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 Just Tony wrote:

 Daba wrote:

 Insularum wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
2e fans, commence telling me why I am the wrongest man in Western Europe.

You are wrong, it was perfect

Spoiler:

Unless you lost any cards
Or any of the specific custom to the game dice
Or you had gaps in your WD collection
Or you wanted to play a game over 2k points but you didn't have a 3 day weekend
Or your opponents were willing to take advantage of some of the more busted rules
Or you had to carry your entirely metal army anywhere
Or you had to call a game early because your opponent tried to get a whole squad of dudes to throw frag grenades and it took an hour to resolve all of the scatters, overlapping templates and stacked hits on dudes unlucky enough to be standing in the wrong place

2nd ed 40k needed a new edition akin to 5th -> 6th edition Warhammer Fantasy instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater which is what we got in 3rd ed, of which the mistake still echo to this day.

I prefer 3rd. I think they made the EXACT right moves when they redid it. I also think that games of 3rd with the army lists in the BRB are the most balanced games of 40K you'll ever have.

Such genius ideas like removing the movement stat so you have to put in special rules to represent different kinds of movement because the core rules could no longer cope? The all or nothing armour save system that skewed games into leaning into weapons that would remove power (or better) armour (making terminators weak), so they had to have more special rules added? Then later leaning into immense weight of fire being the choice as the armour penetrating weapons were nerfed and costed up.

Not to mention that the characterhammer after 2nd was worse, as they could sweep through hordes of troops far better than anyone in 2nd could.

I would say 8th was a more balanced rulebook only experience. 3rd had the luck of being the only 'reset' for years (as 4-7th were just patches over the 3rd ed core that had overstayed its welcome), coming from the wild west. It's ironic that 10th went with reviving some 3rd edition things and the balance there was the worst it had been in a long time.

2nd was a wargame built on the framework of and RPG. It really needed to be trimmed and simplified if it wanted to get any bigger then a handful of models.

But 3rd cut way too deep. But then the bloat started back up.

 Nevelon wrote:
2nd was a wargame built on the framework of and RPG. It really needed to be trimmed and simplified if it wanted to get any bigger then a handful of models.

But 3rd cut way too deep. But then the bloat started back up.

Yes. I think of how the excesses of WHFB 5th edition were cleaned up in 6th. No more Herohammer. Unit special rules combined into broader categories across lists. If you look at the state of the game near the end, with FAQs and suggested house rules, scenario mods for specific games, it was reasonable to expect that a lot of clutter would be cleared out to support faster games at that scale.

Alas, it was not to be.

 Daba wrote:

Not to mention that the characterhammer after 2nd was worse, as they could sweep through hordes of troops far better than anyone in 2nd could.

I think that's only true if you're considering running down broken troops after winning a close combat, otherwise I'm hard pressed to think of models that were realistically killing hordes of troops, or anything that could compete with the likes of lvl4 psykers, wargear trickery and layered saves that existed in 2nd.

"My Exarch on a Jetbike moving fast with Evade and a Holo-field with a combined -6 to hit assaults your Titan (drive by) and uses the Exarch ability Disarm to destroy your Plasma Blastgun. Oh you actually managed to hit him with a lucky shot? Ablative Armor motherf****r!"

True story

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Daba wrote:

Not to mention that the characterhammer after 2nd was worse, as they could sweep through hordes of troops far better than anyone in 2nd could.

I think that's only true if you're considering running down broken troops after winning a close combat, otherwise I'm hard pressed to think of models that were realistically killing hordes of troops, or anything that could compete with the likes of lvl4 psykers, wargear trickery and layered saves that existed in 2nd.

"My Exarch on a Jetbike moving fast with Evade and a Holo-field with a combined -6 to hit assaults your Titan (drive by) and uses the Exarch ability Disarm to destroy your Plasma Blastgun. Oh you actually managed to hit him with a lucky shot? Ablative Armor motherf****r!"

True story

A marine captain with powerfist (or a meltabomb for a little bit extra - 8+D20+2D6 is pretty good, +1 additional d6 if the titan was stationary) on a bike is no slouch at doing this either, except he has to actually roll to damage the titan with his fist. The exarch powers are really the only difference. I don't think the faqs ever addressed disarm (that I've found) but I don't know anyone that considered its description applicable to dreadnoughts, let alone titans... But RAR you could do this.

The comments I've seen is more that a single character could wade through an army in 2nd ed, rather than pull off individual feats of daring do like the above. A marine captain with a thunderhammer on bike driving into into warhound in 3rd ed could also do this.




So to answer the OP, I think the lack of thorough FAQ and rule clarity was what was wrong with 2nd ed. A lot of the problems with it could be solved with even a 10th of the detail they currently provide in faqs and erratas for 40k 10th.

There were only a few times when they actually published an errata for 2nd ed, perhaps the most egregious being the infamous Space Wolf, Wolf Guard terminator squad of 20 each with an assault cannon and a cyclone missile launcher. Because they didn't notice the weapon selection rules interacting with the wargear tables allowing this. Although they banned this combo, the unit could still be 20 assault cannons, or missile launchers or a mix of both which was still a bit silly.

 Hellebore wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Daba wrote:

Not to mention that the characterhammer after 2nd was worse, as they could sweep through hordes of troops far better than anyone in 2nd could.

I think that's only true if you're considering running down broken troops after winning a close combat, otherwise I'm hard pressed to think of models that were realistically killing hordes of troops, or anything that could compete with the likes of lvl4 psykers, wargear trickery and layered saves that existed in 2nd.

"My Exarch on a Jetbike moving fast with Evade and a Holo-field with a combined -6 to hit assaults your Titan (drive by) and uses the Exarch ability Disarm to destroy your Plasma Blastgun. Oh you actually managed to hit him with a lucky shot? Ablative Armor motherf****r!"

True story

A marine captain with powerfist (or a meltabomb for a little bit extra - 8+D20+2D6 is pretty good, +1 additional d6 if the titan was stationary) on a bike is no slouch at doing this either, except he has to actually roll to damage the titan with his fist. The exarch powers are really the only difference. I don't think the faqs ever addressed disarm (that I've found) but I don't know anyone that considered its description applicable to dreadnoughts, let alone titans... But RAR you could do this.

The comments I've seen is more that a single character could wade through an army in 2nd ed, rather than pull off individual feats of daring do like the above. A marine captain with a thunderhammer on bike driving into into warhound in 3rd ed could also do this.

I'd say one of the major parts of herohammer in 2nd waa the layered defensive capabilities (like the -6 to hit, and that Exarch also had a Displacer Field iirc). Multiple invulns, rerollable saves (some on 2D6) were such a staple of 2nd, and 3rd ed stripped that waaay back. That Captain on a bike in 3rd might have had a 4+ save, and very few models got anything fancier. Not to mention you were limited to 2 HQ choices, rather than having up to half of your points to spend on souped up Mighty Heroes potentially. And all of this is without leveraging the Psychic Phase.

In 3rd you coukd spend a bunch of points on upgrading squad leaders here and there, but it wasn't in the same ballpark of goofery as in 2nd.

I'm pretty sure the rules prevented you having more than one of each type of save active. So you couldn't have 2 armour saves, or 2 invulns. But you could roll 1 save and 1 invuln if you failed the save. I don't recall any rules that allowed for rerolling failed armour saves, but it's been a while so I could be wrong.

The difficulty to hit was iirc only exarchs with those abilities, harlequins or ravenwing characters. But it was only useful if they sere by themselves because you couldn't target them inside a squad. And being a lone character was asking to get a lascannon to the face so it made it more feasible to actually be alone.

Displacers being 3+ made them pretty popular, but being on a bike with one meant teleporting off it and leaving it behind... It also didn't work against vortex grenades which were kind of the mortal wounds of 2nd ed, answer to everything :p

The difference though is that even a chainsword had a -1ASM, so your armour was getting bypassed a lot by anything better. Power swords -3, PFs -5 iirc.

So you often ended up only getting an invuln anyway.

The unique combat system (which I'm ambivalent on), also meant that only one side of the combat made attacks, while 3rd ed onward meant that even if a captain's opponent's struck first, so long as he was alive he could slaughter the lot anyway.

I killed more than one marine captain with nothing but grots back then, partly because I enjoyed the visual. When your 6th grot is rolling 7 attacks at WS7, he's very likely to beat a marine captain with 4 attacks, and the difference generates enough hits to potentially kill him.

6 tactical marines in btb with a character usually killed them by the 5th guy in my experience - WS+4 6A, at S4 ASM-1 they will punch a normal marine captain to death with only 3 wounds.

They weren't toothless but I don't think 3rd ed marine captains with terminator honours charging, generating 6 attacks and killing 3-4 dudes (more if they were a wolf lord with frost weapon), preventing strike backs and then running them down, was LESS herohammery.

Maybe the difference is immediacy, 2nd ed heroes could slowly work their way through units, by killing a max of 6 at a time so that by the end of the game they may have killed more.

While 3rd ed they'd kill whole squads in one go, but potentially get killed in the next turn or something.

I dunno, 3rd ed had 1 wound only weapons, excepting ID weapons at I1, while a 2nd ed heavy bolter could one shot a character - if it used a displacer field and teleported out of coherency of their ablative squad.... :p

They FAQd the Field + Storm Shield combo at some point. Buuuuut...

Khornate Terminator Lord could get a rerollable 2+ on 2D6, then a field.

A Librarian could cast Prescience on himself, allowing rerolling both Armor and Field saves.

An Assassin could have a Field plus a Dodge for two invuln saves.

There were probably more combos but that's what comes to mind.

And for fighting against hordes, while I get what you're saying, but many of our Characters were running around with 2 Parries and able to hold off multiple minor attackers. And if a few attacks get through would wind up bouncing off the many saves. A 3rd ed Captain killing 3-4 guys doesn't feel like that big of a deal compared to Psykers casting Destructor, Vortex, Executioner, or others in addition to the CC potential of many high level psykers on top of that.

Oh just remembered about CC - swords could parry.

Parry snything. Dreadnaught with a powerfist rolls a six? A swish of my rapier and parried I had a horde of brood brothers with nothing but basic hand weapons. They all had swords

^Yeah. As much as I liked the way Power Axes looked on my Assault Marines, Power Swords were basically always taken for the utility of the parry.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Daba wrote:

Not to mention that the characterhammer after 2nd was worse, as they could sweep through hordes of troops far better than anyone in 2nd could.

I think that's only true if you're considering running down broken troops after winning a close combat, otherwise I'm hard pressed to think of models that were realistically killing hordes of troops, or anything that could compete with the likes of lvl4 psykers, wargear trickery and layered saves that existed in 2nd.

"My Exarch on a Jetbike moving fast with Evade and a Holo-field with a combined -6 to hit assaults your Titan (drive by) and uses the Exarch ability Disarm to destroy your Plasma Blastgun. Oh you actually managed to hit him with a lucky shot? Ablative Armor motherf****r!"

True story

To be fair? Titan’s weren’t at all common, or officially official in the game. Biggest thing you’d really meet would be a Landraider. Even they were super rare due to no retail model for most (all?) 2nd Ed.

LR's were definitely around for some of 2nd ed. I had two of them. It's possible the ones I bought at the store were leftover stock. They're still advertized in Dark Millenium and the SW Codex, though not the UM one.

An Exarch may not have been able to use Disarm against a Land Raider anyways, since you have to win a round of CC to do it, and I think you just swung at Vehicles without it fighting back. So you could Disarm Walkers RAW as they actually fought. Titans were rare, true. But when a couple rich kids came over with their Titan and looking to smash me and my friends, we pulled out all the cheese.

The combination of "Heroic" statlines, Wargear Cards, bespoke special rules and psychic powers meant you could do crazy things with Characters in 2nd and you'd be hard pressed to get a similar level of potential shennanigans for a long while. Chaos 3.5 had some avenues for it but I never felt they could get to 2nd eds level, and it was more limited because it was just one faction and not across multiple factions like 2nd ed.

 Daba wrote:


Not to mention that the characterhammer after 2nd was worse, as they could sweep through hordes of troops far better than anyone in 2nd could.

Not true. CC was base to base, so if all the models in contact were killed, the survivors could voluntarily break without the "free strike."

Voluntarily breaking was a great way to leave a hth monster stuck in the open for massive retaliatory shooting. Also, CC did not prevent troops from firing into it, which was absolutely the case in 3rd. In 3rd you could do sweeping advanced and whip across the board, and so long as you reached the next squad, no one could shoot at you.

In 2nd, you could fire into the combat in such a way as to sweep aside your own feeble troops) which took half the hits, until only the bad guy was left and NOW you throw the heavy guns into it.

That was why IG troops in 3rd began adopting parade formations because cc monsters could hopscotch across the table without being shot if the units were too close together.

I've been playing 2nd for a long time, and while you can trick out a cc monster to absolutely get into combat, there were lots of ways to bog them down or cut them down. Maybe you played it differently, but I've never seen a character sweep through hordes.

 Insectum7 wrote:
They FAQd the Field + Storm Shield combo at some point. Buuuuut...

Khornate Terminator Lord could get a rerollable 2+ on 2D6, then a field.

A Librarian could cast Prescience on himself, allowing rerolling both Armor and Field saves.

An Assassin could have a Field plus a Dodge for two invuln saves.

There were probably more combos but that's what comes to mind.

And for fighting against hordes, while I get what you're saying, but many of our Characters were running around with 2 Parries and able to hold off multiple minor attackers. And if a few attacks get through would wind up bouncing off the many saves. A 3rd ed Captain killing 3-4 guys doesn't feel like that big of a deal compared to Psykers casting Destructor, Vortex, Executioner, or others in addition to the CC potential of many high level psykers on top of that.

I'm not sure how the khornate lord got a 2+ save, only Abaddon can wear his chaos armour that grants a 2d6 2+. The praise of khorne reward only allows armour re rolls. Was there another 2d6 2+ wargear card I'm missing?

The black codex assassin has no dodge save while the codex assassin assassins all have locked wargear they can't change so I'm not sure how they're getting extra stuff.

Psykers were definitely tough. Prescience was a good ability and easy to use. I'd forgotten about it. Level 4 librarians with stacked wargear could cost 300+points though, which is more than a bloodthirster. A t5 4w model that expensive is a big risk so I'd hope they could stay alive for a while.

Maxed out captains could be 200+points as well, and they only had 3 wounds. They're all very vulnerable to multi wound heavy weapons. I've killed more than a few with just a heavy bolter, especially using the commissar's tactic of falling back to leave the character exposed.


Psykers were harder to deal with if you didn't have your own, but you could still nullify their powers. A 33% chance to prevent prescience activating even without your own psyker is pretty good. 36 warp cards, 8 were nullify and 1 Demon attack that non psykers could play. 1 in 4 cards being usable to stop powers is pretty good.



My experience was that a 3rd Ed marine character charging defeating and running down a unit was a lot more common than a stacked 2nd character doing anything much except slowly Wade through whatever you fed them. With particularly potent psykers being more of a problem, in the same way a similarly priced greater daemon was

The other thing I wanted to address was the -6 to hit thing, which also has a simple solution: template weapons. If you can't hit him directly, shoot at the ground next to him, which you hit on a 6, but the template can still scatter. Guess weapons were also a thing, so hit modifiers had no effect. Heavy flamers also had their uses, as did large templates and of course psykers.

One of the things I've noticed about discussions of 2nd over the years is that the scattershot way the rules were pieced together a lot a lot of rules confusion and I have heard many stories, both online and in person about situations that arose that were simply illegal. They got the rules wrong.

Back in the day, there as a 2nd ed. thread on Warseer, and much of the content was people complaining that the game was broken only to find out that they were playing it wrong. It's not necessarily their fault; lots of people learn a game from a friend rather than going through the rulebook and 2nd had several areas where you had to pay close attention to the language to get it right. On my 2nd ed resource page, there is a combination of rules simplifications but also clarifications for rules that people mostly honored in the breach.

That was (to repeat a familiar theme) it really needed a revision and consolidation along the lines of WHFB's transition for the hot garbage of 5th to the design excellence of 6th.

 Hellebore wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
They FAQd the Field + Storm Shield combo at some point. Buuuuut...

Khornate Terminator Lord could get a rerollable 2+ on 2D6, then a field.

A Librarian could cast Prescience on himself, allowing rerolling both Armor and Field saves.

An Assassin could have a Field plus a Dodge for two invuln saves.

There were probably more combos but that's what comes to mind.

And for fighting against hordes, while I get what you're saying, but many of our Characters were running around with 2 Parries and able to hold off multiple minor attackers. And if a few attacks get through would wind up bouncing off the many saves. A 3rd ed Captain killing 3-4 guys doesn't feel like that big of a deal compared to Psykers casting Destructor, Vortex, Executioner, or others in addition to the CC potential of many high level psykers on top of that.

I'm not sure how the khornate lord got a 2+ save, only Abaddon can wear his chaos armour that grants a 2d6 2+. The praise of khorne reward only allows armour re rolls. Was there another 2d6 2+ wargear card I'm missing?

Mark of Khorne gives Chaos Armor, upgrading to a 2+ save. Berzerker Marines have a 2+, for example. Terminators with the Mark of Khorne become Berzerker Terminators with 2+ on 2D6, as well as gaining Frenzy. So your Chaos Lord with Terminator Armor, Mark of Khorne and Praise of Khorne gets 2+ on 2D6, rerolling, then whatever field you stick on him. Plus he gets Frenzy in CC, and the Mark of Khorne allows Parries while being Frenzied for extra nastiness.

The black codex assassin has no dodge save while the codex assassin assassins all have locked wargear they can't change so I'm not sure how they're getting extra stuff.

Assassin special rules are covered in Codex Imperialis pg. 47. 4+ Dodge is there.

Psykers were definitely tough. Prescience was a good ability and easy to use. I'd forgotten about it. Level 4 librarians with stacked wargear could cost 300+points though, which is more than a bloodthirster. A t5 4w model that expensive is a big risk so I'd hope they could stay alive for a while.

Maxed out captains could be 200+points as well, and they only had 3 wounds. They're all very vulnerable to multi wound heavy weapons. I've killed more than a few with just a heavy bolter, especially using the commissar's tactic of falling back to leave the character exposed.

Psykers were harder to deal with if you didn't have your own, but you could still nullify their powers. A 33% chance to prevent prescience activating even without your own psyker is pretty good. 36 warp cards, 8 were nullify and 1 Demon attack that non psykers could play. 1 in 4 cards being usable to stop powers is pretty good.

One of my favorite gnarly hero builds was the Lvl 4 Inquisitor, who had higher stats than a maxxed out Librarian at the time. Plus he drew from the Inquisitor Powers as the primary discipline, ensuring I could get Vortex, and a Nemesis Force Weapon which only Grey Knights or Inquisitors could have. That was nice because it gave a Parry (unlike a Force Rod or Axe), and it could store 2 Force Cards. Sometimes I gave him a Jump Pack to scoot around and deploy the Vortex. It could be quite rude.

My experience was that a 3rd Ed marine character charging defeating and running down a unit was a lot more common than a stacked 2nd character doing anything much except slowly Wade through whatever you fed them. With particularly potent psykers being more of a problem, in the same way a similarly priced greater daemon was

The post-combat Ld rules definitely helped boost lethality from assaults, but it helped everybody, not just characters, and it wasn't useful against Marines (one of the most common opponents) nor Tyranids and often Orks because of their Mob Check rules. Characters could still do pretty nasty things, but it just wasn't as dominating imo. I thought that was quite refreshing, personally.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
The other thing I wanted to address was the -6 to hit thing, which also has a simple solution: template weapons. If you can't hit him directly, shoot at the ground next to him, which you hit on a 6, but the template can still scatter. Guess weapons were also a thing, so hit modifiers had no effect. Heavy flamers also had their uses, as did large templates and of course psykers.

One of the nice things about 2nd edition is that there were usually some solutions to any given problem . . .if you had them in your army. List building was always a balancing act trying to get enough variety of solutions available to handle given potential problems. It always is, just 2nd ed had sooo many very esoteric methods and rules. The -6 to-hit model is just one example of available craziness.

 Insectum7 wrote:
One of the nice things about 2nd edition is that there were usually some solutions to any given problem . . .if you had them in your army. List building was always a balancing act trying to get enough variety of solutions available to handle given potential problems. It always is, just 2nd ed had sooo many very esoteric methods and rules. The -6 to-hit model is just one example of available craziness.

This is true. It was balanced insofar as there was so much lethality on the tabletop that it eventually caught up with just about anything you could put on it.

With 3rd, the weapons became highly specialized, each with a narrow range of effectiveness thanks to AP, but in 2nd, there were lots of "all comers" weapons that had universal applicability. Yes, there were situations where if you went against tanks with an army optimized against horde infantry you would have problems, but you also had things like missile launchers with lots of different warhead choices, or different settings for your heavy plasma gun. At least in my experience, force selection was much harder in 3rd because of AP and setup was more important because of the more restricted movement rates combined with sweeping advance.

In 2nd, you had a more fluid battlefield and troops could run as fast as they could charge, allowing a squad that was facing being overrun a chance to get out of the way. In 3rd, that was impossible.

Well, it was pretty hard to run away from the faster Assault units in 2nd too. And in 3rd I definitely had battles where I dodged incoming assaults by hopping into transports and just driving away. I found 3rd to feel more fluid in general because of the simplified shooting and CC rules, lack of game-interrupting overwatch, plus cover rules and shorter ranges incentivising Marines to move around more.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Mark of Khorne gives Chaos Armor, upgrading to a 2+ save. Berzerker Marines have a 2+, for example. Terminators with the Mark of Khorne become Berzerker Terminators with 2+ on 2D6, as well as gaining Frenzy. So your Chaos Lord with Terminator Armor, Mark of Khorne and Praise of Khorne gets 2+ on 2D6, rerolling, then whatever field you stick on him. Plus he gets Frenzy in CC, and the Mark of Khorne allows Parries while being Frenzied for extra nastiness.

Chaos Armour gave the 2+ save. Terminators had Terminator Armour, not Chaos Armour. Khorne Terminators had a 3+ save, only Abaddon got the 2+.

 insaniak wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Mark of Khorne gives Chaos Armor, upgrading to a 2+ save. Berzerker Marines have a 2+, for example. Terminators with the Mark of Khorne become Berzerker Terminators with 2+ on 2D6, as well as gaining Frenzy. So your Chaos Lord with Terminator Armor, Mark of Khorne and Praise of Khorne gets 2+ on 2D6, rerolling, then whatever field you stick on him. Plus he gets Frenzy in CC, and the Mark of Khorne allows Parries while being Frenzied for extra nastiness.

Chaos Armour gave the 2+ save. Terminators had Terminator Armour, not Chaos Armour. Khorne Terminators had a 3+ save, only Abaddon got the 2+.

I get the argument but that wasn't our read. Mark of Khorne grants the 2+, the Terminator Armor gives the extra D6. I'm fairly certain I saw it in a local tournament too and it was allowed. But if you got a FAQ for it I'm all ears. I did a brief look in my White Dwarfs last night but came up with nothing.

Before I go dig out my Codex Chaos, am I right in thinking that Chaos Armour was a Wargear card?

 insaniak wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Mark of Khorne gives Chaos Armor, upgrading to a 2+ save. Berzerker Marines have a 2+, for example. Terminators with the Mark of Khorne become Berzerker Terminators with 2+ on 2D6, as well as gaining Frenzy. So your Chaos Lord with Terminator Armor, Mark of Khorne and Praise of Khorne gets 2+ on 2D6, rerolling, then whatever field you stick on him. Plus he gets Frenzy in CC, and the Mark of Khorne allows Parries while being Frenzied for extra nastiness.

Chaos Armour gave the 2+ save. Terminators had Terminator Armour, not Chaos Armour. Khorne Terminators had a 3+ save, only Abaddon got the 2+.

Don't think that's true. Mark of Khorne was +1 save in 2nd edition. Regular Khorne Terminators had a 2+ on 2D6. Abaddon also had that because he counted as having all the Marks.

So interestingly i'd made the argument that chaos Terminator squads got 2+ saves, but lords didn't.

Because the Lord has to buy Terminator armour separately, the mark applying to his standard armour and not the wargear he buys separately.

However given that they allowed squads to have it at 2+, I can see why you'd expect the characters to get it too.



EDIT: I found a copy of the battle bible that has an FAQ at the back that says terminators can't get 2+ saves and that only Abaddon gets it. It points to this link on the gw website
http://www.games-workshop.com/newreleases/newsupdates/faq/warhammer40k.html

But for some reason the internet archive scrape I found doesn't list every codex so there's no FAQ for chaos there.

So it's possible there was an FAQ that was briefly hosted on gws website in the late 90s before 3rd ed came out
Or its an editorial by the battle bible guys.



Looking at the cost of terminator armour, 35 pts (37 with chainsaw), combined with the cost of the mark of khorne (30pts) it looks plausible abaddons caos armour is 70pts and is 2+ and nullify on 4+. A khorne lord in Terminator armour is paying 65 pts for 2+ Terminator armour and frenzy. So there is some cost similarities.
On the other hand abaddons entry specifically says his marks are different to normal champions.

So I'm on insectums side on this I think, unless an FAQ surfaces. If anyone has WD 204 it apparently has chaos faqs in it.

Slipspace wrote:

Don't think that's true. Mark of Khorne was +1 save in 2nd edition.

I have the codex in front of me. Mark of Khorne gave them Chaos armour that had a 2+ save.

Kharne's entry mentions the Mark granting +1 to his armour save, but that's not what the actual rules entry for the Mark says it does.

Regular Khorne Terminators had a 2+ on 2D6.

They had Terminator armour by their entry. So by the strict letter of the rules, giving them the Mark of Khorne swaps their Terminator armour for Chaos armour, and they have the same 2+ save that a power armoured model would have. Most people, from my experience, ruled that they kept their Terminator armour instead.

Abaddon also had that because he counted as having all the Marks.

Abaddon had a 2+ on 2D6 because he had 'Chaos Terminator Armour' that explicitly granted the 2+ on 2D6.

 Hellebore wrote:
EDIT: I found a copy of the battle bible that has an FAQ at the back that says terminators can't get 2+ saves and that only Abaddon gets it. It points to this link on the gw website
http://www.games-workshop.com/newreleases/newsupdates/faq/warhammer40k.html

But for some reason the internet archive scrape I found doesn't list every codex so there's no FAQ for chaos there.

So it's possible there was an FAQ that was briefly hosted on gws website in the late 90s before 3rd ed came out
Or its an editorial by the battle bible guys.

I believe that entry comes from an FAQ that was published by the Realm of Innisfail website after the studio had stopped publishing official FAQs for 2nd ed. It was considered official by some tournaments at the time as I believe it was written with some involvement by the studio, and their rulings were rolled into the Battle Bible along with the official FAQs.

So I'm on insectums side on this I think, unless an FAQ surfaces. If anyone has WD 204 it apparently has chaos faqs in it.

It does, but doesn't address this issue.

If you rrad abaddons entry its descripton of his khorne mark specifially says it's why his armour is 2+.

Given the mark describes what ever their armour is mutating into chaos armour and the save value avoids giving dice values of any kind, its not unreasonable to read it as making any armour go to 2+.

It would certainly make khorne terminators terrible if youre paying 20pts each for frenzy which has downsides...

 Insectum7 wrote:
Well, it was pretty hard to run away from the faster Assault units in 2nd too. And in 3rd I definitely had battles where I dodged incoming assaults by hopping into transports and just driving away. I found 3rd to feel more fluid in general because of the simplified shooting and CC rules, lack of game-interrupting overwatch, plus cover rules and shorter ranges incentivising Marines to move around more.

Pretty hard is still better than impossible. Besides, one didn't have to fully escape, just delay the impact for another turn of shooting.

Overwatch (i.e. opportunity fire) is an interesting topic. I think it's essential in a shooty IGO-UGO turn system, and what's even stranger is that WHFB had almost the exact same mechanic - shooting as a charge reaction. All overwatch did was extend it across the battlefield. Historical-based games like Panzer Leader had opportunity fire for units moving around in plain view and in range of an opposing unit.

It certainly led to a lot of decision paralysis during games. The solution to it was avoiding obvious fire lanes or sequencing your movement so that the shooting rules of closest/easiest target applied. You could also screen units with other units or present an obvious threat (a squad with flamers moving into close range) to cover more important/vulnerable units about to achieve an objective.

Instead of freezing up at the sight of an army hiding in overwatch, work them over. Immediately after movement is finished comes the shooting phase, so positioning heavies ready to light up any units that expose themselves is a solid tactic. The other aspect is that a player who goes completely static has completely surrendered the initiative, and because movement rates were so much greater, one could often just outflank or concentrate in a single section of the line and destroy it, and then roll up the rest.

That level of detail and the use of real world-style tactics (overlapping cover, shooting lanes, fire and maneuver) was what made it cool because you could combine that with jump packs and terminators, hovertanks, tyranids and stuff. Now add in the multi-story hive city nightmare, and it really felt like a future/sci-fi battlefield.

As for the Chaos debate, the trick with GW rules going way back is to never draw assumptions or inferences. Never fall into "this, therefore that" type of logic. Don't expect consistency. The rules say what they say and unless specifically cross-referenced, they stand on their own, unrelated to anything else.

A good chunk of the errors in the Battle Bible are based on attempts to draw such inferences. Thus: Chaos Armor has a 2+ save on a d6. That's all it does. Assuming that it translates to terminator armor is pure conjecture. If it did, it would say "this also applies to terminator armor." It does not. If it did, there would be no debate.

There was a venerable thread on Warseer (RIP) that was called "2nd edition memories" and about a third of the posts were people bringing up problems with the game that were entirely the result of misunderstanding or misapplying rules, often in really obvious ways. This was partly because the rules themselves lacked cross references, partly due to the evolving nature of the game with sprawling books and articles, but ultimately I think it was because it was primarily taught orally in hobby shops.

People didn't read through all the material, they watched a game being played or were walked through a game and if they did any reading, it was in the army list section or maybe the background. I learned D&D that way and only dug into the rulebooks when I moved onto AD&D. Later on, we did a retro Basic campaign and it was shocking to find out how much we screwed up back in the day.

Also? Don’t neglect your Smoke and Blind Grenades.

Cunning usage of both can really scupper an Overwatch Camper’s day, as they can’t shoot what they can’t see.

But definitely be prepared for Gentleman’s Agreements and House Rules. 2nd Ed was the make do and mend era for GW rules. If you find certain things are clogging the game up, or strongly and consistently in one player’s favour? Agree rules changes or restrictions etc.

As ever, this isn’t intended to excuse or hand wave away sloppy rule writing. But it was just part of the experience at the time.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

As for the Chaos debate, the trick with GW rules going way back is to never draw assumptions or inferences. Never fall into "this, therefore that" type of logic. Don't expect consistency. The rules say what they say and unless specifically cross-referenced, they stand on their own, unrelated to anything else.

A good chunk of the errors in the Battle Bible are based on attempts to draw such inferences. Thus: Chaos Armor has a 2+ save on a d6. That's all it does. Assuming that it translates to terminator armor is pure conjecture. If it did, it would say "this also applies to terminator armor." It does not. If it did, there would be no debate.

Well by that argument it doesn't apply to power armour either as it doesn't mention an armour type at all, nor the number of dice rolled for it.

It

 Hellebore wrote:

Well by that argument it doesn't apply to power armour either as it doesn't mention an armour type at all, nor the number of dice rolled for it.

It doesn't need to specify the number of dice, as that's already covered by the rules for taking saves.

 Hellebore wrote:
If you rrad abaddons entry its descripton of his khorne mark specifially says it's why his armour is 2+.

It also mentions that his marks are different to the normal ones.

It would certainly make khorne terminators terrible if youre paying 20pts each for frenzy which has downsides...

You're actually paying 20 points each for Frenzy, the ability to parry while Frenzied, and Furious Charge... but yes, all of the cult terminators are a pretty bad deal, paying twice as much for their marks as their power armoured brethren.

 insaniak wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

Well by that argument it doesn't apply to power armour either as it doesn't mention an armour type at all, nor the number of dice rolled for it.

It doesn't need to specify the number of dice, as that's already covered by the rules for taking saves.

 Hellebore wrote:
If you rrad abaddons entry its descripton of his khorne mark specifially says it's why his armour is 2+.

It also mentions that his marks are different to the normal ones.

It would certainly make khorne terminators terrible if youre paying 20pts each for frenzy which has downsides...

You're actually paying 20 points each for Frenzy, the ability to parry while Frenzied, and Furious Charge... but yes, all of the cult terminators are a pretty bad deal, paying twice as much for their marks as their power armoured brethren.

Yes but by not mentioning the type of armour or dice it opens the whole argument up. Especially for caos Terminators where their standard baked in armour is terminator so applying the mark over the top makes it very hard to parse it not applying because it specifically says the armour they are wearing morphs into chaos armour which increases the save to 2+. Which so far parses across both armour types because it functionally works for both.

Abaddon isn't the best example unfortunately because although the entry says his marks are unusual, it actually lists the lack of frenzy specifically as an example..which requires that the +1 is the normal part of the mark. And as this shows that terminator armour can go to 2+ with a make, it makes the argument against it even harder to accept.