Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 aphyon wrote:

SecondTime wrote:
"total focus on comp player"

In theory, if it works for those people, it should work for the casual.

No it doesn't because the style of play is antithetical to casual players. we want lore and immersion, a fun game to play, not a nearly complete focus on the win/damage output.

To me the entire primaris line is as macca from the outer circle said an attempt to homogenise the line and make the appeal of the various chapters more vanilla, shifting the game away from the reason why the casual players play and design the armies that they do.

If all units are playable, then how does that hurt lore and immersion? I don't get it.

 Tyran wrote:
BS

I remember the 5th edition Tyranid codex, it was an unplayable mess. Your nostalgia googles are too damn strong.

This was the edition that made Carnifexes, Tyranid Warriors and Genestealers unplayable because Cruddace was salty he lost against 4th edition Nids once.

It wasn't just nids. I'm fully expecting the next response being about how his group essentially rewrote half the rules to a ruleset that has about as much in common with 5th as 7th did. It's always the same with people being so aggressive about some old edition being the bestest.

I loved 5th, but 9th definitely is a far better game.

if 9th is better than 5th will be seen when 9th is done

otherwise you need to compare the first year of 5th with 9th, which leaves lot of the bad things out as those came later

for 9th we don't know yet which Codex GW will mess up and if there is a design shift in the middle of the Edition or not

9th right now is better than every single year of 5th, which got increasingly worse with the later codices when every new codex had to one-up the previous one.

That is true, but at the very least I can tell you, from a Tyranid perspective 8th was better than 5th (and 6th and 7th).

Tyran wrote:

 aphyon wrote:

all the classic editions of the game were horrendously flawed

Every edition has had it's flaws, but by far the core rules set for 5th was far better than anything that is out now. most complaints were about the wound allocation system because WAAC players found a way to abuse it. There was a bit of codex power creep but that has always been a (feature) "problem" to help GW sell more minis.

By comparison however all types of armies were viable from every faction. rather you want well rounded, melee focused, or gun lines etc....

I just did a battle last week of 5th with a CC oriented nid army VS khorne while he was still more CC oriented than normal marines he still had quite a bit of shooting compared to mine that were basically limited to a couple carnifexes and a zoanathrope it was a brutal but close(and most importantly -fun) battle that i managed to win.

BS

I remember the 5th edition Tyranid codex, it was an unplayable mess. Your nostalgia googles are too damn strong.

This was the edition that made Carnifexes, Tyranid Warriors and Genestealers unplayable because Cruddace was salty he lost against 4th edition Nids once.

I use the 4th edition codex, if you remember it was used through half of 5th before it got updated, i have a buddy of mine who loves the 5th codex because of units he likes that were added or modified like trygons, 3++ zoanathropes, warrior primes, lashwhips/ bone swords, drop pods etc... and he has done really well with it in 5th and it is not nostalgia we STILL actively play 5th.

SecondTime wrote:

 aphyon wrote:

SecondTime wrote:
"total focus on comp player"

In theory, if it works for those people, it should work for the casual.

No it doesn't because the style of play is antithetical to casual players. we want lore and immersion, a fun game to play, not a nearly complete focus on the win/damage output.

To me the entire primaris line is as macca from the outer circle said an attempt to homogenise the line and make the appeal of the various chapters more vanilla, shifting the game away from the reason why the casual players play and design the armies that they do.

If all units are playable, then how does that hurt lore and immersion? I don't get it.

Currently not all units are "playable" because the focus of the game has changed in such a way that you never bring certain units because they do not preform. as noted previously by AnomanderRake

The competitive players are happy to spam minis they don't like to win. I'm not happy to get constantly steamrolled because I refuse to spam minis I don't like.

Making everything basically vanilla marines also destroys the immersion.

Jidmah wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
BS

I remember the 5th edition Tyranid codex, it was an unplayable mess. Your nostalgia googles are too damn strong.

This was the edition that made Carnifexes, Tyranid Warriors and Genestealers unplayable because Cruddace was salty he lost against 4th edition Nids once.

It wasn't just nids. I'm fully expecting the next response being about how his group essentially rewrote half the rules to a ruleset that has about as much in common with 5th as 7th did. It's always the same with people being so aggressive about some old edition being the bestest.

I loved 5th, but 9th definitely is a far better game.

I rate 9th just behind 6th as the worst edition of the game GW ever made for 40K. it's cover system is a convoluted mess, it's scoring systems is counter productive to full gameplay, it's MTG style resource managements/damage output system is even more glaringly bad than 8th (or 7th eds formation system which it replaced). gameplay is not intuitive, it is clunky and slow compared to previous editions.

In my book it has all the window dressings of 40K but it isn't 40K anymore than AOS is warhammer fantasy battles.

 Jidmah wrote:
9th right now is better than every single year of 5th, which got increasingly worse with the later codices when every new codex had to one-up the previous one.

Disagree here, as I enjoyed the first halve of 5th much more than I do 9th now

"Currently not all units are "playable" because the focus of the game has changed in such a way that you never bring certain units"

That's because they are miscosted, not because of competitive vs casual play. If its busted in competitive play, you can guarantee its busted in casual play, too.

 aphyon wrote:


I use the 4th edition codex, if you remember it was used through half of 5th before it got updated, i have a buddy of mine who loves the 5th codex because of units he likes that were added or modified like trygons, 3++ zoanathropes, warrior primes, lashwhips/ bone swords, drop pods etc... and he has done really well with it in 5th and it is not nostalgia we STILL actively play 5th.

And I like having an actual AP on my shooting and some invulnerable saves outside of Zoanthropes, and Carnifexes that aren't 100% overcosted.

And not having to deal with a single S8+ large blast vaporizing a unit of Warriors or a guy with a Force weapon one-shooting everything in the codex because Instant Death and Tyranids didn't had a single model with Eternal Warrior.

And the lack of assault grenades crippled what was a mostly melee army.

Lot of negativity here, but I am feeling exactly the same way. I get why people like the new stuff, but it isn't for me and I am not interested in it.

I have been working away on building small armies like you describe (a couple of squads, a couple of vehicles and a couple of heroes, no super heavies or lords of war) for Grimdark Future, which I feel captures what I like about older editions of 40K (simplicity with just enough flavour) with a simple ruleset I can introduce to absolutely anyone and alternating activation, which I feel just makes for a far more engaging and enjoyable game overall.

Haven't got much gaming in (been pretty depressed for a while and haven't had the energy) but I am more enthusiastic about the Sci Fi Wargaming hobby than I have been at any time since 6th edition came out.

Would GW do it? I dunno. I am happy enough with Grimdark Future right now. If GW did something I don't have a lot of faith in their designers not to fill it with meaningless cludge to be honest.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
To be fair, old Warhammer Fantasy editions still exist and yet GW has announced they're bringing back the Old World, complete with square bases.

Where was this? I was very less than pleased with AOS and losing both my armies.

Perhaps they know something.

EDIT:
The advantage of having a supported game instead of just playing older editions is that it's, well, supported.

Rules updates that iterate on what came before, rather than throwing everything away and starting fresh.

SecondTime wrote:
"Currently not all units are "playable" because the focus of the game has changed in such a way that you never bring certain units"

That's because they are miscosted, not because of competitive vs casual play. If its busted in competitive play, you can guarantee its busted in casual play, too.

The thing is that used to not be the case. in casual thematic play (by the scoring system and the terrain rules especially) i have a chance to have a good game i can win just as well as my opponent.

It is busted now because the core mechanics of 9th are busted not just the points costs.


The comp lists required you to really work at breaking the army build list out of what it should have been.

i played against a black legion chaos undivided list back in 5th even using that terrible chaos dex but the guy who was playing it went full lore with every chaos god being represented by legions, led by abaddon and included summoned demons. i don't remember who won, and it doesn't really matter because it was one of the most enjoyable games i had playing against chaos with that codex in that edition.

By the same comparison i did a battle against a WAAC player who copy/pasted a nurgle lash prince list from a tourney. it wasn't a hugely enjoyable game, granted because he was a WAAC player he basically quit at the end of turn 3 because he wasn't utterly crushing me.

I also regularly played against a FW eldar corsair list, one of the hardest eldar lists i have ever had to fight, that was very thematic. because of the core rules of 5th i was able to do pretty well against it with my themed army


Addendum

and Carnifexes that aren't 100% overcosted.

you do realize GW did that on purpose for the new 5th ed codex right?

They nerfed the hell out of fexes, took away the upgrades because they just imported the previously FW only trygon.mawloc model into the plastic line with all sorts of super good new rules. they had already sold a ton of fexes and the sales were dropping off so they needed a new bling model to replace it.

"i have a chance to have a good game i can win just as well as my opponent."

We played in different realities of 5th ed then. Miscosted units have been a problem in EVERY edition independent of the core rules. In fact, core rules are factored out when examining whether a unit is miscosted or not because it can only be miscosted within the context of the core rules in operates in.

"you do realize GW did that on purpose for the new 5th ed codex right?

They nerfed the hell out of fexes, took away the upgrades because they just imported the previously FW only trygon.mawloc model into the plastic line with all sorts of super good new rules. they had already sold a ton of fexes and the sales were dropping off so they needed a new bling model to replace it."

Maybe. Maybe not. If their patterns followed this trend, it would be more believable. The explanation that fits the data best is that they just have no idea what's good or bad or how units actually get used.

The "super good" Trygon that was one-shotted by any random Grey Knight, was too big to get any sort of cover and the binary save system meant more often than not it didn't get a save. And also didn't had grenades so it sucked if your enemy was in cover.

Or enough lasguns, Tyranid monstrous creatures were extremely vulnerable to weight of fire.

Yeah, Nids were not a relevant list in deciding 5th ed meta lists.

I also remember monstrous creatures getting murdered by eldar pathfinders

 Tyran wrote:
The "super good" Trygon that was one-shotted by any random Grey Knight, was too big to get any sort of cover and the binary save system meant more often than not it didn't get a save. And also didn't had grenades so it sucked if your enemy was in cover.

Or enough lasguns, Tyranid monstrous creatures were extremely vulnerable to weight of fire.

1 there is no such thing in 5th as to big to get cover like there is in 9th (to many wounds)
2. grey knights were an extremely rare army to see, but that ability was true of a host of units like librarians, korsarro khans sword etc... and it applied to all units in the game not specifically nids.
the trygon usually also went first with I6 IIRC against most armies in CC where that ability would apply. as a monster its attacks are also all AP2 so only invul saves can be taken against it. you were more likely to die before you even got to attack back.
3. i agree removing "flesh hooks" was a terrible design direction. i don't think adding more monsterous creature options or deepstrike ability balanced that out.
4. weight of fire was true against everything and it is even more glaring in 9th thanks to the increase volume of shots, the ability to hurt everything with everything and the damage reduction system.
i lost more of my deathwing terminators to las gun or bolter fire than i ever did to one shot heavy weapons. which both had a better chance to wound/kill than they did against a T6 nid with 6 wounds.

 aphyon wrote:


1 there is no such thing in 5th as to big to get cover like there is in 9th (to many wounds)

IIRC it had the 50% obscure rule for cover, although i guess I could be wrong and it was another edition.

2. grey knights were an extremely rare army to see, but that ability was true of a host of units like librarians, korsarro khans sword etc... and it applied to all units in the game not specifically nids.

Grey Knights were the army to beat, so they weren't that rare, definitely the army of choice for competitive players. Moreover, plenty of Space Marines characters had Eternal Warrior and pretty much all Daemons had it, and of course Vehicles were not affected.

the trygon usually also went first with I6 IIRC against most armies in CC where that ability would apply. as a monster its attacks are also all AP2 so only invul saves can be taken against it. you were more likely to die before you even got to attack back.

Unless it charged into cover, because no assault grenades.

4. weight of fire was true against everything and it is even more glaring in 9th thanks to the increase volume of shots, the ability to hurt everything with everything and the damage reduction system.
i lost more of my deathwing terminators to las gun or bolter fire than i ever did to one shot heavy weapons. which both had a better chance to wound/kill than they did against a T6 nid with 6 wounds.

The difference is that now a Trygon has 12 wounds instead of 6. It may be a glaring issue now, but it was worse in 5th for Nid monsters. People complain now because vehicles are now playing with the same rules.

I must also add that the lack of invulnerable or good armor saves and the lack of grenades meant Tyranids were both extremely dependent on cover while also being crippled by it.

IIRC it had the 50% obscure rule for cover, although i guess I could be wrong and it was another edition.

50% for vehicles only (BRB P62), area terrain and intervening models are exempt from this rule (BRB P22), as long as the model/majority of a multi model unit is in it or behind it(for shooting through) they count as being in cover.

So unless your bug is out in the open from the firing unit they will get cover.

 aphyon wrote:

all the classic editions of the game were horrendously flawed

ROFLOL...and you don't think 8th/9th are? with 3 SM codex updates in less than 2 years? with a total focus on comp player and an MTG style damage buff/debuff system?

Every edition has had it's flaws, but by far the core rules set for 5th was far better than anything that is out now. most complaints were about the wound allocation system because WAAC players found a way to abuse it. There was a bit of codex power creep but that has always been a (feature) "problem" to help GW sell more minis.

By comparison however all types of armies were viable from every faction. rather you want well rounded, melee focused, or gun lines etc....

I just did a battle last week of 5th with a CC oriented nid army VS khorne while he was still more CC oriented than normal marines he still had quite a bit of shooting compared to mine that were basically limited to a couple carnifexes and a zoanathrope it was a brutal but close(and most importantly -fun) battle that i managed to win.

You're looking to blame competitive players for clearly laid out wound allocation rules? Man, apologists for old editions are hilarious.

The 5th ed wound allocation rules sucked, and this was made most apparent by competetive players.

In my opinion 5th edition's wound allocation would have been perfectly fair if the round-robin distribution didn't require unique wargear. It's not like multi-wound infantry was particularly great.

5th wound allocation was solved by doing it per shooting weapon group so that shooting more different weapons did not ended up in less casualties
and making it available for all multiwound models

5th is tricky anyway because it was also the time of "we don't need an Errata because our rules are perfect" approach from GW
hence different clubs/groups/events used different Houserules/FAQ's to solve problems

My ork codex from back then still has a list of 27 things written in its cover that I had to clarify before each game.

My favorite one still is "is a deff rolla part of the hull?". No matter which way the opponent answered, he would argue about it later

In a business model no, not really, from a hobbyist standpoint yes, so much so that when I floated that my group does a 4th Ed escalation league, painting in the style of 4th and building a 4th ed army every single player was up for it.

with 30k losing support from FW over the years and 8th/9th putting people off for various reasons people seemed quite receptive to going back to a simpler ruleset that is not getting overloaded with primaris and book releases.

 aphyon wrote:
2. grey knights were an extremely rare army to see, but that ability was true of a host of units like librarians, korsarro khans sword etc... and it applied to all units in the game not specifically nids.

GK were all over the place at the end, but the nids got hit from a bunch of different angles in the edition which was one part cruddace, one part codex creep (hello jaws of the world wolf), and one part down to the edition itself with parking lots able to tankshock and wall off.

 kodos wrote:
5th is tricky anyway because it was also the time of "we don't need an Errata because our rules are perfect" approach from GW

oh, it had plenty of errata - GW were just very bad at it. The WH/DH errata was a running joke because the two never matched (despite being errata for the same units) and I think a lot of the early excitement for the points updates in 8th came from a lack of them during the heavily power creeped 5th era and onwards. The cost you paid for a weapon was determined by the author and release date rather than the weapon itself - if Phil Kelly decided that every squad can have a flamer and plamsagun free of charge or Matt Ward decided that 11 points was fair price for a troop slot assault marine it only applied to that one specific instance and not the half dozen other identical instances in the game.
Of course 8e points updates haven't exactly worked out to be the fix that people were hoping for either.

 aphyon wrote:


ROFLOL...and you don't think 8th/9th are? with 3 SM codex updates in less than 2 years? with a total focus on comp player and an MTG style damage buff/debuff system?

Cute.

The 'roflol' is neither wanted nor needed aphyon.i was referring entirely to the 'classic' editions, I had nothing to say about the current/recent ones, let alone any kind of comparison or view that current editions aren't problematic in comparison.

 aphyon wrote:

Every edition has had it's flaws, but by far the core rules set for 5th was far better than anything that is out now. most complaints were about the wound allocation system because WAAC players found a way to abuse it. There was a bit of codex power creep but that has always been a (feature) "problem" to help GW sell more minis.

If you say so.

I wasnt too interested with 5th, I was burned out of gw at the time, and loving wmh MK2. I do recall regarding the early fifth codices as the high water mark though, at least in terms of lore/content (like I said, I wasn't interested in playing the game so won't comment too much on the rules) - the 5th ed Ork codex still makes me smile. At least up to chaos/newcrons, I thought the writing was pretty damned decent.

And to be fair, before we get ahead of ourselves, fifth was still as broken as any other edition. The game was pretty flawed, core rules were still based on poor foundations, and still fell into particular builds with good codices and bad. Tau were terrible and then later you got space wolves, leaf blower guard and grey knights.

Thay said, I'd rather play kill team, warcry or newcromunda.

Eh, I know when I'm bored I tinker with making rules for new units to put into 5th edition.

I like to call my project "5th edition reforged!" Since older rules are basically sandbox now, I want to make all factions as strong as the strongest factions were at the time and implement the new units into the rules, as well as new rules to make the armies still characterful.

I'm not doing it because I dislike 9th edition. I enjoy it as a fun time with folks, but I remember my fondest experiences growing up with essentially my first edition and I feel that with the current and updating models range and the 5th edition rules, I could cobble something together to make it the best edition I could make.

 The Warp Forge wrote:
Eh, I know when I'm bored I tinker with making rules for new units to put into 5th edition.

I like to call my project "5th edition reforged!" Since older rules are basically sandbox now, I want to make all factions as strong as the strongest factions were at the time and implement the new units into the rules, as well as new rules to make the armies still characterful.

I'm not doing it because I dislike 9th edition. I enjoy it as a fun time with folks, but I remember my fondest experiences growing up with essentially my first edition and I feel that with the current and updating models range and the 5th edition rules, I could cobble something together to make it the best edition I could make.

Sounds great. Make sure to share it when you have something done

 Formosa wrote:
In a business model no, not really, from a hobbyist standpoint yes, so much so that when I floated that my group does a 4th Ed escalation league, painting in the style of 4th and building a 4th ed army every single player was up for it.

with 30k losing support from FW over the years and 8th/9th putting people off for various reasons people seemed quite receptive to going back to a simpler ruleset that is not getting overloaded with primaris and book releases.

Well that's it, it would be something that's divorced from new releases and new books being released.

@The Warp Forge has made an interesting point about 5th being their first edition and it therefore having a nostalgic value attached to it.
That version would still have had its arguments on message boards (I remember people complaining about marines going from T3 to T4, before there was an internet to argue about it! Instead the arguments were in gaming stores ) , but it's the place these miniatures, rules, game and background etc. hold in our memories.

So - hence something like a re-print of old rules or codecies (you could even have something like an official, legal version of the 'battle bible' that combines all of them into one release for instance) might be popular.
Releases of the original miniatures in their original box format (including artwork) with a swish new 40k classic logo.
Even a White Dwarf compendium that contains a feature of the best articles on 40k for example from a given year?

If you look at every other big entertainment format it has a space for 'retro'.
Companies like Marvel regularly mine their classic stories and materials and re-release it, they know there is a market for that type of stuff.