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 Wyzilla wrote:
Regarding 2e, the issue is that Marines and 2e overall is a completely different wargame than you're likely used to, because tactical modifiers are so important. You noted lasguns have -1 AP, so yes, Space Marine lists without terminators will get torn to pieces by guardsmen in a direct shooting match. That's why you don't fight fair, you fight dirty. If you pay attention to their rules Space Marines have autosenses which allows them to completely ignore the effects of smoke grenades. The play style of 2e space marines, barring characters with void grenade antics, is to be a whole lot more tactical and precise than later editions. You don't just form a gunline and shred the enemy in a shooting match. You take cover, you pop smoke religiously so most enemies can't see anything while your units can gun them down easily. You mention melee is a joke and that's correct, Marines being melee happy was an evolution of 40k over time indulging in being more and more self referential. Marines circa 1e and 2e still are Marines, not knights.

I’d argue combat was effective, but only if you were of above strictly average stats. Which Marines were.

Also, if I wound up within 10” of an enemy unit with my Dark Angels? Get the grenades out, ‘Arold. Pelting units with Frags, or big nasties with Krak, was usually a solid plan. Just spam them with wounds (Frag) or with harder hitting shots (Krak) and your Tactical squad could do a lot of damage.

Assault Marines were an odd fish. Tooled up, with that points premium, they could mob and butcher a surprising number of things.

Terminators of course were absolutely murderous in 2nd, and Marine Dreadnoughts were filthy.

Solid base accuracy was also an important part of playing Marines right, as even in hard cover, with nowt else in play, you were still hitting on a 5+. Predators were horrific in either configuration against their appropriate target. The Whirlwind was also a laugh as you could drive it around at top speed, didn’t need LoS, and blow stuff up.

You just had to make use of cover. Yes, massed Lasguns were surprisingly deadly thanks to the -1 Save. But in Hard Cover? Most Guard were hitting on a 6, wounding on a 5+, and had to get past my 4+ save. In fact…a huge chunk of most enemy infantry would be hitting on a 6+, which covered me for all number of sins. Expect of course being caught in the open where I’d bloody well earned that kicking!

You could also pull shenanigans, like popping Scouts out into the open, where your opponent had to follow targeting rules, which typically meant “I think you’ll have to shoot the kiddos first, sport!”

God I love 2nd Ed!

Marines weren't Marines until 3rd Ed.

The sheer abundance of Save Modifiers meant that the much-vaunted Power Armour of the Space Marines basically meant nothing in 2nd Ed.

3rd Ed hits with its new AP system, and suddenly Marines are taking saves on a full 3+ (or not taking them at all). It was the single most striking change, to me at least, when the editions changed over.

I know there are a lot of criticisms of the 3rd-7th AP system, but Marines being able to actually use their armour was a big deal.

3rd also had a lot less AP2 then later editions. Yes, there was some, but not at the levels we saw in 5th+. So marines didn’t need to hug cover for dear life as much. They could walk across the battlefield, small arms pinging off their PA.

Made them feel as tanky as the lore had them.

Plasma and starcannons came out, you still hugged the treeline though…

A lot of great stuff has been written by MDG above so I won't repeat it, but I think if you try and play 2nd edition with modern armies and sensibilities (and to an extent terrain) then you won't get very far with it.

For starters, if you have a look at battle reports from the 2nd ed. era the tables were *packed* with terrain. Also using smaller points values (1500 or even 1000) meant that manoeuvre tactics really came into play with flanking, surprise ambushes and the like. And this is where marines were effective, because even though their armour was more vulnerable, you could use application of force on an area of the enemy force; yes 20 guardsmen armed with lasguns (or more commonly gretchin with autoguns!) could outshoot you in an open field, but in practice that never happened with the terrain, and the fact the marines have jumped out of a rhino or razorback and outflanked them.

There were also a bunch of other bonuses that they got which aren't directly reflected in the stat-lines: autosenses, immunity to gas or choke grenades, the fact that all hold grenades and have a knife (no improvised -1 weapon attacks!) meant they were all-round very useful.

I will say my friends and I used to complain marines were *too* powerful in that edition, they were very hard to beat convincingly and it was common for people to be able to wrestle back a draw or narrow defeat even when they had played poorly. At least until Tyranids came along, and I will be honest GW what the hell were you thinking with that codex and making the game a misery for everyone else

So if you are going to play 2nd do 'when in Rome..' play with a force, a tabletop and a mentality appropriate to the toolbox the game gives you. Yes you can be a massive arsehat and come up with some truly horrendous lists (wolfguard terminators with cyclone missile launchers and assault cannons being a classic) but if someone does that, do as we did 25 years ago, laugh at them and tell them to piss off and pick a sensible army

I think off and pick a sensible army

I think 3rd was such a radical departure, but closer really to the modern editions in that the game switched from squad to platoon level combat, and you had a much more abstract experience, necessary because there were so many more miniatures on the tabletop.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Marines weren't Marines until 3rd Ed.

The sheer abundance of Save Modifiers meant that the much-vaunted Power Armour of the Space Marines basically meant nothing in 2nd Ed.

3rd Ed hits with its new AP system, and suddenly Marines are taking saves on a full 3+ (or not taking them at all). It was the single most striking change, to me at least, when the editions changed over.

I know there are a lot of criticisms of the 3rd-7th AP system, but Marines being able to actually use their armour was a big deal.

I can see where you’re coming from, and I kind of agree. The AP system could’ve worked, but it wasn’t that well implemented.

The Autocannon is kind of a go-to example of a naff gun. S7 meant it struggled against tanks. AP4 meant it did little to heavy infantry. Heavy 2 meant it didn’t do enough to light and medium infantry. And it’s far from the only “wait, what is exactly is this for?” Weapons, which lead to stuff like Las/Plas/Pie Plate spam.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


God I love 2nd Ed!

The thing I'd most like to resurrect from 2E is Psychology.

Absolutely yes. Fear and Terror were pretty useful tools.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


The Autocannon is kind of a go-to example of a naff gun. S7 meant it struggled against tanks. AP4 meant it did little to heavy infantry. Heavy 2 meant it didn’t do enough to light and medium infantry. And it’s far from the only “wait, what is exactly is this for?” Weapons, which lead to stuff like Las/Plas/Pie Plate spam.

I'm going to invoke an ancient horror here, but Autocannons were for light vehicles. They glanced AV10 on a 3+, and AV11 on a 4+. Since a lot of light vehicles were skimmers or had smoke, getting more shots was way better than being more likely to penetrate.

But yes, aside from that fairly specific target, it was pretty terrible against anything else.

Especially after hull points were added. Autocannons were the go-to for a while for AV needs, but were really designed to the lighter ones.

Also just a lot of previously reliable weapons became bobbins.

Scatter Laser. Used to get a fixed 6 shots. Became crap.

Assault Cannon. Oh you poor, poor thing. You could still explode, and often that’d be your best kill of the game.

Multi-Melta. Lost its template. Move or Fire, and had to get into half range to do its thing.

Most Dreadnoughts swapped the nought for ful

Oh and in HTH? Save or No Save. There is no AP.

Terminators could move and fire with Heavy Weapons….but still swung last with their Powerfists and Thunder Hammers.

Just…..Meh.

You will never find that holy grail edition because gw was never interested in making a 'complete' game, only in giving you enough stuff to keep your interest for an edition cycle before they did something new.

The only reason 3rd-5th ed gave the appearance of improving was because they were focused on Lord of the rings and stayed with the core ruleset for far longer without any fundamental changes that affected codexes (like ap on melee weapons).


This is why you see so many people trying to Frankenstein themselves a version from all the previous ones using the best mechanics, because they were all deficient to some degree.

And then you end up in an endless cycle of basically rewriting 40k as a fan edition and never finishing or getting anywhere...



You can do the same thing to 2nd ed as well, but it's still just a fan edition. It was more complete than other editions though.

Here's some 2nd ed changes that make it easier to play and reduce some of the issues.

Reduce all asm by 1 (so save mod -1 becomes 0).
Make asm only begin at s5 (5 -1, 6 -2, 7 -3 etc).

Halve and round down all damage values to one of 3 damage options:
1
1d3
1d6
You will find things normalise a bit.

When rolling to penetrate vehicles, you only succeed if you roll higher than the armour and the effect is determined by how far past it you get (ie armour 20 and you roll 23, then the 3 result on the damage table is used).

Alternatively, ignore the normal penetration rules entirely and simplify by halving all vehicle armour rounding down and roll 1d6+str to determine if you penetrate again using the amount you exceed as your damage result (ie armour 9 vs 7+1d6=12 means you get the 3 result on the damage table).


Throw out melee resolution, and just use the 3rd ed ws vs ws chart and use initiative to determine who makes attacks first. Get +1i on the charge.


Like I said you'll chase your tail, and will still end up house ruling things.


The 2003 necromunda edition streamlined 2nd and removed weird dice, turning everything into a d6 or d3. The melee rules stayed which is fine in a small game like that, but terrible in squad v squad.

 Hellebore wrote:


This is why you see so many people trying to Frankenstein themselves a version from all the previous ones using the best mechanics, because they were all deficient to some degree.

And then you end up in an endless cycle of basically rewriting 40k as a fan edition and never finishing or getting anywhere..

This.

Hence why, although no edition will be perfect, I totally share the wish to find the "best" one, because we won't have that much gaming time on our hands for the most of us and probably'd like to enjoy ourselves instead of fixing stuff.

There are some people who are really into making custom rules though. Dakkanaut easy E for example has made up his BFG sea based spin off IIRC, and the dedicated section of this forum proposes a lot of things.

Thing is?

It’s always been that way. As ever that’s not an excuse or a justification. Just a statement of fact and why others like myself have never particularly minded. It’s just, always been part of the overall experience.

I think that a reasonable rule for Autocannons in 3rd-7th would be:

High Impact [1]
When making an armor save against this weapon, subtract 1 from the save roll.

So Terminators save on a 3+, Marines on a 4+, and Scouts get nada because AP4.
Yes, that's just 8th onwards AP, but I don't think having some weapons get it is the end of the world, even if I prefer the binary saves of 3rd-7th.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I think that a reasonable rule for Autocannons in 3rd-7th would be:

High Impact [1]
When making an armor save against this weapon, subtract 1 from the save roll.

So Terminators save on a 3+, Marines on a 4+, and Scouts get nada because AP4.
Yes, that's just 8th onwards AP, but I don't think having some weapons get it is the end of the world, even if I prefer the binary saves of 3rd-7th.

And stepping outside the binary off/on of AP wasn’t unprecedented. IIRC choppas didn’t let you get more then a 4+ save.

 Nevelon wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
I think that a reasonable rule for Autocannons in 3rd-7th would be:

High Impact [1]
When making an armor save against this weapon, subtract 1 from the save roll.

So Terminators save on a 3+, Marines on a 4+, and Scouts get nada because AP4.
Yes, that's just 8th onwards AP, but I don't think having some weapons get it is the end of the world, even if I prefer the binary saves of 3rd-7th.

And stepping outside the binary off/on of AP wasn’t unprecedented. IIRC choppas didn’t let you get more then a 4+ save.

That's a weird one, since it triples damage against Terminators, +50% against MEQ, and does nothing for Scouts or lighter armor.
But yeah, it was a thing, I think.

^This is actually our 'rending' rule. Unlike the old denying of armor saves on a roll of 6, rending weapons always reduce the save by 1.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Absolutely yes. Fear and Terror were pretty useful tools.

It was a great way to make the Big Bads nastier without making them so much "bigger"

Get a GM and play Rogue Trader.
(then I'd put 2nd ed after that)

I just want to point out that I do use a squad of autocanon in 6th just because they look so cool

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The Autocannon is kind of a go-to example of a naff gun. S7 meant it struggled against tanks. AP4 meant it did little to heavy infantry. Heavy 2 meant it didn’t do enough to light and medium infantry. And it’s far from the only “wait, what is exactly is this for?” Weapons, which lead to stuff like Las/Plas/Pie Plate spam.

Autocannons were the bread and butter of the Guard.

Could take out everything up to and including AV13. Wounded almost all infantry in a 2+. Fired 2 shots a turn, which on a 50/50 Ballistic Skill meant you were hitting each turn, and were great for taking out those incoming rushing Rhinos (and then Autocannon Havocs with Tank Hunters? Oh boy they were fun!).

Now, to be fair, I see your point about a high strength weapon with AP4. And, it is true, when we did our own homebrew rules, one of the first things I introduced was the concept of "High Impact", which was a -1 Save Modifier that some weapons got, and everything S8 and above got. It meant that AP3 Krak Missiles caused Terminators to save on a 3+, and Autocannons (which were given the High Impact rule for this exact reason) made Marines save on a 4+. Not completely ignoring their armour, but showing that this powerful light cannon was more likely to get through than a Guardman's Lasgun or a Guardian's knife.

EDIT: I see JNA had the same idea.

And Choppas were stupid, reducing Terminator armour but doing nothing to a Guardsmen. Funnily enough, we gave Choppas "High Impact" in our rules, rather than their strange non-scaling rules. In fact, all "Heavy Close Combat Weaons" got High Impact.

I remember 2nd ed. GSC- mostly ripping things to pieces with purestrains- if I remember correctly, we got an extra die for vehicle armour pen or some such thing that gave a purestrain a decent chance to rip into a tank- often sacrificially blowing up its own unit.

The Witch Hunter dex, while fantastic, lacks a lot of the units I love. I really like Mortifiers, Zephyrim, Sacressants. While I only use named characters in very specific games, Morvenn is really, really important to Sisters as a part of the narrative- she is the sole Abbess governing both Prioris and Sanctorum and she's a High Lord of Terra on top of that. I even like the Paragons and the Castigator.

And as good as the Witch Hunter dex was, I just don't want to house rule or count as so many of the units that I've come to appreciate.

Note: The second ed Sisters dex was pretty cool with a lot of extra characters, but since I was content with GSC, I didn't really go all in on Sisters until 3rd.

RE: White Dwarf heyday

I'm going to defend 8th-9th era WD. The Torchbearer Crusade rules are probably my favourite set of WD rules of all time. The 4 issues of support for Wars of Faith in Crusade were also really well done, and they provided a wealth of additional support for 9th's Nachmund campaign.

And while wargear options on datacards may not support conversion work, white Dwarf certainly does- their gallery of Fallen themed miniatures was awesome and they made really good use of AoS Slaanesh to glam up more than a few 40k units- including, if a remember correctly, a titan with a noise marine band on its back and another with the AoS endless spell Deamon face as a head. There was also an amazing deathwatch army full of custom modelling.

And there was a lot of good content in Flashpoint articles eve if some of them were a little flat.

The jury's still out on WD in 10th. Today's issue will be the first with 10th ed Crusade content, and I'm not as impressed with the Bunker content as I expected to be- so far there's a lot of emphasis on Combat Patrol. There is potential, and we're early in the edition.

Even though I don't play any Marines besides the Chambers Militant of the Inquisition, I am looking quite forward to seeing the Tome Keepers bespoke content for the insight about what we can expect in terms of bespoke subfaction Crusade content for the remainder of the edition. Like of the Tau dex is devoid of Crusade content that adequately supports alien auxilia broadly and Kroot more specifically, that would be a perfect place for WD to step up.

Or give us some really good Imperial Agent/ Inquisition content. I really liked the Ashes of Faith campaign system, and I'd love to see it adapted for 40k- WD would be well suited to that task too.

So in the great tradition of chasing a 'complete and perfect' edition, I've gone and done that thing I said people do - creating a modified version of an edition. This time though, it's 2nd ed (using the latest version of the existing battle bible), tweaking the rules but keeping it mostly the same (except Melee - that had to go in the bin).

Vehicles and armour penetration has changed a bit, as each location's damage table is now a 'wound' table, and each penetrating hit causes the effect and knocks that wound off, so you have to keep penetrating to destroy it (or score a crit and increase the damage).

ASM are reduced by 1 across the board and all damage has been halved, then rounded down to either D6, D3 or 1.

The fun damage results in 2nd Ed were one of the things I loved the most.

When I wrote the vehicle rules for the 40k RPGs, I went out of my way to include things from those charts in the game. Especially the "vehicle flips over" result, which was my fav one.

@Hellebore: Aww, no more "A fire breaks out and kills some of the crew. Roll a D6 for each crew member and on a 4+ they are consumed by the flames." ?

Lol at the CC getting tossed out. It was . . . Slow going. I'll have to see what it was replaced with.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
All damage halved. . . That's a big shift.

THose effects are still there, you just apply them per penetrating effect.

So look at the table, and the first option (normally 1 on a d6) is the first thing that happens to the vehicle from a penetrating hit.

If that location gets hit again, the second result is applied and so on.

The wacky effect is still there, it's just applied once.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Lol at the CC getting tossed out. It was . . . Slow going. I'll have to see what it was replaced with.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
All damage halved. . . That's a big shift.

I liked the CC rules at necromunda scale as they felt like a duel, but trying to run 20 duels a turn is pretty tiring in 40k. These rules are the 3rd to hit table combined with modifiers for WS and I for hits, with criticals and a different sequence.


The damage stat was mostly used for vehicle penetration, as nothing except Nurgle Daemon prince had more than 10 wounds making the damage as, if not more, dangerous to monsters as the penetration rules were to vehicles.

 the_scotsman wrote:
What are your thoughts? How do you feel about the various books your faction got between 3-5? Were any of them "The Book"? Are the 3rd ed books universally more fun and we should just use 3e books with 4e rules?

GW seemed to change their design philosphy about three times every edition, and as some(most) factions missed entire editions at a time the best way to get a fun balance is always going to be a degree of tweaking and agreements to not be 'that guy'.

'That guy' is also circumstantial. Going full-on competitive options with the 4e eldar codex under 5e rules against top 5e books is very different from doing it under 4th edition rules and older books. Similarly a lot of mid-ish 3rd edition books were packed with options that could be abusive (eldar shooting you off the board before the game starts, chaos fielding literally indestructible units, etc), but the other 90% of those books were mostly fine.

It's something you can only really figure out as you go along depending on your group and the kinds of lists you play. Quite a few factions jump from very limited to very powerful all at once with no 4e middle ground.


Very broadly speaking once you hit the 4th edition Chaos codex and onwards you start to get the cheaper vehicles and more free basic wargear (greandes, etc), peaking with some of the later marine variants in 5th. There is also a dip in customisability starting around about the same time in terms of being able to min-max units that made performance a little more predictable, but also a notable drop in points for specialist units particularly in the area of points 'tax' on high speed(bikes/jump packs), heavy weapons, etc.

Best edition?
3rd... Hands down. No contest.

3.5 Chaos codex is the greatest thing GW ever made.
We got the Tau and necrons in third. The army sets, plastic dread and landraider, lots of fun alternative lists like Guard Armored Companies, Alpha Legion cultist lists, all the flavors of Eldar and Chaos, all the flavors of marine...
Almost every kit GW was comparable with space marine kits and people actually came up with amazing lore and conversions and you almost never ever saw an army painted in codex colors.
4th was okay.
5th was bad.
6th didn't exist.
7th was awful.
8th happened I guess.
9th is the worst version of 40k.
10 was tolerable for a few weeks but it's starting to just be a mess again.

These days I play against one person who actually buys GW products and another who has printed himself a few dozen armies but has yet to actually play a game.
I don't really have any interest playing against other people. Most of my old opponents moved on well over a decade ago or moved away. I do not enjoy 40k in the same way as newer players do so I don't get involved.
I'm almost at the point of just giving up on the gaming side entirely. It hasn't been a rewarding experience since like 2010 for me.

Another thought on my distaste for 3rd. And I’m afraid I’m going to sound like a right prick. Because frankly, I am being a bit of a prick with this.

3rd not only brought me into contact with WAAC Weirdos, but was also the edition that seemed to think a rich background was for wimps, because it was all but excised from the Codexes.

That was jarring, and has tainted not only my view of the edition, but those to whom 3rd was their first brush with 40K. And that’s not really fair.

But as someone so invested and intrigued by the background, to find it excised and so suddenly exposed to buzzwords like “optimal”, “competitive” and “meta” was oddly upsetting. The hobby I’d adored seemed to be turned on its head. As if a tide of goons (in reality, probably just a dozen or so really talkative goons) had invaded, determined to make the game something it was never intended to be. Like someone taking a stock Ford Fiesta to the Indy 500, and complaining it didn’t perform as well as custom modified racing cars.

As I said, this is beyond a grossly unfair opinion, but it still colours my view to this day.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Another thought on my distaste for 3rd. And I’m afraid I’m going to sound like a right prick. Because frankly, I am being a bit of a prick with this.

3rd not only brought me into contact with WAAC Weirdos, but was also the edition that seemed to think a rich background was for wimps, because it was all but excised from the Codexes.

That was jarring, and has tainted not only my view of the edition, but those to whom 3rd was their first brush with 40K. And that’s not really fair.

But as someone so invested and intrigued by the background, to find it excised and so suddenly exposed to buzzwords like “optimal”, “competitive” and “meta” was oddly upsetting. The hobby I’d adored seemed to be turned on its head. As if a tide of goons (in reality, probably just a dozen or so really talkative goons) had invaded, determined to make the game something it was never intended to be. Like someone taking a stock Ford Fiesta to the Indy 500, and complaining it didn’t perform as well as custom modified racing cars.

As I said, this is beyond a grossly unfair opinion, but it still colours my view to this day.

You know, I feel you, that's pretty much also part of my reluctancy to jump any further than the edition I started with (while I don't mind going backwards). Even as a youngster both to the hobby (10 years is relatively new by this forum's metric i guess) and in general.

You came at a time for a hobby because it appealed to you. Then it changes. When you no longer feel the same vibe that made you like it, you rant about how it has derailed and how it's been all botched. Sometimes you're even annoyed at people because they like it and you're like that prick as you say "those kids don't know what this is actually all about".

The practical frustration with this however is quite simple and factual: when you lag behind in your prehistoric version of things, it'll get harder to find people to gather and have a game you actually enjoy -rules, atmosphere and lore-.

You're not the only prick in here

Edit: corrected my unsufferable butchering of english spelling that hurt even my french heart.