Per Bell Of Lost Souls, we the players and third party providers are to blame for current codex writ

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**ccs**

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
ccs wrote:

So? The existence of the Pacer has nothing to do with my love of 70s muscle cars.

The emissions controls imposed on the auto industry made them less cool than they are now. That and the gas lines.

What a lot of people are doing is taking the cream of the decade - the happy parts we love and celebrate - and ignoring the absolute horror that they were in real time. Yeah, Star Wars was great, and it stood out because there was so much that was awful. Same with disco - we only play the best of it.

Emissions controls & gas lines were not a factor to my 70s child self.
As a child i never experienced a 70s gas line. My parents did, but I wasn't with them as they did.
And it'd be many years before I had to deal with the emissions controls on various models (but just like doing conversion work on GW minis, there's not much you can't fix with the right tools & skills

)

So, like the existence of the Pacer neither changes my love of certain cars.....

As for your 2nd point? Uh, congratulations?? You just defined nostalgia.

**Dai**

Eilif wrote:
Dai wrote:
OG Necromunda with Outlanders might be my fave GW game. Still trying to source the books and that style of terrain though

I highly recommend the "Necromunda Community Edition" as assembled by Yaktribe. It's a fairly subtle tweaking of the game by a fan community that did alot of playtesting. Shaves a few of the rough edges and balances some things, but makes no attempt to modernize or drastically change anything so it feels just like you remember. It's based off of the last community edition that (a version of "Underhive" rulebook) that GW released and incorporates the Outlanders stuff. We played a mini-campaign with NCE a few years back and really enjoyed it.

As for terrain there are some good MDF kits available in that style, including some that seem to mirror almsot exactly the contents of the original boxed set. However, building multi-level necro-style terrain from junk toys (very "Necromundicon"-ish) has been a labor of love for me over the years that I've quite enjoyed. Much of which can be viewed here: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/651712.page

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dai wrote:

I love the internet when it is this civil

I'm a huge 2nd edition fan and agree with all you said. Nevertheless its a mess I love. You do need an empty day to get a game in i find though

Thanks!
It is a glorious mess. I think that if I had a long afternoon set aside and an opponent who was really excited about 2nd edition, and familiar enough with the rules to help me along, I'd give it a go again. Ideally a smaller scope game though, maybe a platoon or so per side and an interesting scenario.

In the meantime, I'm having a ton of fun playing big quick "40k" games with my son using Grimdark Future and even those sometimes have to be split between days because family/kids/work/life/etc....

If anyone is interest, here's my thoughts on when I briefly revisited 2nd edition.
https://www.chicagoskirmishwargames.com/blog/2011/11/vintage-warhammer-40k-2nd-edition/
I'm mildly embarassed that what I thought was "a few years ago" is actually over a decade past. Time flies....

Apologies for the late reply here have been super busy, that time of year but just wanted to thank you. All of these resources are incredibly useful and I'll be sure to let you know how I am getting on when I get back to gaming in the new year.
Serious gratitude for you taking the time out there

**Eilif**

Dai wrote:

Apologies for the late reply here have been super busy, that time of year but just wanted to thank you. All of these resources are incredibly useful and I'll be sure to let you know how I am getting on when I get back to gaming in the new year.
Serious gratitude for you taking the time out there

Your very welcome! Glad you found them useful.
Good luck getting back into vintage 40k-ness in the new year.

**Commissar von Toussaint**

Eilif wrote:

If anyone is interest, here's my thoughts on when I briefly revisited 2nd edition.
https://www.chicagoskirmishwargames.com/blog/2011/11/vintage-warhammer-40k-2nd-edition/
I'm mildly embarassed that what I thought was "a few years ago" is actually over a decade past. Time flies....

I got so lost in 70s anti-nostalgia that I missed this. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa...

Two hours for 750 points is a lot of time, and you can cut that down considerably by eliminating fussy things like eliminating scatter for jump packs, rolling for persistent weapon effects, and so on.

The link is of course in my sig, but basically what 2nd needed was some streamlining. When it came out, the designers weren't sure of it was a game of squads or platoons. As the edition developed, the model count was clearly meant to increase, but fiddly things like rolling for individual models on fire to run around the board slowed things down.

I think there is room for both: if you love the detail of watching plasma balls linger, snuff out or burst, those rules are there.

But if you want to bring more troops on the board, that sort of extra detail is easy to sweep aside. I've also come up with a less dice-intensive way to do close combat that retains the essential elements of the stat lines.

Re-rolling for parries I can live without, but I love hitting vehicles and blowing the turrets off and seeing where they land.

**BlackoCatto**

This article was hilarious.

**Dysartes**

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Two hours for 750 points is a lot of time, and you can cut that down considerably by eliminating fussy things like eliminating scatter for jump packs, rolling for persistent weapon effects, and so on.

If you don't play the full game, it'll take less time than if you play the full game - good to know.

**Commissar von Toussaint**

Dysartes wrote:
Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Two hours for 750 points is a lot of time, and you can cut that down considerably by eliminating fussy things like eliminating scatter for jump packs, rolling for persistent weapon effects, and so on.

If you don't play the full game, it'll take less time than if you play the full game - good to know.

I'm just here to help!

Seriously, is scatter for jump packs really that crucial to the overall design? Is it a core feature of the system that a wide shot with a plasma missile should be monitored each turn for its condition?

Similarly, the re-roll of parries is a spectacularly inefficient way to generate probability shifts. I know of several games where players came up with "hacks" to speech up play simply by using less time-consuming mechanics.

**Eilif**

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

Seriously, is scatter for jump packs really that crucial to the overall design? Is it a core feature of the system that a wide shot with a plasma missile should be monitored each turn for its condition?

Similarly, the re-roll of parries is a spectacularly inefficient way to generate probability shifts. I know of several games where players came up with "hacks" to speech up play simply by using less time-consuming mechanics.

I think the more pertinent question is how much do you simplify? It's not just scattering jumps and parries, all aspects of 2nd edition are rife with these sorts of extraneous mechanics. Vehicle rules/cards, wargear, Psychic powers, etc....

Trimming out things here and there for preference is fine, but I would suggest that if you want to play 2nd edition you just have to be ok with alot of kooky flavorful rules and time-consuming mechanics. 2nd edition will just never be a streamlined ruleset, so it's best to either embrace that or find another ruleset.

**Commissar von Toussaint**

Eilif wrote:

I think the more pertinent question is how much do you simplify? It's not just scattering jumps and parries, all aspects of 2nd edition are rife with these sorts of extraneous mechanics. Vehicle rules/cards, wargear, Psychic powers, etc....

Trimming out things here and there for preference is fine, but I would suggest that if you want to play 2nd edition you just have to be ok with alot of kooky flavorful rules and time-consuming mechanics. 2nd edition will just never be a streamlined ruleset, so it's best to either embrace that or find another ruleset.

I think there is a clear difference between core concepts of a game and the way in which those concepts are implemented. I played the game "as written" for many years and I liked it. However, when I came back to it, I realized that one could preserve the same feel (and tactics) while speeding up game play by eliminating some of the kludge.

Thus, my streamlined close combat system. Rolling two dice one time is a lot faster than rolling lots of dice and then doing re-rolls. The percentages are same, though because of the fumble mechanic, GW actually makes having high numbers of attack dice a liability, which strikes me as an unintentional design flaw (why should five attacks be statistically better than 10?).

Streamlining physical mechanics is just good game design. I remember years ago a Civil War boardgaming system required lots of dice-rolling and this was done sequentially. Then a player clued them in that you could just roll all the dice at once if they were different colors. Huge time-saver, and the designers included this in updates.

The same is true of jump packs' scatter. The scatter is d3" but they move 4", so unless they are jumping onto a ledge, it doesn't matter.

It is also important to consider that things like jump pack scatter, warhead expansion, etc. are not core rules, but rather rules that apply to specific pieces of gear, which may not appear at all in many games. Coming up with a way to make the wargear/weapons easier to use in no way challenges the integrity of 2nd edition's rules.

**tneva82**

Eilif wrote:
Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

Seriously, is scatter for jump packs really that crucial to the overall design? Is it a core feature of the system that a wide shot with a plasma missile should be monitored each turn for its condition?

Similarly, the re-roll of parries is a spectacularly inefficient way to generate probability shifts. I know of several games where players came up with "hacks" to speech up play simply by using less time-consuming mechanics.

I think the more pertinent question is how much do you simplify? It's not just scattering jumps and parries, all aspects of 2nd edition are rife with these sorts of extraneous mechanics. Vehicle rules/cards, wargear, Psychic powers, etc....

Trimming out things here and there for preference is fine, but I would suggest that if you want to play 2nd edition you just have to be ok with alot of kooky flavorful rules and time-consuming mechanics. 2nd edition will just never be a streamlined ruleset, so it's best to either embrace that or find another ruleset.

Ah yes the black and white only this and no other attitude. Always useless as usual.

One could direct your comments regarding 9e for gw as well. Once rule written can't change period. 8e army books obviously shouldn't have been updated either.

**Commissar von Toussaint**

tneva82 wrote:
Ah yes the black and white only this and no other attitude. Always useless as usual.

One could direct your comments regarding 9e for gw as well. Once rule written can't change period. 8e army books obviously shouldn't have been updated either.

I took it as more of a purity test - that the "true" 2nd edition can't be modified.

Except that it was, often. The Black Codex yielded to books, the main rules had psykers that were superseded by Dark Millennium, articles in White Dwarf introduced additional changes and unit types, etc. I guess you could say the final form was when 3rd came out and it became obsolete, but it wasn't "finished" so much as "abandoned." There was clearly work still to be done.

For example, are psykers required? Clearly, no. If there are no psykers present, there is no psychic phase. At least around here, most people didn't use them because they didn't add much to the army's effectiveness and they slowed the game down.

I think the strength of 2nd is that it can be played both ways - one can do the fiddly bits and have a near-Necromunda level of detail. Alternatively, one can simplify various tertiary rules mechanics and have the fun of fielding larger forces while reducing playing time. What I think is interesting is how many players hit on the exact same "fixes," which is pretty remarkable given the often fractious debates about 40k rules.

**Eilif**

tneva82 wrote:
Eilif wrote:
Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

Seriously, is scatter for jump packs really that crucial to the overall design? Is it a core feature of the system that a wide shot with a plasma missile should be monitored each turn for its condition?

Similarly, the re-roll of parries is a spectacularly inefficient way to generate probability shifts. I know of several games where players came up with "hacks" to speech up play simply by using less time-consuming mechanics.

I think the more pertinent question is how much do you simplify? It's not just scattering jumps and parries, all aspects of 2nd edition are rife with these sorts of extraneous mechanics. Vehicle rules/cards, wargear, Psychic powers, etc....

Trimming out things here and there for preference is fine, but I would suggest that if you want to play 2nd edition you just have to be ok with alot of kooky flavorful rules and time-consuming mechanics. 2nd edition will just never be a streamlined ruleset, so it's best to either embrace that or find another ruleset.

Ah yes the black and white only this and no other attitude. Always useless as usual.

One could direct your comments regarding 9e for gw as well. Once rule written can't change period. 8e army books obviously shouldn't have been updated either.

I think perhaps you misread my intent and we may actually be in agreement here. Probably my fault for not being more clear. I encourage players to play the games they like and change wherever rules they want. I certainly houserule often myself.

My contention is that with a game like 2nd Ed 40k you would have to change an awful lot of rules to modify the character of the game. For a player like Commissar T who already enjoys the system, a little tweaking around the edges gives him the game he really enjoys and that's great. For myself -while I'm open to trying it again someday - I currently think the sort of changes listed here would still provide -for me- an unsatisfying experience similar to the one I linked too. Especially if the game was bigger than platoon size and involved vehicles and psychics. My bias is toward streamlined rules like Grimdark Future but if 8th/9th is your jam rock that in good health.

All this to say, play the rules you like and flavor to taste, just don't expect the overall character of those rules to change.

**Commissar von Toussaint**

Eilif wrote:

My contention is that with a game like 2nd Ed 40k you would have to change an awful lot of rules to modify the character of the game. For a player like Commissar T who already enjoys the system, a little tweaking around the edges gives him the game he really enjoys and that's great. For myself -while I'm open to trying it again someday - I currently think the sort of changes listed here would still provide -for me- an unsatisfying experience similar to the one I linked too.

Thanks for the additional clarification.

You are correct in the sense that 2nd stands apart from the later editions in its use of vehicles and most of all, in its emphasis on fire combat over melee. It is a very unforgiving game if you leave troops out in the open. Even terminators have a limited life expectancy advancing over open ground.

Cutting out the clutter allows people who like that type of game to boost army sizes while keeping the playing time reasonably short. Using just two dice for HTH, for example, is huge in terms of speeding up the mechanics of the thing.