Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I think that 5th was probably my choice for best edition.

Yes, I know that some armies were crazy OP but the core rules were satisfying and allowed for a decent amount of customization. 6th-7th went off the rails a bit and 8th completely jumped the shark - 9th was probably my favorite edition of Nu-40k even if the balance was all over the place. 10th was such a non-starter for me that I just completely lost interest, even when I get the itch to play I try and build a list in 10th and the complete and utter lack of customization kills that itch.

I played during 3rd and 4th, so while I enjoyed them both it may have been tainted by the fact that my brother was a meta chasing try hard who latched onto things like Fish of Fury and Skimmer spam for Eldar.

Usually threads like these on dakka revolve around 5th and 4th, and usually 5th gets the most votes.

I never read 4th base rules but what makes 5th better?
I read 4th has abstracted los, secondary weapons on vehicles, better wound allocation, fluffier codizes, guess ranges, more morale tests - is it really just the improved vehicle rules that make 5th better for people?

Every now and then I wonder to try out one of these old editions (I started at the tail end of 5th), but then I remember old CC phase and AP system and I'm nope nope nope, but I want at least to give it a read at some point.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I never read 4th base rules but what makes 5th better?

There were quite a few changes, which were good or bad is somewhat subjective. Off the top of my head:
- Infantry gained the ability to run
- Troop unit only scoring (with rulebook scenarios anyway), infiltrate and deepstrike were not restricted by scenario type.
- Normal cover increased from 5+ to 4+
- Infantry were not forced out of vehicles that were hit, or annihilated with all hands (and no saves) on a 6
- Glancing hits had to wear down a vehicle unless it was open topped/AP1 rather than destroying them on a 6. Skimmers didn't turn all hits into glances.
- You could not charge new units with your consolidation move
- Line of sight changes, and the ability to kill all models in a unit with a hail of fire and not just the ones that you can see. Target priority tests were removed.
- Close combat changes - pile in, full attacks from nearby models, results determined by wounds inflicted (especially for fearless units)
- Wound allocation mini-game
- Template changes - determined by scatter not roll to hit, partials are hit without a roll, no guess ranges.

Aside from that there the special and weapons rules were gathered up and adjusted somewhat. Fewer power fist swings, rending weapons had to roll to wound, pistols were single shot only and the maximum strength of defensive weapons was lowered.

5e tended to run a little faster and a little hotter as units could cover more ground and attacks were more decisive. You didn't get the same amount of scattered survivors or models that were excluded from action for various reasons (i.e. entangled, failed priority rolls, in combat but not in range, etc). 50% of your battlecannon shots didn't disolve into mist on firing, etc.

It put some extra pep in the step of infantry and mechanised armies while dealing with some longstanding issues of 4e but then followed through by creating new issues of its own. Mostly but not entirely due to out of control codex writers and a little lack of foresight in making vehicles cheaper towards the end of 4th.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Usually threads like these on dakka revolve around 5th and 4th, and usually 5th gets the most votes.

I never read 4th base rules but what makes 5th better?
I read 4th has abstracted los, secondary weapons on vehicles, better wound allocation, fluffier codizes, guess ranges, more morale tests - is it really just the improved vehicle rules that make 5th better for people?

Every now and then I wonder to try out one of these old editions (I started at the tail end of 5th), but then I remember old CC phase and AP system and I'm nope nope nope, but I want at least to give it a read at some point.

I know some people like the more abstract LOS rules of 4th and i still play some games that use similar rules and both work fine in their own way especially if your player group is all on the same page. that being said i will go through a few points of why 5th was a step up from 4th-

The things 4th did well-snipers, wound allocation, defensive weapons being S5 on vehicles

The thing it did badly-vehicle damage rules-IE made skimmers specifically eldar and tau way to powerful

The things 5th did better- rapid fire rules, vehicle damage rules, target selection (you no longer needed a LD test to shoot at something that wasn't the closest) good simple/clear USRs and not to many to be bloated.

Things 5th did worse-wound allocation and a move away from thematic codexes aside from the few really good ones i mentioned before (blood angels, space wolves, necrons and dark eldar). the only real "bad" codex in the entire edition was the travesty that was the grey knight codex. keep in mind many of the "better" 4th ed codexes lived for a long time in 5th and did just fine like tau, orks, eldar and tyranids when they finally did get a 5ht ed release they were rather "meh" not incredibly good or bad.(chaos was never good again after the glory that was the 3.5 codex).

By the time of 5th the old guess range weapons had been replaced with the 2d6/scatter minus for BS of 3rd (guess range was pretty terrible, when it changed it was universally praised at the time).

When our group decided to go old hammer when we saw the direction GW was going with the release of 8th we went with 5th because it was the pinnacle of improvement in the game. we did however house rule in the 4th ed wound allocation system to keep everything fair as well as using defensive weapons being S5 on vehicles, and the snipers always hit on 2+ rule from 4th. we also borrowed grenade throwing, overwatch and snap fire from 6th/7th to improve 5th without the negatives of formation spam that broke core game mechanics, USR bloat, the double damage system for vehicles in the form of the more lethal damage chat AND hull points at the same time.

I absolutely love the CC rules and AP system. you had a save or you didn't the all or nothing system is simple and easy. the AP- system was a flow over from fantasy that was based on the strength of the attacker. the systems were separate and different and needed to stay that way. The idea of initiative and WS comparison also made it feel more lore accurate Eldar were weak as a normal human but agile as all hell which made sense especially when it came to aspect warriors or drugged up witch cults.

Also keep in mind any edition of the game and any codex could be broken with enough effort by players with the wrong mind set as the game lent itself much more to thematic play than it did tournament play. if you played with the latter in mind it made the game very unfriendly and not much fun.

 aphyon wrote:
keep in mind many of the "better" 4th ed codexes lived for a long time in 5th and did just fine like tau, orks, eldar and tyranids when they finally did get a 5ht ed release they were rather "meh" not incredibly good or bad.(chaos was never good again after the glory that was the 3.5 codex).

Of those only nids got a release in 5th and had the misfortune of getting Robin 'do you like my guard army?' Cruddace as its author. It had good units but it seemed like a concious effort was being made to push new models by making all of the old classics poor choices... or perhaps that was just Cruddace being unable to balance a unit without some special rule propping it up.

5e nids were particularly poorly suited to the following: assaulting into cover, destroying transport vehicles at range, facing S8 AP3 weapons. And this was half way into 5th where Cruddaces own guard book was the yardstick against which all other armies were measured.


3.5... it had a lot of tremendously flavourful and characterful and so on and so on and oh look here comes that list/unit/combo again. The book it reminded me most of was the old necromunda board game where there were a hundred skills and items and you really only wanted a few ideal paths, to the point of taking two heavies at gang creation so that you could weed out the failures (poor upgrade rolls) early on.

It's a pity that the 4e CSM codex didn't do a better job of bringing the options over and balancing them out as the core codex had decent fundimantals but lacked the gimmicks to offset being badly codex-creeped (by the space wolves in particular).

Thanks for the write up. I must admit, it makes me quite wary towards those editions. Having played from 5th on, 8th was a relief for our gaming group. We were always narrative players, so debates about scatters or what have you never were a problem, but CC in those editions just was a terrible gaming experience in my view, with units getting trapped in CC and having no player agency whatsoever in that phase, it was everything I disliked about IGOUGO dialed up to 11, and bad Initiative for factions like orks or necrons was just rubbing it in.
Same with the AP system, every weapon below AP4 was useless most of the time if it didn't also have S6+ or a lot of shots. There are probably other things, but these especially make it a hard sell to go back (and not just stick to OPR where we are now. I guess in the end I just want the occasional flamer template back , because that was actually fun and felt easy to resolve. Also Chaos 3 5 and Orks 5th Edition are just great books I'd like to play around with.)

 aphyon wrote:

I know some people like the more abstract LOS rules of 4th and i still play some games that use similar rules and both work fine in their own way especially if your player group is all on the same page. that being said i will go through a few points of why 5th was a step up from 4th-

The things 4th did well-snipers, wound allocation, defensive weapons being S5 on vehicles

The thing it did badly-vehicle damage rules-IE made skimmers specifically eldar and tau way to powerful

The things 5th did better- rapid fire rules, vehicle damage rules, target selection (you no longer needed a LD test to shoot at something that wasn't the closest) good simple/clear USRs and not to many to be bloated.

Things 5th did worse-wound allocation and a move away from thematic codexes aside from the few really good ones i mentioned before (blood angels, space wolves, necrons and dark eldar). the only real "bad" codex in the entire edition was the travesty that was the grey knight codex. keep in mind many of the "better" 4th ed codexes lived for a long time in 5th and did just fine like tau, orks, eldar and tyranids when they finally did get a 5ht ed release they were rather "meh" not incredibly good or bad.(chaos was never good again after the glory that was the 3.5 codex).

By the time of 5th the old guess range weapons had been replaced with the 2d6/scatter minus for BS of 3rd (guess range was pretty terrible, when it changed it was universally praised at the time).

When our group decided to go old hammer when we saw the direction GW was going with the release of 8th we went with 5th because it was the pinnacle of improvement in the game. we did however house rule in the 4th ed wound allocation system to keep everything fair as well as using defensive weapons being S5 on vehicles, and the snipers always hit on 2+ rule from 4th. we also borrowed grenade throwing, overwatch and snap fire from 6th/7th to improve 5th without the negatives of formation spam that broke core game mechanics, USR bloat, the double damage system for vehicles in the form of the more lethal damage chat AND hull points at the same time.

I absolutely love the CC rules and AP system. you had a save or you didn't the all or nothing system is simple and easy. the AP- system was a flow over from fantasy that was based on the strength of the attacker. the systems were separate and different and needed to stay that way. The idea of initiative and WS comparison also made it feel more lore accurate Eldar were weak as a normal human but agile as all hell which made sense especially when it came to aspect warriors or drugged up witch cults.

Also keep in mind any edition of the game and any codex could be broken with enough effort by players with the wrong mind set as the game lent itself much more to thematic play than it did tournament play. if you played with the latter in mind it made the game very unfriendly and not much fun.

Out of curiosity which army/s did you play during that time? In my experience at the time, I found no army except horde or marine armies fun to play, because the AP system blasted everything else off the table. Playing eldar was a chore trying to keep them alive while also needing to get into 12" range with their stupidly nerfed catapults. Playing my space wolves was fun because I could just run across the table and survive long enough to punch people.

The addition of running and boosting of rapid fire also removed any advantage those 12" catapults had being assault weapons, or the eldar had being a fleet of foot force. This was where the eldar suffered most from a single broken unit/army list selection and got tarred for the whole game. So when I was trying to run armies that had no unbreakable grav tanks I was just being slaughtered.

so 4th had the best rules for me, because it DIDN'T have the things you're saying you liked. It allowed for a more enjoyable gaming experience if you weren't a space marine.

Something that insectum has pointed out a few times is that the 3rd ed difference between rapid fire and assault actually offset the 12" range of the catapult a bit, but GW kept chipping away at the differences so marines could do more while leaving assault less and less useful, especially when your mainline troop gun had a 12" range.

aphyon wrote:
When our group decided to go old hammer when we saw the direction GW was going with the release of 8th we went with 5th because it was the pinnacle of improvement in the game. we did however house rule in the 4th ed wound allocation system to keep everything fair as well as using defensive weapons being S5 on vehicles, and the snipers always hit on 2+ rule from 4th. we also borrowed grenade throwing, overwatch and snap fire from 6th/7th to improve 5th without the negatives of formation spam that broke core game mechanics, USR bloat, the double damage system for vehicles in the form of the more lethal damage chat AND hull points at the same time.

I absolutely love the CC rules and AP system. you had a save or you didn't the all or nothing system is simple and easy. the AP- system was a flow over from fantasy that was based on the strength of the attacker. the systems were separate and different and needed to stay that way. The idea of initiative and WS comparison also made it feel more lore accurate Eldar were weak as a normal human but agile as all hell which made sense especially when it came to aspect warriors or drugged up witch cults.

Also keep in mind any edition of the game and any codex could be broken with enough effort by players with the wrong mind set as the game lent itself much more to thematic play than it did tournament play. if you played with the latter in mind it made the game very unfriendly and not much fun.

This touches on one of the things that frustrates me about how the game has changed over the years. I've been playing since 5th, and it doesn't feel like the game has necessarily improved all that much over time; just changed. It feels like every couple editions, GW introduces a bunch of mechanics that actually work pretty well, but then they also yank out a bunch of stuff that was already working and replace it with something weird or add a new wonky problem. It's not even that they're occassionally overhauling the game (even 8th kept a lot of the basics more or less in tact); it's that they seem to be semi-randomly throwing out both the bad *and* the good rather than keeping the good and tweaking things.

So like, 6th and 7th gave us different answers to 5th edition's unkillable stun-locked parking lot problem and introduced warlord traits, but they also implemented those warlord traits badly at first (made them random) and then also gave us the wonky psychic phase rules. 7th got rid of some of the annoying randomness of 6th and kept some of the good ideas, but also threw out any semblance of balance with absurdly power-creepy codices and also formations. 8th added a bunch of solid common sense core mechanics (voluntary falling back, splitting fire as a universal option, etc.), got rid of some of the more annoying mechanics (vehicle spam being immune to bolters, fallback, etc.), but it also broke the game with mortal wound spam and flawed CP generation/detachment rules. Plus it got rid of some of the more interesting core mechanics like jinking, going to ground, etc; sacrificing those mechanics on the altar of stratagems. 9th vastly improved on the CP generation/detachment rule issue, but it also cranked all the lethality up to 11 for no obvious reason. 10th toned down some of that lethality (we're probably currently still in a less lethal state with 10th than we were at the end of 9th) and is probably the most balanced version of the game to date for tournament play, but it had to kill off tons of customizability and (seemingly) flavor to get that balance.

It feels like somewhere along the way they could have taken one of the editions with decent core rules, fixed some of the known problems, and added on the more popular mechanics from later editions. Like, 7th edition with 5th edition's psychic phase as a starting point. Maybe re-evaluate whether you actually want the old fallback or multi-step vehicle explosion rules, etc that got thrown out in 8th. Maybe add in some of the popular mechanics from 8th like splitting fire and voluntary fallbacks. Then toss out those pesky formation rules and replace them with something a little easier to balance like 10th edition detachment rules.

(And then maybe avoid adding stratagems and instead just provide some flavorful expanded detachment rules, but that's probably a more controversial opinion.)

Do something like that, and I feel like you'd end up with an edition that has a lot of the more flexible, intuitive, and flavorful mechanics from recent editions, without the "E-sports" vibe that is often attributed to 10th.

A.T. wrote:Of those only nids got a release in 5th and had the misfortune of getting Robin 'do you like my guard army?' Cruddace as its author. It had good units but it seemed like a concious effort was being made to push new models by making all of the old classics poor choices... or perhaps that was just Cruddace being unable to balance a unit without some special rule propping it up.

5e nids were particularly poorly suited to the following: assaulting into cover, destroying transport vehicles at range, facing S8 AP3 weapons. And this was half way into 5th where Cruddaces own guard book was the yardstick against which all other armies were measured.

3.5... it had a lot of tremendously flavourful and characterful and so on and so on and oh look here comes that list/unit/combo again....

I only played a few games with the 5e codex, but I never understood why it was so hated. There were a lot of cool, flavorful options in that book. Tervigons pooping out babies and spores letting you run 'nids as a drop pod army and Trygons plopping down tunnels all gave 'nids some really cool ways to deploy their army along with still letting you do some of the classic gimmicks like outflanking stealers.

It *was* bad at killing vehicles at a distance, but was that not true of past 'nid books? And further, 5th edition was where they finally got some dedicated shooty tankbusters in the form of hiveguard. Now, I know that hiveguard being spammed in every list stank, as did the fact that spamming them ate up Elite slots and thus limited list variety. But surely that's more of a flaw of the army A.) not having shooty tank killers already and B.) the flaws of the force org chart, no? I'm probably missing something, but from what I recall, the 5th edition bug book basically just added more options rather than taking away or fundamentally changing units that existed. Was this the book that made venom cannons glancing only?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hellebore wrote:

Out of curiosity which army/s did you play during that time? In my experience at the time, I found no army except horde or marine armies fun to play, because the AP system blasted everything else off the table. Playing eldar was a chore trying to keep them alive while also needing to get into 12" range with their stupidly nerfed catapults. Playing my space wolves was fun because I could just run across the table and survive long enough to punch people.

The addition of running and boosting of rapid fire also removed any advantage those 12" catapults had being assault weapons, or the eldar had being a fleet of foot force. This was where the eldar suffered most from a single broken unit/army list selection and got tarred for the whole game. So when I was trying to run armies that had no unbreakable grav tanks I was just being slaughtered.

so 4th had the best rules for me, because it DIDN'T have the things you're saying you liked. It allowed for a more enjoyable gaming experience if you weren't a space marine.

Something that insectum has pointed out a few times is that the 3rd ed difference between rapid fire and assault actually offset the 12" range of the catapult a bit, but GW kept chipping away at the differences so marines could do more while leaving assault less and less useful, especially when your mainline troop gun had a 12" range.

Having never played 4th, this feels pretty consistent with my experience with 5th. It was probably the edition that most felt like it was designed with marines in mind and eldar forgotten. Heavy flamers? Why those are a handy tool for killing horde armies like orks or swarms of gants. What do you mean they're wounding your elite army on 2s and ignoring their 4+ saves? Surely such an army doesn't exist!

Plus all the issues I've already rambled on about regarding parking lots and anti-tank availability on a previous page.

10th kind of has shades of a similar problem in my mind. The shrunken board, reduced mobility options (no turbo boost/flatout/jink/less move-shoot-move), and emphasis on standing in magic circles while you face tank incoming fire all feel like the sort of thing you design when you have power-armored gorillas and horde armies in mind, but it doesn't jive very well with an army that wants room to zoom around and typically prefers to hide from return fire rather than standing around in the open.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

I only played a few games with the 5e codex, but I never understood why it was so hated. There were a lot of cool, flavorful options in that book. Tervigons pooping out babies and spores letting you run 'nids as a drop pod army and Trygons plopping down tunnels all gave 'nids some really cool ways to deploy their army along with still letting you do some of the classic gimmicks like outflanking stealers.

It *was* bad at killing vehicles at a distance, but was that not true of past 'nid books? And further, 5th edition was where they finally got some dedicated shooty tankbusters in the form of hiveguard. Now, I know that hiveguard being spammed in every list stank, as did the fact that spamming them ate up Elite slots and thus limited list variety. But surely that's more of a flaw of the army A.) not having shooty tank killers already and B.) the flaws of the force org chart, no? I'm probably missing something, but from what I recall, the 5th edition bug book basically just added more options rather than taking away or fundamentally changing units that existed. Was this the book that made venom cannons glancing only?

It took away upgrades. In particular it took away nid's access to T7 and 2+ saves (in an edition in which TLOS made shooting very dominant and made AP3 very damn common), it also took away Synapse's immunity to Instant Death (and latter introduced 5th ed Grey Knights, making that match up basically an instant loss). It also took away flesh hooks from most of our assault units, making them useless at assaulting into terrain. And neutered Implant attack and Genestealers (which were already neutered by 5th's changes to rending).

Spamming Tervigons with Hive Guard was basically the only way to play that codex competitively, and even that wasn't winning tournaments.

Ah where to begin---

Out of curiosity which army/s did you play during that time?

dark angels, salamanders, sisters of battle, tyranids, tau, but i also had a pretty diverse player group that included lots of chaos, orks, eldar, and guard. in fact the guard player is still somebody i play with to this day.

Playing eldar was a chore trying to keep them alive while also needing to get into 12" range with their stupidly nerfed catapults.

2 of the regulars were eldar players one craftworld and one used the FW corsairs list. both were tough to fight, and surprisingly more often then not the "harder" army to fight (corsairs with loads of hornets, warp hunters, and the like) i often fought to a draw based mostly around playing the objectives.

This touches on one of the things that frustrates me about how the game has changed over the years. I've been playing since 5th, and it doesn't feel like the game has necessarily improved all that much over time; just changed. It feels like every couple editions, GW introduces a bunch of mechanics that actually work pretty well, but then they also yank out a bunch of stuff that was already working and replace it with something weird or add a new wonky problem

That was indeed an issue, change for the sake of change became more obnoxious over time. certain things worked really well. but then when they saw a problem they usually fixed it and threw the baby out with the bathwater so to speak and "fixed" something that was fine.

That is why when our group was deciding on what edition to base our games on, while we felt 5th was overall the best there were a few glaring things that needed to be addressed like the wound allocation shenanigans.

which were already neutered by 5th's changes to rending

In all honesty that was a good change. assault cannons went from worthless (3rd) to (4th) to just about right (5th). remember when they went to 4th they got an extra shot and rending against infantry was a 6+ on the roll to hit and against vehicles it was an additional d6 on the armor pen roll so you basically trashed the most powerfull vehicles in the game on a 3+.

It took away

You also forgot the horrible reworked instinctive behavior rules that made your big fearless bugs run off the table.

I rank it right up there with Jervis's 6th ed "you always assault vehicles on the rear armor (at worst on a 3+) because you deserve it" level of stupidity.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I only played a few games with the 5e codex, but I never understood why it was so hated. There were a lot of cool, flavorful options in that book.

They didn't trade well. Units like fexes and stealers were priced as if that T6 3+ save and init 6 weren't frequently translating into 2+ to wound no save and init 1 assaulting into cover.
In 4e you could go cheap and vulnerable or expensive and protected, 5e lost that choice and stuck a lot of units in a worst of both worlds middle ground.

It *was* bad at killing vehicles at a distance, but was that not true of past 'nid books? And further, 5th edition was where they finally got some dedicated shooty tankbusters in the form of hiveguard.

Yes, but transports in 4e were flaming coffins of death, and quite expensive pre 4e chaos marines - 85pts for a chimera. Just not as popular or effective.
Aside from the eldar transports but they reduced all hits to glances so the glance-only nature of the venom cannon didn't matter, and they were multi-shot strength 10 weapons rather than the single blast S6 of 5th edition (the 5e tyrannofex effectively replaced the old venom cannon fex but cost more than two vindicators or a whole squad of broadsides...)

Hive guard were good against transports and tough enough not to get wiped out in return by the survivors small arms. Unfortunately they were somewhat ultra-specialised lacking the strength or range to go after the big tanks and artillery, lacking the AP to deal with elite targets and monstrous creatures. And at the end of the day they were a 150pt squad shooting at a 35pt rhino that was already half way up the board.


They weren't unplayable and they didn't need the big lists of upgrades that 4e had to be good, but they did need (and didn't have) options to adapt units to the changing meta.
And frankly books like the space wolves with their mass discounted missile launchers and 'delete tyranid MC' psychic powers didn't help.

Cheers for the responses regarding tyranids, folks.

I think I just didn't get enough games in with the 4th edition book to be tuned-in to the things we lost with the 5th edition book. I just saw all the shiny new options.

 Hellebore wrote:

The addition of running and boosting of rapid fire also removed any advantage those 12" catapults had being assault weapons, or the eldar had being a fleet of foot force.

Ah, rapid fire. In 2nd ed., it was a special rule for all Space Marines, loyal and traitor. It posited that Marines train with bolters a lot. All the time, really.

What this meant was that Marines using bolt pistols, bolters or storm bolters who did not move, got to shoot twice (or in the case of storm bolters, roll a second sustained fire die).

This was very fluffy and very cool. Marine players had to put great care into positioning their forces to maximize fire lanes, because friendly models blocked LOS, and the platonic ideal was having every approach covered. Bolters were a bit more effective because of save modifiers (-1, which neutralized flak armor), but rapid fire meant that Marines in position could put down killer amounts of fire. All the cover art showing them just mulching stuff around them came to life on many a tabletop.

And because bolt pistols were also standard equipment for all Marines - and +2 to hit at short range - one got the precursor of the "pistol is faster than reloading" by having troops switch to bolt pistols and just tear things up when the bugs got too close.

I was very upset when it became just another general weapons rule, and actually called GW to complain to the Rulz Boyz (it was a thing back then).

In the end, broken, dispirited, I quit. Traded my beautiful WW I-inspired khaki Praetorians (with six metal Sentiels, no less and a custom Vanquisher with t-shaped muzzle break) for a reinforced platoon WW II Germans and called it a day. I kept my beloved Marines because I could not bear to part with Third Company (a whole codex company!) and its dreadnoughts, old school Razorbacks, and Rhinos. The Chaos Marines I just sold off. I just couldn't afford the new books and the magic was gone.

Then, a few years later, my nephew asked about all these neat models and when I explained what happened he said: "You know, you could just go back to the old rules."

Favorite 40k edition is 7.5, more commonly known as Age of Darkness 1st edition.


It took 7th edition, removed formation nonsense and the invisibility psychic power, and kept the armies in the system playing with a much improved FOC system, Mission set and flavorful rites of war.

It has a few problems still like D weapons, wound allocation and pie plate spam, but otherwise it's an improvement on 7th.

The fact that nobody realizes they can just pick up the red book and play a better 7th edition utterly baffles me. literally all the rules good rules for 7th is right there, and everybody I talk to goes "You're using 7th codexes with HH1? thats strange! That's only for legion lists"

My brothers in the Omnissiah, it's the improved version of the same rules.

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
Favorite 40k edition is 7.5, more commonly known as Age of Darkness 1st edition.


It took 7th edition, removed formation nonsense and the invisibility psychic power, and kept the armies in the system playing with a much improved FOC system, Mission set and flavorful rites of war.

It has a few problems still like D weapons, wound allocation and pie plate spam, but otherwise it's an improvement on 7th.

The fact that nobody realizes they can just pick up the red book and play a better 7th edition utterly baffles me. literally all the rules good rules for 7th is right there, and everybody I talk to goes "You're using 7th codexes with HH1? thats strange! That's only for legion lists"

My brothers in the Omnissiah, it's the improved version of the same rules.

You can pick up any book and play something better than 7th. 7th sucked.

Age of Darkness 1E was the best available version of the rules but to get there without breaking down entirely, they had to limit you to 1 army. (you do get to paint their armor different colors though!).

You could technically bring Xenos or Real Chaos, but that meant either significantly reworking even the base codexes or babysitting the Horus Heresy armies. Craftworld Eldar and Chaos Daemons books were obscenely strong even with 0 Invis and 0 formations.

ERJAK wrote:

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
Favorite 40k edition is 7.5, more commonly known as Age of Darkness 1st edition.


It took 7th edition, removed formation nonsense and the invisibility psychic power, and kept the armies in the system playing with a much improved FOC system, Mission set and flavorful rites of war.

It has a few problems still like D weapons, wound allocation and pie plate spam, but otherwise it's an improvement on 7th.

The fact that nobody realizes they can just pick up the red book and play a better 7th edition utterly baffles me. literally all the rules good rules for 7th is right there, and everybody I talk to goes "You're using 7th codexes with HH1? thats strange! That's only for legion lists"

My brothers in the Omnissiah, it's the improved version of the same rules.

You can pick up any book and play something better than 7th. 7th sucked.

Age of Darkness 1E was the best available version of the rules but to get there without breaking down entirely, they had to limit you to 1 army. (you do get to paint their armor different colors though!).

You could technically bring Xenos or Real Chaos, but that meant either significantly reworking even the base codexes or babysitting the Horus Heresy armies. Craftworld Eldar and Chaos Daemons books were obscenely strong even with 0 Invis and 0 formations.

nah man, best edition imo. Those problems were with the codexes, not the edition. it's like blaming the base 3rd edition rules cause of Chaos space marines were a bit strong. .

Nah, sorry but I'm in the camp of 7th was borked to the core, too.
From hull points to wound allocation to Monster rules to psychic system it just made some problems I had with the 3-7th framework even worse. (6th was even worse though, as 7th basically was a small patch to 6th). I agree that HH 1 (or maybe even 2?) was the best you could make out of that system and they even used the rules bloat to create something nice, but some problems like the vehicle/Monster split just couldn't be overcome, which showed at Mechanicum (or Tau) just turning their walkers into monsters et voila - immediately they became OP.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Nah, sorry but I'm in the camp of 7th was borked to the core, too.
From hull points to wound allocation to Monster rules to psychic system it just made some problems I had with the 3-7th framework even worse. (6th was even worse though, as 7th basically was a small patch to 6th). I agree that HH 1 (or maybe even 2?) was the best you could make out of that system and they even used the rules bloat to create something nice, but some problems like the vehicle/Monster split just couldn't be overcome, which showed at Mechanicum (or Tau) just turning their walkers into monsters et voila - immediately they became OP.

okay, I will give you those yea, but honestly, I still preffer HH1 to 5th or 4th. The gameplay itself feels better to me baring a few flaws, and army building is my absolute favorite for this edition.

 Tiger9gamer wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Nah, sorry but I'm in the camp of 7th was borked to the core, too.
From hull points to wound allocation to Monster rules to psychic system it just made some problems I had with the 3-7th framework even worse. (6th was even worse though, as 7th basically was a small patch to 6th). I agree that HH 1 (or maybe even 2?) was the best you could make out of that system and they even used the rules bloat to create something nice, but some problems like the vehicle/Monster split just couldn't be overcome, which showed at Mechanicum (or Tau) just turning their walkers into monsters et voila - immediately they became OP.

okay, I will give you those yea, but honestly, I still preffer HH1 to 5th or 4th. The gameplay itself feels better to me baring a few flaws, and army building is my absolute favorite for this edition.

HH is written for armies that are all T4 3+ save, in no way does it help anyone else play the game.

 Hellebore wrote:


HH is written for armies that are all T4 3+ save, in no way does it help anyone else play the game.

See my previous example; bring up that HH1 is just 7th edition with some quality of life updates, they reply like this.

The Legions and red army books are balanced around marines, yes, but the core rules (what I like the most) is just 7th ed. you can play a 7th ed codex vs a 7th ed codex with no hiccups outside of the lack of formations.

That implies that anything that wasn't a space marine could play effectively in that game...

Just because eldar could take broken wraithknights didn't make the army effective. Trying playing anything with T3 and 5+sv and tell me that those models were effective at all.

The latter 6th and 7th editions required that a faction only play the most broken combo because everything else was useless. That's not a good system.

 Hellebore wrote:
That implies that anything that wasn't a space marine could play effectively in that game...

Just because eldar could take broken wraithknights didn't make the army effective. Trying playing anything with T3 and 5+sv and tell me that those models were effective at all.

The latter 6th and 7th editions required that a faction only play the most broken combo because everything else was useless. That's not a good system.

The core system is pretty similar 3rd-7th. There are tweaks (largely with Vehicles) but the bones are the same.

I will 100% agree there were Codex issues aplenty-but that's different from the core rules.

Except that the codex issues are due to the flaws of the core system. You just can't balance AP rules effectively, so they make codexes that work around that to give at least something that's effective in a codex.

I challenge anyone to make an army that relies on T3 Sv5+ models to play using the AP system without having to create all sorts of crutch units or upgrades to support it.

Guard never actually used their troops, guardians were useless.

The codexes were responding to the limitations of the core rules, so only units that were able to ignore core issues like the AP system were effective in their own right.

A guardian weapon platform shouldn't be the only effective model in a squad of 20 guardians.

 Hellebore wrote:
Except that the codex issues are due to the flaws of the core system. You just can't balance AP rules effectively, so they make codexes that work around that to give at least something that's effective in a codex.

I challenge anyone to make an army that relies on T3 Sv5+ models to play using the AP system without having to create all sorts of crutch units or upgrades to support it.

Guard never actually used their troops, guardians were useless.

The codexes were responding to the limitations of the core rules, so only units that were able to ignore core issues like the AP system were effective in their own right.

A guardian weapon platform shouldn't be the only effective model in a squad of 20 guardians.

Yes, back in 7th it took 18 shots from basic Infantry to kill a single Marine. As compared to today, where it takes... *Checks notes* 36 shots.
So much better and more impactful.

But basic MEQ weren't super great either-let's take some Terminators! In the past, it took 36 shots from a basic Infantry with a Lasgun to kill a Terminator. Today, it only takes... 108. Hm, that feels weird.

Well, Guardians! It took a whole 6 shots to kill a Marine out of cover. If they had a 5+ cover save, it'd increase to 7, and with a 4+, to 8.
But today, it only takes 12 shots to kill a Marine out of cover! And with cover, that increases to 18.

Okay, Terminators vs. Guardians. It used to take 9 shots to kill a Terminator. If they had 4+ Cover, it took 11 shots. And if they had a Storm Shield, hoo boy! It took 14!
But today, it only takes 41 shots to kill a Terminator! Give them cover, and it's 81. Give them a Storm Shield and no Cover, 54 shots. And with a Storm Shield AND Cover, 108 shots.

When did i ever say the current rules were better?

 Hellebore wrote:
When did i ever say the current rules were better?

It felt pretty heavily implied.

If that wasn't your intent, my apologies.

No my issue is the intrinsic issue with the AP and its inability to be balanced effectively.

The current modifier mechanic IS more easily balanced, but GW have bloated wounds on models which has reduced the effectiveness.

there is no changes you can make to a game that uses AP to balance it, without changing the AP system entirely. But you can just stop adding extra wounds to things in the current game and not give every weapon a save modifier.

It's the binary of AP that makes it impossible to balance, even if you stripped it off every model. It either becomes useless or too effective. At least modifiers can tweak to sit between the extremes, because they are themselves graduated rather than binary.

 Tiger9gamer wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Nah, sorry but I'm in the camp of 7th was borked to the core, too.
From hull points to wound allocation to Monster rules to psychic system it just made some problems I had with the 3-7th framework even worse. (6th was even worse though, as 7th basically was a small patch to 6th). I agree that HH 1 (or maybe even 2?) was the best you could make out of that system and they even used the rules bloat to create something nice, but some problems like the vehicle/Monster split just couldn't be overcome, which showed at Mechanicum (or Tau) just turning their walkers into monsters et voila - immediately they became OP.

okay, I will give you those yea, but honestly, I still preffer HH1 to 5th or 4th. The gameplay itself feels better to me baring a few flaws, and army building is my absolute favorite for this edition.

7th might be the pre-8th-overhaul edition that I wear the thickest rose tinted glasses for. I think there was plenty that worked about 7th, and if you took the time to tailor your lists to your opponents' with the goal of having a good game, you could have a really solid game. I also think it's the last edition to feel more like "real 40k, " and I suspect the gamey vibe of stratagems are a big part of that.

But while I think most of the problems with 7th are found on the codex level (formations, internal and external balance issues, etc.), the core rules are still probably less than ideal. And that's even setting aside a bunch of the ambiguous wording issues that caused debates in my group like what it means to "throw" grenades.

The psychic system was doing that gimmicky psychic battery, random power, poorly balanced powers thing. A lot of the rules that got dropped in 8th were kind of just rolling for the sake of rolling. Random game length was zany. Etc. (I actually liked hull points though.)

For me personally, I think it's less that 7th was *good* and more that it was the last edition to feel "familiar." 8th overhauled a lot of stuff. And while many of those changes were good ones, it did sort of change the vibe of the game. And then stratagems on top of that kind of started the "e-sports" vibe that people talk about today.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Well, Guardians! It took a whole 6 shots to kill a Marine out of cover. If they had a 5+ cover save, it'd increase to 7, and with a 4+, to 8.
But today, it only takes 12 shots to kill a Marine out of cover! And with cover, that increases to 18.

Tbf, I still like the general move of marines to having W2 with the new AP system. It feels better to me to kill half a marine with my shurikens AP-1 generally being factored in (unless the marine stook the time to grab cover.) And the second wound on marines makes each marine death feel "earned" whereas it always felt frustrating to lose a marine to a single lucky laspistol shot back in the day.

I enjoy the general sense that defensive and offensive stats are both part of the conversation. I feel like the mistake on GW's part was upping the lethality of every army in the game to compensate in 9th rather than just upping the cost of marines and letting them be both expensive and durable.

 JNAProductions wrote:
The core system is pretty similar 3rd-7th. There are tweaks (largely with Vehicles) but the bones are the same.

I will 100% agree there were Codex issues aplenty-but that's different from the core rules.

thank you.

 Hellebore wrote:
That implies that anything that wasn't a space marine could play effectively in that game...

Just because eldar could take broken wraithknights didn't make the army effective. Trying playing anything with T3 and 5+sv and tell me that those models were effective at all.

The latter 6th and 7th editions required that a faction only play the most broken combo because everything else was useless. That's not a good system.

Again, this is a codex problem, and part of the reason why people at the time gravitated to HH1, and played HH1 for 10 years until HH2 came out. When HH1 fully split off into it's own system of 7th ed+, they removed the largest cause of codex imbalance at the time; formations.

I have played against plenty of opponents back then that made guard work, and if you tell me eldar had weak toughness cause they largely didnt get saves outside of wraiths i'm going to fully think you're trolling.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

7th might be the pre-8th-overhaul edition that I wear the thickest rose tinted glasses for. I think there was plenty that worked about 7th, and if you took the time to tailor your lists to your opponents' with the goal of having a good game, you could have a really solid game. I also think it's the last edition to feel more like "real 40k, " and I suspect the gamey vibe of stratagems are a big part of that.

But while I think most of the problems with 7th are found on the codex level (formations, internal and external balance issues, etc.), the core rules are still probably less than ideal. And that's even setting aside a bunch of the ambiguous wording issues that caused debates in my group like what it means to "throw" grenades.

The psychic system was doing that gimmicky psychic battery, random power, poorly balanced powers thing. A lot of the rules that got dropped in 8th were kind of just rolling for the sake of rolling. Random game length was zany. Etc. (I actually liked hull points though.)

For me personally, I think it's less that 7th was *good* and more that it was the last edition to feel "familiar." 8th overhauled a lot of stuff. And while many of those changes were good ones, it did sort of change the vibe of the game. And then stratagems on top of that kind of started the "e-sports" vibe that people talk about today.

I admit, those are some good problems. Still disagree on the last parts about 7th not being good, but I can fully admit that a lot of the stuff like random powers / warlord traits, random game length, night fighting happening every game ect is stuff that can be dropped or changed if they stuck with the framework.

still, it's my preffered and favorite. Hell this thread is making me want to write a fan FAQ to help this...

Sure. Like I said on the previous page, I feel like one of my dream versions of 40k would basically steal a lot of the better ideas from various editions and just address the problems with the base edition rather than throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

That's part of why the 3-year cycle has been a little frustrating. It feels like they keep sabotaging efforts to make the game significantly better on the whole by throwing out their refinements and injecting new problems every other edition.

6th had issues. 7th had issues but fixed a lot of stuff that was wrong with 6th. But then also cranked things up to 11 and broke things again.

8th was an overhaul that wiped the slate clean. It had its own issues, but 9th improved on a lot of those. But then also cranked up things to 11 and broke things again.

And then 10th wiped the slate clean. It has its own issues, but 11th will (if the pattern holds) fix some of those problems but then also crank things up to 11 and make us all beg for 12th edition to wipe the slate clean. And they'll throw out a lot of what worked, and they'll introduce new problems, and those problems will get partially addressed in 13th before it all gets thrown out in 14th.