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I guess I should have flagged that yes, Eldar had the same book in 5th as 4th, and it just didn't hold up as well in the face of changing rules and newer releases. Sort of similar (although not as extreme) to how Guard were +/- the best book for half or so of 8th, but fell off dramatically with Marines 2.0, and were hopeless for the majority of 9th.

I feel Marines are hated when they are on the up - but as people say, they tend to have a 2 years on, 1 year off sort of relationship. Or did in 7th, 8th, 9th. Good initial start, then fall off in the face of codex creep. But GW intervene with formations, supplements and free stuff to push them back up.

I expect Marines will have 6 months in the sun when their Codex drops (and a more severe round of nerfs falls on Eldar etc). They'll then start to wilt in the first half of 2024 and be considered bad in the second half. For a brief moment of 2025 they'll genuinely be unplayably rubbish - but at some point GW will buff them back to top tier.

A.T. wrote:

And the fan made stuff never matches up in what constitutes best. Prohammer for example includes many later rules like snapfire, overwatch, etc for compatability with later 6e/7e books, Simplehammer(if I ever get around to it) is based around speeding up the game by trimming the rules/rerolls, a_typical_hero was working on alternating activation, etc. Which is good if you can find one you like but then you have to find opponents.

Also none of them are meant for balanced play meaning you are entirely relying on self-restraint and also means they will be immediately discarded by the competitive/tournament crowd and are not fit for the casual pick-up game crowd.

 Tyran wrote:

A.T. wrote:

And the fan made stuff never matches up in what constitutes best. Prohammer for example includes many later rules like snapfire, overwatch, etc for compatability with later 6e/7e books, Simplehammer(if I ever get around to it) is based around speeding up the game by trimming the rules/rerolls, a_typical_hero was working on alternating activation, etc. Which is good if you can find one you like but then you have to find opponents.

Also none of them are meant for balanced play meaning you are entirely relying on self-restraint and also means they will be immediately discarded by the competitive/tournament crowd and are not fit for the casual pick-up game crowd.

And as a pick-up gamer through and through you just hit on the reason why I don't touch any of the fanmade systems. They're made to cater to either the Win At All Costs players or the Narrative At All Costs players, and I have no interest in either type of game.

 Tyran wrote:
Also none of them are meant for balanced play meaning you are entirely relying on self-restraint and also means they will be immediately discarded by the competitive/tournament crowd and are not fit for the casual pick-up game crowd.

 Just Tony wrote:
And as a pick-up gamer through and through you just hit on the reason why I don't touch any of the fanmade systems. They're made to cater to either the Win At All Costs players or the Narrative At All Costs players, and I have no interest in either type of game.

Custom40k is totally meant to be a balanced experience. The only thing where you have to restrain yourself is making a bad army list. Feel free to give it a try with one of your buddies. I'd recommend two "balanced" forces for the start where you bring a bit of everything (anti infantry, anti tank, a bit chaff, a bit elite, a bit vehicles, ...) to get a feeling for the system, before you lean into more skewed armies. Especially the AV system for vehicles and that most hero units start out naked catches people unfamiliar with older editions off guard. Make sure to play the standard mission from the core rules. Just setting up on two opposing sides of the table and shooting each other is not how the game is meant to be played.

a_typical_hero wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
Also none of them are meant for balanced play meaning you are entirely relying on self-restraint and also means they will be immediately discarded by the competitive/tournament crowd and are not fit for the casual pick-up game crowd.

 Just Tony wrote:
And as a pick-up gamer through and through you just hit on the reason why I don't touch any of the fanmade systems. They're made to cater to either the Win At All Costs players or the Narrative At All Costs players, and I have no interest in either type of game.

Custom40k is totally meant to be a balanced experience. The only thing where you have to restrain yourself is making a bad army list. Feel free to give it a try with one of your buddies. I'd recommend two "balanced" forces for the start where you bring a bit of everything (anti infantry, anti tank, a bit chaff, a bit elite, a bit vehicles, ...) to get a feeling for the system, before you lean into more skewed armies. Especially the AV system for vehicles and that most hero units start out naked catches people unfamiliar with older editions off guard. Make sure to play the standard mission from the core rules. Just setting up on two opposing sides of the table and shooting each other is not how the game is meant to be played.

I thank you for the info but as I have at least 2 regular 3rd Ed. opponents I have no reason to try this.

shortymcnostrill wrote:
Agreed also on the latest editions making the army simpler. I think that's partly due to the core mechanics becoming less and less capable of portraying an army such as this (e.g. removing initiative and speed-based defenses).

Yeah. Agreed. I liked 8th edition overall, but I think that's where eldar kind of stopped feeling properly space-elfy. No more speed-as-defense outside of a a couple stratagems. Initiative had its problems, but it did create room for my (dark) eldar to feel like they could be dangerous in melee without having to match marine strength/durability. And while we got it back in 9th (and lost it again in 10th), this is also where battle focus went away, so no move-shoot-move shenanigans. Plus, removing things like turbo boosting from skimmers meant that we weren't ever that much faster in a sprinting contest than armies like marines.

So with no option to be sneaky/agile, we were kind of stuck just trying to trade blows efficiently. So you saw things like ynnari reaper castles (maximized offense) and Alaitoc flyer spam (maximized defense). We didn't have the option to be squishy and hide behind walls with battle focus or trade next turn's offense for this turn's defense with jink or anything like that.

Which is one of the reasons our 10th edition index has me a little concerned about how GW will handle craftworlders going forward. We're back to having most of our maneuverability and speed-as-defense tied up in stratagems, and Strands of Fate and our detachment ability all tell us that we're just supposed to punch the enemy as efficiently as possible without much nuance or maneuvering.

Pacific wrote:That TSOALR comic is so funny. Is that still gone and buried I take it? I did really used to like them.

On the subject of Eldar, I remember them being a tricky army to play even back in 2nd. They had a lot of annoying tricksy psychic powers which 'doomed' your units, or gave their own re-rolls to wound etc. In some ways the in-game Farseers were foretelling what the 40k game itself would become, with re-rolls and yet more re-rolls..

Yeah, there were plenty of threads complaining about it, but 8th edition marines really kind of felt like they ate our lunch. Where rerolls used to kind of be the eldars' "thing," marines were doing it even better with auras. And then you had specialized primaris units like the eradicators who killed tanks better than fire dragons, for cheaper, and were tougher while doing it. Back in the day, you could sort of get away with representing eldar as being "high tech" by giving them entire squads full of meltaguns or powersword and maybe mixing in some nifty exarch powers. But eventually the designers realized that having to pay for ablative bolter marines in a meltagun squad wasn't as points efficient, so we got primaris units right around the same time they reduced the differences between skimmers and non-skimmers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Oh God, this all turned into an Eldar rant.

Excellent. Everyone knows eldar rants are the best threads.

GrimDarkFuture gets my vote...

but sans that

4th or 10th... voted 10th. If they can bump some of the weapon profiles so a heavy bolter can compete with a plasma cannon (for example), then this SYSTEM really good work well.

Voted 10th for the potential, but since I've collected most of my 40k factions at the company level (3 companies of Ultramarines, 2 of Dark Angels, 2 of Guard, etc) since the RT days... I know its probably foolish optimism

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Oh God, this all turned into an Eldar rant.

The best kind of rant by far!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Tyran wrote:

A.T. wrote:

And the fan made stuff never matches up in what constitutes best. Prohammer for example includes many later rules like snapfire, overwatch, etc for compatability with later 6e/7e books, Simplehammer(if I ever get around to it) is based around speeding up the game by trimming the rules/rerolls, a_typical_hero was working on alternating activation, etc. Which is good if you can find one you like but then you have to find opponents.

Also none of them are meant for balanced play meaning you are entirely relying on self-restraint and also means they will be immediately discarded by the competitive/tournament crowd and are not fit for the casual pick-up game crowd.

Mmm...

I don't want to derail this, but define "best."

One of the reasons that I still love 1st above all others, is that it is the most individualized, and most useful for rpging and skirmish level play. Does that make it "best?" From my perspective it does. From the perspective of the guys who want to field hundreds of miniatures per army on the same battlefield at the same time, it certainly doesn't.

Who's right? God alone knows, I guess.

My present "army" consists of a Navigator, his mutant girlfriend/ second in command, and their robot Julian. They just had to raid an ork asteroid mine, run mostly by gretchin slaves, because their dinictarium grav-simulator konked out in deep space, and they needed to jury rig something to make it back to the Imperium. They are presently being pursued by an ork frigate, which is just about to to catch and engage in a deep space battle.

However, Imperial forces in the form of a few fighters are closing in, and, if the crew can do something clever to hold out for awhile (purging radioactive waste in the path of their pursuers? Hmm... Maybe...) they might just survive the few hours necessary.

Will they make it home to the Navigator's Household world of Rajinagara? Who knows?

That's the stuff hero tales are made of!

Of course, if what you're into is massive Horus Heresy level battles where whole planets are being blown away by armies of billions, and perhaps random slaps by the gods, it wouldn't interest you at all.

4th... Because I loved having my Wyches charge into combat, wipe out a unit, then consolidate right into a new combat.

Putting that subjective malarkey aside, 9th or 10th would be my favorite.

Depends on how dope and awesome the codexes are in 10th would make 10th my favorite.

 BuFFo wrote:
4th... Because I loved having my Wyches charge into combat, wipe out a unit, then consolidate right into a new combat.

That was both 3rd and 4th, and quite impossible if your opponent was intelligent enough to keep his battle line far enough apart that you couldn't travel the 3" you were allowed to consolidate.