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3.5, after the introduction of the new assault rules. Super fun time

4th or 5th. I think my ideal version would be 4th with 5th vehicle damage chart. Though some of the Forge World army lists from later are some of the coolest things the game has ever had - looking at the 7th edition Corsair list and the 7th edition Renegades and Heretics. Luckily, with a bit of work you can pretty much forward port or backport any of the 3-7th stuff into 4th/5th, its just some things take a touch more work than others.

Which Edition changed the Strength of Blast Weapons, for penetrating armour, to 1/2 Strength unless under the central hole?

That was a pretty decent change. Not a major one, but reduced the outright killiness of stuff like Demolisher Cannons

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That was a pretty decent change. Not a major one, but reduced the outright killiness of stuff like Demolisher Cannons

4e for the half strength partials.

5e took away the ordnance damage chart - aka 'the vehicle is dead, everyone inside the vehicle is dead (no saves), everyone within 6" of the hull may also be dead'

A.T. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That was a pretty decent change. Not a major one, but reduced the outright killiness of stuff like Demolisher Cannons

4e for the half strength partials.

5e took away the ordnance damage chart - aka 'the vehicle is dead, everyone inside the vehicle is dead (no saves), everyone within 6" of the hull may also be dead'

That made me, Lord Solar Macharius, and the 6 Basilisks in my Armoured Company very sad.

Grimdark Future.
Fast and fun and finally my games of "40k" play out with a speed and ease that I always wanted them too. Yet it still "feels" like the 40k universe. Grimdark easily accommodates MASSIVE apocalypse'ish battles (I love ridiculously huge battles) in a reasonable amount of time. Also it's basically free...

I still dig into 40k fluff and play mostly with 40k figures, but for rules it's all Grimdark. I enjoy the rules so much that at this point I've probably played more Grimdark games than all other 40k editions (I played off and on from 2nd-6th) combined.

If I had to choose a GW ruleset for the 40k universe, I do like Necromunda 95 and Shadow War Armageddon (and also Mordheim). Those games take the 2nd edition mechanics and keep them at the small scope of game that they work best at. When you're only dealing with a kill-team-per-player it's no problem to have slightly crunchier old-school mechanics.

A.T. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That was a pretty decent change. Not a major one, but reduced the outright killiness of stuff like Demolisher Cannons

4e for the half strength partials.

5e took away the ordnance damage chart - aka 'the vehicle is dead, everyone inside the vehicle is dead (no saves), everyone within 6" of the hull may also be dead'

This is perhaps my biggest issue with the era of 3-5 edition. the graduated rules change across editions and codexes. It wasn't until 6th that they paradigmed the codexes. Until that point, every previous codex worked in the current edition.

So when I say that parts of 3-5 were good, it's frustrating because they add some improvements and then some terrible decisions. So you can't pick an edition or a codex to reflect that era.

The 4th targeting rules and abstract LoS are IMO still the best game implementation they've done and the half S blast was also good. But then they went and did dome things with wound allocation and vehicle damage tables.

And you can see the design shift in codex rules from the restraint of 3rd to the Wardian crap of 5th. Like, I would probably be happy with 3rd ed were it not for the fact that the 3.5 design sensiblities didn't spill into all the codexes before edition change. The eldar were still using a crappy 80pt avatar in 4th while chaos had their much better GDs from their 3.5 codex. It took the 4th ed eldar codex to give us a better eldar army.

But that means you can't use it in 3rd ed...

 Eilif wrote:
Grimdark Future.
Fast and fun and finally my games of "40k" play out with a speed and ease that I always wanted them too. Yet it still "feels" like the 40k universe. Grimdark easily accommodates MASSIVE apocalypse'ish battles (I love ridiculously huge battles) in a reasonable amount of time. Also it's basically free...

I too play OPR, fast simple and I don't like current 40k. However it is very much too lean on the crunch to make me completely satisfied. I wish they'd at least add more than two unit stats.

I'd be interested in your experience with the apoc scale battles if you've had any, the idea of using the "use squad leaders as the only measure marker for the unit" is interesting. I also wonder if you could adapt it to the GW apoc rules where you resolve damage at the end.

Wish I had the time to try 5th with my mate (we both started in 5th) but being busy adults OPR is just too handy to play instead when we get together twice a month.

4th edition and its not even close. Yes, vehicle entrapment sucked, but it was a time when skill could still win you a game over just list building and money spent on models.

The game wasn't as much point and click as it has been turned into.

Anyone remember when guess weapons were infact guess? I had a buddy who was a carpenter play and he could nail the back edge of a target within a 1/4" every time. After his forth kill with a basilisk, It felt like he was cheating, but it was in fact just skill.

 Jayden63 wrote:
4th edition and its not even close. Yes, vehicle entrapment sucked, but it was a time when skill could still win you a game over just list building and money spent on models.

The game wasn't as much point and click as it has been turned into.

Anyone remember when guess weapons were infact guess? I had a buddy who was a carpenter play and he could nail the back edge of a target within a 1/4" every time. After his forth kill with a basilisk, It felt like he was cheating, but it was in fact just skill.

Guessing distances is not a skill I care about in my war games.

And the game has plenty of skill to it today. 7th, sure, you could have matched that were forgone conclusions before deployment. But the game has skill these days.

 Jayden63 wrote:
4th edition and its not even close. Yes, vehicle entrapment sucked, but it was a time when skill could still win you a game over just list building and money spent on models.

The game wasn't as much point and click as it has been turned into.

Anyone remember when guess weapons were infact guess? I had a buddy who was a carpenter play and he could nail the back edge of a target within a 1/4" every time. After his forth kill with a basilisk, It felt like he was cheating, but it was in fact just skill.

Which is exactly why guess weapons sucked.

Clearly, for your friend, the game was kinda point and click- and not because of a game skill, but because he was a carpenter.

Timing strat and unit ability combos to play objectives may not be skills that you enjoy using- I understand that for many players, these feel more like collectible card game skills than wargame skills (a valid point, BTW), but at least they are GAME skills.

 Hellebore wrote:
And you can see the design shift in codex rules from the restraint of 3rd to the Wardian crap of 5th.

3e had first turn charges, pre-first turn unit removal, literal invulnerability, and all kinds of min-maxing among other fun design choices.

The difference was that 3e seemed to be written by rule of cool and disinterest in actual competitive balance whereas the powerful 5e books felt like they were deliberately pushing the bar up. Credit to Ward that his first book was actually on target, but I guess he had eyes on him after blowing up WHFB, pity it didn't last.

3rd ed had core rules revisions before 4th came in.

The codex were restrained compared to 5th ed..just compare the 3rd greater daemons to the 5th ed ones. Not to mention stat creep in marine characters.

3rd was basically using index style lists all the way through. 3.5 was a pretty minor change.

5th ed still had invulnerable units, but it also had the stat inflation ward loved.

 Hellebore wrote:
The codex were restrained compared to 5th ed..just compare the 3rd greater daemons to the 5th ed ones. Not to mention stat creep in marine characters.
3rd was basically using index style lists all the way through. 3.5 was a pretty minor change.

Ward definitely snuck an extra stat point or two onto some of the named characters where they weren't needed. In fairness it was somewhat in catch-up to 4e chaos, at least until GK when he was trying to one up himself.

Rulebook to end of 3e codex was night and day though. And daemons were 4e :p

 Eilif wrote:
If I had to choose a GW ruleset for the 40k universe, I do like Necromunda 95 and Shadow War Armageddon (and also Mordheim). Those games take the 2nd edition mechanics and keep them at the small scope of game that they work best at. When you're only dealing with a kill-team-per-player it's no problem to have slightly crunchier old-school mechanics.

Yes. It's interesting to go through the Wargear book in 2nd and see just how much stuff never appeared in subsequent books. It was just too fiddly and not appropriate to a game that was moving beyond the squad level to the platoon. That is why I looked at ways to cut out the non-essential elements like models being on fire, rolling for plasma diameter, jump pack scatter, etc. Because of the granularity, there is still a practical limit, but if you do things like resolve close combats without re-rolls, it goes a lot faster.

My preferred edition is 5th edition.

My group settled on it as a point where most of the units are in the game, and also a lot of the units that wpuld be dropped haven't been, so its a good point for us. I use my witch hunters & daemonhunters codecies, and my 5e IG, & SW codecies.

For me, there are a couple of reasons I prefer this. The most important is the mechanics. I dislike the 8th and post mechanics, especially multiwound proliferation and the overall mushiness of the system. The 3rd - 7th structure is much preferred and while its also not my favorite of all the systems I play, its the best of 40k. In this sense, 5th is the best of them, because it is also still at a point where the movement versus shooting trade off is stronger, so while weapons have effect and feel good, the overall effect isn't as catastrophic. In a sense, your guns are more powerful, but you get to use less of them because most of the time you spend moving.

For 5th more specifically, 5th is before that flyers, Lords of War, and Allies became a common part of the game. While I play Witch Hunters, own 6 baneblades and a macharius and 6 malcadors, and a vendetta, so Im aware the all of those were new for 6th and had been around since IA1 at least, but they weren't like normal in the game.

Also 5th is before hull points for vehicles. I dont like hit point mechanics as damage modelling for individual vehicle and person elements, so I dont like the idea of multiwound infantry monstrous creature rules, or vehicle hull points. Fundamentally hitpoints are not an appropriate model for damage modelling in a game at the scale of 40k, and even within 40ks own system, toughness represents the resistance to becoming a casualty, while wounds represent plot armour: a character suffering a wound that would have caused them to become a casualty, but not becoming one.

I'm happy for those who enjoy(ed) 5th edition, but it's shocking to me that so many people still seem to like it. Between the parking lot spam, unkillable vehicles, troop tax, only troops being able to score objectives, the limited missions (including the Dawn of War deployment that really screwed over certain units), etc., it really sticks out in my mind as the worst edition I've played in terms of core rules.

Like, 6th had more randomness than I'd like, and 7th got bonkers due to power creep codices and formations, but I still think of the core rules from both of those editions as waaaay less frustrating than 5th edition. So even if you don't like the overall vibe/stratagem focus of 8th onward, 5th still seems like the worst version of the pre-8th forms of the game to me.

EDIT: I feel like a version of the game that used 7th as a base, made an actual effort to balance things, used the 3rd-5th edition psychic system, and brought in some of the more popular changes from 8th (split fire, fall back voluntarily, etc.) would be pretty snazzy.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I'm happy for those who enjoy(ed) 5th edition, but it's shocking to me that so many people still seem to like it. Between the parking lot spam, unkillable vehicles, troop tax, only troops being able to score objectives, the limited missions (including the Dawn of War deployment that really screwed over certain units), etc., it really sticks out in my mind as the worst edition I've played in terms of core rules.

Like, 6th had more randomness than I'd like, and 7th got bonkers due to power creep codices and formations, but I still think of the core rules from both of those editions as waaaay less frustrating than 5th edition. So even if you don't like the overall vibe/stratagem focus of 8th onward, 5th still seems like the worst version of the pre-8th forms of the game to me.

EDIT: I feel like a version of the game that used 7th as a base, made an actual effort to balance things, used the 3rd-5th edition psychic system, and brought in some of the more popular changes from 8th (split fire, fall back voluntarily, etc.) would be pretty snazzy.

Just to comment, since you brought it up and it's something that was very much a lesser object on my radar, but only troops being able to score has been a big improvement in our games; from my personal perspective. It make you troops count go well beyond the "troops tax" and cuts down on the toys-before-boys nature of 40k. It's not the ideal fix for this problem, as that would likely require a fundamental shift in the combat model of 40k away from "the rifleman exists to score points" to make the rifleman and infantry fire team much more of the core fighting element rather than cheerleaders watching with peashooters while all the heavy lifting done by the support, but its a big step up. This is definitely a "your mileage might vary" type thing, however, based on how you want to play 40k, and isn't a plus for everyone.

Yeah, having only troops score was a good thing in 40K. It's one of many reasons 5th will always be my favourite. Opening up scoring to everything was a big mistake, but there's no putting that genie back in the bottle at this point. People want to take whatever they want whenever they want it, and now we're in a place where restrictions don't really exist anymore so a lot of armies no longer look like armies on the table.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
Yeah, having only troops score was a good thing in 40K. It's one of many reasons 5th will always be my favourite. Opening up scoring to everything was a big mistake, but there's no putting that genie back in the bottle at this point. People want to take whatever they want whenever they want it, and now we're in a place where restrictions don't really exist anymore so a lot of armies no longer look like armies on the table.

Should Nurglings be better at holding objectives than Terminators?

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Between the parking lot spam, unkillable vehicles..

I don't think the guard parking lot would ever have gained traction with the 3e codex open topped, single firing point 85+pt chimera and elite slot veterans.
A lack of foresight by GW when the started making transports cheaper in late 4e right before the rules change that made them into portable bunkers. 15pts per rhino and 25pts off of every razorback too, 4e and 5e had their points around the wrong way for their respective damage charts.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Should Nurglings be better at holding objectives than Terminators?

Nurglings couldn't hold objectives in 5e (no swarms could). IIRC they were scoring units in 4th though.

 Hellebore wrote:
Like, I would probably be happy with 3rd ed were it not for the fact that the 3.5 design sensiblities didn't spill into all the codexes before edition change. The eldar were still using a crappy 80pt avatar in 4th while chaos had their much better GDs from their 3.5 codex. It took the 4th ed eldar codex to give us a better eldar army.

But that means you can't use it in 3rd ed...

Says who? You can play different editions codexes in the same game, just check if it is OK and as along as your whole army uses the same codex and you don't cherry pick X from this codex and Y from that codex and rule Z from that other edition, it should be fine.

-STS

Spot on slade, our group uses the core 5th ed rules but we do allow any codex from 3rd-7th to be used within the 5th ed frame work and it works fine.

I also find the "parking lot" argument out of sync with reality. there are plenty of things that kill armor and do it well within the 5th ed core rules using both older and newer codexes.

As somebody who has gone back and been playing it since 8th ed dropped almost non-stop, and with a dedicated vehicle heavy player in our group, dealing with lots of armor is not a problem for any average player no matter what faction they bring.

 aphyon wrote:
Spot on slade, our group uses the core 5th ed rules but we do allow any codex from 3rd-7th to be used within the 5th ed frame work and it works fine.

I also find the "parking lot" argument out of sync with reality. there are plenty of things that kill armor and do it well within the 5th ed core rules using both older and newer codexes.

As somebody who has gone back and been playing it since 8th ed dropped almost non-stop, and with a dedicated vehicle heavy player in our group, dealing with lots of armor is not a problem for any average player no matter what faction they bring.

I have followed 40k since Rogue Trader but didn't play till 3E.
I think the core rules of 3E with the sort of rule of cool but not too much granularity really fits my rules preference. Codexes are sort of all over the place for what edition fits my factions correctly. The only rule that I use is the half-strength for Ordnance... it fits my idea of what artillery is, destructive, but not accurate enough for anti-vehicle work except by luck.

Again, I think factions can run from RT to 7th can all be combined easily into a game... but 8th is where the design philosophy shifted and everything became very same-y in my opinion. I don't really like Hull Points or Structure Points, or the keyword spam, and definitely not the CP metacurrency mini game. All of those felt like attempts to shift from a game into a codified rules set that leeched out a lot of the wackiness of the setting. Just my opinion.

-STS

 aphyon wrote:
Spot on slade, our group uses the core 5th ed rules but we do allow any codex from 3rd-7th to be used within the 5th ed frame work and it works fine.

I also find the "parking lot" argument out of sync with reality. there are plenty of things that kill armor and do it well within the 5th ed core rules using both older and newer codexes.

As somebody who has gone back and been playing it since 8th ed dropped almost non-stop, and with a dedicated vehicle heavy player in our group, dealing with lots of armor is not a problem for any average player no matter what faction they bring.

I still remember 5th edition competitive games being transport spam*, because the comination of undercosted transports and damage tables that were very generous to transports.

I don't need to go back to 5th ed, I already lived that reality.

*Or long fang spam, or some flavour of wound abuse death star.

 Tyran wrote:

 aphyon wrote:
Spot on slade, our group uses the core 5th ed rules but we do allow any codex from 3rd-7th to be used within the 5th ed frame work and it works fine.

I also find the "parking lot" argument out of sync with reality. there are plenty of things that kill armor and do it well within the 5th ed core rules using both older and newer codexes.

As somebody who has gone back and been playing it since 8th ed dropped almost non-stop, and with a dedicated vehicle heavy player in our group, dealing with lots of armor is not a problem for any average player no matter what faction they bring.

I still remember 5th edition competitive games being transport spam*, because the comination of undercosted transports and damage tables that were very generous to transports.

I don't need to go back to 5th ed, I already lived that reality.

*Or long fang spam, or some flavour of wound abuse death star.

I suspect that my experiences are very very different than that of other players in that I have never played in any competitive game, and every battle was driven by lore than points... so full narrative on my part.
Points are great, but rather like CR in DnD, BV in Battletech, I consider points in 40k to be guidelines, not something to be followed to the number so if my SoB have too many infernos, oh well, or if my GK are underpointed, I don't really care. My particular OCD is in damage modeling in RPGs, not list building in wargames. For this reason, I really like uneven historical or asymmetrical games and scenarios.

-STS

Tyran wrote:I still remember 5th edition competitive games being transport spam*, because the comination of undercosted transports and damage tables that were very generous to transports.

I don't need to go back to 5th ed, I already lived that reality.

I still advocate for 5th Ed core rules with 3rd/4th Ed codices as the best of Oldhammer. Most of the problems associated with 5th really were the result of the codices. You don't get leafblower nonsense using the 3.5Ed Guard codex.

You do still have wound allocation shenanigans, but that can be alleviated by threat of dreadsock.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I'm happy for those who enjoy(ed) 5th edition, but it's shocking to me that so many people still seem to like it. Between the parking lot spam, unkillable vehicles, troop tax, only troops being able to score objectives, the limited missions (including the Dawn of War deployment that really screwed over certain units), etc., it really sticks out in my mind as the worst edition I've played in terms of core rules.

Like, 6th had more randomness than I'd like, and 7th got bonkers due to power creep codices and formations, but I still think of the core rules from both of those editions as waaaay less frustrating than 5th edition. So even if you don't like the overall vibe/stratagem focus of 8th onward, 5th still seems like the worst version of the pre-8th forms of the game to me.

EDIT: I feel like a version of the game that used 7th as a base, made an actual effort to balance things, used the 3rd-5th edition psychic system, and brought in some of the more popular changes from 8th (split fire, fall back voluntarily, etc.) would be pretty snazzy.

Just to comment, since you brought it up and it's something that was very much a lesser object on my radar, but only troops being able to score has been a big improvement in our games; from my personal perspective. It make you troops count go well beyond the "troops tax" and cuts down on the toys-before-boys nature of 40k. It's not the ideal fix for this problem, as that would likely require a fundamental shift in the combat model of 40k away from "the rifleman exists to score points" to make the rifleman and infantry fire team much more of the core fighting element rather than cheerleaders watching with peashooters while all the heavy lifting done by the support, but its a big step up. This is definitely a "your mileage might vary" type thing, however, based on how you want to play 40k, and isn't a plus for everyone.

Fair enough and to each their own. I started the game in 5th with eldar as my first army. So most of our troop choices evaporated to bolters/flamers, and I was a broke kid who couldn't afford to spam jetbikes. Avengers were cool (and my first troops), but they, too, were squishy in 5th. So if you wanted to win games with eldar in 5th, you ended up doing that DAVU thing where you just flew tanks full of MSU dire avengers around in circles so that you didn't auto-lose by having no troops. So functionally, the more you invested in units that could stay alive to score points at the end of the game, the less of your army that was actually *fighting* and doing cool space elf power ranger stuff. Whereas 6th edition onward encouraged me to field units that were survivable or cheap enough to be good choices as scoring units, but I didn't have this "keep the avengers in the tanks alive" mini-game hanging over my head the whole time.

When people tell me they liked 5th edition, I half-jokingly ask them which army they played: Marines or guard.

 catbarf wrote:
You do still have wound allocation shenanigans, but that can be alleviated by threat of dreadsock.

Pre 5e books it was really only the orks. That said dropping the 5e allocation minigame entirely and just using the old torrent of fire rules is waaaay faster for much the same effect.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
So most of our troop choices evaporated to bolters/flamers, and I was a broke kid who couldn't afford to spam jetbikes

For eldar I think it was more lack of firepower. In 5e you wanted troops you could attack with so that it was practical to take a lot of them.
Inquisition stormtroopers, veteran guardsmen, dark eldar warriors, etc. No more durable than avengers, less durable than jetbikes, but absolutely premium troops choices.

When people tell me they liked 5th edition, I half-jokingly ask them which army they played: Marines or guard

marines (deathwing/ravenwing/dark angels/salamander), sisters, tyranids, and tau...still play using 5th ed core rules-demon hunters(3.5), admech(7th), salamanders(5th), dark angels(3.5), guard (5th), Tyranids (4th)

we house ruled the wound allocation thing to go back to 4th ed- owning player gets to choose what models die, multi-wound models must be removed as casualties first once they are wounded.