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BanjoJohn wrote: I had forgotten completely, or never knew, but pistols could shoot twice if your model stood still in 3rd edition, hmmm, I guess I didn't read carefully enough back then. Not that it makes a huge difference but it is interesting.
That was before they started equipping everyone with a free sidearm (and grenades) IIRC. Generally the only people with pistols wanted to be in CC. There may have been a handful of edge cases (SoB jump pack gunslingers maybe?) but it was almost never used.
The only model I can think of that would want to do that would be Cypher.
It was definitely an edge case, but if you had a model within charge range without moving, you could shoot twice with a pistol and then charge, which is something that Rapid Fire weapons prohibited.
Sergeants, and assault squads are the only models I can think who regularly had pistols, but you'd want them to assault instead of shoot, unless maybe getting those extra shots with plasma pistols could be worth it, say a squad of 6 assault marines with 2 plasma pistols, getting 4 plasma shots and 6 bolt pistol shots isn't bad. Or a tac squad that stood still to rapid-fire boltguns would allow the sergeant to shoot twice with pistol too. At least the bolt pistol would have AP5 when shooting, assault marines would allow armor save in combat.
Rapid Fire and Heavy weapon models which remained stationary to fire could not Assault, but models with pistols could, so these Sergeants, Assault Squads, or equivalent models could fire twice with pistols and then assault.
It'd be a circumstance forseeable in situations where an opponent has Assaulted your models and won the combat, but might not be able to reach any more models after consolidation or advance from combat resolution. There'd be enemy models very close to other troops ready for counterattack.
Or sometimes you didn't really want to charge anyways. I saw a lot of Bloodthirsters in action during 3rd ed, and I wasn't excited to charge 'em! Dumping Plasma Piatol fire into them instead of charging would be a pretty enticing option.
Yeah, there was NEVER enough terrain at any LGSRT event or even GT's. And since the LGS was the central place for everyone to meet for leagues and such, it was the same problem. Never enough terrain to do anything.
I didn't have any Vypers, Guardians, or War Walkers. I have a Biel-Tan army, so it was expensive elites and vehicles. The pair of Falcons and the pair of Wave Serpents had Starcannons, but that was it, and I often took Bright Lances instead to deal with the vehicle spam. The Eldar vehicles with Spirit Stones and Holo-Fields were literally indestructable for the most part...IF got the first turn and could move them to take advantage of the skimmer rules. If not, you just picked them up, and rolled to see who died inside them.
I eventually just left them on the shelf and played all-on-foot Biel-Tan. 40 Banshees, 10 Reapers, 2 Wraithlords (1 BL, 1 SC), and 2 Farseers with Fortune. I think I had enough left for some Hawks with a Web of Skulls on the Exarch. For some reason, when 40 Banshees and 2 WL's are charging your lines, those Marines pretty rarely got around to shooting the Reapers, who were making them pick up two 5-man squads every turn and sitting in cover with re-rolled armor/cover saves and a Farseer to assign occasional wounds to. It didn't fare as well against horde-style armies, but since 67%-75% of the people at an event were playing Marines/Chaos Marines every edition, I didn't really care. All the models on foot made them easier to hide with what little terrain there usually was and made losing the first turn less devastating. Suddenly Razorbacks are dumping lascannons into WL's that I didn't really care about all that much, they were just a giant distraction.
Lack of terrain was a common thing to see. I usually was the guy who made sure our local games had enough stuff to make a good table.
40 Banshees in an army sure would have caught me by surprise! I almost never saw them during 3rd. That could have been an interesting fight.
I loved my Banshees, obviously, fielding 4 full squads of them with Exarchs. They were totally wasted potential against anything but a 3+ armor save or better, but as I mentioned, in my area, Marines/Chaos Marines were always 2/3rds or more of your games. I own all the Aspects, and theory/mathhammered the hell out of the Banshee/Scorpion contest. The Scorpions were always better against T3/4 models with a 5+ or worse save, and the Banshees came out on top against T3/4 and a 3+ or 2+ save. Against a 4+ it was pretty much a wash.
The look on some Marine players faces when I set down the carrying display of minis was priceless. Ork, IG, and Tyranid players, OTOH, would just giggle. With good reason.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/04/19 04:12:52
I ran a 180+ ork green tide list for a while and it was a similar sort of thing. The average "tooled against Marines" list suddenly looked at all their lascannons and multimeltas and dark lances and venom cannons and sighed, whereas the Dual Lash Princes with double vindicators and a defiler started to cackle maniacally.
Da Boss wrote: I ran a 180+ ork green tide list for a while and it was a similar sort of thing. The average "tooled against Marines" list suddenly looked at all their lascannons and multimeltas and dark lances and venom cannons and sighed, whereas the Dual Lash Princes with double vindicators and a defiler started to cackle maniacally.
Those armies are a blast to face, so overwhelming but still so much killing. I like to think my typical 3rd ed list would have fared reasonably well, since I ran 60+ Marines and incorperated flamers rather than plasmas for my specials.
Yeah one of our regulars runs an iron hands list for our 5th ed games puts nearly 100 marines on the table at 2k points. the only vehicles he has is 3 rhinos for his small dev squads.
it is a lot to chew through. back in my days of silly list writing i wanted to do a grot centric "ork" army. it would probably do terrible but it would be a blast for me to play personally.
GAMES-DUST1947/infinity/B5 wars/epic 40K/5th ed 40K/victory at sea/warmachine/battle tactics/monpoc/battletech/battlefleet gothic/castles in the sky,/heavy gear/MCP
Yeah everyone was generally pretty happy to see it coming because it was fluffy and it's fun to slaughter orks by the handful win or lose, it feels like the fiction and makes your opponent feel badass.
The main thing is to be fast at your movement phase (like not sweating optimal dispersion) and have ways to tell the mobs apart (I did different coloured base rims) so you don't run out of time or visually overwhelm your opponent.
I can do it with Tyranids these days. I've got 120 Termagaunts painted up alongside 60 Hormagaunts. Not much time to game though, and little interest in 10th. Someday I'll roll 'em all out at once though.
I was actually supposed to get a couple more games in but real life got in the way. i got one at least against iron hands with my demon hunters and deathwatch allies-inquisition for days....
Spoiler:
Spoiler:
A very close game with a king of the hill center objective came down to the last shot of the game to break a tie.
GAMES-DUST1947/infinity/B5 wars/epic 40K/5th ed 40K/victory at sea/warmachine/battle tactics/monpoc/battletech/battlefleet gothic/castles in the sky,/heavy gear/MCP
Mordekiem wrote: Didn't pistols give you +1 attack in close combat? That's why you saw pistols and not combis or other things.
Yeah unless you had Lightning Claws for some reason.
Anuvver fing - when they do sumfing, they try to make it look like somfink else to confuse everybody. When one of them wants to lord it over the uvvers, 'e says "I'm very speshul so'z you gotta worship me", or "I know summink wot you lot don't know, so yer better lissen good". Da funny fing is, arf of 'em believe it and da over arf don't, so 'e 'as to hit 'em all anyway or run fer it.
2025/04/24 05:45:48
Subject: Re:The 40K- all things old editions topic.
lightning claws, thunders hammers etc are specialist weapons and only grant the +1 in pairs. otherwise yes pistol count as CCW+1
GAMES-DUST1947/infinity/B5 wars/epic 40K/5th ed 40K/victory at sea/warmachine/battle tactics/monpoc/battletech/battlefleet gothic/castles in the sky,/heavy gear/MCP
IIRC it wasn’t until 5th? that “specialist” weapons were a thing, and you could get an extra attack for a pair. I thought the early editions were a flat “no extra attack” for things like fists and hammers.
Or it might have been they were prohibitively expensive to take in pairs. I do remember that lightning claw/powerfist was a go-to combo for a while, as the LC was reasonably priced and paired for +1A. Also gave you the option to strike hard last, or at your normal initiative.
Nevelon wrote: IIRC it wasn’t until 5th? that “specialist” weapons were a thing, and you could get an extra attack for a pair. I thought the early editions were a flat “no extra attack” for things like fists and hammers.
Lightning Claws were an explicit exception in 4th edition and post-rulebook 3rd, needing matching pairs. Everything else you could pair off with anything until 5th.
Due to the way specialist weapons worked in 5th you had to take a lightning claw instead of a power weapon alongside a fist if you wanted the bonus attack which is how that combo ended up being used.
In 3rd edition, a pistol/close combat weapon could give +1 attack to power weapon, power fist, chainfist, and thunder hammer.
Lightning claws were the only ones explicitly stated which could only get +1 attack from having a second lightning claw
But...
Only terminator miniatures had thunder hammers. The rules for "What you see is what you get" meant that you had to have the weapon on the miniature. You could technically convert a power armored marine to have a thunder hammer in order to get an extra attack with a pistol.
Chainfists were the only weapon stated to explicitly be "terminators only"
And...
Characters in terminator armor are not allowed to take pistols so the miniatures that were actually modeled with the thunder hammer/chainfist could not get the extra attack from a pistol by default, so you would have to give them a second "Special weapon" like a power fist or lightning claw to get the extra attack.
Which is kind of funny. You could have a terminator character with a chainfist and a lightning claw, the lightning claw would give an extra attack to the chainfist, but the claw would only get an extra attack as a pair of claws.
Tonight i was running a demon hunters army (3rd) with an attached allied unit of deathwatch.
my opponent was also running a composite force. of guard and iron hands.
He decided to try and castle up behind his defense wall. his lack of mobility made it easier for me to pull off a pincer attack. it took me a while to start killing his tanks loads of damage results of 1s and 2s, MVP went the calidus Assassin Taking out his tech priest and proceeding to wreck his tanks with glancing hits from her neural shredder. the vindicare helped out as well.
Spoiler:
Spoiler:
Spoiler:
I lost a single grey knight terminator out of the command squad, and all but 2 deathwatch.
Since this was an attack/defend mission his lack of mobility made my objective a non-factor. so it was all pushing on my side.
Even if he had managed to prevent me from taking his objective, the tie breakers were in my favor so we ended the game on turn 5 (my Calidus was on his objective.
Game 2 my opponent did much better. we had no objectives for this one. the inquisitorial storm troopers really pulled their weight in this one, helping thin out the 2, 10 man crusader squads and the terminator squad coming my way. my command squad lost all but 2 terminators, i also lost 2 of my assassins but when re rolled off for the game to end on turn 5 he had a single model left on the table. the last spartan land raider. as usual the deathwatch squad took a big part of the pain.
Spoiler:
Spoiler:
Spoiler:
Spoiler:
GAMES-DUST1947/infinity/B5 wars/epic 40K/5th ed 40K/victory at sea/warmachine/battle tactics/monpoc/battletech/battlefleet gothic/castles in the sky,/heavy gear/MCP
BanjoJohn wrote: Lately I've been wondering if pistols should have been Assault 2, hmmm. Certainly worth playtesting a little bit
In 3e and 4e they were effectively Assault 1 / Heavy 2, mimicking the extra attack you got from the old rapid fire rules.
I don't know quite what GW was aiming for with it though as the late 3e witch hunters were probably the main users. Most units didn't even have pistols and those that did usually wanted to assault.
BanjoJohn wrote: Lately I've been wondering if pistols should have been Assault 2, hmmm. Certainly worth playtesting a little bit
In 3e and 4e they were effectively Assault 1 / Heavy 2, mimicking the extra attack you got from the old rapid fire rules.
I don't know quite what GW was aiming for with it though as the late 3e witch hunters were probably the main users. Most units didn't even have pistols and those that did usually wanted to assault.
I've been thinking that since, unless you had power weapons, shooting was probably better most of the time than combat, some units like assault squads, seraphim squads, or similar units with pistol/combat weapon or two pistols would probably have been more effective if they had assault 2. Of course having pistols be assault 2 could have made other units a little more viable too, the odd sergeant or squad leader getting a small boost, etc.
Insectum7 wrote: You could fire pistols AND Assault. It wasn't the either/or situation thar seems to be constantly alluded to here.
I'd say we turn people getting the rules to 3rd wrong into a drinking game, but then we'd surely die of alcohol poisoning...
I don't get the rules wrong though, I know you can shoot pistols and assault. I'm saying assaulting a unit isn't always the best option because... they can fight back, and they might have power weapons when your assault squad doesn't, and your bolt pistols at least negate 5+ and 6+ armor saves when your close combat attacks dont. And your plasma pistols negate 2+ armor saves when your close combat attacks dont.
I'm just saying, I can see that there could be a scenario where you would prefer to shoot and not assault, rather than shoot and assault. It might not exist all the time, but it can exist some of the time.
EDIT: Maybe pistols could have been "Assault 1/ Heavy 2" with a special jump pack rule that lets them fire pistols as if they had stood still, even if they moved, hmmm.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2025/05/07 13:58:01
Most of the units I assaulted with in 3rd were built expressly for that purpose, and would basically throw the unit away if I decided to pass up charging to double pistolnshots when pistol shots would soften the unit I would then devastate in hand to hand.
Yeah I understand that, but really, if your unit is standing still in order to get to shoot twice with pistols, and then being able to assault after that, the enemy unit would have been 6" or less away, and that situation happens rarely, if never, because they would have either stayed out of 12" range, or would have assaulted your unit.
So shooting twice with a pistol would normally only happen in circumstances when you'd never be able to assault in the first place, ie, more than 6" away but less than 12" away.
EDIT: I'm also just thinking of cost-benefit analysis. Depending on the unit you're shooting at, the cost for charging them might be less than the benefit of charging them, but the cost might be greater than the benefit. But the spirit of the game tells me its generally more fun to just try anyways.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/05/09 17:00:34
BanjoJohn wrote: Yeah I understand that, but really, if your unit is standing still in order to get to shoot twice with pistols, and then being able to assault after that, the enemy unit would have been 6" or less away, and that situation happens rarely, if never, because they would have either stayed out of 12" range, or would have assaulted your unit.
So shooting twice with a pistol would normally only happen in circumstances when you'd never be able to assault in the first place, ie, more than 6" away but less than 12" away.
EDIT: I'm also just thinking of cost-benefit analysis. Depending on the unit you're shooting at, the cost for charging them might be less than the benefit of charging them, but the cost might be greater than the benefit. But the spirit of the game tells me its generally more fun to just try anyways.
The scenario that comes to mind that makes pistols firing twice possible is when a CC ends near your own line, but the victorious opponent can only Consolidate, or has Sweeping Advanced towards/into your other troops. Enemy models that have Advanced into a new unit can still be shot at even when they're in base contact, and your own models can fire twice with their pistols, and still move to engage in the subsequent assault. (Rapid Fire and Heavy weapons don't allow it)
Which is neat, imo. It gives pistols a little extra capability once troops are contacting each other.
Nothing is stopping you from playing them with friends
Our group has never been happier since we went back to 5th.
GAMES-DUST1947/infinity/B5 wars/epic 40K/5th ed 40K/victory at sea/warmachine/battle tactics/monpoc/battletech/battlefleet gothic/castles in the sky,/heavy gear/MCP
2025/05/09 20:36:55
Subject: Re:The 40K- all things old editions topic.
Free at last from the GW overlords is where it is at. they cant with you anymore. it is a nice feeling.
GAMES-DUST1947/infinity/B5 wars/epic 40K/5th ed 40K/victory at sea/warmachine/battle tactics/monpoc/battletech/battlefleet gothic/castles in the sky,/heavy gear/MCP
It didn't fare as well against horde-style armies, but since 67%-75% of the people at an event were playing Marines/Chaos Marines every edition, I didn't really care. All the models on foot made them easier to hide with what little terrain there usually was and made losing the first turn less devastating. Suddenly Razorbacks are dumping lascannons into 
Ultramarines, 3rd Co. and friends, 16k+ 
4k 
4k Points
Competition Index
with you anymore. it is a nice feeling.