack to leathery daemonic wings. It was most often seen as wings of Daemon Princes.
Someone asked GW if Blood Rage would make a character with Daemonic Flight go faster.
"Being angry doesn't make a Jump Pack go faster."
Well I was certainly afflicted with Blood Rage after that absurd answer.

The entry for Blood Rage in the codex stated "do not roll for vehicles, Dreadnoughts, bikes, or models using Daemonic flight"

So I suspect it was a poorly worded response to players saying "my character doesn't have daemonic flight, it has a jump pack (gained from daemonic flight) and so that rule doesn't apply to me"

**aphyon**

Well i like to think that dreadnoughts get their own version on a 1 with a little love from Khorne...or Tzeentch takes them on a 6 and they go on a fire frenzy.

**Haighus**

The weirdest IMO was the enginseer servitor ruling that directly contradicted the reprint of the 3.5th Guard codex and also made the "only one servitor can carry a plasma cannon" sentence pointless when that would also apply to a multimelta servitor as they cost over half the 50pt wargear allowance too.

**A.T.**

In terms of FAQ weirdness the daemonhunter and witch hunter errata was always out of sync.

And of course the big round of 5e update errata to old books which took an... interesting approach to setting costs, Though in fairness it did broadly achieve the goal of bringing the WH, BT, and DA books into a better place for casual 5th edition play.

**Commissar von Toussaint**

Haighus wrote:
The weirdest IMO was the enginseer servitor ruling that directly contradicted the reprint of the 3.5th Guard codex and also made the "only one servitor can carry a plasma cannon" sentence pointless when that would also apply to a multimelta servitor as they cost over half the 50pt wargear allowance too.

One of the (many!) advantages of 2nd ed. is that it actually lasted a long time, so a lot of the kinks were ironed out of it before it was rendered obsolete.

A lot of players were really hoping that 3rd ed. would be the definitive edition of the game, a needed revision that cleared out some of the Rogue Trader-era fiddly details and creating a more streamlined system capable of sustaining larger battles.

Well, the model count went higher, but the system was in many ways unrecognizable, and GW dumped one set of problems for a new, larger set. And the Tau. I'll never forgive them for the Tau.

**H.B.M.C.**

Haighus wrote:
The weirdest IMO was the enginseer servitor ruling that directly contradicted the reprint of the 3.5th Guard codex and also made the "only one servitor can carry a plasma cannon" sentence pointless when that would also apply to a multimelta servitor as they cost over half the 50pt wargear allowance too.

This one rings a bell. What did it say again?

**Haighus**

H.B.M.C. wrote:
Haighus wrote:
The weirdest IMO was the enginseer servitor ruling that directly contradicted the reprint of the 3.5th Guard codex and also made the "only one servitor can carry a plasma cannon" sentence pointless when that would also apply to a multimelta servitor as they cost over half the 50pt wargear allowance too.
This one rings a bell. What did it say again?

Servitors were listed as wargear in the armoury. In the original print of the codex, it did not state if they counted towards the wargear limit of 50pts or not. The FAQ stated they did, but the reprint of the codex stated they did not.

A techpriest could have up to 4 servitors. For reference, a technical servitor was 10 pts, a heavy bolter servitor was 25pts, a multimelta servitor was 35pts and a plasma cannon servitor was 45pts. The latter stated you could have only one... but took up almost the entire wargear allowance itself making that sentence redundant.

**H.B.M.C.**

*clicks fingers*

Yes, I remember that now. It was around this time that I first heard the phrase:

"Ask a GW Rulesboy one question, and you will get three answers, each one different and wrong."

**ThePaintingOwl**

Worst "lore as rules" FAQ was the 5th edition inquisition rules where the anti-plasma relic which (IIRC) made all plasma weapons only hit on 6s applied to Tau pulse weapons because deep in some obscure piece of lore somewhere it said they use plasma somehow.

**Haighus**

ThePaintingOwl wrote:
Worst "lore as rules" FAQ was the 5th edition inquisition rules where the anti-plasma relic which (IIRC) made all plasma weapons only hit on 6s applied to Tau pulse weapons because deep in some obscure piece of lore somewhere it said they use plasma somehow.

That was a great ruling IMO, it made a useless bit of kit into something situational but still challenging to use. Made perfect sense for an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor to carry. The gear was the Ulumeathi plasma syphon.

The range was still only 12", it wasn't game-breaking.

**A.T.**

ThePaintingOwl wrote:
Worst "lore as rules" FAQ was the 5th edition inquisition rules where the anti-plasma relic which (IIRC) made all plasma weapons only hit on 6s applied to Tau pulse weapons because deep in some obscure piece of lore somewhere it said they use plasma somehow.

That would be the tau codex, under the entry for pulse rifle.
"The pulse rifle uses an induction field to propel a particle, which reacts by breaking down to create a plasma pulse as it leaves the barrel."

Lack of 'type' tags on weapons caused a number of oddities. For example the avatar was protected from 'melta weapons, flamers, and heavy flamers' - but RAW not hand flamers or inferno cannons. Meltabombs were not melta weapons for the purposes of ceramite armour. Starcannons were plasma weapons, Starlances were not, Disintegrators were... kind of?

**Daba**

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Haighus wrote:
The weirdest IMO was the enginseer servitor ruling that directly contradicted the reprint of the 3.5th Guard codex and also made the "only one servitor can carry a plasma cannon" sentence pointless when that would also apply to a multimelta servitor as they cost over half the 50pt wargear allowance too.

One of the (many!) advantages of 2nd ed. is that it actually lasted a long time, so a lot of the kinks were ironed out of it before it was rendered obsolete.

A lot of players were really hoping that 3rd ed. would be the definitive edition of the game, a needed revision that cleared out some of the Rogue Trader-era fiddly details and creating a more streamlined system capable of sustaining larger battles.

Well, the model count went higher, but the system was in many ways unrecognizable, and GW dumped one set of problems for a new, larger set. And the Tau. I'll never forgive them for the Tau.

I always thought 3rd threw out the baby with the bathwater. It was too sparse and shoddy of a base system, yet it's variations lasted the longest of any.

**H.B.M.C.**

3rd was meant to be the definitive edition, or would have been if Andy Chambers had got his way.

**PenitentJake**

That wouldn't surprise me- if anyone at GW was ever capable of seeing the advantages of a persistent edition, Chambers would have been a good bet.

**H.B.M.C.**

I'd imagine that if he'd won, 40k's edition changes would be more along the lines of BattleTech's: Small tweaks to the rules and no wholesale non-iterative changes. Certainly no churn.

And yes, I'm sure some smart alec is going to come along and say that new editions are a big money spinner and that if their rules weren't constantly being changed that they would've gone out of business years ago (and I can even guess exactly which person would say that): You can still do new Starter boxes, even if the rules haven't changed much (or at all). You can still refresh codices and miniature lines without taking a scorched Earth approach to previous edition rules and concepts.

**ThePaintingOwl**

Haighus wrote:
That was a great ruling IMO, it made a useless bit of kit into something situational but still challenging to use. Made perfect sense for an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor to carry. The gear was the Ulumeathi plasma syphon.

The range was still only 12", it wasn't game-breaking.

It's not the balance that was the issue, it's that it was a fundamentally stupid ruling. It turned lore into rules and "interpreted" the rule in a way that could not possibly be correct based purely on the rules text. No amount of reading or thinking about the rules could get you to the conclusion, you had to go read unrelated lore text and make guesses about how GW meant the technobabble interactions between the two to function in-universe. And they dared to call it an "FAQ" instead of the clear errata that it actually was.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

H.B.M.C. wrote:
And yes, I'm sure some smart alec is going to come along and say that new editions are a big money spinner and that if their rules weren't constantly being changed that they would've gone out of business years ago (and I can even guess exactly which person would say that): You can still do new Starter boxes, even if the rules haven't changed much (or at all). You can still refresh codices and miniature lines without taking a scorched Earth approach to previous edition rules and concepts.

The whole "new editions make $$$$$$$$$$" thing isn't even a very good argument. Most players don't stick around long enough to buy multiple cycles and most long-term players pirate all the rules. At best you're selling new books to a handful of tournament players who need to provide proof of purchase at official events. TBH I'd be surprised if edition cycling didn't cost GW profit because of how the cost of the books drives away potential customers. It just does so in a way that doesn't show up on some middle manager's quarterly performance evaluation so we're stuck with it.

**A.T.**

H.B.M.C. wrote:
3rd was meant to be the definitive edition, or would have been if Andy Chambers had got his way.

In some ways 7th edition was still 3rd edition, with a lot of accumulated bloat on top.

Some of which made perfect sense and would have happened as either 4th, 5th, etc or 3.1, 3.2, 3.3. USRs as a collation of the shared special rules from the codex books, tweaks based on playtesting such as not assaulting out of moving vehicles. It just built up over time.

ThePaintingOwl wrote:
It turned lore into rules and "interpreted" the rule in a way that could not possibly be correct based purely on the rules text

It's the eldar avatar question all over again - immune to melta and flamer weapons, but what about inferno weapons or incinerators...
Both FAQs gave effectively the same answer, that flamer/melta/plasma weapons under a different name (as per their armoury page description) were still flamer/melta/plasma weapons for rules purposes.

Though RAI whether or not Matt Ward had even considered the tau when he created the wargear is a question only he could answer.