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Getting a mite bored with playing One Page Rules for getting our 40k minis on the tabletop, a mate and I are looking hard at playing 5th which is more or less where we left off with 40k. Was thinking it could probably do with some tweaks to help it feel a bit more modern/exciting and perhaps fit primaris marines.

For example I was thinking - Allowing squads to split fire, allowing heavy weapons to fire after moving at -1 BS, giving SMs a second wound and allowing them to assault with rapid fire weapons (and increasing their points a bit) Then there's needing to get creative and make up some of the new units or adapt them from later codices.

Having to remain stationary to fire heavy weapons, not being able to rapid fire and assault, not being able to split fire etc. force the player to actually make choices rather than having their cake and eating it too.

All the core 5th ed. rules really need is an extra sentence on wound allocation so that you have to allocate all AP1, then all AP2, then all AP3 and so on in order; and put target priority from 4th ed. back in.

Was 5th movement by squad or by model? I know they changed it at one point. It used to be if the guys with the bolters shuffled around the ML guy could not fire. At one point they changed it so he could have his feet planted to pop off a missile while the rest of the squad wheeled around him.

That was the sweet spot for heavy weapon movement/fire rules IMHO. Maybe with the snap-shot on a 6 if you did move, which may have been added later.

All the old editions kinda mush together after a while…

RustyNumber wrote:Getting a mite bored with playing One Page Rules for getting our 40k minis on the tabletop, a mate and I are looking hard at playing 5th which is more or less where we left off with 40k. Was thinking it could probably do with some tweaks to help it feel a bit more modern/exciting and perhaps fit primaris marines.

For example I was thinking - Allowing squads to split fire, allowing heavy weapons to fire after moving at -1 BS, giving SMs a second wound and allowing them to assault with rapid fire weapons (and increasing their points a bit) Then there's needing to get creative and make up some of the new units or adapt them from later codices.

I think your instincts are on the right rack. I'd encourage you to basically look at all the changes made between 7th and 8th edition and consider bringing those back into 5th. That's where we got things like being able to split fire (so that you weren't stuck wasting bolter shots when you wanted the melta marine to shoot at a vehicle) and other feelsgood/common sense changes. I'd also probably encourage you to consider porting the 7th edition hull point/damage chart back to 5th as one of 5th's biggest flaws was that unkillable vehicles made it the "parking lot" edition. Hull points should help ensure that a vehicle that has been glanced a million times actually dies instead of sticking around. I'd also encourage you to ignore the stupid rule about only troops being able to score (possibly the worst rule 40k has ever had) and to consider modifying kill points so that they're based on how expensive a slain unit was. (Otherwise some armies like drukhari just give up tons of points for no cost.)

You should probably avoid the second wound on marines though. Without a damage stat to reign that change in or the modern AP system to make power armor easier to kill, you're going to make regular power armor way too durable for its cost.

Nevelon wrote:Was 5th movement by squad or by model? I know they changed it at one point. It used to be if the guys with the bolters shuffled around the ML guy could not fire. At one point they changed it so he could have his feet planted to pop off a missile while the rest of the squad wheeled around him.

That was the sweet spot for heavy weapon movement/fire rules IMHO. Maybe with the snap-shot on a 6 if you did move, which may have been added later.

All the old editions kinda mush together after a while…

Snap-shots were kind of horrible to be honest. It was just a lot of time wasty fishing for 6s.

Disclaimer: 5th was my least favorite edition, but I'm trying to offer relatively simple changes to make it much, much better.

Thanks for the comments, interesting I can't remember learning about 7th so didn't know it introduced vehicle wounds. I only recall 6th was a tuned up 5th, but introduced wounds on model positioning. So your cool Sgt leading the squad was technically the fist you were supposed to remove, which I did not like. Read some of the book just last night, one model moves = whole squad counts as moving.

When we play it'll just all be funsies, so roughly getting a she'll-be-right balance will be fine. Hence my wanting to experiment with sexing up SMs a little bit, never felt right they were just 1 wound each.

Your signature made me chuckle wyldhunt! I'd be interested to know what you didn't like of 5th compared to earlier. It's the edition I started with, so logically is the best edition, and I now understand all the dyed-in-the-wool Herohammer/6th ed WFB diehards and their commitment to an old ruleset they loved.

In 5th multi-wound infantry was a big deal. I don’t think regular marines needed it. I think it would help make terminators more worthwhile. 5th was not a good time for them.

The wounds is more about a fluff/feeling, SMs shouldn't die like a guardsmen to one wound... though of course weapons have damage these days to account for that. I do recall it ended up with wound allocation shenanigans in competitive, where the rules had a loophole allowing you to assign wounds around a squad if they all took different wargear or something. Nobs and grey knights from memory were offenders.

 RustyNumber wrote:
The wounds is more about a fluff/feeling, SMs shouldn't die like a guardsmen to one wound... though of course weapons have damage these days to account for that. I do recall it ended up with wound allocation shenanigans in competitive, where the rules had a loophole allowing you to assign wounds around a squad if they all took different wargear or something. Nobs and grey knights from memory were offenders.

Correct. 5th wound allocation was very exploitable for certain units.

Basic marines had trouble surviving in 5th due to the proliferation of AP2 stuff. An extra would would help them survive against plasma spam, as it would take S8 to Instant Death them. It’s a non trivial change without damage values on weapons, amd would require some major retuning of points.

Multiple wounds was mostly for characters, giant monsters, and a very select few elite units. Opening that up to a whole army is not something I’d recommend.

 RustyNumber wrote:
Your signature made me chuckle wyldhunt!

Thanks! I need to update it to reflect my more modern pet peeves.

I'd be interested to know what you didn't like of 5th compared to earlier. It's the edition I started with, so logically is the best edition

It was my first edition as well, and I'm kind of surprised 5th didn't convince me to quit. Things I loathed about 5th in general (not necessarily in comparison to other editions):

* Parking lots. The Armor Value mechanic was always kind of sketchy to me in general because it meant that skew lists could make it so that some units literally had no way of hurting vehicles, but 5th edition kind of tripled down on the skew problem. Not only did it use AV, but vehicles were cheap, the vehicle damage chart meant that vehicles could frequently stick around getting shaken/stunned over and over and over instead of dying, and vehicles were available in lots of slots. So you ended up with things like the infamous "leafblower list" and plas/las razorback spam.

This hard skew into vehicles meant that you had to fields as many anti-vehicle weapons as you could get your hands on, especially if you played a Strength 3 army (marines could just punch vehicles to death if they didn't feel like using krak grenades), which in turn meant that you were constantly leaving big chunks of your codex on the shelf because you needed an anti-vehicle option in that slot. Did you want to try putting a flamer on that model? How foolish! Give that man his meltagun! Oh, and did you want to see super soldiers fighting ninja elves at some point? Don't be silly. Infantry is a thing that happens when you blow up an enemy transport. Unless they're specialized anti-tank infantry that you're *sending* to blow up a transport.

This is my first and biggest complaint about the edition. In my experience, people who speak fondly of 5th or who say they want to go back to it were *probably* playing guard or marines at the time. And probably a very tank heavy version thereof.

* Only troops could score. This meant that taking only a few troops put you in a position where your opponent could just focus those units down and make it impossible for you to win the game. So you were encouraged/forced to spam troops. Even if you didn't particularly want to. Even if your troops were kind of bad for their points. This was doubly frustrating for non-marine players both because marines are typically a lot harder to kill off and because a large enough marine squad could just split into two different units giving your opponent twice as many squads to chew through before they could shut down your scoring. Basically, the troop tax was even more mandatory this edition than most. This is also why you say things like the DAVU falcon (dire avengers vehicle upgrade) where an eldar player would just stick some dire avenger troops in a falcon with maxed out defensive buffs and fly it in circles until the last turn(s) of the game. Because dire avengers were the cheapest of the troop tax options, and leaving their nigh-unkillable tank meant dying instantly to a stiff breeze leaving the eldar player without any way to score.

* Somewhat tied to the last point, 5th edition used the old force org chart, and that sucked. This could be a rant unto itself, but basically the chart was kind of a failure mechanically because there were enough ways (especially in 5th) to bypass it and enough weird choices about which units went into which slots that it wasn't successfully preventing skew or optimized unit spam. And narratively, it was getting in the way of, for instance, an Iybraesil list whose fluff states they should be using howling banshees in the way that other armies use guardians or dire avengers.

* 5th's wound allocation was kinda bad. I didn't run into the allocation shenanigans *that* often, but it was a pain. I'd probably take any wound allocation system we've had since then instead.

There were other things that weren't ideal about 5th but that also weren't *unique* to 5th (ex: not being able to splitfire your unit meaning you either wasted bolter shots into an untouchable rhino or wasted your lascannon killing gaunts), but I'll avoid rambling on about those unless prompted.

Thankyou for that, I have *always* simply played the game casually with people using lists that are chosen based on cool/whim/we own the models. So I've NEVER had any serious balance issues with anything, but it's always fun to read more in-depth peoples takes.

Just wondering how my mate and I might use some of the more modern Marine, Necron models for 5th. For example an Aggressor Squad might be marines with power fist and twin-linked flamer or storm bolter? Infernus have heavy flamers. Eradicators merely join a tactical squad and have an extra-range melta gun. For Necrons I have the scorpion scuttley melee dudes, tripod walker to figure out...

Depending on which factions you play there were a few official errata/updates - Templars, Dark Angels, and Sister notably.

In terms of limited changes that improve the game:
- grouping models by upgraded/non-upgraded for wounds speeds things up and removes most multi-wound shenanigans.
- adding +1 to damage results for immobilized vehicles can reduce parking lots
- stick between 1500 and 1850 points, give or take. Some armies don't scale up/down well.

 Nevelon wrote:

 RustyNumber wrote:
The wounds is more about a fluff/feeling, SMs shouldn't die like a guardsmen to one wound... though of course weapons have damage these days to account for that. I do recall it ended up with wound allocation shenanigans in competitive, where the rules had a loophole allowing you to assign wounds around a squad if they all took different wargear or something. Nobs and grey knights from memory were offenders.

Correct. 5th wound allocation was very exploitable for certain units.

Basic marines had trouble surviving in 5th due to the proliferation of AP2 stuff. An extra would would help them survive against plasma spam, as it would take S8 to Instant Death them. It’s a non trivial change without damage values on weapons, amd would require some major retuning of points.

Multiple wounds was mostly for characters, giant monsters, and a very select few elite units. Opening that up to a whole army is not something I’d recommend.

Yeah it would wildly change the meta; plasma guns would be completely useless, always replaced by meltaguns. Always power fists over power weapons. The Leman Russ is even better, Guard infantry even worse (except for vets with meltas and demos). In a lot of ways it exacerbates problems that edition already had.

The main things I would add to 5th edition is bringing back 4th's more abstract terrain rules and target priority. Otherwise 5th is a fantastic edition (though I still prefer 4th) that sitting right in the middle of the 3-7th range is pretty well set up to use codices from every one of those editions with just a few tweaks here and there (like just erase hull points from any 6th/7th edition book, they sucked so much).

I would avoid multiwound Marines personally, that opens up a big mess of a can of worms as they already warp the game around them due to being about 1/2 of the armies - while people talk of ap 2 spam, for a lot of armies that was basically relegated to the heaviest of weapons or plasma. Heavy weapons it varies, if you want to be able to shoot still I'd just go with snap fires, or just copy paste the rule from one of the other editions that state the model itself has to move to lose its ability to shoot. Split fire is another thing too, on one hand I like it, on other I don't. For older editions built around no split fire, if you really want it, I'd say give 1 'free' split fire per round, and then after that maybe tie it to leadership test - so high leadership armies can likely react to the situation at hand more readily, while lower leadership ones cannot.

Honestly I'd play 2-3 games of baseline 5th first, see what you like, don't like, etc, and then within your group start edging here and there till you find the perfect balance. Also keep a list of your house rules handy, so that you don't forget them / which rules are house and which are official - it will make it easier if say you get a new person in the group down the line.

I would actually say that if you're committed to the 2-wound marine idea you need to go a step further and just make them immune to Instant Death as well.

That's even tougher and they would need to be even more expensive but at least that retains better parity between S7- and S8+ weapons.

Remember lads we're talking about games between friends, we're not balancing a mainstream edition!

I still rather like the fluff of 2 wound marines getting blown away by the Instant Death rule. Of course we'd be increasing their cost for a second wound, I don't know by a quarter or something. I'm yet to actually look at their 6th ed codex. I think of things mainly for an IG perspective, so being able to move and fire heavy weapons (plus splitting fire) is entirely about feel and rule of cool. Always sucked having to fire a heavy weapon across the board at a vehicle while the rest of the squad does nothing. I'd absolutely just list the house rules on a print out, and as far as I know it'll just be myself and my old mate from those days playing. Who knows we might play a game or two of fifth and go "nah bugger it" and just keep on with OPR.

 RustyNumber wrote:
Getting a mite bored with playing One Page Rules for getting our 40k minis on the tabletop, a mate and I are looking hard at playing 5th which is more or less where we left off with 40k. Was thinking it could probably do with some tweaks to help it feel a bit more modern/exciting and perhaps fit primaris marines.

For example I was thinking - Allowing squads to split fire, allowing heavy weapons to fire after moving at -1 BS, giving SMs a second wound and allowing them to assault with rapid fire weapons (and increasing their points a bit) Then there's needing to get creative and make up some of the new units or adapt them from later codices.

I know what you feel, to me 5th ed was the gold standard, 40K has never been better as far as core rules go, however there were a few hiccups in there like the wound allocation system.

I have 2 topics on the matter-

The first is the imported edition rules we added on to 5th to make it more fun.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/806639.page

The other expands on this with general older editions topics as well as constant battle report updates and such.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/789567.page


The short, short version of what your looking for-we use the 4th ed wound allocation system-wounds are allocated by the owning player but wounded models must die first. Snap fire, overwatch and grenade throwing are added from 6th/7th as well as "smash" for monstrous creatures from 6th ed S10 AP2 (attacks halved rounding up). replacing the 2d6 +S from the previous editions to tone them down just a bit.

Since we allow any codex from 3rd-7th (3rd and 4th ed codexes are some of the most flavorful and remain popular choices) to be used in the 5th ed core rules. All USRs use the 5th ed versions they represent.

Best of luck to you, playing 5th really brings the fun back into the game for casual players IMHO.

Thanks very much for that, looks like a good list to reference!

I figured the entire borked wound system could have been officially fixed with a simple "you must allocate wounds starting with already wounded models" boom done.

 RustyNumber wrote:
I figured the entire borked wound system could have been officially fixed with a simple "you must allocate wounds starting with already wounded models" boom done.

The problem comes one step earlier when fast rolling the saves as 5e had you split your target up into distinct wargear groups so that there was a chance that an important model might get killed.

Once you got to the wound allocation phase 5e did require you to remove wounded models first, so in the few squads where it mattered (ork nobz, grey knight paladins, etc) tournament players would give each model slightly different wargear so that each was their own group.
You would never notice it outside of those few squads and the problem went away if you just split into upgraded/un-upgraded/squad leader groups instead.

------

Regarding expanded 5e rulesets i'd always advise using the original core rules with minimal 'smoothing' first. 6e and onwards added a lot of extra rolling and more special rules - things like snapfire, overwatch, and even melee AP mods add whole extra phases worth of dice as you go fishing for 6s rather than having distinct go/no-go situations.

Though you may find that some are needed to use the units like superheavies, while other changes clean up legacy issues (i.e. pre-measuring - no more guess range weapons in 5th).

@A.T.

we have been playing our hybrid 5th ed rules since 8th ed dropped and we have found none of that to be an issue. we do use premeasuring but not being able to split fire forces choices and those units able to do so are extremely rare and pay through the nose for the ability. The "extra rolling" is negligible. overwatch really gives the game an extra bit of depth. even needing a 6+ it helps those factions that are susceptible to melee, and adds a different element of risk.

As for the power weapon issue we solved it really easily. all power weapons are AP3 save those that double strength(thunder hammer/ork power Klaws, evicerators etc..) It gives things like artificer armor the extra niche that makes them unique on the battle field other than just a 2+ save especially if there is no invul save like terminators have.

The matter of superheavies are also not an issue because we use the original FW rules for weapons and damage tables made before apocalypse was ever released when they were deigned for play in normal games of 40K circa imperial armor 1 1st ed. there is no such thing as a D weapon, templates max out at the 5" circular template and S10/AP1 with the occasional titan killer rule for things like volcano cannons and plasma blast guns (when taking a structure point form a superheavy you get to roll a D3 instead of just taking 1) every other weapon is a normal weapon or on par with them. I.E. turbo lasers are small blast S9 AP2 60" range. it is a las cannon with a blast radius.

 aphyon wrote:
As for the power weapon issue we solved it really easily. all power weapons are AP3 save those that double strength(thunder hammer/ork power Klaws, evicerators etc..) It gives things like artificer armor the extra niche that makes them unique on the battle field other than just a 2+ save especially if there is no invul save like terminators have.

I found the AP3 power weapons to be quite polarizing when introduced in 6th as a number of specialist close combat units suddenly lost 5/6ths of their strength against a range of units, mostly the elite units they previously would have been chasing. A whole lot of 'my death cultists are armed with one axe and one mace' going on.
It also massively skewed characters, and at a time where the double strength weapons were already the better choice outside of the expensive 'elite' power weapons that got hosed in 6th along with the rest.


Having read a number of your battle reports I do note that you often skew quite vehicle / elite heavy. Locally we had a fair bit more infantry so perhaps the slowdown of units snapfiring and overwatching was more pronounced, especially when combined with the extra rerolls that were coming into the game (i.e. 6e preferred enemy).

Overwatch also seriously bummed out the local nid player as he got to watch his gaunts torn apart as they ran up the field and then torn apart some more. And then they'd fail their charge because it was random in 6th to top it all off, assuming they weren't screwed out of the charge by the new 'remove closest model' rules that just further boned them.

I've thought it would be a nice thing to have in a game where you wouldn't otherwise get any chance to defend yourself - i.e. setting overwatch instead of shooting against an incoming transport or drop - but the double dipper of 6e was punitive on the wrong units, and also bizarrely favorable to ill-disciplined dice-bucket rollers rather than units that should be good at the task (like flamethrowers).

The reason many of the batreps skew vehicle heavy is because of one very active player who is a vehicle nut. most of the players have quite a collection of minis to choose from. i run some lists that have very few vehicles and we have even done all infantry battles.

Aside from that one player most of the guys really focus on thematic lists. last weekend one of the guys tried out a test iyanden list that had a grand total of 3 vehicles- 2 serpents and a falcon. the rest of the force was all wraith guard, as one does with iyanden. it got smashed but they still had fun.

One of our iron hands players actually runs a staggering 90+ infantry model army with 3 rhinos being his only vehicles to transport his multi-melta dev squads. it is silly hard to stop.

bit off point, but are OPR free?

Regarding additions to 5th, I wonder whether bringing back 4th ed line units height would be fun. Indeed, I wanted to give it a go in our 6th-7th games, but we play little today and i'm not sure whether that would actually be beneficial.

Might be something to look into maybe?

OPR is free for the core rules, the nicer rule book with all sorts of suggested extra rules costs you a month of their patreon or $5 on rpg drive thru. It's really bloody excellent just for getting minis going on the table with games that only last an hour, though after some time you will find it a bit too simple. They also have their own extensive, free army builder.

Loving the discussion of olden days stuff here. I was surprised to re-learn last night reading 5th ed BRB that power weapons straight up ignored armour! Implying that slicing through a land raider hull is the same as an orks scrap metal shoulder pads with an energy sword!

 RustyNumber wrote:
I was surprised to re-learn last night reading 5th ed BRB that power weapons straight up ignored armour! Implying that slicing through a land raider hull is the same as an orks scrap metal shoulder pads with an energy sword!

Armour saves only. No additional effect on vehicles.

How were flyers back in 5th edition ?


They still did bombing runs right?

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
How were flyers back in 5th edition ?


They still did bombing runs right?

They were not in the core rules until 6th.

Some “flyers” were just fast skimmers at the time, and there were more in FW books, but I never saw one on the table until they crossed into core.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
How were flyers back in 5th edition ?


They still did bombing runs right?

Flyers only existed with FW rules prior to 6th.

The only real problem with the FW rules was the fact they moved out of turn sequence and it really messed with the flow of the game. They came on during your opponents movement.

Aside from that the other rules were great. that is why our group blended the two. using the 6th/7th ed movement sequence (arrive from reserve turn up to 45" and move 12-48") What we did keep was some of the other better FW rules-

.+12" range penalties to represent them flying high(pistols and such could never hit them)
.template weapons could never target flyers
.no ability to get cover saves (we use the jink rules from 6th)
.only AA units/other flyers can hit them on normal BS otherwise you need 6+(note FW rules specify all pintle mounted weapons on vehicles as having the AA ability, also almost every flyer prior to 6th ed was AV10 even super heavies aside from space marines and the tau manta at AV 12)
.no such thing as vector lock, an immobilize result=destroyed however GW originally had a universal chaff/flare launcher upgrade that we still use that allowed a once per game damage result re-roll.
.destroyed flyers also crash (scatter dice +2d6 5" template starting at the location of the flyer S10 AP1 if it hits anything on the ground- friend or foe).
.jump infantry could assault flyers in melee.

My salamanders successors are an air cav themed army as such i own a FW storm eagle as well as a normal storm hawk interceptor and a few drop pods. many of the players have air assets and they have never been a game breaking issue with the blended FW/GW rules. flyers tend to be glass cannons.

Foreword rules, got it. I never played 6th - 8th, but I remember my completely useless flying unarmoured, unarmed, Arvus Lighter zooming across a megabattle, hoping someone would waste their shots at it.

Sadly, it was the only thing in my army that survived that conflict.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 RustyNumber wrote:
Your signature made me chuckle wyldhunt!

Thanks! I need to update it to reflect my more modern pet peeves.

I'd be interested to know what you didn't like of 5th compared to earlier. It's the edition I started with, so logically is the best edition

It was my first edition as well, and I'm kind of surprised 5th didn't convince me to quit. Things I loathed about 5th in general (not necessarily in comparison to other editions):

* Parking lots. The Armor Value mechanic was always kind of sketchy to me in general because it meant that skew lists could make it so that some units literally had no way of hurting vehicles, but 5th edition kind of tripled down on the skew problem. Not only did it use AV, but vehicles were cheap, the vehicle damage chart meant that vehicles could frequently stick around getting shaken/stunned over and over and over instead of dying, and vehicles were available in lots of slots. So you ended up with things like the infamous "leafblower list" and plas/las razorback spam.

This hard skew into vehicles meant that you had to fields as many anti-vehicle weapons as you could get your hands on, especially if you played a Strength 3 army (marines could just punch vehicles to death if they didn't feel like using krak grenades), which in turn meant that you were constantly leaving big chunks of your codex on the shelf because you needed an anti-vehicle option in that slot. Did you want to try putting a flamer on that model? How foolish! Give that man his meltagun! Oh, and did you want to see super soldiers fighting ninja elves at some point? Don't be silly. Infantry is a thing that happens when you blow up an enemy transport. Unless they're specialized anti-tank infantry that you're *sending* to blow up a transport.

This is my first and biggest complaint about the edition. In my experience, people who speak fondly of 5th or who say they want to go back to it were *probably* playing guard or marines at the time. And probably a very tank heavy version thereof.

As a huge tank fan since I started 40k, I agree with all the above and let me add another reason I hated 5th edition and how it handled my beloved tanks. Vehicles had special move and shoot rules back then, instead of caring about weapon type (rapid fire, assault, heavy) it was based on the weapon's strength stat and how far you moved. If you moved up to 6", you could fire one "main" and all "defensive" weapons. Move 12" and you got nothing, remain statuary to fire everything. "Fast" typed vehicles got to move 12" and fire one main/all defensive or move 6" and fire everything. It worked this way in both 4th and 5th edition, but 5th changed the threshold to be considered a main weapon from strength 7 (in 4th ed, when I started) to just STR 5. So you could only move and shoot with one weapon and any bolters/storm bolters. This is why vehicle skew lists got called "parking" lots, they just sat around, refused to die and sometimes shot back when they weren't getting stunlocked. The mobility of tanks was one of the things that drew me to them in 40k, so seeing this get clobbered was deeply frustrating. It's not like the AV and penetration damage tables were very fun as a tank user either, you didn't get to roll saves and just watched as your tank got turned off again for another turn at best. The modern wound system for tanks is much better for everyone. The player fighting thanks get's to make mesurable progress when they don't one-round a tank and the tank player doesn't have to fear lucky one-shots and actually get to play it on turns where it takes damage but doesn't die.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 RustyNumber wrote:
Your signature made me chuckle wyldhunt!

* Only troops could score. This meant that taking only a few troops put you in a position where your opponent could just focus those units down and make it impossible for you to win the game. So you were encouraged/forced to spam troops. Even if you didn't particularly want to. Even if your troops were kind of bad for their points. This was doubly frustrating for non-marine players both because marines are typically a lot harder to kill off and because a large enough marine squad could just split into two different units giving your opponent twice as many squads to chew through before they could shut down your scoring. Basically, the troop tax was even more mandatory this edition than most. This is also why you say things like the DAVU falcon (dire avengers vehicle upgrade) where an eldar player would just stick some dire avenger troops in a falcon with maxed out defensive buffs and fly it in circles until the last turn(s) of the game. Because dire avengers were the cheapest of the troop tax options, and leaving their nigh-unkillable tank meant dying instantly to a stiff breeze leaving the eldar player without any way to score.

* Somewhat tied to the last point, 5th edition used the old force org chart, and that sucked. This could be a rant unto itself, but basically the chart was kind of a failure mechanically because there were enough ways (especially in 5th) to bypass it and enough weird choices about which units went into which slots that it wasn't successfully preventing skew or optimized unit spam. And narratively, it was getting in the way of, for instance, an Iybraesil list whose fluff states they should be using howling banshees in the way that other armies use guardians or dire avengers.

* 5th's wound allocation was kinda bad. I didn't run into the allocation shenanigans *that* often, but it was a pain. I'd probably take any wound allocation system we've had since then instead.

There were other things that weren't ideal about 5th but that also weren't *unique* to 5th (ex: not being able to splitfire your unit meaning you either wasted bolter shots into an untouchable rhino or wasted your lascannon killing gaunts), but I'll avoid rambling on about those unless prompted.

My first army was Tau and the only troops score rule was absolutely brutal to my collection. Firewarriors were crap after the Devilfish died for the sins of the Eldar Skimmers which only left Kroot. And I've never liked Kroot. Between that and Hammerheads getting whacked for the same reasons and in the same ways as Devilfish, 5th ed Tau were locked into a mon-build of Crisis, Broadsides and Kroot, 2/3rds models I didn't own because I didn't like them. 5th ed was suffering for me and is why I'm a bitter vet. Legit the only reason I ever came back is that 10th ed has free rules* and they some how got my favorite Tau units right enough.

@Sam, we fixed most of that by the addition of snap fire allowing tanks to fire almost all their guns needing a 6+ save when popping smoke or doing flat out and we also reverted defensive weapons to S5 ala 4th ed. meaning a predator could move 6" and fire it's TL las cannon and both heavy bolter sponsons at normal BS.

Also we adopted the later editions ability for all units to score objectives unless the vehicle was immobilized or there were troops contesting the objective giving them OBSEC to make troops have more of an impact in army lists.

The reality is in nearly every wargame i can think of vehicles exist. each system addresses them differently. 5th ed 40K really favored a take all comers set up, fire warriors with EMP grenades or a tac squad srgnt with a power fist were always there "just in case". current 40K is based on board and card game design and treats them in a more abstract manner, some players may like that, but the more simulation minded WARgame players such as myself absolutely hate it. the very concept that a small arm like an AK could hurt an abrams is mentally just as insane as expecting a las rifle to be able to even threaten a leman russ. it breaks the immersion.

I use the example of DUST 1947 it has wounds on vehicles as well, but small arms cannot hurt vehicles above a certain armor value (the lower end ones being open topped and such making the crew susceptible to small arms damage) where AT weapons are needed to do the job. there is still firing arcs in that system but the AV is "all around" for the vehicle stats.

Also as one of our players is an active Tau player i can from experience tell you the 4th ed codex + FW tau units is a brutally effective army in 5th ed even without the kroot or vespid.