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Has anyone ever run different editions in the same game? So like 3rd Edition Space Marines and 5th Edition Orks?

Just on first glace, it really seems that the factions can be different editions, but the "game" itself has to pick a rule edition to determine things like cover and battlefield effects.

Is that correct?

Thanks in advance.

-STS

This was the norm for most editions. Not every factions would get a codex every edition, so some would be using a book that was out of date. You would normally get a FAQ at the start of the new edition to bring things up to speed. And it did make for some odd comparisons, where ballance had changed over time.

So yes, posible. But might take some work to get old books lined up with the new rules, and vice versus.

That'd be what's known as Open Play, and its been supported by the rules for a while now. Not many people seem to be into it, for whatever reason..

And indeed, in the days of yore, you sometimes went an entire edition without a new dex, so there it went without saying of course

 tauist wrote:
That'd be what's known as Open Play, and its been supported by the rules for a while now. Not many people seem to be into it, for whatever reason..

And indeed, in the days of yore, you sometimes went an entire edition without a new dex, so there it went without saying of course

I don’t think that’s what open play is.

A 10th edition codex isn’t really compatible with the rules of 3rd-7th, and while more compatible with 8th and 9th, you’d still have to do a LOT of work.

If you start with the premises of "this is for FUN..." and "if x doesn't work, we'll houserule it....." you can have a lot of fun. Some matchups don't match - but - did you expect them to?

stroller wrote:
If you start with the premises of "this is for FUN..." and "if x doesn't work, we'll houserule it....." you can have a lot of fun. Some matchups don't match - but - did you expect them to?

Theres a difference between 3rd Edition to 5th “We need to figure out how Furious Charge works,” and 9th Edition to 7th Edition “What stats do we give a Lord Discordant at all?”

You can house rule anything, and I 100% support doing so to make the game more fun for you and those you game with. But some things start off baseline nonfunctional-which isn’t always the case with cross edition codecs.

slade the sniper wrote:
Has anyone ever run different editions in the same game? So like 3rd Edition Space Marines and 5th Edition Orks?

3e-5e are fundamentally the same game. Old books work fine in later editions while newer books under older rules just need a list of any missing USRs.

6e-7e is the same core system but bolted on a ton of extra stuff that complicates things and there was a ton of supplemental material. Requires more work to mix and match.

8e was a rules reset. New system going forwards not compatible with older books.

Dark Eldar went through 3rd to I think 6th with one Codex and a half arse update to it.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Dark Eldar went through 3rd to I think 6th with one Codex and a half arse update to it.

No, Dark Eldar got the big update and line revamp at the end of 5th. One of the last codices of that edition, I think?

You can definitely do this with the editions 3-7 I think, with a bit of common sense. Sometimes in the later editions keywords or universal special rules are mentioned which were not present in the earlier editions, so you'd have to have some way to find out what those were, and it is definitely better to use just one codex and stick to that rather than cherry picking (so like, use the 3e Ork Codex or the 5e Ork Codex or the 6e Ork codex but don't mix and match!). But you could also do some mixing if you were fair minded about it - like it wouldn't break the 4e Ork book if you put a Gorkanaut in it or something.

Should fully have the rules so 2nd ed models get armour save modifiers, while AP system has to have the correct AP value.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Dark Eldar went through 3rd to I think 6th with one Codex and a half arse update to it.

No, Dark Eldar got the big update and line revamp at the end of 5th. One of the last codices of that edition, I think?

I probably would have started sooner, but someone smartly suggested I wait until Black Templar got an update to their codex

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Dark Eldar went through 3rd to I think 6th with one Codex and a half arse update to it.

No, Dark Eldar got the big update and line revamp at the end of 5th. One of the last codices of that edition, I think?

True, but it was also a 12 YEAR wait for that new codex. Its not like current practice of rolling a new edition every 3 years. As a Dark Eldar player, that was a looong wait. Back then, folks complained that the, what, 14 armies at the time was too much for them to balance. It hasn't gotten any easier or better, imo.

Like others have said, there is enough out there to allow you to create rules for new units in line with older rules, or just come to agreement on what certain things do within what rules framework.

Codex Dark Eldar in 1998, then the 2002 update to the codex dark eldar, and then 5th edition codex dark eldar in 2010.

So yeah they were pretty neglected, but to be fair they were "brand new" in 3rd and they probably had very little direction about how and where they wanted to improve them or change them.

And I certainly seem to remember dark eldar kicking a lot of butt in our local group back in the day so its not like they were impotent.

 Da Boss wrote:
You can definitely do this with the editions 3-7 I think, with a bit of common sense. Sometimes in the later editions keywords or universal special rules are mentioned which were not present in the earlier editions, so you'd have to have some way to find out what those were, and it is definitely better to use just one codex and stick to that rather than cherry picking (so like, use the 3e Ork Codex or the 5e Ork Codex or the 6e Ork codex but don't mix and match!). But you could also do some mixing if you were fair minded about it - like it wouldn't break the 4e Ork book if you put a Gorkanaut in it or something.

3rd-5th has minimal issues (as mentioned earlier, DE were using their 3rd edition book in 5th edition), but they'd struggle to work with 6th/7th edition books.

6th/7th had a dramatically different psychic system. Plus Warlord traits (though I guess the 3rd-5th books could use the generic warlord traits from the main 6th/7th rulebooks). If you used 6th/7th as the game system baseline, you'd also have to make some decisions about formations. Pre-7th books would be at a big disadvantage if they didn't have access to formations, but some factions in 7th (harlequins and I think skitarii) couldn't use the force org chart because they didn't have HQs.


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slade the sniper wrote:
Has anyone ever run different editions in the same game? So like 3rd Edition Space Marines and 5th Edition Orks?

Just on first glace, it really seems that the factions can be different editions, but the "game" itself has to pick a rule edition to determine things like cover and battlefield effects.

Is that correct?

Thanks in advance.

-STS

Out of curiosity, what's your goal here? Surely it would be easier to just use the relevant books for whichever edition you want to play?

I don't know what the OP's goal is, other man maybe letting people use the army they want, with the codex they want, either 3rd, 4th, or 5th edition, and choosing the same baseline game 3rd, 4th, or 5th in order to play a game.

My own personal idea is that codex's from these three editions and Chapter Approved units could be merged together into a super-codex that represents peak of each of these editions, probably using 5th edition or 4th as the ruleset to play games with.

BanjoJohn wrote:
I don't know what the OP's goal is, other man maybe letting people use the army they want, with the codex they want, either 3rd, 4th, or 5th edition, and choosing the same baseline game 3rd, 4th, or 5th in order to play a game.

My own personal idea is that codex's from these three editions and Chapter Approved units could be merged together into a super-codex that represents peak of each of these editions, probably using 5th edition or 4th as the ruleset to play games with.

There's at least one of those projects present on these forums. Probably more.

I'm fairly sure that some armies were running their 3rd edition codices during 5th. There are some rules that don't work, but it's perfectly possible.

Before starting to house-rule 3rd edition into 10th edition, you are better off picking up something like one page rules to play the game you want.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Out of curiosity, what's your goal here? Surely it would be easier to just use the relevant books for whichever edition you want to play?

Goal? Um... I suppose to make a version of the game that has the baseline rules I find the most useable, so that I can play my favorite (not most powerful) version of the armies I like.

For instance, 3rd Edition Imperial Guard (3.5 Doctrines), 5th Edition Grey Knights, 2nd Edition Chaos, 8th Edition Tau, Mechanicus and Imperial Knights... 5th Edition Imperial Armor.

Basically that.

Some factions were just better in some ways with earlier stuff, and I liked those armies and don't like the new versions.

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 Jidmah wrote:
I'm fairly sure that some armies were running their 3rd edition codices during 5th. There are some rules that don't work, but it's perfectly possible.

Before starting to house-rule 3rd edition into 10th edition, you are better off picking up something like one page rules to play the game you want.

I think I really stopped liking the "rules" at about 7th...
And while some new units are nice, I prefer armies from various older editions.

-STS

slade the sniper wrote:
I suppose to make a version of the game that has the baseline rules I find the most useable, so that I can play my favorite (not most powerful) version of the armies I like.

For instance, 3rd Edition Imperial Guard (3.5 Doctrines), 5th Edition Grey Knights, 2nd Edition Chaos, 8th Edition Tau, Mechanicus and Imperial Knights... 5th Edition Imperial Armor.

You'd need to pick an edition and then re-write all books from outside of the underlying ruleset.

3e guard in 7e rules works. 3e guard in 2e or 8e rules doesn't.

slade the sniper wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Out of curiosity, what's your goal here? Surely it would be easier to just use the relevant books for whichever edition you want to play?

Goal? Um... I suppose to make a version of the game that has the baseline rules I find the most useable, so that I can play my favorite (not most powerful) version of the armies I like.

For instance, 3rd Edition Imperial Guard (3.5 Doctrines), 5th Edition Grey Knights, 2nd Edition Chaos, 8th Edition Tau, Mechanicus and Imperial Knights... 5th Edition Imperial Armor.

Basically that.

Some factions were just better in some ways with earlier stuff, and I liked those armies and don't like the new versions.

Ah. Gotcha. This may be of interest to you then: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/796101.page

I just want to say, that I just did that.

I played my 3rd Edition Witch Hunters codex vs 5th Edition Space Marines, and 4th Edition Orks and Chaos Space Marines, all under the 5th edition ruleset, in a couple of recent games.

That was just the way it was, sometimes you would skip an edition, so you would start with a codex two editions old. And in the case of Sisters of Battle, we only got a codex via a White Dwarf, which I never had in the first place (and wasn't even aware about until it was reprinted as a 6th edition PDF).

The first Necron Codex also goes into the "long-haul" group of books. It came out early/mid 3rd and lasted until just before 6th came out, iirc. The late 5th ed release including the proto-flyer rules in preparation for the normalization of flyers in 6th ed.

I remember having battles with the 3rd ed Necrons against 5th ed Chaos and Marines (and 4th ed Eldar). There weren't any rule conflicts that I remember, but Necrons suffered under the 5th ed CC resolution-Morale rules.

slade the sniper wrote:
Has anyone ever run different editions in the same game? So like 3rd Edition Space Marines and 5th Edition Orks?

Just on first glace, it really seems that the factions can be different editions, but the "game" itself has to pick a rule edition to determine things like cover and battlefield effects.

Is that correct?

Thanks in advance.

-STS

See this topic

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


That is exactly what our group does. you have to set a baseline however. since the core mechanics of 40K barely changed between 3rd and 7th all the codexes are mostly cross compatible. depending on what baseline you use however you will find a rule or 2 that doesn't work. like hull points. they were poorly implemented and do nothing for the game except punish players for taking vehicles effectively creating a double damage chart. Since we core the game around 5th ed where they did not exist we just ignore the mechanic entirely to make the game work.

We regularly put codexes from different editions against each other under this setup with no problems.

There are some obvious favorites when it comes to codexes. for example the chaos players all use the 3.5 chaos codex since there has been nothing better since.

I think skitarii) couldn't use the force org chart because they didn't have HQs.

GW already addressed this. they released the codex skitarii and cult mechanicus separately for white dwarf magazine releases but they are the same army.

As such the force org chart does work as the HQ option is in the cult mechanicus book.

 Insectum7 wrote:
The first Necron Codex also goes into the "long-haul" group of books. It came out early/mid 3rd and lasted until just before 6th came out, iirc

Six 3e factions in all, out of sixteen - Wolves (2000*/2009), Guard (1999/2003/2009), Necrons (2002/2011), Dark Eldar (1998/2003/2010), Daemonhunters (2003/2011), and Witch Hunters (2004/2011**)

* wolves were a supplement to 3e marines and had been obsolete since 2004
** the sisters existed as a variety of chapter approved articles, ebooks, Index: Imperium, etc from ~Dec 2009 when the Witch Hunters codex went OOP to Nov 2019 as the last codex of 8th edition.

Yeah, the baseline rule set I think I am going with is 3E and then working everything into that.

The most difficult part is working vehicles into the AV system that didn't exist prior to 8th Edition.

Everything else is pretty easy so far, and since I don't play with points, it is all narrative, I don't have to worry about that.

-STS