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.

The transition into 8th from 7th edition did not go in the direction I wanted. Instead of fixing the broken problems of 7th with power levels and bad rules interactions they changed the game toward a more "gamified" style with stratagems, auras, and buffing. I like my aircraft, and I actually really liked their rules in 7th edition. They were fragile to other flyers and AA weapons, while remaining strong in their own niche. 8th essentially made them into skimmers that could be charged by ANYTHING with the fly rule including units like the gladius tank, and space marines with jump packs. A flame thrower would automatically hit aircraft when previously they could not.
Aircraft actively suffered a -1 to hit penalty for shooting heavy weaponry, so it was better to literally park my valkyries in the back line rather than actually fly around the table.

It looks like this problem is not being fixed in 10th, with aircraft literally just being skimmers that cant be charged by units unless they have fly. There isn't even a -1 to hit for going super sonic, nor can you go in and out of zoom and hover =(

 Fugazi wrote:

 aphyon wrote:
Wish i could gather up all you guys and have you join our group. when it comes to GW games (among all the other systems we all play) we have over a dozen players at our FLGS currently playing 5th ed 40K with some house rules fixes and we are having the best of times when we play 40K (or BFG for that matter).

Right, I’ll just take a short drive to…checks location…damn.

Happy for you, Aphyon. Hope you all continue to have a blast in 5th.

Would you be inclined to PM me your house rules? I don’t know 5th inside and out in order to do that.

No worries. You guys can come to my place, which is sort of in the middle, so I'll just stay here.

Be sure to bring some pizza and fried chicken

 Fugazi wrote:

 aphyon wrote:
Wish i could gather up all you guys and have you join our group. when it comes to GW games (among all the other systems we all play) we have over a dozen players at our FLGS currently playing 5th ed 40K with some house rules fixes and we are having the best of times when we play 40K (or BFG for that matter).

Right, I’ll just take a short drive to…checks location…damn.

Happy for you, Aphyon. Hope you all continue to have a blast in 5th.

Would you be inclined to PM me your house rules? I don’t know 5th inside and out in order to do that.

A couple of folks from my group play 4th Edition, with some houserules.

 Vankraken wrote:
Quit during 8th when the game just stopped being fun. They gutted the rules so much that it lost all the interesting gameplay elements. Game became so bare bones and then GW tried to pad it out with so much paid content that threw on more bloat (the thing 8th claimed to be trying to remove) that continued to have almost no gameplay depth. The rare opportunity that I got to play 7th were still a blast so it wasn't that I fell out of love with the game but that the game changed far too much for the worse.

Maybe 10th will be decent enough to play again but I doubt it. The lose of things like armor facings and blast weapons removed a tactical aspect that the current rule sets don't appear to be able to fill the void of (8th and 9th sure as gak didn't).

I know everything is subjective, but the idea that 7th edition had gameplay depth is hilarious to me. Yeah, 'My 2+,2++,2+++ rerolling Invisible deathstar punches your 2+, 2++, 2+++ rerolling invisible deathstar.' was the epitome of tactical mastery. Pretending that armor facings or blast templates had any impact on player behavior or squad tactics, other than 'be at max coherency range' is the cherry on top.

To resurrect from the grave here, I quit entirely early on in 9th edition as I got sick and tired of the gimmicky, almost moba feel to modern 40k and finding 40k overall to just be a poor excuse for a wargame unless you go all the way back to 2nd edition. Otherwise Epic and Fantasy stand as completely superior alternatives. And 10th isn't changing anything, it had my curiosity at first, but looking through the general rules made me quickly realize positioning, cover, among other things does not matter at all and it's still a farce of a 'wargame'.

Combined with knowing now from friends the inner workings of GW and some rather sketchy things going on behind the scenes, I hope 40k just outright dies. I've lost all interest in its qualities as both a game and a setting, lest Priestley were to suddenly return it's better off going defunct and letting new growth takes its place.

If you want to play an actually good wargame that's science fiction focused, albeit only with humans, pick up Stargrunt 2. It's freely available and so, so much better than 40k in being a proper wargame.

 Wyzilla wrote:
.

If you want to play an actually good wargame that's science fiction focused, albeit only with humans, pick up Stargrunt 2. It's freely available and so, so much better than 40k in being a proper wargame.

I just wanted to congratulate you for bringing Stargrunt 2 into the conversation. That's old school goodness.

I don't know that it will appeal to 40k players, but it's definitely worth looking over to read a well presented classic ruleset with completely different structure from 40k. Really no reason not to since it's free. https://shop.groundzerogames.co.uk/rules.html

 Wyzilla wrote:
To resurrect from the grave here, I quit entirely early on in 9th edition as I got sick and tired of the gimmicky, almost moba feel to modern 40k and finding 40k overall to just be a poor excuse for a wargame unless you go all the way back to 2nd edition. Otherwise Epic and Fantasy stand as completely superior alternatives. And 10th isn't changing anything, it had my curiosity at first, but looking through the general rules made me quickly realize positioning, cover, among other things does not matter at all and it's still a farce of a 'wargame'.

Combined with knowing now from friends the inner workings of GW and some rather sketchy things going on behind the scenes, I hope 40k just outright dies. I've lost all interest in its qualities as both a game and a setting, lest Priestley were to suddenly return it's better off going defunct and letting new growth takes its place.

If you want to play an actually good wargame that's science fiction focused, albeit only with humans, pick up Stargrunt 2. It's freely available and so, so much better than 40k in being a proper wargame.

It's funny you say that as I always found 2nd Ed. was garbage as a wargame, but worked as a skirmish battle RPG. It wasn't until 3rd that it felt like a wargame to me, AND it wasn't until 3rd that I realized how imbalanced pretty much all of GW's games were until that point. It's why I chose 3rd to go back to, and 6th on the WFB side of things.

10th might do it for me.
Not selling models or anything, but the rules just… they don’t look fun.

Twice-and-a-half.

First time my first love affair happened and 40k simply can't compete here

Second time I rage quit after 3rd dropped. I stayed only till Eldar codex was released and none of the old flavour was there. I got back mid 7th soon after Harlequins became a faction. Which was funny, because I didn't know that at the time, and when I quit all those years before, I made a vow to myself, that I'll only return to 40k if exactly this had happened

And second-and-a-half time was after 8th dropped. Hadn't stopped wargaming with my 40k models, just not with official rules anymore. And this was the best decision ever. GWs models are great, GWs rules are not.

I quit in 7th edition.

Started in 4th, mostly played during 5th and loved it, 6th was a mess with allies but I still enjoyed the game. I can barely remember 7th but I remember being completely turned off by the rules and datasheets.

My last ever game was my pretty decent Eldar list against some Tyranid player that had a bio-titan in a 2000pt game, and I just got utterly annihilated, it wasn’t even close.

I ‘returned’ during the pandemic because I wanted to start painting again but haven’t actually played a game yet. I didn’t like stratagems spam or reroll spam so I’m glad that’s gone (at the moment), but the points and upgrade system has completely killed whatever hype I had for 10th already…

 Just Tony wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
To resurrect from the grave here, I quit entirely early on in 9th edition as I got sick and tired of the gimmicky, almost moba feel to modern 40k and finding 40k overall to just be a poor excuse for a wargame unless you go all the way back to 2nd edition. Otherwise Epic and Fantasy stand as completely superior alternatives. And 10th isn't changing anything, it had my curiosity at first, but looking through the general rules made me quickly realize positioning, cover, among other things does not matter at all and it's still a farce of a 'wargame'.

Combined with knowing now from friends the inner workings of GW and some rather sketchy things going on behind the scenes, I hope 40k just outright dies. I've lost all interest in its qualities as both a game and a setting, lest Priestley were to suddenly return it's better off going defunct and letting new growth takes its place.

If you want to play an actually good wargame that's science fiction focused, albeit only with humans, pick up Stargrunt 2. It's freely available and so, so much better than 40k in being a proper wargame.

It's funny you say that as I always found 2nd Ed. was garbage as a wargame, but worked as a skirmish battle RPG. It wasn't until 3rd that it felt like a wargame to me, AND it wasn't until 3rd that I realized how imbalanced pretty much all of GW's games were until that point. It's why I chose 3rd to go back to, and 6th on the WFB side of things.

Funny you mention that, 6th edition Fantasy is also my favorite era of rules and culture on the WHFB side of things at GW. Otherwise WAP feels like it has some alright ideas.... and some very bad ones. Stargrunt 2 was also something I only learned of thanks to the alternative wargames general thread on /tg/, specifically because of its interesting use of range bands which make for a lot more varied level of ballistic skill that leaves close range fire effective yet long distance impossibly hard.

I quit in 9th (after 20 years of playing, started in 3rd) do to the abysmal state of the 9th edition CSM codex, and the game itself in general. Moved to 30k. 10th edition isn't going to bring me back.

 Wyzilla wrote:
To resurrect from the grave here, I quit entirely early on in 9th edition as I got sick and tired of the gimmicky, almost moba feel to modern 40k and finding 40k overall to just be a poor excuse for a wargame unless you go all the way back to 2nd edition. Otherwise Epic and Fantasy stand as completely superior alternatives. And 10th isn't changing anything, it had my curiosity at first, but looking through the general rules made me quickly realize positioning, cover, among other things does not matter at all and it's still a farce of a 'wargame'.

Combined with knowing now from friends the inner workings of GW and some rather sketchy things going on behind the scenes, I hope 40k just outright dies. I've lost all interest in its qualities as both a game and a setting, lest Priestley were to suddenly return it's better off going defunct and letting new growth takes its place.

Couldn't agree more. Folks need to demand better of GW and stop giving them money for subpar rules writing.

 Wyzilla wrote:
Combined with knowing now from friends the inner workings of GW and some rather sketchy things going on behind the scenes, I hope 40k just outright dies. I've lost all interest in its qualities as both a game and a setting, lest Priestley were to suddenly return it's better off going defunct and letting new growth takes its place.

Okay what's the scoop? You can't just drop hints of insider info without releasing some tidbits!

I left in 6th edition when all balance started to depart this earthly realm in favor of Rule of Cool.

The end of 9th edition was the single most balanced era of 40k. The rules were tinkered with by TOs and GW for four years and we got to a point where games lasted for about four rounds and the variance in winrates was modestly under control.

And we left that for a complete rewrite that put us all back into The Bad Times.

PoorGravitasHandling wrote:

The end of 9th edition was the single most balanced era of 40k.

After hating on 9th early on I had to admit this myself. Currently I have no intention of moving forward into another period of rebalance. Its worth voicing opinions on 10th in the hope that they 'get there' one more time. But until then I see no reason to trade something polished for something not.

PoorGravitasHandling wrote:
The end of 9th edition was the single most balanced era of 40k.

3rd Edition with the in-book army lists at launch would disagree with you.

 Just Tony wrote:

PoorGravitasHandling wrote:
The end of 9th edition was the single most balanced era of 40k.

3rd Edition with the in-book army lists at launch would disagree with you.

That's a take I haven't heard before.

I don't think I played it enough to have an opinion.

EDIT: I feel like I can recall Wave Serpents with 14 AV? Was that a thing?

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

PoorGravitasHandling wrote:
The end of 9th edition was the single most balanced era of 40k.

3rd Edition with the in-book army lists at launch would disagree with you.

That's a take I haven't heard before.

I don't think I played it enough to have an opinion.

EDIT: I feel like I can recall Wave Serpents with 14 AV? Was that a thing?

They may have reduced your Pen roll by 2, meaning they are functionally AV 14 on the front. That sounds like GW's good idea of a serpent shield tbf. Lol

4th edition eldar codex-wave serpent shield-reduces strength of all hits from shooting attacks to front and side armor from 9/10 to 8 (if the weapon is below S8 then it has no effect), it also negates any extra dice from shooting attacks I.E. melta.
attacks to the rear or from close combat are not effected by the shield
wave serpent armor is 12/12/10 so not quite comparable to AV 14. unless you shot it with something S10.

The Wave Serpent was AV14 to start with. That changed when Eldar got an actual Codex.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

PoorGravitasHandling wrote:
The end of 9th edition was the single most balanced era of 40k.

3rd Edition with the in-book army lists at launch would disagree with you.

That's a take I haven't heard before.

I don't think I played it enough to have an opinion.

EDIT: I feel like I can recall Wave Serpents with 14 AV? Was that a thing?

Yes it was, and the lists were internally and externally balanced so you didn't have the power creep from codices.

dominuschao wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Combined with knowing now from friends the inner workings of GW and some rather sketchy things going on behind the scenes, I hope 40k just outright dies. I've lost all interest in its qualities as both a game and a setting, lest Priestley were to suddenly return it's better off going defunct and letting new growth takes its place.

Okay what's the scoop? You can't just drop hints of insider info without releasing some tidbits!

Andy Smillie is a jackass and the upper studio are just as exploitative and averse to crediting people as many other studios. That's all, if anything further comes out then that's how it spreads.

 Wyzilla wrote:

dominuschao wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Combined with knowing now from friends the inner workings of GW and some rather sketchy things going on behind the scenes, I hope 40k just outright dies. I've lost all interest in its qualities as both a game and a setting, lest Priestley were to suddenly return it's better off going defunct and letting new growth takes its place.

Okay what's the scoop? You can't just drop hints of insider info without releasing some tidbits!

Andy Smillie is a jackass and the upper studio are just as exploitative and averse to crediting people as many other studios. That's all, if anything further comes out then that's how it spreads.

If I refused to play games made by companies who employ jackasses... I probably wouldn't have many games to play

An older cousin gave me the Rogue Trader rulebook back when that was current, and I drooled over it for a couple years.

I finally started playing when I got the 2nd edition box set and expanded to space wolves and Eldar from there. I went on to play all through 3rd and most of 4th.

I stopped playing a little before 5th came out. Not because of anything against the game but just life stuff. Got married, grad school, job, kids, etc. My friend group was in the same boat.

I got pulled back in during the 8th edition hype train, and my nephews started getting into it too. We played a game of 8th edition when tent camping with the core rules using stones and a marker to create our units. It was pretty funny.

But I quickly realized that 8th edition was not for me. Just wasn't the kind of game I wanted to play if I was going to play 40K. I was also going pretty hard on hobby board games as my "hobby."

When the pandemic hit, a few of us started playing games on Tabletop Simulator and we realized we could use it for 40K - in fact there's a thriving ecosystem for it. Given busy adult lives, this was a way to play games during the pandemic and even saving games to finish them across multiple sessions if needed. It was pretty good.

So we ended up going back to 4th edition and I started working my way through 5th 6th and 7th edition rules that I completely skipped over. We decided to make a custom edition that matched what we wanted and loved about the game, and that led to ProHammer. The rest is history.

At this point we have no interest in trying to stay current with 40K. Playing our crazy OldHammer edition on TTS suits us well.

I was interested in seeing how 10th edition was going to land - but I can say I have no interest in it what so ever. It liberating not being a slave to keeping up with the GW churn and money extraction process.

I played 4th, 5th and 6th. I quit at the end of 6th/start of 7th. I had been growing annoyed at the signature elements of 6th: flyers, fortifications, and allies. There was the December to remember when they released a $17 Cypher model that needed a $17 dataslate. Seems quaint now, but it was a harbinger of what followed. There came the nid codex in 4 parts; base codex and 3 dataslates, one of which was clearly superior to the others. Then revamped Guard arrived split into two codex books (AM and Scions) to add to the idea that 40k was never going to develop into a good game. It was just a means to extract resources from players. Then 7th finally arrived with the formations and superheavies. I didn't make the switch. I sold my armies off a year or so later.

Quit at 6th start of 7th. Fortifications did it for me. Turning scenery into army purchasables. Came back in 9th because I loved the new dark angels releases. Then....couldn't even get hand nor hide on Lion El, for love of money. And have been disappointed since.

PoorGravitasHandling wrote:
The end of 9th edition was the single most balanced era of 40k.

Disagree, late 4th to mid 5th was the most balanced. There’s a reason why the GK codex caused such a huge meltdown, it was because it completely warped a stable edition like never before

I dropped out mid-8th. Focused more on playing Age of Sigmar and doing other things. I was drawn back with the hype for 10th...and I'm going to be sitting out current edition 40k. Keen for oldhammer, if I can find a group.

post early 9th, after DE, playing GK had that 8th ed feel. At the same time, for an understandable reason my aunt bought me a second Lumineth Lords starter set. I played AoS, I decided I hate the double turn mechanic, even if it favoured my army. At the same time AoS was like heaven enjoyment wise. Now I only play w40k, if I can't find a AoS opponent to play against.