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 NurglesR0T wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Just as long as we can chose to forget the great evil that was the Blood Angels and their Deep Striking Land Raiders (I want to blame Mat Ward, but he was Ultramarines, if my memory serves).

Anything Matt Ward touched during that era was always dunce worthy. GK Paladin wound spam and the stupidly OP Daemons WFH army book that basically forced a new rule edition being the worst offenders.

I argue Pete Haynes paved the way for Mat Ward's excess. Basically, too many writers were allowed to write their favorite army and GW editorial didn't bother to restrain them at all.

The only codex by Matt i have a problem with is the 5th ed grey knight codex. it totally destroyed what the lore position of the GKs were-just a part of the Odro malleus of the inquisition an ordo militant arm. As such they never deployed as a full space marine chapter which is what the 5th ed codex turned them into. they work both lore wise and on the table as the demon hunters codex lays them out. as part of a combined inquisitorial force or better yet as an allied contingent attached to another imperial force. The demon hunters codex also focused them more on the actual job they do as anti-chaos/demon forces with the rules and wargear available to them.

As for the blood angels codex, i actually rather enjoy it. it provides quite a bit of variance to build from as a divergent chapter-a death company themed army, a normal tactical army, a jump infantry army, an elite sanguinary guard army, A fast vehicle armored company for space marines etc...or a combination there of. the deep striking land raiders was silly and hardly ever used, it just meant you didn't have to buy the actual FW thunderhawk lander model to use it's rules.


Oh and shortly before the codex came out our group was actually joking about flying dreadnoughts.......

Deep striking Land Raiders sounds like something best reserved for games of Apocalypse/Epic. Thunderhawk transporter models did look cool though, I hope HH 2.0/3.0 brings them back in some form. Never been a fan of the humongous cannon on them Thunderhawks

I have always thought thunderhawks were best used to deliver boarding parties in BFG, their use in epic/40k always felt lackluster to me.

 aphyon wrote:
The demon hunters codex also focused them more on the actual job they do as anti-chaos/demon forces with the rules and wargear available to them.

Giving the grey knights power weapons to fight against daemons (invulnerables across the board) was certainly a choice.

5e Blood Angels were marines +1 in an almost pure sense. To hit credit the core marine book wasn't crazy but if you weren't playing scoring bikes, null zone, or a named character then BA probably did it better.

BanjoJohn wrote:
I have always thought thunderhawks were best used to deliver boarding parties in BFG, their use in epic/40k always felt lackluster to me.

Isnt that what Dreadclaws and Caestus Assault Ram are for though? Thunderhawk doesn't seem to have any hull busting drills nor armament..

 tauist wrote:

BanjoJohn wrote:
I have always thought thunderhawks were best used to deliver boarding parties in BFG, their use in epic/40k always felt lackluster to me.

Isnt that what Dreadclaws and Caestus Assault Ram are for though? Thunderhawk doesn't seem to have any hull busting drills nor armament..

The Thunderhawk has weapons to destroy fighters who might try to intercept them, in BFG terms they survive on 4+ against fighters, and then its the space marines themselves who punch through the ship's hull and cause the hit-and-run damage to the enemy ship in BFG, possibly with the battle cannon on the T-Hawk helping to punch a hole too.

I'm guessing BFG is so old that Dreadclaws and Caestus Ram werent invented when it was out

 tauist wrote:
I'm guessing BFG is so old that Dreadclaws and Caestus Ram werent invented when it was out

BFG came out in 1998 I think. There were in general three kinds of "assault craft" that could be launched from the space ships, fighters, bombers, and assault boats.
Fighters can intercept other fighters, bombers, and assault boats to protect the big ships from being attacked by them.
Bombers can deal damage to the big ships directly.
Assault boats punch into the big ships and have troops storm in to cause damage to critical systems.

The imperial navy has "fury interceptors" as fighters, "starhawk" bombers, and "shark" assault boats.
Chaos fleets have "Doomfire" bombers, "swiftdeath" fighters, and "Dreadclaw" assault boats.
The eldar have "darkstar" fighters, "eagle" bombers.
Orks have "fighta bommas" which are kind of like fighters that can also do bombing, and "assault boats"
Space marine navy's launch "thunderhawk gunships"s which count as assault boats and fighters. And, if their ships have torpedoes, they are "boarding torpedoes" instead of regular torpedoes.

 aphyon wrote:

Oh and shortly before the codex came out our group was actually joking about flying dreadnoughts.......

Speaking of, 40K's relationship to mechs with jump jets is kind of an odd one, really. 1st ed Imperial dreadnoughts had a variant with a jump pack and then you had afaik nothing until Tau showed up and 3rd ed and later Eldar started getting some of their Epic titans done by Forgeworld. But even then it wasn't anything common. The 3rd ed vehicle design rules don't even have it as an option despite letting you build tunneling vehicles. I guess the GW design team didn't much care for Battletech?

IIRC the Eldar Revenant Scout Titan had jump capabilities when it was initially released for Space Marine 2 / Titan Legions.

Eldar titans have always been able to jump 36", but then again regular titans/knights could walk 12, sprint for 18 and still fire a single gun system or flat out run for 24"

Yeah, that's the funny thing. Huge ole titans can rocket around but regular 40K-scaled mechs? The well was real dry on that front for a good while.

I think it was meant to show how big they are by how much they could move. superheavy walkers can literally step over any area terrain feature that is less than 12" across.

 aphyon wrote:
Our scheduled games for tonight were 2k games

the table was a mars mat with the space marine outpost-

Are the Dawn of War buildings sold somewhere? I kinda want them now.

Santtu wrote:

 aphyon wrote:
Our scheduled games for tonight were 2k games

the table was a mars mat with the space marine outpost-

Are the Dawn of War buildings sold somewhere? I kinda want them now.

I see them all the time on EBay. Most are 3d prints I think. And I thought GaleForce9 made some at some point.

Santtu wrote:

 aphyon wrote:
Our scheduled games for tonight were 2k games

the table was a mars mat with the space marine outpost-

Are the Dawn of War buildings sold somewhere? I kinda want them now.

The dawn of war stuff are STL files from war scenery https://www.warscenery.com/

Gale force 9 has a contract with them for the space marine out post collection and the Tau city collection. possibly more in the future.

 tauist wrote:

BanjoJohn wrote:
I have always thought thunderhawks were best used to deliver boarding parties in BFG, their use in epic/40k always felt lackluster to me.

Isnt that what Dreadclaws and Caestus Assault Ram are for though? Thunderhawk doesn't seem to have any hull busting drills nor armament..

Imperial marines don't use the Dreadclaw and its larger cousin at scale anymore (they're a bit too "sentient" and enjoy killing stuff too much, and thus are likely to become a liability), and the Caestus is rather rare and not able to transfer larger amounts of marines. The chief method for combat/hot boarding is thus either the boarding torpedo, while thunderhawks are used for boarding derelict ships and such, can also be used for hot drops against enemies that have similar enough ship structures that you can find a convenient point of ingress (hangars, open gun bays etc.) and are needed anyway to get the boarding party back.

But anyway, boarding actions are something you'd best not think too hard about, or the numbers and logistics break down pretty fast - at the rates ordnance supposedly gets shot down, cramming your marines with their oh-so-precious progenoids and irreplacable chapter artefacts into torpedoes and throwing them at the enemy is madness, and that's before you factor in that both success and failure of a boarding strike might lead to the whole party being unrecoverable either way. At least with Terminators, you can theoretically teleport them back, but then teleport assaul is supposedly also hella dangerous.

Just going to toss this out there and let it roll around like a (Vortex, Virus) grenade with the pin pulled.

GW has always sucked at actually writing rules. Always. In every edition, 40k or WFB. Strap in kids, get ready for an old man telling you stories.

I started this addictive BS back in '89, when I went to college. WOOO! old. So, my opinions must matter, right? Rogue Trader era and 2nd edition 40k was a nonsensical roller coaster of overpowered garbage, just like 3rd edition Fantasy. Can you say "Vortex Grenade?" "Virus Grenade?" "Parasitic Weapon?" "Summon Elemental Horde?" "Wind of Death?"

I knew you could.

I still have nightmares (not really, figure of speech) of 2nd edition 40k. The rules required you to shoot at the nearest model. That was often a Space Marine Terminator Hero with a Power Shield, making first a 3+ save on 2d6 followed by a 2+ Invulnerable Save if he somehow failed the first, while a bunch of Terminators with Cyclone Missile Launchers were literally dropping 12" pizza-sized Krak Missile templates on your army. Countered with Suicide Jetpack Heroes with Vortex Grenades landing on top of them and triggering, Distortion Cannons galore, Orc Pulsa-rokkits knocking half your army prone every turn, and a ridiculous amount of other BS.

3rd edition revamped everything, toning the garbage down like a pendulum had swung in the other direction. Now, first turn meant literally everything, as if you went second you were likely picking up 25%-33% of your army before you moved a miniature. "3.5" and 4 were no better. It was at this point I focused on WFB instead, because I was sick of games being decide by a single die roll to see who went first. Ask me sometime about the 15-minute game my Eldar played at a GT against a Khorne Terminator army. Just...stupid. And I won without losing more than a handful of models.

WFB was better, but every edition was another insane pendumlum swing. 4th-5th editions? Herohammer, where I could win games with single models picking the right magic item and spell cards. 6th edition? Ruled by specific units with specific rules, i.e. Brettonians and a couple other books.

7th edition WFB? The sweet spot, if there ever was one. A decent mix of unit-based tactics and Hero abilities, Magic was reasonable, the game was actually semi-tactical and fun.

8th edition? Toss that out the window with another pendulum swing...bring a L4 Wizard, or lose. Period.

Then GW just...obliterated their own product with AoS. Let's just play 40k with Fantasy miniatures. WTF is the point, at that point?

What are the best games GW has ever published? Original Necromunda (minus the Ratskin BS), Original Mordheim, Original Blood Bowl/Dungeon Bowl, and Epic Armageddon. They are complex (but not ridiculously so), reasonably fair/balanced, cheap to get into, and ACTUALLY FUN to play in a league with your buddies. Everyone gets together on a weekend evening, drinks some beer, plays a few games of these (each takes only an hour or so), laughs and cries at the ups and downs, and has a generally good time. Next week? Roll to see how your team/gang improved, make new match-ups in the group for the next games scenarios.

GW lost its way a long, long time ago. They're now in the top 100 of UK companies, stock-market-wise, IIRC a news article I read not long ago. They care about one thing...selling you wildly overpriced pieces of plastic. Go look at the substitute armies available on Etsy (with superior visuals in a lot on instances, 3D printed), or illegal casting/printing services for less than a quarter of the price. GW is here to keep you addicted to a hobby you shouldn't be willing to attempt to afford. Their rules are always flawed. After 40 years and billions of games, you would think that enough playtesting would've been accomplished to come up with a consistently good, fair, and balanced set of rules. That's death to their business model. If they come up with a consistent set of rules, overpriced plastic miniature sales will suffer as they won't make you buy new things every three years, every new edition, every new army book.

Do yourself a favor. Make this an actual hobby. Relax a bit. Model and convert minis. Learn to paint to a decent degree. Play the game with the minis you have, with friends, or even at tournaments. Ignore the shiny new squirrels, and adapt what you have to new editions with as minimal expense as you can.

Or, chase the dragon and keep feeding GW enough money to pump up their stock price. That's not wrong either, just be aware of what you're doing, and why.

Just an old man, shouting at a cloud. But to be fair, the cloud started it.

So I've been re-reading 3rd edition recently for a personal project. I've been wondering what other people think, did you like the original rule where half the occupants of a transport could shoot from the vehicle? Or the update where there were limited firing points that units could shoot from? I remember things like the "6 man tactical squad in a razorback" spam that a few people did where you'd have the razorback shooting a lascannon and plasma gun, and the 6 man tac squad with lascannon and plasma gun shooting out from the razorback too. So some kind of fix is understandable, but I wonder if this made friendly games less fun or different somehow.

BanjoJohn wrote:
So some kind of fix is understandable, but I wonder if this made friendly games less fun or different somehow.

Wave serpent with fusion guns, blood angels assaulting out of the front viewport of rhinos... (not that later edition spinning top rhinos were better).

Fire points were an improvement, or rather removing them was a poor choice as even 2e had them (albeit in a 'figure it our yourself' way).

A.T. wrote:

BanjoJohn wrote:
So some kind of fix is understandable, but I wonder if this made friendly games less fun or different somehow.

Wave serpent with fusion guns, blood angels assaulting out of the front viewport of rhinos... (not that later edition spinning top rhinos were better).

Fire points were an improvement, or rather removing them was a poor choice as even 2e had them (albeit in a 'figure it our yourself' way).

I had forgotten about those tricky eldar drive-byes, though the assaulting out of a rhino could be solved by pivoting the rhino which would have been allowed. Y'know I was realizing that you could technically have six terminators in a Chimera but very few factions could actually take advantage of this and it was more like an inquisitor in terminator armor would join another squad in a chimera.

I'm feeling inspired to try and do an alternative vehicle damage table that combines glance and penetrating hits, and gives bonuses to roll on the damage table the more hits have penetrated it, kinda try to extend the life of a vehicle but it still can be destroyed on a really unlucky first hit, but the more hits it takes the more likely it is to be destroyed hmm.

 Kagetora wrote:
. . . Terminators with Cyclone Missile Launchers were literally dropping 12" pizza-sized Krak Missile templates on your army.

Because I was totally "that guy" in 2nd (with some tournament wins, even) I have to point out that it was a 6" blast, not 12". 1/2" diameter per missile fired, not radius. I know it well because I saw that "mistake" a couple times.

BanjoJohn wrote:
I'm feeling inspired to try and do an alternative vehicle damage table that combines glance and penetrating hits

The 5e shared table was:
1 - Shaken
2 - Stunned
3 - Weapon Destroyed
4 - Immobilised
5 - Wrecked
6 - Explodes

+1 for AP1, +1 open topped, -1 AP -, -2 for glancing. Ordnance rolled twice and chose the best.

3 & 4 spill over into one another if the vehicle is already unarmed/immobilised, and then spill over into wrecked.

Something like a flat +1 damage on any penetrating (not glancing) hit against a vehicle that has already taken either just an immobilised or either 3-4 result would up the damage without overdoing it.

Vehicles in 5e were notoriously easy to disable (one glance = no shooting at a minimum) but hard to knock out as they absorbed repeated 1-4 results. Mostly a transport thing where they were bunkers that at worst might singe a model or two as the squad walks away from the crater, whereas in 3-4e non-skimmer transports were flaming coffins of death prone to pitching their passengers out onto the road, entangling them, or just instantly killing everyone inside.

BanjoJohn wrote:
So I've been re-reading 3rd edition recently for a personal project. I've been wondering what other people think, did you like the original rule where half the occupants of a transport could shoot from the vehicle? Or the update where there were limited firing points that units could shoot from? I remember things like the "6 man tactical squad in a razorback" spam that a few people did where you'd have the razorback shooting a lascannon and plasma gun, and the 6 man tac squad with lascannon and plasma gun shooting out from the razorback too. So some kind of fix is understandable, but I wonder if this made friendly games less fun or different somehow.

I play 3rd completely unaltered. That's my opinion on it. When given a choice to go back to ANY edition after giving up on modern 40K I chose 3rd. I have no issues with the rules as presented. You also have to understand the level of abstraction in the deploy and charge rules. Having actually assaulted an enemy position from an M113 I can say that the rules as stated accommodate for the speed and level of training.

I just had a flashback to the old tournaments from GW...

I hated tournaments because your opponent could decide to knock your points down with low "sportsmanship" scores.

I remember one event where it got pretty ugly in the parking lot where the guy who was undefeated didn't win because of two guys who always gave low sportsmanship scores to their opponents when they lost.

Passive-aggressive tactics for the win.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I just had a flashback to the old tournaments from GW...

I hated tournaments because your opponent could decide to knock your points down with low "sportsmanship" scores.

I remember one event where it got pretty ugly in the parking lot where the guy who was undefeated didn't win because of two guys who always gave low sportsmanship scores to their opponents when they lost.

Passive-aggressive tactics for the win.

Yeah, tournaments have always been kinda disgusting to me because its too competitive, like.. you're going to do stuff like abuse sportsmanship to win a toy wargame competition? But trying to do a fun scenario with friends with a goal that is different than just "kill the whole army" like.. escaping off the table edge, or rescue an objective, destroy a bunker/generator, whatever. There's so much you can do in the game that's better than a toxic tournament.

 Just Tony wrote:

BanjoJohn wrote:
So I've been re-reading 3rd edition recently for a personal project. I've been wondering what other people think, did you like the original rule where half the occupants of a transport could shoot from the vehicle? Or the update where there were limited firing points that units could shoot from? I remember things like the "6 man tactical squad in a razorback" spam that a few people did where you'd have the razorback shooting a lascannon and plasma gun, and the 6 man tac squad with lascannon and plasma gun shooting out from the razorback too. So some kind of fix is understandable, but I wonder if this made friendly games less fun or different somehow.

I play 3rd completely unaltered. That's my opinion on it. When given a choice to go back to ANY edition after giving up on modern 40K I chose 3rd. I have no issues with the rules as presented. You also have to understand the level of abstraction in the deploy and charge rules. Having actually assaulted an enemy position from an M113 I can say that the rules as stated accommodate for the speed and level of training.

Unaltered like, no white dwarf or chapter approval changes? just straight out of the book? Do you use the codex's? Or the army lists in the book? I think that's an interesting way to play.

As somebody who played progressively through those editions 3rd had some serious issues un altered-guess range weapons were huge as were rapid fire weapon rules. as you went through the editions things slowly improved overall but as always there was always a thing or 2 that were bad. skimmers were overpowed in 4th for eldar and tau (only being able to glance them) and the rules for wrecks/passengers as mentioned above. even though i find 5th the OVERALL best rule set. it still had a few issues that ironically were added that were not needed-like wound allocation rules (better in 4th). the other gripe was that a vehicle that was stunned/shaken suddenly contributed nothing since it could at best move unless it was a walker that could do CC.

We fixed those problems by reverting wound allocation to 4th ed(owning player allocates wounds/saves based on majority stats but wounded models always must take the next wounds in the case of multi wound models) and snap fire for vehicles and heavy weapons ala 6th/7th ed. this makes the game much more enjoyable for both players.

BanjoJohn wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I just had a flashback to the old tournaments from GW...

I hated tournaments because your opponent could decide to knock your points down with low "sportsmanship" scores.

I remember one event where it got pretty ugly in the parking lot where the guy who was undefeated didn't win because of two guys who always gave low sportsmanship scores to their opponents when they lost.

Passive-aggressive tactics for the win.

Yeah, tournaments have always been kinda disgusting to me because its too competitive, like.. you're going to do stuff like abuse sportsmanship to win a toy wargame competition? But trying to do a fun scenario with friends with a goal that is different than just "kill the whole army" like.. escaping off the table edge, or rescue an objective, destroy a bunker/generator, whatever. There's so much you can do in the game that's better than a toxic tournament.

 Just Tony wrote:

BanjoJohn wrote:
So I've been re-reading 3rd edition recently for a personal project. I've been wondering what other people think, did you like the original rule where half the occupants of a transport could shoot from the vehicle? Or the update where there were limited firing points that units could shoot from? I remember things like the "6 man tactical squad in a razorback" spam that a few people did where you'd have the razorback shooting a lascannon and plasma gun, and the 6 man tac squad with lascannon and plasma gun shooting out from the razorback too. So some kind of fix is understandable, but I wonder if this made friendly games less fun or different somehow.

I play 3rd completely unaltered. That's my opinion on it. When given a choice to go back to ANY edition after giving up on modern 40K I chose 3rd. I have no issues with the rules as presented. You also have to understand the level of abstraction in the deploy and charge rules. Having actually assaulted an enemy position from an M113 I can say that the rules as stated accommodate for the speed and level of training.

Unaltered like, no white dwarf or chapter approval changes? just straight out of the book? Do you use the codex's? Or the army lists in the book? I think that's an interesting way to play.

I should have said "No house rules" As I play it with every supplement and addendum that was posted for 3rd, except for the trial vehicle rules that became the 4th Ed. vehicle rules.

I have to ask if you have a Blood Angels player in the group I found 3rd to be mostly pretty great except for their particular involvement. That Rhino rush attack was very irritating.