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Dark Angels were another army that suffered.

Terminators became a bit rubbish. Yes Deathwing could mix ranged and CCW, that’s true. But the Assault Cannon and Heavy Flamer were shadows of their former selves.

Ravenwing? What was once one of the best gunboats in the game (nice weapon combo, no penalty for shooting on the move, harder to hit than average) became……a 6+ Invulnerable save.

Sure, we never really ran away. But Marines already had a boost there from ATSKNF

They weren’t unplayable as such, but again, all character and flavour extracted.

I've got limited time and so this id a limited response, buuuut . . .

Re: Orks
I think Orks are a great example of what I was talking about. Yes, they lost some detail and some wacky weapon tables. But they Gained in a big way in how their flavor changed. They absolutely got meaner in close combat, with their core statline changing and focusing on this role. They gained the Shoota, which was an Assault weapon so the army could move and fire lots of bulleys, unlike the Imperial armies, and they gained the Choppa, an extremely nasty weapon which no other faction had an equivalent to. And yeah, that first book was thin. But by late 3rd they had gained two supplemental armies, Speed Freaks and Feral Orks. Added bonus? Looted Vehicles were awesome, and the Vehicle Design Rules made it real easy to make custom Orky constructs. In summary, some original flavor was removed, but it's not like thay didn't gain anything in return. They became more the Orks we have today and less the basically-a-human statline they started with.

Re: Dark Angels
My memory about them isn't great, but I'm not sure what they lost is "flavor" instead of just "effectiveness" when it came to the Terminators. The Terminator Heavy weapons definitely took a big hit in the transition to 3rd, but that said, I think the Deathwing themselves may have gone unchanged. But unlike 2nd, in 3rd I think DA were the only chapter to be able to field an army made exclusively of Terminators, which seems like a flavor win for them since it made them more unique.

Re: Chaos 3.5 and Nids
I think these complaints can be lumped under the category of "local meta problems". I definitely experienced a wide variety of builds and not just "Nidzilla and Iron Warriors" One of my most common opponents was all-Khorne-all-the-time, with Bloodthirster, Bloodletters, Berzekers/Berzerker Terminators, Juggernauts and that crazy Glaive wargear item on his Daemon Prince. And the other wacky lists you could build with that book were just awesome.

I do have so many ideas on how to fix this ol beastie known as 3rd after I'm done plopping everything that there was in the battle bible.

RE: Dark angels in 3rd. Honestly the deathwing in 2nd edition seemed like it wasn't special at all compared to doing an all terminator army from codex ultramarines in 2nd edition, so it makes sense that they wouldn't be that special in 3rd either, other than now being the only official all terminator faction.

I have ideas about the ork clans I want to write for 3rd, I have ideas about making weapons great again in 3rd (usually meaning more shots like they had in 2nd), and some others.

 Eilif wrote:


Fair enough. Sounds like at least for now 3rd edition might be a good choice.

Also, If you've already got bolt action forces, the upcoming Konflikt 47 version might be of interest to you. Adding a few Weird War units can go a long way towards differentiating the forces.

Might check that out. I should point out that we are playing everything on TTS since he lives 4000 miles away. Buddy also suggested The Old World, but I had zero interest in that.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
And at the cost of almost all Orky flavour.

Bubble Chukka? Gone.
Smasha Gun? Gone.
Traktor Cannon? Gone.
Hop Splat Field Gun? Gone.
Pulsa Rokkit? Gone.
Shokk Attak Gun? Gone.
Boarboyz? Gone
Clans? Gone, until a WD article, possibly series of articles, which I genuinely do not recall personally.
Weirdboyz? Gone.

Lootas? No special guns for you. But you can take the options of a unit from another Codex. But thanks to BS2, there’s absolutely no good reason to do so.

Choppas and Mob Rule was kinda fun. But so much of what made Orks Orks was just ripped straight out.

The army may have worked overall, but it was a dreadfully bland Codex.

Weirdboyz and Boarboys were around in 3rd. After the codex came out GW stated that those units in the main rulebook were still playable.

Yeah, they were simplified, but still there, but I can say be the end of 3rd edition no ork players I knew were using them.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Tyranids really suffered from that, because if memory serves, so many middle sized beasties were Elites. And so a lot of folk just went Nidzilla, spending their Compulsory Troop allocation on two broods of three Rippers. Which was very boring for opponents, as it tended to be tricky to counter, and seen with depressing frequency.

Either you're thinking of a later edition or there was something weird about your local meta. The closest you could get to Nidzilla in 3rd Ed was two Hive Tyrants and three Carnifexes, which was not enough to build a 2K or even 1500pt list. More importantly it was extremely difficult for monstrous creatures to deal with infantry in any capacity; you'd just get tarpitted the whole game.

Also, the only Elites choices in 3rd Ed were Warriors and Lictors. Suspect you're getting mixed up with 5th or something.

 catbarf wrote:
Either you're thinking of a later edition or there was something weird about your local meta.

4th edition was nidzilla - any carnifex of 115pts or less could be elite, enough for T7 but not for 2+ saves.

What you could do, if you wanted to, was basically have almost your entire army be warriors. Warrior HQ, warrior elites, warrior fast attack, warrior heavy support. You just needed like 2 broods of genestealers or gaunts or something.
If you were really into it with your own custom hive fleet, you could have 1 species of warriors be HQ/elite, 1 species be fast attack, and 1 be heavy support. You could thus cut your list down to 4 species total and have more mutants in each brood. Heck, depending on the way its worded, you could probably have 1 species that counts as HQ, Elite, and Heavy support, and just need 1 new species for fast attack, or, you could have your winged fast attack species count as heavy support when it has the number of heavy weapons listed, so you'd have just 2 different species of warriors and 1 species for your troops.

I think the 3rd edition tyranid codex is perhaps the most strange/unique of the ones that are out there, at least from what I've seen, because of the whole "create your own species, create your own hive fleet, and some in each brood can be mutants"

I mean, you could field a brood of 9 warriors, all of them with venom cannons, as a heavy support choice. Upgraded appropriately that would be 18 BS3 S7 AP4 shots with 36" range and it counts as an assault weapon so you can move and shoot. Sure its 369 points minimum for that brood of 9 warriors, but you have a decent chance to wreck any vehicle that's not av14, or melt quite a few models away from any squad, even if the AP doesn't penetrate armor, the S7 means you're forcing a lot of armor saves.

^Whoah! TIme to take another look at that 3rd edition book. I think I could field two of those 9 Warrior w/Venom Cannons squads. . .

 Insectum7 wrote:
^Whoah! TIme to take another look at that 3rd edition book. I think I could field two of those 9 Warrior w/Venom Cannons squads. . .

Yeah, its not in the default army list where you can do this, its in the "custom hive fleet species/ mutation" stuff near the back of the 3rd edition codex, but its basically like taking the same unit entry for warriors in the elites choice, and giving 2 or more of them venom cannons and they count as a heavy support choice.

And the good thing about it being an obsolete ruleset is that you don't have to worry about building a custom list and having everything invalidated in a couple of years...

 Arschbombe wrote:
My buddy is feeling nostalgic and wants to play 3rd edition again. I've never played it having formally started with 40k in 4th. I have the rules and a few of the codices. I've even found an online list builder for it (newrecruit.eu). It feels kind of incomplete compared to the later editions. Is there a collection of resources to add that make a "definitive" 3rd edition with WD articles, Chapter Approved, FAQs, etc? A final form if you will.

I love third edition.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
from the games i have played of it. its very simple. which lends to its creadit.

the books are small and easy to move around. the armys are small and also easy to move. like i said i love this old edition of 40k and i only recently played it.

give it a shot.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Re: Chaos 3.5 and Nids
I think these complaints can be lumped under the category of "local meta problems". I definitely experienced a wide variety of builds and not just "Nidzilla and Iron Warriors" One of my most common opponents was all-Khorne-all-the-time, with Bloodthirster, Bloodletters, Berzekers/Berzerker Terminators, Juggernauts and that crazy Glaive wargear item on his Daemon Prince. And the other wacky lists you could build with that book were just awesome.

I played pure Thousand Sons and the other local CSM player played pure Emperor's Children.

One time some munchkin proxied the Daemonbomb just to prove to us our codex was broken.

We shrugged and went back to playing what we liked.

Did Feral Orks still exist in 3rd as a distinct army list?

They did. Not sure when they were first released, but the army list is in Chapter Approved 2003.

There also was, in the main rulebook, an appendix note on the ork army list about using a feral ork army with the army list in the rulebook, perhaps a poor substitute for a real feral ork army list, but it existed at the start of 3rd,

it looks like White Dwarf UK #260 was the issue that had a feral ork army list in chapter approved.

One of the goofier things in 3rd that I remember:

I didn't play Tyranids back then, but my friend did. I pointed out that it was technically possible for him to put a venom cannon or barbed strangler on a ripper swarm. Not that it would be effective, but you could. He had enough spare parts that he actually made the conversion.

 Arschbombe wrote:
I can't find anything in the rules that says you can't assault out of transports. Which I guess is why rhino rush was a thing that I've heard about. But again my buddy remembers differently. So we may actually be looking at 4th edition instead. LOL.

There were experimental assault rules released near the end of 3e that were rolled over into the 4e ruleset.

But also a lot of players were using their 3e army books throughout 4th and even 5th before they got updates so it's easy to mix up transition points between the editions unless your local group was playing something unique(ish) to that edition such as the near indestructible eldar skimmers of 4e or the rhino rushes of mid 3e.

So for people playing third edition, I have a question for you.

Are you adjusting points or abilities for stuff that was broken at that time?

The main issue with the older editions wasn't really the core rules set per se, but the fact that back then GW did not really provide any support to the game to make adjustments to rules or points for balance or fix issues. So are people who are playing just using the old points sets or are you making any modifications? I know people who play older editions probably have more of a gentleman's agreement about making armies balanced for a fun game (so like don't bring the iron warriors detachment that gets an extra HS slot), but some of the issues are just present, like Eldar ap2 3 shot star cannons, or their shoot and scoot, or assault cannons just sucking or some units just being way to costly or way to cheap. Also there are definitely some unanswered FAQ style issues if I remember correctly from that era, how do you handle those?

Also how do you get the rules? Is there a place online, or did you just save the books? I tossed mine years ago when I moved across country.

I am genuinely curious about this as I think it would be fun every once in a while to play 3rd, as it is really what got me hooked on the game (I played 2nd, which I liked, but 3rd is what made me dive all in and play for the last 30 years).

I had gotten a 3rd edition rule book and some codices off of ebay years ago. There are also scans of the various books available online here and there.

There may not have been points adjustments, but there were errata and FAQs back then. I think they were mostly published in WD and later compiled in the chapter approved books.

I still have yet to play the game. We may make some adjustments for ourselves once we get a few games under our belts, but we are cognizant of jumping to conclusions with a lack of experience (see Atomic Mass Games nuking X-wing with their 2.5 changes). My buddy did say that if I took 3 Wraithlords, I would be "that guy."

Meh the 3 wraithlords thing was only an issue for space marines.

Marine players were the biggest whiners in the 3rd ed paradigm, because they were so used to getting to make armour saves, if you dared deploy things they couldn't hurt or ignored their saves they sulked about it.

Every other army in the game looked forward to the rare chance they GOT a save, that having it ignored was par for the course...

Strange, any such complaints from SM players tended to be drowned out by the tears of Eldar players whining - and, admittedly, possibly with justification - about what happened to the Shuriken Catapult.

 xeen wrote:
So for people playing third edition, I have a question for you.

Are you adjusting points or abilities for stuff that was broken at that time?

The main issue with the older editions wasn't really the core rules set per se, but the fact that back then GW did not really provide any support to the game to make adjustments to rules or points for balance or fix issues. So are people who are playing just using the old points sets or are you making any modifications? I know people who play older editions probably have more of a gentleman's agreement about making armies balanced for a fun game (so like don't bring the iron warriors detachment that gets an extra HS slot), but some of the issues are just present, like Eldar ap2 3 shot star cannons, or their shoot and scoot, or assault cannons just sucking or some units just being way to costly or way to cheap. Also there are definitely some unanswered FAQ style issues if I remember correctly from that era, how do you handle those?

Also how do you get the rules? Is there a place online, or did you just save the books? I tossed mine years ago when I moved across country.

I am genuinely curious about this as I think it would be fun every once in a while to play 3rd, as it is really what got me hooked on the game (I played 2nd, which I liked, but 3rd is what made me dive all in and play for the last 30 years).

The only thing I'd be wary of is using the Blood Angels codex. Their Rhino Rush could be insane, and they didn't really pay much for a bunch of extra abilities. I wouldn't adjust points or whatever, but I'd just keep an eye on how it gets used.

The three Wraithlord thing is interesting. It was a pretty rude awakening to have something that couldn't be hurt by S4 in CC. But it was slow, and it didn't get a save against Missile Launchers or Lascannon/equivalents, so whatevs.

There was, iirc, a funny issue where you couldn't shoot at it if it was behind an Avatar, or something. Like the Avatar would block LOS to it, but then you couldn't shoot the Avatar because it was a character. I seem to recall some funny phase of the game where an interaction between the two units was weird.

As for books and rules erratta. If you can find the Chapter Approved books of the time, those are great. Bunch of FAQs and extra rules/units/scenarios etc. I still have my 3 from the era.

 Hellebore wrote:
Marine players were the biggest whiners in the 3rd ed paradigm, because they were so used to getting to make armour saves, if you dared deploy things they couldn't hurt or ignored their saves they sulked about it.

Marines arguably got better saves in 3e than 2e - considering that they were at best 4+ in 2nd edition against anything short of grots with blunderbusses, and 6+ against things like shuriken cannon and autocannon.

Terminators on the other hand were pointless at the start of 3e.