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a_typical_hero wrote: 6th saw the introduction of fliers, many still deem unreasonable to fit into the scale of 40k.
Aircraft were introduced in 3rd edition, maybe 4th at the latest. 6th is just when they went from being heavily abstracted bombing/strafing runs to being treated as normal on-table models, starting the process of making their rules increasingly bland and unrealistic to force them into a role they weren't suited for.
There is also the argument that 40k hasn't been a squad level infantry game for a long time now (with the squad level rules being legacy rules because GW gonna GW).
Tyran wrote: There is also the argument that 40k hasn't been a squad level infantry game for a long time now (with the squad level rules being legacy rules because GW gonna GW).
I guess you could play division, army, planetary, whatever level with 28mm figs at 1:1 scale, but I'd think things would become increasingly divorced from reality that way.
First, all means to conciliate; failing that, all means to crush.
NapoleonInSpace wrote: I was also looking at the poll. Its interesting how 4ok's popularity seems to peak at 5th ed, and then rapidly goes flatline.
Why so? Not being snarky, I really don't know.
Could just be luck of timing, economics, alternative entertainment, etc - but...
By the end of 4th edition GW had been busy streamlining the old style of books and faction rules and followed through with the 5e book consolidating a lot of stuff and making rule changes that were - if not necessarily better - far easier to understand for young and new players. Things like build-a-bear units and extra rules scattered to the four winds made way for radical new ideas like clear page references and a summary in the back of each codex.
The 4e-5e transition also did a reasonable job of reigning the shenanigans, arguably at the start of 5th edition you could pick any faction (save perhaps pure grey knights) and be able to put up a decent showing against any other.
The 5e-6e transition on the other hand did nothing to address suggestions that the game was lacking oversight on what the codex writers had been smoking, the gap between the have and have not factions grew wide and 6e just piled on a whole bunch of ill-advised changes and random dice rolls to make things worse.
2023/07/11 00:26:29
Subject: Re:What 40K edition do you prefer and why?
6th was a short-lived edition that was mostly forgotten in the transition to 7th. It didn't do much that was particularly bad but it didn't really do anything that made it stand out as a good edition to anyone.
7th was a raging dumpster fire of formation nonsense, invulnerable death stars, etc, that made a serious attempt to kill the game and GW as a company. This was the height of "anything but 40k" driving people to non-GW games and I doubt many people remember it fondly.
8th and 9th got the rules bloat and emphasis on buff stacking over on-table tactics to such a bad state that another full reset of the game was required. It wasn't as bad early in the cycle but I think recency bias skews the perception and people are voting based on the end state of 9th.
So that leaves the older editions with a heavy bias towards being the favorite for anyone who was around to remember them.
a_typical_hero wrote: 6th saw the introduction of fliers, many still deem unreasonable to fit into the scale of 40k.
Aircraft were introduced in 3rd edition, maybe 4th at the latest. 6th is just when they went from being heavily abstracted bombing/strafing runs to being treated as normal on-table models, starting the process of making their rules increasingly bland and unrealistic to force them into a role they weren't suited for.
Yes, both fliers and superheavies went from "something special somebody bought from Forgeworld (heavily stigmatised at the time), that we are going to use in a big battle, were we agreed to bring out exotic stuff" to "just another selection in your codex, don't even bother announcing it in advance".
Designer's Note: Hardened Veterans can be represented by any Imperial Guard models, but we've really included them to allow players to practise their skills at making a really unique and individual unit. Because of this we won't be making models to represent many of the options allowed to a Veteran squad - it's up to you to convert the models. (Imperial Guard, 3rd Edition)
2023/07/11 11:15:13
Subject: Re:What 40K edition do you prefer and why?
6th was a short-lived edition that was mostly forgotten in the transition to 7th. It didn't do much that was particularly bad but it didn't really do anything that made it stand out as a good edition to anyone.
7th was a raging dumpster fire of formation nonsense, invulnerable death stars, etc, that made a serious attempt to kill the game and GW as a company. This was the height of "anything but 40k" driving people to non-GW games and I doubt many people remember it fondly.
8th and 9th got the rules bloat and emphasis on buff stacking over on-table tactics to such a bad state that another full reset of the game was required. It wasn't as bad early in the cycle but I think recency bias skews the perception and people are voting based on the end state of 9th.
So that leaves the older editions with a heavy bias towards being the favorite for anyone who was around to remember them.
Iirc 6th introduced vehicle hull points and did away with the damage chart. This was a drastic redesign of vehicle durability, meaning stats for weapons and vehicles had to be rethought to accommodate it. Which gw didn't do (sigh), leading to vehicles getting their hp stripped by rapid firing medium strength weaponry. I'm not sure what else 6th did wrong anymore, it was seen as a failure and quickly replaced by 7th.
2023/07/11 12:06:08
Subject: Re:What 40K edition do you prefer and why?
shortymcnostrill wrote: Iirc 6th introduced vehicle hull points and did away with the damage chart. This was a drastic redesign of vehicle durability, meaning stats for weapons and vehicles had to be rethought to accommodate it. Which gw didn't do (sigh), leading to vehicles getting their hp stripped by rapid firing medium strength weaponry. I'm not sure what else 6th did wrong anymore, it was seen as a failure and quickly replaced by 7th.
6th still had the damage chart but single-hit destruction was made harder while the hull points just ensured that a vehicle was dead after three glancing or better hits regardless of damage suffered or weapon used.
But you also had 'from the front' wound allocation, all the random charts and extra USRs, challenges, and tremendously lop-sided allocation of aircraft, anti-air, superheavies and d-strength, and the warp-dice based psychic phase. Quite a few of the new areas were written as their own counter so you were screwed if you weren't one of the fortunate ones. Flyers countered fliers, superheavies countered other superheavies, the psychic phase was owned by whoever had the most psykers.
It didn't help that Ward had been pre-emptively codex creeping his books to be double-plus broken when 6th landed.
You know, I think I prefer mid-4th (before things like the Daemons book and the travesty of late 4th chaos) because it was the most recent time that the game felt like it had a unified design goal.
That's probably more correct than wading into the weeds about what specifically I liked.
2023/07/11 13:11:59
Subject: Re:What 40K edition do you prefer and why?
I think people thinking of warp dice in relation to 6th are misremembering that you had to roll for your psychic powers. You couldn't choose.
Other things that 6th did:
- differentiated power weapons into sword, axe, maul and glaive. For example, Axes went to S+2 and I1 like a powerfist. This retroactively punished modeling choices that had been purely cosmetic before. Dante spent this edition on the shelf as a consequence.
- fortifications. Suddenly everyone needed a bastion or aegis defense line with an AA gun. Led to silly things like Fire Dragons parked on the bastion roof so the crack shot Exarch could man the AA gun.
- allies. Neat concept probably intended to encourage folks to start smaller second armies, led to a host of problems.
- changed wound allocation rules to allow you to kill any model in a unit even ones out of range.
Unit1126PLL wrote: You know, I think I prefer mid-4th (before things like the Daemons book and the travesty of late 4th chaos) because it was the most recent time that the game felt like it had a unified design goal.
Weirdly I always felt like mid 4th - specifically around the 4th edition chaos and dark angels, but arguably 4e Eldar and Tau - was the last time they had a unified goal. There was a clear shift to a new pricing standard, unit compositions, etc.
Early 4th and late 3rd felt more like the codex writers were freestyling with no cross-codex consistency - there are few similarities between the structure of the chaos legion/unit construction rules, the marine chapter traits, tyranid 'build your own unit' rules, eldar craftworlds, and so on. The same rule would be priced differently between books and sometimes within the same book (i.e. CSM spikey bits were just better mastercrafted weapons with a 5 point discount... which could also be mastercrafted), units were mismatched, USRs were erratic, there were about half a dozen different types of psychic power..
I suppose 'rule of cool' is technically a unified goal.
The earlier editions (3rd to 5th-ish) will always hold a special place in my heart, but I absolutely do not miss the feeling of hoping your faction will be lucky enough to get a codex this edition.
At one point, the game was absolutely Space Marines codex>Xenos codex>Space Marines again>Xenos codex>Yet More Space Marines>Xenos, Xenos>More and More Space Marines>Xenos>New edition. Several armies went multiple editions without rule updates.
And then, of course, when they did get an update, if the rules were gak, well, have fun waiting again.
And this was when editions felt like were 5+ years apart.
Interestingly there also aren't a lot of people left to vote for WWI as their favorite war to fight in.
Not quite sure what this ^^ means, but it can be taken two ways.
One would be that the generation who would have been interested is long gone, but far more likely, I think, is that games of infantry running into a meat grinder are just no fun.
But that isn't really fair either. WWI was VERY popular for its dogfights.
Albert Ball VC. Albert Ball was one of the United Kingdom's highest-scoring air aces. ...
Andrew Beauchamp-Proctor VC. ...
William 'Billy' Bishop VC. ...
Georges Guynemer. ...
Max Immelmann. ...
Edward 'Mick' Mannock VC. ...
James McCudden VC. ...
and, of course, who can forget:
Manfred von Richthofen aka 'The Red Baron'
The war in the air had all the grandeur and chivalry that the trenches lacked.
For the same reason, I think a reboot of 1e, with things cleaned up a little might be very popular. A skirmish game with just enough simplicity to not quite be an rpg was what I always loved about it.
First, all means to conciliate; failing that, all means to crush.
MinscS2 wrote: Its too early to tell, but I think 10th may very well become my favorite edition actually, unless the codicies absolutely feth it up.
Other than that, I think 5th is my favorite edition, but it might be nostalgia talking and I might've forgotten everything I didn't like about it.
It is not nostalgia. our FLGS group STILL plays 5th with some rules fixes (mostly re-instating some rules from other editions to fix things like wound allocation shenanigans and flyer rules from FW) and the game has never been better and more fun to play. once you start doing what we are doing you won't give a GAK what GW is doing other than maybe snagging a new model here and there...but do you really need to do that very often when you can get 3d printed ones that are better looking and far cheaper?
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
MinscS2 wrote: Its too early to tell, but I think 10th may very well become my favorite edition actually, unless the codicies absolutely feth it up.
Other than that, I think 5th is my favorite edition, but it might be nostalgia talking and I might've forgotten everything I didn't like about it.
It is not nostalgia. our FLGS group STILL plays 5th with some rules fixes (mostly re-instating some rules from other editions to fix things like wound allocation shenanigans and flyer rules from FW) and the game has never been better and more fun to play. once you start doing what we are doing you won't give a GAK what GW is doing other than maybe snagging a new model here and there...but do you really need to do that very often when you can get 3d printed ones that are better looking and far cheaper?
I'm glad to hear you're having a good time, but I'm always surprised when people express fondness for 5th as it was my first and least-favorite edition. I'm wondering if you've added any houserules to address my personal pet peeves:
* Only scoring with troops was rough for armies (like my eldar) whose troops were neither super cheap, super durable, or good at tankbusting. This also weirdly turned a lot of games into troop hunting where you'd semi-ignore the enemy's more threatening pieces so you could finish off random guardsman squad number 6.
* Vehicles everywhere. Definitely the parking lot edition. Which was too bad for those of us who found the infantry kits more interesting than tanks. This also lead to lower list diversity as you had to make sure you crammed enough anti-tank guns into your list to deal with those parking lots. So no taking striking scorpions unless you've grabbed your mandatory fire dragon squads already. No flamers until you have more meltas than you can count.
* Random end of game scoring. That awkward, gamble where you have to decide whether to try and hold an objective on turn 5, wait until 6, or hold out until 7, knowing that your squishy troops won't be likely to survive more than a single turn.
* The missions in general. There were only 3 missions in the main book as I recall. One of them basically screwed over melee and heavy weapon units (Dawn of War), and the Kill Points mission strongly favored elite, durable armies over squishy MSU armies.
I also recall the following getting griped about a lot, although I didn't personally mind them as much:
* Taking extra damage at the end of the Assault phase because you're Fearless.
* Initiative being pretty feels-bad for I3 and I2 armies.
* Skimmers being nigh-unhittable if they'd moved that turn.
* Being stuck in melee with a walker or other tarpit and not having the option to fall back.
Do you do anything to address any of the above? I'm also curious about what your local meta looks like. I tend to think that people who like 5th edition are probably playing imperial armies; probably with lots of tanks. I'm curious to know if your local crowd bucks my stereotype.
ATTENTION. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
It means anyone who played Rogue Trader would be 100+ years old by now and not many of them are voting in polls.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wyldhunt wrote: * Random end of game scoring. That awkward, gamble where you have to decide whether to try and hold an objective on turn 5, wait until 6, or hold out until 7, knowing that your squishy troops won't be likely to survive more than a single turn.
* The missions in general. There were only 3 missions in the main book as I recall. One of them basically screwed over melee and heavy weapon units (Dawn of War), and the Kill Points mission strongly favored elite, durable armies over squishy MSU armies.
TBH these are features, not bugs.
Random game length is there to mitigate the "take minimum troops, hide them while you kill stuff, and run onto objectives at the very last minute" strategy. You don't know when the final turn will be so you need a more sustainable way to claim objectives. If you treat scoring as a complete afterthought and dedicate 95% of your list to killing you're at the mercy of the RNG and can't reliably win.
Kill points favoring expensive units is the whole point of kill points. The other two missions strongly favor MSU, having a third mission that penalizes MSU forces you to think about balance in your list instead of spamming pure MSU. TBH this is why all the competitive players hated it, they couldn't win in the list building phase as easily and lobbied hard to remove kill points and make "buy MSU" the easy correct solution.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/07/11 19:53:12
I'm glad to hear you're having a good time, but I'm always surprised when people express fondness for 5th as it was my first and least-favorite edition. I'm wondering if you've added any houserules to address my personal pet peeves:
* Only scoring with troops was rough for armies (like my eldar) whose troops were neither super cheap, super durable, or good at tankbusting. This also weirdly turned a lot of games into troop hunting where you'd semi-ignore the enemy's more threatening pieces so you could finish off random guardsman squad number 6.
For Eldar the trick was Guardians with a Warlock with Conceal. The power was always on and granted a 4+ cover save. Add in a Farseer with Fortune and you've got a re-rollable 4+ which is statistically better than a 3+. The funny thing, is that your opponent would usually ignore said Guardians in favor of the more lethal elements of the army. So they were actually quite durable in the mech/anti-mech meta of 5th. Firing a Melta at a Guardian is such a waste.
A 10-man Guardian squad with Scatter Laser platform and Conceal Warlock was 135 points. A barebones Farseer with guide was 75, but the 150 point version with Runes of Witnessing, Runes of Warding and Spirit Stones was preferred. Eldrad was the best because he could cast 3 powers, usually Fortune twice and then Guide.
* Vehicles everywhere. Definitely the parking lot edition. Which was too bad for those of us who found the infantry kits more interesting than tanks. This also lead to lower list diversity as you had to make sure you crammed enough anti-tank guns into your list to deal with those parking lots. So no taking striking scorpions unless you've grabbed your mandatory fire dragon squads already. No flamers until you have more meltas than you can count.
Well, you wouldn't ever actually need flamers . EML/ BL Wraithlords/ War Walkers were often enough to do the trick. Warp Spiders were very effective transport poppers too. But, yes, it was a very mechanized meta and that did serve as a forcing function for list building.
* Random end of game scoring. That awkward, gamble where you have to decide whether to try and hold an objective on turn 5, wait until 6, or hold out until 7, knowing that your squishy troops won't be likely to survive more than a single turn.
I thought this was a neat mechanic since the game had an equal chance of ending on turn 5, 6 or 7. In a tournament though, you'd rarely see turn 6 or 7 simply because of time.
* The missions in general. There were only 3 missions in the main book as I recall. One of them basically screwed over melee and heavy weapon units (Dawn of War), and the Kill Points mission strongly favored elite, durable armies over squishy MSU armies.
Dawn of War was a deployment type. The missions were annihilation (kill points), seize ground (D3+2 objectives), and capture and control (1 objective per side). The 3 deployments were the aformentioned Dawn of War where it was table halves for deployment plus night fight for turn 1. Spearhead was opposite table quarters. Pitched battle was long table edges with a 24" no man's land between them. The combinations of deployments and missions gave us 9 possibilities for random pick up games.
I also recall the following getting griped about a lot, although I didn't personally mind them as much:
* Taking extra damage at the end of the Assault phase because you're Fearless.
Only if you lost the combat. I don't remember it being a huge deal in 5th until tyranid warriors and raveners went to 3 wounds and lost eternal warrior. This meant a single powerfist wound would instagib a warrior and count as 3 wounds for combat resolution. One of the reasons my Nids saw less table time after the 5th edition codex dropped.
* Initiative being pretty feels-bad for I3 and I2 armies.
There's lots of feels bad in 40k. Not sure why this is particularly egregious, but maybe I'm wrong and this is why the initiative stat went away.
Right, a deployment type that forced you to start off the table with most of your army and severely penalized heavy weapons (which couldn't move and shoot) and melee (which had to start at the back edge and take forever to get into charge range).
Random game length is there to mitigate the "take minimum troops, hide them while you kill stuff, and run onto objectives at the very last minute" strategy. You don't know when the final turn will be so you need a more sustainable way to claim objectives. If you treat scoring as a complete afterthought and dedicate 95% of your list to killing you're at the mercy of the RNG and can't reliably win.
Ah. See, in my case it didn't encourage me to take more troops because the ones I had already felt like a tax. Instead, it encouraged me to invest as little into troops as possible and focus entirely on trying to defang my opponent via offense. Bad eldar troops is why you saw things like the DAVU falcon being spammed. I didn't want to be that guy and thus didn't run these very often, but it's telling that the best use of an eldar troop in 5th was to basically pretend that they were a heavy support vehicle instead.
Kill points favoring expensive units is the whole point of kill points. The other two missions strongly favor MSU, having a third mission that penalizes MSU forces you to think about balance in your list instead of spamming pure MSU. TBH this is why all the competitive players hated it, they couldn't win in the list building phase as easily and lobbied hard to remove kill points and make "buy MSU" the easy correct solution.
See, I feel like that kind of falls apart when some armies are just really built for MSU rather than chunky units. Dark Eldar, for instance, tended to give up tons of kill points. I could all but table my opponent, have a good chunk of my army left, and still lose. Which felt weird in the "kill stuff better than your opponent" mission. 5e kill points just seem like a clear downgrade compared to things like PL kill points or oldschool "how many points of models did you kill?" victory points. Although the latter is admittedly a little time-consuming to calculate.
Plus, you could argue that encouraging people to take a small number of durable units is partly why you saw 5th edition's version of deathstars. I remember people not being wild about facing paladin blobs towards the end of 5th.
Right, a deployment type that forced you to start off the table with most of your army and severely penalized heavy weapons (which couldn't move and shoot) and melee (which had to start at the back edge and take forever to get into charge range).
My bad. Deployment type. Not mission. So a 1 in 3 chance of having all your snipers or devastators or melee army or whatever screwed over.
The missions were basically:
* The one where you lost if you didn't spam troops.
* The one where you lost if you played MSU.
* The one where you always tied.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/07/11 23:22:57
ATTENTION. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
Right, a deployment type that forced you to start off the table with most of your army and severely penalized heavy weapons (which couldn't move and shoot) and melee (which had to start at the back edge and take forever to get into charge range).
Yeah, ok. Not sure why this a huge deal since it impacted both players and with night fight rules in place shooting was limited to 2D6x3" (6-36"). First turn was largely a wash for most, but there were some interesting tactical choices given that there wasn't any separation of the deployment zones. The player going first could line up on the center line and push the second player's forces back to within 6" of the board edge in order to maintain 18" separation. But to do that put those 3 units at risk being so far ahead of the rest of his army.
5500 pts 
6500 pts 
7000 pts 
9000 pts 
13.000 pts 
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