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Choppas were lost in favour of Furious Charge, making even the lowly Ork Boy S4 on the charge. Which if memory served worked out about the same against MEQ.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I’m also going to speak in favour of Weapon Traits. At least as a concept.

Take Thallaxi in 2nd Ed Heresy.

Their Lightning Guns are no slouch and are frankly one of the best basic weapons in the game.

But one in three can have a Multi-Melta, Phased Plasma Fusil, or a Photon Thruster.

Multi-Melta is self explanatory. Phased Plasma Fusil was a rare straight AP3 Plasma Weapon, not far off 3rd Ed’s dreaded Star Cannon, but with Gets Hot!. The Photon Thruster is a stripped down Dark Lance. Its stats aren’t great, not hitting as hard as the Plasma but still having Gets Hot!, but does at least offer Blind.

And it’s Blind that tipped me in favour of the Photon Thruster. It has a reasonable shot at outright squashing a Marine (and so most infantry). But it’s the chance to Blind the target unit that is Chef’s Kiss.

So Weapons Traits can be the way to make otherwise niche or middling stat weapons appealing options.

Note the can there. As like so many of life’s good ideas, it’s all in the execution.

For instance of a bad one in 3rd style editions? Pinning.

Now, to shutdown an opposing unit for a turn sounds grand. Except, typically, you didn’t get many Pinning weapons, which didn’t come with many shots, typically lacked reliable AP, and most armies and units either had straight out reliable enough Ld, or a way round it entirely (Synapse, Mob Rule) to prevent a unit failing the resulting test. Oh, and often only appeared in small units.

There, the execution was right off. Pinning could’ve been a powerful tool, but the rules conspired to render it pretty much moot.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
There, the execution was right off. Pinning could’ve been a powerful tool, but the rules conspired to render it pretty much moot.

It was more common in earlier editions where you had things like the ranger disruption tables and dark eldar terrorfexes.

Reliable pinning was too punitive to be used en-mass. seems that rather than weaken the effect GW just reduced the causes - in 3e you could pin half the opponents army off the bat with rangers or run drive-bys with terrorfexes... the latter actually had improved pinning rules (-1 Ld if below half strength, another -1 Ld for multi-hits. DE stacked this up with Ld reduction wargear and squad vets were optional).
This meant that playing infantry against DE could lead to multiple LD 4-5 pinning tests from 18" away, every turn, where you were either going to be losing a decent chunk of your units or simply immune with not much inbetween.

Memnoch wrote:
5th Edition brought in armour save modifications for every weapon ironically.

Melee AP was 6th edition, neutering half of the melee named characters as they could no longer harm their counterparts or leading to unaddressed debates over whether Dante was hitting with an axe (init 1, AP2) or axe-shaped sword (init 6, AP3)

I originally played RT back in the day, all the way to the end when the rules (I'm told) had practically morphed into 2nd edition. I didn't play again until 8th edition, and have continued playing until now.

In 9th edition I went to Warhammer World and re-bought the RT core and Realm of Chaos rulebooks, so they sit on my shelf with the 10th edition rulebooks.

I thought 9th edition was better than 8th edition, but got too complex. 10th edition reset that but possibly too far? Having said that, the new TSons codex practically reintroduced the psychic phase which was welcome. Fingers crossed the GK codex does similar.

My favourite thing about 8th edition to 10th edition is that vehicle datasheets are now the same as other units.

 PenitentJake wrote:

slade the sniper wrote:

8th Edition and later seems to have gotten the psyker right. It isn't as simple as 3, 4 or 5, but keeps the flexibility of RT, 2E and 7E while making the whole thing much easier.

I's say 8th and 9th got it right.

10th gutted what 8th and 9th got right, to the point where the only thing in the game that feels remotely psychic is Ksons.

In 10th, psychic powers are just a special class of guns that have certain characteristics in common. It's boring and stupid, but they kept Crusade, and made it easy enough to play for free for long enough that they were able to keep my interest. I'm hoping 11th restores at least some of the variety we used to have with psychics. I don't need a dedicated phase, but I need to be able to make choices with psykers so that they aren't all the same.

While I agree 100% regarding 10th, I don't particularly care for the psychic "system" in 8th/9th.

My issue is that there's no real tactic or strategy - you just throw a couple of dice and hope for the best.

Not that I'd want to go back to 7th, where you basically played Yahtzee for half an hour.

But it would be nice if there was at least a little extra to it. e.g. having Perils (d3 Mortal Wounds to the psyker) on a double-1 or double-6, and letting psykers roll up to 2 additional dice per power. So you can increase your odds of casting but make it riskier for yourself in the process.

Or make it more resource-management, where your dice are pooled (similar to 7th, but without all the random elements) and you can choose how you allocate them.

Just something to add a modicum of depth to using psychic powers.

Which runs into the issue of that over half a dozen factions do not have psychic powers.

 Tyran wrote:
Which runs into the issue of that over half a dozen factions do not have psychic powers.

I always found that the problem lay more with the lack of evenly spread psychic defenses, especially when more psykers was the only proper response to more psykers. Combined with powers being so strong that even getting one off (like invisibility) is a momentum shifting event.

In isolation they can be like the guards orders or the sisters faith where their strength and reliability can be priced in. Some editions though became an arms war where in one game the core of your army might be dead weight and in the next they might summon enough free units to double the points value of your list.

 Tyran wrote:
Which runs into the issue of that over half a dozen factions do not have psychic powers.

That's why I suggested bringing back Deny the Witch and creating units in non-psychic armies. And you don't have to call it deny the Witch- Admech might have a Null Field, the T'au might have Faith in the Greater Good, etc.

@Vipoid- 9th did have perils, but I really liked your suggestion of choosing the number of dice to roll- that would have been a great addition to 9th's support for psychics, and importing the whole thing into 11th would be great. I honestly think there's a good chance of that happening. I think 10th was meant to strip the game down, and now that they've got a skeleton that works, they can add a bit of meat.

Bring back costed equipment, improving terrain rules and psychic powers would be a nice bunch of upgrades for the new edition.

 PenitentJake wrote:

@Vipoid- 9th did have perils, but I really liked your suggestion of choosing the number of dice to roll- that would have been a great addition to 9th's support for psychics, and importing the whole thing into 11th would be great. I honestly think there's a good chance of that happening. I think 10th was meant to strip the game down, and now that they've got a skeleton that works, they can add a bit of meat.

Bring back costed equipment, improving terrain rules and psychic powers would be a nice bunch of upgrades for the new edition.

Amen to that.

As for perils, I couldn't remember if it still existed in 9th or not. Just wanted to clarify the intended risk for using extra dice. Cheers for reminding me that it did still exist last edition.

 Tyran wrote:
Which runs into the issue of that over half a dozen factions do not have psychic powers.

Could you elaborate on what the issue is?

- If it's a lack of psychic defence, I wouldn't have thought this would be any more of an issue with my system than it was in regular 9th. There is, after all, greater risk associated with making powers more likely to succeed.

- If the issue is that other factions don't have much to do, that's fair. Though, again, I don't think it's much worse under my system than it was in 9th (I'm trying to avoid the time-sink that was 7th's psychic phase).

However, I would note that many factions could be given other strings to their bow. For example, Necrons already have C'tan powers, which you could simply make into pseudo-psychic powers. Or you could make their Reanimation Protocols more of a choice (e.g. give them a pool of Reanimation Dice each turn that they can spend to try and revive particular units). With DE, you could do a similar thing and give them a Mandrake Lord with pseudo-psychic powers, or maybe make FNP more involved. SoB already have Miracle Dice.

Basically, you could tweak the unique mechanics of other factions to give them more actual levers to pull (either in the form of powers that aren't technically psychic but which may use similar mechanics), or otherwise by making their faction-specific abilities a little more involved in one way or other.

Just spitballing but IMO 40k is in dire need of more mechanics, rather than fewer.

 vipoid wrote:

Could you elaborate on what the issue is?

- If it's a lack of psychic defence, I wouldn't have thought this would be any more of an issue with my system than it was in regular 9th. There is, after all, greater risk associated with making powers more likely to succeed.

- If the issue is that other factions don't have much to do, that's fair. Though, again, I don't think it's much worse under my system than it was in 9th (I'm trying to avoid the time-sink that was 7th's psychic phase).

Both, with the additional commentary that even 9th's psychic phase could become a time sink for psychic heavy armies.

Just spitballing but IMO 40k is in dire need of more mechanics, rather than fewer.

40k is in need of more universal mechanics, rather than ones in which only some factions can play with.

My requirement for a more complex psychic system is "how are you going to give psychic powers to Tau?" If you can make a system in which even the less psychic faction still feels rewarded then thumbs up, but otherwise it will be inherently flawed.

 Tyran wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

Could you elaborate on what the issue is?

- If it's a lack of psychic defence, I wouldn't have thought this would be any more of an issue with my system than it was in regular 9th. There is, after all, greater risk associated with making powers more likely to succeed.

- If the issue is that other factions don't have much to do, that's fair. Though, again, I don't think it's much worse under my system than it was in 9th (I'm trying to avoid the time-sink that was 7th's psychic phase).

Both, with the additional commentary that even 9th's psychic phase could become a time sink for psychic heavy armies.

Just spitballing but IMO 40k is in dire need of more mechanics, rather than fewer.

40k is in need of more universal mechanics, rather than ones in which only some factions can play with.

My requirement for a more complex psychic system is "how are you going to give psychic powers to Tau?" If you can make a system in which even the less psychic faction still feels rewarded then thumbs up, but otherwise it will be inherently flawed.

I mean, that could be as easy as Psyker client races/mercenaries.

 Tyran wrote:


My requirement for a more complex psychic system is "how are you going to give psychic powers to Tau?" If you can make a system in which even the less psychic faction still feels rewarded then thumbs up, but otherwise it will be inherently flawed.

I heavily disagree with that. Not every faction needs to compete in every mechanic or ability. Keep faction diversity. Tau don't need psychic powers because they have special equipment that gives other unique abilities. Instead of Guide they have Markerlights, for example. Necrons don't need Fortune, they have We'll be Back. (Res Protocols?)

 Tyran wrote:

40k is in need of more universal mechanics, rather than ones in which only some factions can play with.

What about a resource that different factions spend on different mechanics?

A little like CP but more grounded and built into the faction mechanics.

e.g. SoB and Eldar both use dice pools in their mechanics. Perhaps something similar could be built into other races and used to fuel their mechanics?

 Tyran wrote:
40k is in need of more universal mechanics, rather than ones in which only some factions can play with.

My requirement for a more complex psychic system is "how are you going to give psychic powers to Tau?" If you can make a system in which even the less psychic faction still feels rewarded then thumbs up, but otherwise it will be inherently flawed.

There are two ways that GW has dealt with psykers. The first way was to separate them out and give them a specific phase. Everyone had them, everyone used them.

The problem here was that the "game within a game" bogged everything down, and if players wanted to just hammer each other with weapons, they got in the way. The solution was for players to communicate whether they would be used. Everyone I knew had a psyker list and a no-psyker list for pick-up games.

GW subsequently decided to make it more of "just another weapon, but a little different." Since then, the game goes back and forth and there lies the tension.

The fact that GW branched out into non-psyker armies has only complicated matters because if it's a special thing, a lot of armies get locked out, which is lame. If it's another weapon, the specialness is gone. I doubt this tension will ever be resolved.

slade the sniper wrote:
The attacker and defender's skill were taken into account so that was a nice mechanic IMO to keep skill levels in mind when attacking in melee.

My problem with the system was that in practice you did not take the defender's skill into account because everything in the enemy army had the same skill, so melee was just less effective against some factions. Assuming you had the same well rounded list to throw against both Tau and World Eaters, you are still going into melee with your Terminators, you throw your Tactical Squad into melee against Tau and try to keep them out against World Eaters not because you inflict 33% more damage (essentially no damage either way), but because against Tau you stop a meaningful amount of shooting and take no melee damage, while against World Eaters you take a tonne of melee damage and stop no ranged damage.

What the WS and Initiative systems needed to work is more spread inside factions. If every faction had a larger spread of WS and Initiative values I have to evaluate matchups on that layer on top of S, T, AP, Sv. Not necessary for the game since you have those factors making you pick your melee targets anyway. If you want an individual unit to be good at duelling you have "cannot be hit on better than 4+" and -1 to hit in melee. Those abilities makes a unit good at duelling characters and good at fending off hordes respectively, but if you gave it to an entire faction it stops mattering, because my Terminators need to see action and if you don't have a unit I can hit on 3+ because your Devastators have lower WS than Assault Marines I am not going to pick my engagement based on how likely I am to hit.

Strangely, the increases to Damage and the introduction of Mortal Wounds at the same time as anything can damage anything feels like it was known that Wound bloat would occur, so they increased damage and Mortal Wounds to compensate. If you already knew it would be a problem, why change it instead of incorporate a fix... then incorporate Feel No Pain to make sure that the "heroes" are not killed off too fast.

It means that every gun can do a little damage, but not too much. Instant Death and immunity to it was really wonky in previous editions. I don't think mortal wounds are meant to solve durability, I think it is meant to be fast. Psychic powers having more or less a monopoly on inflicting mortal wounds really set them apart and Smite solved the issue of more or less useless witchfire powers. Lasguns needing 2 unsaved wounds to kill a Tactical Marine but anti-Marine weapons like gauss cannons and plasma guns still being able to 1-shot Marines without 1-shotting Space Marine Captains is really neat.

 vict0988 wrote:

slade the sniper wrote:
The attacker and defender's skill were taken into account so that was a nice mechanic IMO to keep skill levels in mind when attacking in melee.

My problem with the system was that in practice you did not take the defender's skill into account because everything in the enemy army had the same skill, so melee was just less effective against some factions. Assuming you had the same well rounded list to throw against both Tau and World Eaters, you are still going into melee with your Terminators, you throw your Tactical Squad into melee against Tau and try to keep them out against World Eaters not because you inflict 33% more damage (essentially no damage either way), but because against Tau you stop a meaningful amount of shooting and take no melee damage, while against World Eaters you take a tonne of melee damage and stop no ranged damage.

What the WS and Initiative systems needed to work is more spread inside factions. If every faction had a larger spread of WS and Initiative values I have to evaluate matchups on that layer on top of S, T, AP, Sv. Not necessary for the game since you have those factors making you pick your melee targets anyway. If you want an individual unit to be good at duelling you have "cannot be hit on better than 4+" and -1 to hit in melee. Those abilities makes a unit good at duelling characters and good at fending off hordes respectively, but if you gave it to an entire faction it stops mattering, because my Terminators need to see action and if you don't have a unit I can hit on 3+ because your Devastators have lower WS than Assault Marines I am not going to pick my engagement based on how likely I am to hit.

Strangely, the increases to Damage and the introduction of Mortal Wounds at the same time as anything can damage anything feels like it was known that Wound bloat would occur, so they increased damage and Mortal Wounds to compensate. If you already knew it would be a problem, why change it instead of incorporate a fix... then incorporate Feel No Pain to make sure that the "heroes" are not killed off too fast.

It means that every gun can do a little damage, but not too much. Instant Death and immunity to it was really wonky in previous editions. I don't think mortal wounds are meant to solve durability, I think it is meant to be fast. Psychic powers having more or less a monopoly on inflicting mortal wounds really set them apart and Smite solved the issue of more or less useless witchfire powers. Lasguns needing 2 unsaved wounds to kill a Tactical Marine but anti-Marine weapons like gauss cannons and plasma guns still being able to 1-shot Marines without 1-shotting Space Marine Captains is really neat.

In 2nd edition WS values were not always flat like they were in 3rd/4th/etc, LIke.. veterans could have higher WS. Granted they used a heroic dueling kind of combat system in 2nd.

I always thought that different specialized/trained squads could have increases in BS or WS or both compared to standard troopers. Having it flat accross the board makes sense.

What the new system doesn't make sense to me is... if a warrior is fighting another warrior in combat, they are more likely to hit a less skilled warrior who doesn't know how to defend themselve in combat, so having a flat 3+ or 4+ to hit in combat just doesn't make sense, the skill of the warrior attacking vs the skill of the warrior defending makes more sense. Now maybe you could balance out the to-hit table or rules so it makese more sense, but I do think its a better approach.

That is an issue.

For me, though, the bigger problem is that it would seem to make WS a rather pointless stat. If the only modifier is from the occasional special ability, then why bother even having it as a stat? Might as well just give a unit fewer attacks and skip straight to the wound roll.

Same with BS. If it's not going to be modified by range, target size/type etc., then why include it? It just seems to add another phase of dice rolling for no gain.

Frankly, it seems 40k is rapidly sinking into the same swamp as AoS.

Do you want a spear that hits on a 3+ and wounds on a 4+ or a hammer that hits on a 4+ and wounds on a 3+. Truly the height of tactical choice.

BanjoJohn wrote:
I always thought that different specialized/trained squads could have increases in BS or WS or both compared to standard troopers

They did but only WS/BS 3 -> 4

Past that point there seemed to be mixed direction - eldar and DE had a full WS progression of 3 cannon fodder, 4 elite, 5 lesser characters, 6 combat characters, 7 named characters, 8+ special case.

Pretty much everyone else was either 3/4 or 4/5.

 Tyran wrote:
GW should redesign the lore to make Space Marines expendable, basically Helldivers in power armor.

All the power fantasy paired with the knowledge they live a few minutes at most.

And then they can drop Space Marines to 1W.

Ironically, Helldivers are pretty close to classic Space Marines in most factors. There's the obvious deployment via drop pods, and elite equipment but with the NPC defence force, Helldivers can take a lot more punishment than they can, lug around heavier equipment and are 7' tall (the game outright states this in the tutorial).

The feeling is also similar to the early edition covers with the Space Marines surrounded by enemies and blasting away. In many ways, they're closer to the original space marines than modern depictions are.

Helldivers actually outperform Space Marines though. If you use all reinforcements, command are sending basically a 24 man force (albeit with orbital bombardment and some turret support) and can easily get kills in the 100s per player, and ending on a 100:1 kill ratio for the overall game per diver isn't unrealistic.

That's the difference in a videogame vs NPCs compared to the needs of a wargame where both players are expected to have an army. In Space Marine 2 your squad of 3 marines regularly kill over a thousand per mission. The table top has never been good about that fantasy, because its way less fun when only one player gets to experience it.

 LunarSol wrote:
That's the difference in a videogame vs NPCs compared to the needs of a wargame where both players are expected to have an army. In Space Marine 2 your squad of 3 marines regularly kill over a thousand per mission. The table top has never been good about that fantasy, because its way less fun when only one player gets to experience it.

There's also the problem of setting up 1,000 figures.

I don't know what the points costs were in later editions, but in 2nd basic marines were worth three our four low-tier orks or 'nids, and as you added heavy weapons, specialists, sergeants, etc., they got much more expensive per capita.

With the right tactics, marines could generate a pretty healthy kill ratio. They could also be buried because once enough are killed, they lack sufficient strength/firepower and get overrun.

I think 2nd was the most fluffy, because marines were such a cut above without being overpowered. They were still one-wound troopers, but the ability to double-tap if they stood still gave them tremendous firepower vs other armies, even the Eldar, whose basic weapon was no slouch.

I really feel like space marines should have kept the "bolter drill" rule and shouldn't have gotten "and they shall know no fear", and things like fearless/immune to psychology should have been more limited than they were. Units need to be able to fall back, or pinned, in order for things like taking objectives of forcing them to flee off the table to be worthwhile victory point conditions.

At least bolter drill provides a good benefit for standing still, but it penalizes you if your unit is standing still and needs to move to the objective. It would have made terminator units more deadly as well just with their storm bolters instead of the eventual "thunder hammer stormshield" meta that developed when they got 3+ inv

The problem is in my opinion an unsolvable one, because it is trying to appeal to two conflicting ideas that are mutually exclusive that marine players desire.

And that's entirely down to the conflation of being a protagonist with inherent skill.


Marines are both deadly and impervious, but if you have a game where they need to fight each other, one of those factors is lost. And if your game is also protagonist-less, then you need army balance where everyone has a chance of winning.


Fire Warrior, SM2, Halo, Metal gear, Doom etc are what protagonism gets you. Because you're fighting a computer, you get to be tough and killy.


the 40k tabletop is antithetical to this and so marines are caught in an endless powerloop, where they want to be invulnerable super warriors, and also kill their enemies. which if their enemies also happen to be invulnerable super warriors, either makes them impotent, or die like chaff.


The only game mechanic way I can see for giving the pure SM2 powerfantasy to marines, is making the game a one sided protagonist led one where one player just controls chaff for you to murder.

But no matter how popular marines are, you will crash your game if you tell everyone else they need to be the buttboys for other players, so it's unlikely to ever happen.

The bigger issue is GW's refusal to acknowledge this difference and the power being a protagonist gets you when they sell marines. If their comms were clearer then they wouldn't have this disconnect to begin with because their customers wouldn't be clamouring for power fantasy marines, recognising that the tabletop is what happens when neither side is the protagonist/they both are.

wanna write a lot of things, but.
Marines pushing sales and gives us newcomers. Lot of non marine players i knew come because that cool guys, but after some time switched for other factions. I never play or even colect any marines for ideological reasone, but i can understand why people try 40k with marines first, when every kettle tell you this guys the best of the best.
And we loose more if Imperium propaganda were stoped. Cause any disillusioned SM player is another guards/nids/eldar player

 Hellebore wrote:
The bigger issue is GW's refusal to acknowledge this difference and the power being a protagonist gets you when they sell marines. If their comms were clearer then they wouldn't have this disconnect to begin with because their customers wouldn't be clamouring for power fantasy marines, recognising that the tabletop is what happens when neither side is the protagonist/they both are.

The biggest issue is that GW has no interest in proper game balance or iterative design improvements. It is possible to have "flagship" troop types (I'm thinking of the iconic Battlemechs) and these can flourish in a solid gaming environment.

The GW-unique churn means that there is no real feedback, because every mechanic gets swapped out eventually.

The old editions have followings because they are outside this, and many of them got FAQs to the point that just before they were obsolete, they were better balanced.

That is true for 9th edition (and maybe 2nd?) but 7th edition was a gakky unbalanced mess all the way to its end.

5th, 6th and 8th* were also notably unbalanced by codex creep at their ends. Maybe 3rd and 4th?

EDIT: 8th is a funny example in that it was decently balanced at its middle point before Space Marines 8.5th. GW ruined it for pandering to Space Marine players that wanted to be both the most resistant and the killest and the most bloated.

 Tyran wrote:

EDIT: 8th is a funny example in that it was decently balanced at its middle point before Space Marines 8.5th. GW ruined it for pandering to Space Marine players that wanted to be both the most resistant and the killest and the most bloated.

I'll second that. 8th was kinda a wild ride, and then it settled for like, 3 months where things seemed like they were in a reasonable state. The GW blew it up again with SM v2 and those chapter expansions.

I think GW tries to fix issues with every change and you can find someone complaining about the healthiest and most interesting emergent gameplay mechanics like 3-pointing and 40k appeals to people with vastly different preferences, no it is not 5th polished up, but it has a bigger audience than ever.

8th, 9th and 10th were super half-cocked releases balance and polish-wise, but still iterating on aspects disliked by some.

 Tyran wrote:
That is true for 9th edition (and maybe 2nd?) but 7th edition was a gakky unbalanced mess all the way to its end.

5th, 6th and 8th* were also notably unbalanced by codex creep at their ends. Maybe 3rd and 4th?

EDIT: 8th is a funny example in that it was decently balanced at its middle point before Space Marines 8.5th. GW ruined it for pandering to Space Marine players that wanted to be both the most resistant and the killest and the most bloated.

6th might have gotten more and more balanced, the Necron codex was insane out the gate and flyers had few counters, but more and more codexes got ones, giving them possible counters and bigger incentives for bringing anti-air.

 vict0988 wrote:

6th might have gotten more and more balanced, the Necron codex was insane out the gate and flyers had few counters, but more and more codexes got ones, giving them possible counters and bigger incentives for bringing anti-air.

6th shifted what was overpowered.

Sure as it developed fliers became less of an issue, but also Knights became a thing, Wraithknights became a thing and Grav Centurions became a thing.

 Tyran wrote:
5th, 6th and 8th* were also notably unbalanced by codex creep at their ends. Maybe 3rd and 4th?

3e had the 3.5 and expansion books which were frequently 'premium DLC content' giving you things like the ability to shoot your opponent off the board before the start of the game, to disallow your opponent from shooting at your warlord, or to make 26"+ charges.

Late 4e books were decent enough but not dominant. Everything at the time was viewed through the lens of not being 4e eldar or 3.5 chaos.

5e suffered from extreme codex creep early on which settled down mid-edition but everything was playing catch-up. Then GK and crons came along and you remember that Ward was moved off of WHFB for killing an entire edition with his codex writing.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
The old editions have followings because they are outside this, and many of them got FAQs to the point that just before they were obsolete, they were better balanced.

I'm not going to waste my time to repeat all the proof for the arguments proving you wrong, feel free to dig through my post history if you care.
TL;DR: You're objectively wrong. As usual, if you don't want to change your opinion, don't bother reading.

Bottom line is, external and internal army balance has never been as good as today - even at times where knights and DG are completely warping the meta, the number of armies winning events and the number of different units used from each codex exceed anything previous editions ever managed to achieve.

I actively started playing with 5th, and that edition got worse with every codex released - space wolves brought longfang spam, guard codex brought leafblower and greyknights were a blight on the entire game. I vaguely remember drukhari being problematic as well, but I honestly don't remember and don't want to research right now. I might be wrong.
Then 6th was released and it made the game worse - flying circus, invisibility, riptides, wraith knights, taudar. If was fething abomination, that was rightfully killed off as the shortest edition ever.
7th started out with some headscratcher, but then tumbled down the decurion stairs, giving each army more and more powerful detachments, leading to a tier list where no one had a chance to compete against the top tier codices. They had to give marines a detachment that allowed them to take ~500 points of free vehicles just so they would be able to compete with 2000 points of eldar, tau or necrons. Sure, if everyone in a gaming group had top tier armies, it probably was a blast to play. But CSM, durkhari and ork players for were just wasting their time by even unpacking their army against top tiers, and even exceptional players were struggling to win games with guard or nids.

Index era 8th was nice for some people, but quite few armies simply got the short stick. Once again, if none of your friends played any of those armies, it was a great time. Afterwards, we had imperial/chaos/ynnari soup, castellans and tipple smash captains everywhere, pox walkers and pink horrors, flyer spam, lootas spam, custodes jetbike spam, iron hands spamming dreads. Internal balance was pretty much trash, tripple best thing was the name of the game. Though I agree that external balance was somewhat decent before marines ruined everything, there was much left to be desired.

9th already was much better, almost every other codex completely blew up the meta, going to winrates well above 60%, sometimes above 70%. But GW addressed nearly all of them, ending the edition on mostly mechanical problems rather than balance problems, though internal balance still wasn't that good. If you really had no problems with how 9th played, balance issues are not going to stop you, irrespecive of what army you and your friends are playing. However, we have tons and tons of data on win rates for 9th, and by just comparing those we know it still wasn't as good as 10th at any point in time. Even after all their nerfs, armies like iron hands, aeldari or GSC were still sitting at similar win rates as knights and DG are today.

Old editions mostly have a following because of nostalgia, an unwillingness to keep spending money on models and books or because the game evolved into a direction you know longer enjoy.
All of those are good reasons. Balance is not. There is a reason why a good portion of this forum is spending a lot of time on fixing those old editions.