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Hello,

Do you guys think Warpath is better than the old 2nd and 3rd edition of Warhammer 40k?

I have a friend who hates Warpath and he told me he prefers to play the old 40k rules instead.

Never played 2nd edition 40K. I haven't played Warpath but looking at the rules, I think I'd prefer pretty much any edition of 40K.

Better than 2nd edition, worse than 3rd edition.

I played both extensively.

Think you got the numbers 2nd and 3rd mixed up there Scarletsquig

I definitely don't, unless you can quote me the armour penetration value of a 2nd edition reaper autocannon from memory. :p

What was it? 2d4+d8+d12+5 or something?

Boy, that sure was fun, especially since me and my friends never had the funny shaped dice and had to make do with the "fudge it using d6's" rules at the front of the book. We were lucky if we ever finished a game.

2nd edition was a slow and kludgey mess with zero game balance and a billion different cards on the table.

I was reading last night the 3rd edition and many basic rules looks a lot like 5th ediiton. It was like 186 pages and must of it was fluff, how to make a terrain and starting your army.

I think if GW concentrates more on rules, codexes will be like 30 pages and main rules like 60 pages.

@scarletsquig: Don't forget the fun of Chainfists (I think they had a d20 in there somewhere for penetration in adition to a d12, a d8, and a couple d6s), the 3+ on 2d6 terminator save, and grenades spilling out your ears.

I agree that 2e 40K < Warpath < 3e 40K, but with better rules to speed up moving and LOS for Warpath, it'd be about equally good imo.

scarletsquig wrote:
Boy, that sure was fun, especially since me and my friends never had the funny shaped dice and had to make do with the "fudge it using d6's" rules at the front of the book. We were lucky if we ever finished a game.

Not GW's fault you didn't have RPG dice.

Damn OK, I will bite. I guess a lot of it depends what you grew up with, or were used to.

The game was only broken if you allowed it to be - as always, so much depends on your gaming group, and I used to love the level of action and cinematic sequences; Of out of control vehicles smashing into stuff and blowing up, assault units throwing grenades through windows, your units being able to defensive fire when they knew they were going to get charged.

Really, it was the ideal large scale skirmish game. But, GW wanted to take the miniature count higher, which was why 3rd edition increased the level of abstraction and made the game play almost like a mass-battle system. Although somewhat amusingly without most of the tactical options that other games which feature that scale usually allow.

Andy Chambers wrote a rule-set for 4th that would have changed this, and made a game system that suited the larger scale and introduced more tactics - quite revolutionary for the time with its break of the 'I-go-you-go' turn sequence, and used a 'reaction' system insead - and how many other games have since adopted this mechanic now? But, the upper brass didn't want this as the 'rules-codex-few new models' cycle had already begun. He took the rules to Mongoose Games for their Starship Troopers game, where despite the great rules and (some) great miniatures the game was mis-managed into oblivion. So, what we have now is essentially Warhammer 40,000 3.3 edition with 3.4 on the way, and why a lot of people feel like they have been playing practically the same game system for almost 15 years.

I guess horses for courses and all that, but unless you were there and around through 1st edition (which I only caught the last few years of), and 2nd and then through to 3rd, you wouldn't realise how massively unpopular the latter set of rules were when they were released. Even though you could argue that it was to make the game more accessible to younger kids, veterans of the system left it in droves. My mates and I played half a dozen games and then dumped it in disgust and switched to Fantasy, which managed to ignore the focus of GW's single-minded money men and has stayed as a pretty good system until the latest version was released. Some add-on books came out later which back-tracked and gave rules for grenades and the like, which I can only imagine was a result of complaints, but it was too little and too late.

As a younger kid, I loved 3rd edition.

And also Mordheim. Didn't get into fantasy until 6th edition, but really liked that too.

Yes, as Pacific mentioned, the 3rd edition rules they look a lot like 5th edition. Only a few things were added.

I have fond memories playing Rogue Trader, 2nd, and 3rd. I skipped 4 and 5 but I will be buying 6th for sure.

Warpath doesn't use individual casualty removal, correct? A large 'problem' with current 40K seems to be figuring out which guys got killed... everyone wants their special weapons to survive, so there's argument over wound allocation/etc. Seems like Mantic dealt with that issue.

I would go with Scarletsquig's assessment too. 2nd was a good enough skirmish system. But 3rd was where I did all my best gaming, I think.

Dr Mathias wrote:I have fond memories playing Rogue Trader, 2nd, and 3rd. I skipped 4 and 5 but I will be buying 6th for sure.

Warpath doesn't use individual casualty removal, correct? A large 'problem' with current 40K seems to be figuring out which guys got killed... everyone wants their special weapons to survive, so there's argument over wound allocation/etc. Seems like Mantic dealt with that issue.

You are right, the wound allocation system is a mess. But some people are having probles with the fragged results and nerve results in Warpath.

NOTHING is better than 40K 2nd Edition and just about EVERYTHING is better than 40K 3rd Edition!

Alpharius wrote:NOTHING is better than 40K 2nd Edition and just about EVERYTHING is better than 40K 3rd Edition!

I'm with this guy on this topic.

Alpharius wrote:NOTHING is better than 40K 2nd Edition and just about EVERYTHING is better than 40K 3rd Edition!

Rogue trader was better!

2nd edition dumbed it all down for kiddies by removing the Int, Cl and WP stats!

*sits back and waits to be outdone by someone who played the original release of laserburn*

Haha yes right, I guess there is something to people's favourite game being the one they started with. I remember there being a certain amount of anger when Marines were being changed from T3 to T4 for instance, although this was before the days of the Internet so it was strictly limited to an angry nerd ranting about it to an audience of half a dozen people in a shop!

Probably the first time I ever heard "why do they always favour marines?!" though..

It does say something though that Necromunda is still so popular, with its bastardised version of 2nd edition rules. In fact I would say it was probably still my favourite rules system/game at that kind of scale until I played Infinity. I have no doubt at all if it was supported in any kind of meaningful way (perhaps subbed in, in place of LoTR in shops?) the casual wargaming public would go absolutely mental for it.

Alpharius wrote:NOTHING is better than 40K 2nd Edition and just about EVERYTHING is better than 40K 3rd Edition!

You're my new favorite person.

I never found 2nd Edition 40K to be that hard, unless you wanted larger battles. It was a good system for a couple of squads per side, with some vehicles added in. That's why a lesser version of it works so awesomely for Necromunda.

-Weapon armor penetration was easy to work with, as long as you had a set of RPG dice. For most normal weapons, the Penetration roll was D6+Strength+Damage.

At least vehicles were handled better than in Rogue Trader, where they just had "wounds" and "armor saves" like every other model. A land raider was perfectly fine from game-on until it's last wound.

AegisGrimm wrote:At least vehicles were handled better than in Rogue Trader, where they just had "wounds" and "armor saves" like every other model. A land raider was perfectly fine from game-on until it's last wound.

Which is what makes the monstrous creater rules so perpetually frustrating...

AegisGrimm wrote:
At least vehicles were handled better than in Rogue Trader, where they just had "wounds" and "armor saves" like every other model. A land raider was perfectly fine from game-on until it's last wound.

Except that you had a chance to do special damage to it whenever you wounded it. Lascannons and multi meltas and other high damage heavy weapons had a good chance of blowing one up. You could also damage the drive system from what I recall.

Now if you had said that they were handled better than the late Rogue Trader rules where you had to roll to see where you hit on the vehicle, then I agree with that. Waaay too fiddly but a lot of fun at the same time.

I lovingly painted a squad of Mark VII Strike Force Marines right when they came out, and stuffed them in my Land Raider. On their maiden voyage I distinctly remember it getting shot at maximum range with a lascannon- the shot slipped through the powerfield and trashed it, killing a bunch of the squad. It barely managed to limp off the table edge- I didn't want my opponent to finish it off, LOL. It was almost like I was trying to protect the gene-seed or something. We certainly played oddly.

Good times!

2nd edition is fine as long as you can find people who won't abuse it (and destroy those two wargear cards that even the designers think were a bad idea).

It's a better skirmish game and it never really coped with being a "battle" game - epic was far superior for that.

Haven't played Warpath yet. Tomorrow's War is my current go-to for futuristic SF infantry (with vehicle support) skirmish games.

The problem with 2nd Ed was that it was really HeroHammer. When in my first game of 3rd ed my Imperial Guard squads killed an Eldar Avatar, I was sold from that point on.

Never really played 4th much. Just a few casual games. Even less of 5th.

Late to the party on this one, but having recently played 2nd edition (and I own DMil and all the codicies) and since 3rd edition (from what I recall) is not drastically different than 5th (which I've played a bit more recently) I'd say that I prefer Warpath to either of them.

For the record, I'm someone who really enjoy's simpler rulesets.

2nd edition is a mess, IMHO. Takes far to long to resolve anything. It's plays like a warband skirmish set (10-20 figures a side) that someone decided to turn into a mass battle game. I'd gladly play a narrative-driven campaign of 2nd edition with warband size forces, but otherwise it ends up being herohammer to the extreme.

3rd edition was more playable for me, but having played Warpath a few times I prefer it. When I want to cram the battlefield with figs and get the battle done in a couple hours. I go with Warpath.

If I want a more detailed or realistic set of rules, there are far better sets that 3-5th ed 40k.

Eilif wrote:Late to the party on this one, but having recently played 2nd edition (and I own DMil and all the codicies) and since 3rd edition (from what I recall) is not drastically different than 5th (which I've played a bit more recently) I'd say that I prefer Warpath to either of them.

For the record, I'm someone who really enjoy's simpler rulesets.

2nd edition is a mess, IMHO. Takes far to long to resolve anything. It's plays like a warband skirmish set (10-20 figures a side) that someone decided to turn into a mass battle game. I'd gladly play a narrative-driven campaign of 2nd edition with warband size forces, but otherwise it ends up being herohammer to the extreme.

3rd edition was more playable for me, but having played Warpath a few times I prefer it. When I want to cram the battlefield with figs and get the battle done in a couple hours. I go with Warpath.

If I want a more detailed or realistic set of rules, there are far better sets that 3-5th ed 40k.

I enjoy simple rules too, but my friends enjoy more complicated stuff like 40k.

Capt. Camping wrote:
I enjoy simple rules too, but my friends enjoy more complicated stuff like 40k.

Fair enough. If I had to choose from the three something other than Warpath, I'd take 3rd edition for anything over 750 points. Not a perfect ruleset, but nicely streamlined compared to what came before.

HI all.
2nd ed was a improvment over RT for a skirmish rule set.STILL over complicated and a bit clunky in the resoluition department.

3rd ed 40k was a battle game not a skirmish game.
As Epic SM was and IS a much better battle game than ANY edition of 40k.

I often wonder what numbskull decided to do a hatchet job on a skirmish rule set to fit more models on the table.

Rather than take an exellent battle game and add detail to it to make it scale apropriate.

WHFB ins space = limited counter intuitive game play.
KoW in space = limited counter intuitive game play.

At lest mantic realised this in Beta testing.
GW plc are on 4th relaese of this mess and still dont want to acknowledge the problems.

The "numskull" in chief was the revered Andy Chambers, who compromised design for the his CEO's bean counting.

Anyhow, what hours of fun could be had in RT, loading down your 10 (or less) models with everything including the kitchen sink. Rolling d100's for random weapon choices or if you were of the Chaos ilk perhaps a d1000 (no it is right) for your mutation/chaos gifts. Halcyon days when one hero could smash his way through so many enemy minions with impunity, having a 3+ save on 2 dice, 8 wounds and several re-rolls.

Then they spoilt it all by going all po-faced and pretending 40k was hard core SF gaming