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Boarboyz and weirdboyz were in the 3rd edition rulebook appendix for the Ork list, and reappeared in the Feral ork list alongside wildboyz and mad boyz. Boarboyz also featured in the Snakebites clan rules.

 Just Tony wrote:
It seems to me that everybody that complains that third edition robbed the game of flavor are more referring to the fact that you didn't really get held to an actual military organizational structure with your armies.

This was something that GW noticeably started to remove in 4th edition, and occasionally made a hash of in 3rd.

Obliterators and Raptors in chaos for example were 0-1 in 3rd edition and free choice in 4th edition - in either case if you wanted to play a 3 raptor squad night lords force you could but it was a choice you made to follow the fluff rather than a restriction placed upon you or a bonus that you could gain.

A.T. wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
It seems to me that everybody that complains that third edition robbed the game of flavor are more referring to the fact that you didn't really get held to an actual military organizational structure with your armies.

This was something that GW noticeably started to remove in 4th edition, and occasionally made a hash of in 3rd.

Obliterators and Raptors in chaos for example were 0-1 in 3rd edition and free choice in 4th edition - in either case if you wanted to play a 3 raptor squad night lords force you could but it was a choice you made to follow the fluff rather than a restriction placed upon you or a bonus that you could gain.

Well, there is also the concept of a FOC in general.

 Da Boss wrote:
People often say your favourite edition is the one you start with, but 5th was my favourite and I started in 2nd.

Funny enough, I've never really felt this way. I dabbled in the game a bit around 5th but didn't really start an army until 7th and honestly, hated it. I enjoyed the modelling and painting but I can't say I ever really enjoyed playing beyond the people I played with. Particularly compared to its contemporaries, it just felt devoid of interesting decisions and engaging mechanics.

I didn't feel nearly the same way about 8th. Though it still was far from my favorite game I can say I enjoyed games of it on their own merits. Still full of notable issues. I actually liked that Guardsmen were everywhere visually, but it was obviously a gamey issue from a first draft economy. Most of my issues at this point focus on GWs update strategy and dated reliance on printed materials. Still, it was fun overall, but in need of work.

9th felt like it really took all of 8ths problems to heart and created a really great base ruleset that it proceeded to spend years making a total mess out of. Making things worse, due to releasing during the lockdown, I didn't really get to play until the mess had already been made and by the time I tried 9th it had become a mess of dozens of pages of strategems spread across 4+ books and just not particularly worth the effort to play in a time where getting people to game was a challenge.

10th has, by contrast, so far been the first edition that I wholeheartedly enjoy without much in the way of caveats. Granted, I'd probably be happier if my faction existed, but even there I've had a blast with the base Space Marine codex and I'm really enjoying branching into Orks. It's fun. Units have cool weapons and do cool things beyond move and shoot. The missions are interesting and for the first time I can say I'm actively choosing games of 40k over other options. Honestly, the biggest trepidation I have with 10th is it leaves me absolutely dreading 11th.

 Haighus wrote:
Well, there is also the concept of a FOC in general.

The FoC did make sense in how the game had a 'right tool for the right job' kind of design.

Allowing players to overload in one area created skew scenarios where bad list match-ups were more significant. When done properly having three fast slots meant you wouldn't get rushed by a whole army turn 1, having three heavy slots meant you weren't getting shelled by a whole army on turn 1, and so on.

Haighus wrote:
Also, Blood Angels rhinos are faster because they horde an STC for better engines, not because they are angry...

In the period we're talking about, the marines deliberately overcharged their engines, it wasnt a described as an advanced pattern until six years later, and the vechicles were subject to spontaneous breakdowns on the table. They had these rules because the marines are behaviorally unstable. Even the layer had to have some amount of bravura, or risk tolerance.

tauist wrote:Isn't Heavy Bolter (or equivalent) the de facto standard in anti-marine weaponry?

The ap4 problem even changed the background of the game. It's more of a story for a guard infantry platoon to be fighting right ext to a Griffon mortar vehicle as their support than it does for them to have a single basilisk on the field supporting them. However a griffon has ap4 which doesn't bother marines, and nobod'y uses it. It's effectively been written out in Imperial Armour and in- universe is rare due to officers thinking its under-powered.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I think that, as a base, 3rd-7th is superior to 8th-10th.
But your point here...

 xeen wrote:
Finally the worst part of the 3-7 experience is not even the game rules. It was the complete lack of any quality control or support by GW. This is why when people complain about there being to many rules updates or points updates I just want to claw my eyes out. The alternative is FAR FAR worse. Units that were straight broken would be so for years. Meta lists, like "leaf blower" or "dual lash prince" would dominate tournaments forever until the next broken thing came out. And the casual game would suffer immensely due to this. If your opponent showed up with even one or two meta units, and you were playing one of the many factions that could not compete, you would just get curb stomped. When Eldar got BROKE in 6th, I would play lists trying to handicap myself and still crush some armies best builds. Quite frankly I am surprised 40k survived this as well. And god forbid you had units you liked that were over costed or under powered. They would stay that way for years while you waited for a new codex.

That's the kicker. If they had put the same effort to FAQ, errata, patch, and all that into the earlier editions, they would've been a lot better.

Sorry to bring this back around, but I am in my office this morning with little to do.

Yes, I believe that if there was the support for say, 5th or 6th edition the way there is now, things would have been better. I liked 6th more as it was when they brought back the psychic phase and it really felt like psychic powers were meaningful again. But things like invisibility were bonkers and needed to be fixed. Points were way out of whack, especially when you compare an early book like CSM to a later book like Eldar. Those armies were playing a different game and had very different design philosophies and it showed (I played both extensively in 6th). So yea if the game had the support it has now maybe my opinion would be different, but right now I am enjoying 40k more than I had in a long while. This also again shows why I hate hate hate when anyone suggests that GW does too frequent updates and complains about having the find the updated points and balance pass, especially now that both are free.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That’s…not helping your case 🤣🤣🤣

All that demonstrates is Marines and MEQ only suffered detriment from cover, as it slowed them down.

And in 2nd Ed? Terrain could still halve your movement.

No, it highlights that cover has defensive bonuses (including in 2nd) not offensive ones, and the ruleset promoted Marines to go on the offensive unless facing heavy artillery. This is how Marines typically operate in the lore. Cover is slow. Marines don't like being slow, they primary MO is repeated rapid strikes unless their hand is forced into a defensive posture.

The melee defensive bonuses are mainly useful against hordes of infantry with poor access to grenades, like hormagaunts or Ork slugga boyz.

Basically cover becomes a tool for specific situations rather than a requirement for Marines. Which is how they typically fight in the lore...

Not how the game worked out though. A highly abstract example follows.

If I was facing say, a Mob of 30 Shoota Boyz? The sensible thing to do in warfare is….not stand in the open. But there was nothing for Marines to gain there. So I was only a few jammy rolls away from having the unit mauled, if not wiped out. There was nothing I could do to mitigate.

That doesn’t feel right, and never will.

Haha, 100% disagree!

The right thing to do was get supporting fire from nearby units to pick off some Boyz, move in close to Flamer a bunch of them, and the Assault the Boyz so you got your extra attacks while denying them the charge bonuses they we're gonna get next turn when they charged you (bonus Attacks and Initiative for passing Mob Check).

Attack! Attack! Attack!

FOC was one of the things I really liked in 3e. When did it drop out of the game, 6e? I really liked the way it made you have a core to your force and gave it all some structure, and it made list building a lot of fun.

I pretty much stopped playing in 6e. It didn't solve any of the issues I had with 5e and introduced new ones, and I became disillusioned with edition churn. I followed the discussion about 7e and it seems like it went even more in the wrong direction (from my POV).

At this point, I've been out of 40K for 5 editions. More editions than I was "in". Hmph. Guess I'm not really a fan!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It’s more that Marines rarely benefitted from Cover in 3rd Ed. Until 5 Man Las/Plas became commonplace.

Las/Plas was pretty immediate. Also those Starcannons, big time.

But also Ordinance weapons like Battlecannons and Demolishers. Vindicators were on the table by the time my first 3rd ed tournament rolled around, and I think that may have been only half a year into 3rd. Battlecannons were terrifying for Marines in 3rd.

 Da Boss wrote:
FOC was one of the things I really liked in 3e. When did it drop out of the game, 6e? I really liked the way it made you have a core to your force and gave it all some structure, and it made list building a lot of fun.

I pretty much stopped playing in 6e. It didn't solve any of the issues I had with 5e and introduced new ones, and I became disillusioned with edition churn. I followed the discussion about 7e and it seems like it went even more in the wrong direction (from my POV).

At this point, I've been out of 40K for 5 editions. More editions than I was "in". Hmph. Guess I'm not really a fan!

It actually lasted all the way until 10th got rid of it, though 9th seemed pretty determined to make it irrelevant.

I think 7th had some interesting ideas with some of the formations and unique FOCs but GW couldn't help themselves and wrote utterly bonkers rules for them which is a major reason why 7th is remembered the way it is.

I think it's perfectly fair to dislike 3rd edition. It's not like people didn't compare it to the modifier system in WHFB 6th edition at the time and think that would be a superior system due to greater granularity. I'm pretty sure I participated n arguments on Portent about it at the time.

Every edition of the game has had its ups and downs, though, and to some degree your fav edition is mostly down to it hitting several notes you like. Not like you can't praise the granularity and game scale of 2nd ed in the same breath as you curse the book-keeping and the army composition rules.

 Da Boss wrote:
FOC was one of the things I really liked in 3e. When did it drop out of the game, 6e? I really liked the way it made you have a core to your force and gave it all some structure, and it made list building a lot of fun.

I pretty much stopped playing in 6e. It didn't solve any of the issues I had with 5e and introduced new ones, and I became disillusioned with edition churn. I followed the discussion about 7e and it seems like it went even more in the wrong direction (from my POV).

At this point, I've been out of 40K for 5 editions. More editions than I was "in". Hmph. Guess I'm not really a fan!

The most fun is when just a person, a trooper with a regular weapon, can set up a cross fire with a weapons team, or give a screening bonus to them, or be a spotter for fog of war rules. These are all things to do for a regular trooper, whose main traits are being ordinary, more likely to be in the right place at the right time.


Or in absence of having rules for crossfire, screening and fog of war that make I important to have front line regular troops, they can just require people to have a few filler troops that most people grow to despise and do anything they can to minimize or avoid taking at all. I think this was a bad thing.

The other fun games come from infantry rec9n or paratroopers running into armour and having to bail their way out of theirnpredicament, or a cavalry raid on artillery and the desperate defense of the guns. At the scale that we play, a 6x4 or 44x60 board and one and a half platoons per side, it makes a lot of sense for one side to have a tank or be all tanks. It makes no sense for both sides to have tanks getting that close to each other, and every effort should be made to minimize balanced armies facing off against each other.

When did it drop out of the game, 6e?

It was 2023. You could make a case for 2017, but not a good one. 8th and 9th edition overwhelmingly demanded three or even six troops to qualify for battalion or brigade bonuses.

Huh, I had the feeling FOC was meaningless/gone much earlier than that! Glad to be educated!

One of my gripes with using One Page Rules to teach my friend to play Wargames is that there's no FOC at all, and he naturally makes quite odd lists due to that, to my sensibilities. I like an army to look like an army, but it's hard to get that across without having the classifications or whatever built into the game.

The standard FOC was technically gone by the 7th edition, where it was replaced by the Combined Arms Detachment (which was just FOC by another name).

The FOC was, to me, an example of a pretty good idea done really badly.

1 HQ, 2 Troops then you get to have some fun is fine with me, in principal.

But too many Codexes blobbed it, with overly stuffed and unbalanced Elites being common place. In short, when (numbers out my arse for now) 9 units categorised as Elite competing for just 3 Elite slots? It’s not a good look, and I guess outright encourages the boredom of pure Mathammer.

Even the vaunted 3.5 Chaos Codex suffered from this. Elites absolutely rammed with options. Fast Attack? Three slots, three choices. One of those choices was 0-1, the others were Bikes and Daemonic Cavalry.

And so armies ended up with a marked lack of variety, not because the FOC was restrictive (that was its purpose after all), but because unit distribution in Codexes could be super wonky.

CSM were not about their Fast Attack options, no. An effect of the de-teching they got during 2nd ed. I don't think it would've been a huge problem if bikers in general weren't so points-heavy throughout 3rd ed.

Eldar were pretty packed with elites choices, too, but there weren't a lot of other places to put Aspect Warriors and there was the Biel-Tan list later on that changed that.

Not to mention most Aspects went from Terrors Of The Field to….massive wusses who could neither take it (they never could) or dish it out (which was entirely new to them).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Might do a separate thread for How Should Cover Work, as I think it’s a really interesting conversation unto itself, and best off? One where nobody is objectively wrong.

Do I recall correctly that I think it was Hellebore from this forum that suggested a way to improve Eldar in the core rules was to switch BS from being a flat number to hit to being a comparison between Initiative and BS like how WS is compared to WS for assault?

That way, it'd be slightly harder to hit Eldar with shooting, representing their natural agility.

It would work out pretty similarly for a lot of the factions, though Orks would be a bit screwed by their I2 and maybe would need a boost to I3 or something to compensate.

An interesting thing to think about anyway - giving more ways to be defensive than just big armour or toughness.

In a system like that, being in cover could boost initiative scores, meaning you're more likely to go first in CC and less likely to get hit by shooting.

It's certainly come up before - I prefer to have a purely defensive "Evasion" stat than using Initiative for it, that way you're splitting "difficulty to hit with a gun" and "striking quickly in combat".

How much did people use the alternative FOCs for battles, raids etc? They seemed like a really neat idea and a great way of adding flavour by forcing asymmetry in force design.

3rd (and 4th) had some really interesting mission types in the main rulebook. They really played with deployment to simulate very different encounter types. The sentry rules are a great example- if you wanted a narrative mission, it gave a place for things like snipers to shine (sniper rifles being fairly bad otherwise) as they could take out sentries silently. A mission with a bunch of scouts sneaking in and taking out sentries around a key target is really evocative.

Sadly most of those cool missions were stripped out in 5th, with some being re-released in separate rulebooks (that cost more money of course). Not that it would have mattered much, my friends always wanted to play kill points

I got to play breakout and meatgrinder many times, which did have their own focs for attacker/defender, and variants of capture the flag where units would have to carry the objective back to their dz

There were also several pieces of wargear, usually battle standards, you could take as a normal piece of wargear but counted as a victory point for opponent if they killed the model in close combat. All of these are great games and I think playing without them is fairly impoverished.

Its possible the only reason this happened for me because we were kids and there was an adult who just told us what scenarios we were going to play. It seems like most people don't have this experience, and most games are two people using whatever the standard FOC or detachment is, without regard to a special scenario like a breakout.

There is someone named Wyddr who posts really good battle reports of scenario based games. When I get to play games I think of hims as a role model

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Even the vaunted 3.5 Chaos Codex suffered from this. Elites absolutely rammed with options. Fast Attack? Three slots, three choices. One of those choices was 0-1, the others were Bikes and Daemonic Cavalry.

Five choices - the cavalry entry was three different units in one.

I believe that gave them the second most fast attack units in 3rd edition behind space marines (who had their three landspeeder variants as distinct units despite just being a single weapon swap).

Last place belonged to GK with their dedicated fast attack units, the only thing you could do with the slots was to put troops into them.

A.T. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Even the vaunted 3.5 Chaos Codex suffered from this. Elites absolutely rammed with options. Fast Attack? Three slots, three choices. One of those choices was 0-1, the others were Bikes and Daemonic Cavalry.

Five choices - the cavalry entry was three different units in one.

I believe that gave them the second most fast attack units in 3rd edition behind space marines (who had their three landspeeder variants as distinct units despite just being a single weapon swap).

Last place belonged to GK with their dedicated fast attack units, the only thing you could do with the slots was to put troops into them.

And the Chaos 3.5 codex only has a whopping three Elite options. Chosen, Possessed, and Obliterators.

The usual suspects, Berzerkers, Noise Marines, Plague Marines and Thousand Sons are in the Troops section, with the note that they are Troops if your Chaos Lord has the same Mark. Basically you buy basic CSM as Troops, and if you Mark them they remain Troops if they're "on theme". But if you add Plague Marines in an army that is led by a Slaanesh Lord, then they're Elites. Very flavorful limitation.

Chosen were also interesting in that the number that you had depended on the size of battle being played. For a 2K battle you could have 20 chosen. And if you split them up into separate units (multiple retinues and one standalone unit) they still only counted as one Elites slot. So Chosen were one Elite slot, Obliterators were only 0-1, so also one Elite slot, and then Possessed and off-Mark CSMs. The Chaos 3.5 Elites didn't really seem that limiting.

I need to refresh my memory of 3rd Ed.

But that involves reading the books, which I won’t ever do again ever. So Nyeah

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I need to refresh my memory of 3rd Ed.

But that involves reading the books, which I won’t ever do again ever. So Nyeah

Well I guess there's nothing like a strong opinion and an unwillingness to do research to liven up internet discourse.

I respect 3rd for its design ethos. They took a wargame that was too convoluted to play at more than platoon scale in an afternoon, and made a company-level wargame you could knock out in two hours. Many of the changes were things that on paper seem weird, but showcase excellent design-for-effect abstractions and in practice work well.

Cover has already been mentioned and I think that's a perfect example, but also things like making rapid fire a core rule, the all-or-nothing AP system (though I do have issues with that- namely what it does in a Marine-focused game), twin-linked, or master-crafted weapons were elegant ways to modify trials through number of dice rolled rather than needing to track modifiers. The more abstract melee system allowed for all-at-once rolls like shooting rather than opposed rolls. Psychology was simplified into a morale system that could be either army-breaking or irrelevant depending on who you played. Psychic powers became part of the relevant unit profiles rather than a separate minigame. The changes made in 3rd were a massive leap forwards for playability, though of course YMMV as to whether it threw the baby out with the bathwater.

Subsequent editions would fix 3rd's issues in many ways, but none of the subsequent edition changes (including the paradigm shift of 8th) were as coherent in vision and execution as 3rd. I have no desire to replay 3rd- I think 4th and 5th iterated on it significantly, before 6th and 7th went off the rails- but I'd love to see a competent designer give 40K the same treatment nowadays, throwing out the atavistic remnants of a long-abandoned design paradigm and making something fresh and clean and holistically designed.

I started in 2nd Ed, and after a while I was playing "Grand Tournament Rules" which restricted certain wargear and Psychic Powers. Eldar were busted but we all just lived with it. Then the fellows that took all Wolfguard Terminator armies each with Assault Cannons and Cyclone Missile Launchers came along.

I have some nostalgia for 3rd Ed because there seemed to be a growth of the gaming scene that accompanied that edition and I had fun for a while. Still, I really didn't like:

- the FOC
- no to hit modifiers or save modifiers
- bad abstractions to make the doubled model count fit// concealed Powerfists etc...I missed the individual duels of 2nd Ed
- sweeping advances
- the vehicle rules that made most vehicles more static (although Ordnance templates were kinda fun at first)
- wonky transport rules (although in 2nd they were just death traps that nobody used, so maybe a wash)
- they killed the Assault Cannon - it never really recovered
- my own main force was in a bad state (Dark Angels)

Having said all that, I did have some fun gaming and I get it if 3rd Ed is someone's jam.

 Da Boss wrote:
People often say your favourite edition is the one you start with, but 5th was my favourite and I started in 2nd.

Now though, with some years to consider, I think my problems with 4th were pretty minor (they made transports death traps, easily fixed by ignoring a couple of rules, and the codex release schedule was bollocks). 5th toward the end was really quite bad for crappy lists and it introduced flyers as a part of the main game, which I was never keen on.

I've generally said in 'What was the best edition' discussions in the past that 2nd edition was the most fun, while 5th was the best written ruleset (and thus the most functional and playable game). It wasn't perfect - vehicle rules and wound allocation needed work, most prominently - but was the best the game has been, IMO.

4th was a mess, and was the edition that saw me take a break from the game due to just not being at all fun to play.

 tauist wrote:
This sort of discussions is why I'd really love GW to reintroduce all the older editions of the game as viable choices for playing. They wouldn't need to add anything to them, just make them available again with all their expansions and erratas especially. Let the players decide which editions they want to play with their toys. Warhammer vault could be a way of doing precisely this. I know it is possible to do this already, but amassing all those old resources takes quite a lot of effort, and I'm sure more players would be open to playing "vintage" edition games if GW's stance was "play any darn edition you want as long as its one of our games". Novelty would still ensure most players would only be playing the latest and greatest.

This would be a lovely thing, but would, I think, just serve to fragment the player base, and would be a nightmare from an inventory point of view, particularly since a lot of codexes spanned several editions and/or were replaced during editions.

I loved the Witch Hunter dex. I think it instilled my love of eclectic multi-faction armies. I bult a 1500 point Penitent Legion- Priests, Inquisitors, and Arbites to oversee Arcos, PE's, Repentia and DCA's. Then I built a 1500 point Holy Choir- Sisters, Doms, Seraphim.

Most of the games I fought were 1500, so I could use one force or the other- great for territorial control in map-based campaign play. But in times of great peril, against foes so numerous that neither saints nor sinners can defeat them alone, the forces unite to manifest the God Emperor's holy wrath.

Good times!