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.

For example, blast templates and scatter. They added a wonderfully chaotic element to artillery (you could hit your own troops!), but the arguments about the direction of the scatter and which models were covered or not were often a nightmare. In addition, templates incentivized trying to space out your models as much as possible, which was often a pain in the ass for horde armies. Part of me misses templates, but I fully understand why they had to go.

This can also be in terms of fluff, not just rules. For example, many players still claim to miss the Squats (though I suspect some of them are just trying to fish for grognard cred at this point). Surely most of us agree, however, that space dwarfs would no longer fit the current 40k setting, which has evolved away from "Tolkienesque fantasy in space".

(The original quote from which the thread subject is inspired was about the Soviet Union.)

.

Dare I say it, 7th edition's Formations. They were cool thematic ways to build your army beyond the basic detachments and gave you some extra abilities for doing so, at the cost of flexibility. The downside: some of them gave such ridiculously good benefits that they totally broke the game and made it unfun for anyone on the other side of the table. Or they led to massively spammy lists (coughwarpspiderscough) that were just braindead. Still others gave players a crazy amount of free points (like the Gladius/Lion's Blade Strike Force for Marines) which massively upset the balance of the game.

Still, some of them are remembered fondly, at least by me. Most of the ones in the Khorne Daemonkin book were cool without being OP as balls (let's face it, I just miss that army all around and hope GW decides to redo it at some point). And I played the Ravenwing and Deathwing Strike Forces from the Dark Angels book a lot, and they certainly didn't break the game and made it fun to run those elements of my army.

Formations are one of those great design ideas that GW turned terrible through lack of discipline and/or love of money.

Challenges. That is all.

Rhino Rush.

The game died when they banned those. 3rd edition ruled.

Metal miniatures.
Failcast destroyed many good designs over Night, but the answer can't be to just go back.

Various craftworlder jump shoot jump mechanics. They were miserable for your opponent who basically wasn't allowed to shoot you, but they made the space elves feel fast and dodgey in a way they really haven't since the start of 8th.

Templates and vehicle facings.

Ork vehicles having a transport capacity of "as many as you can stack on it without them falling off"!

Destroyer Weapons

The original version in 4th was actually fine: a hit caused Instant Death, but acted like a standard attack in the sense that it allowed any eligible saves. If you had an Ap0 Destroyer weapon representing a dirty bomb for example, then even Guardsmen would get an armour save.

Then they turned it up to 11 in 7th Edition whereas anything not a Super-Heavy instantly dies on a 2+.


I also enjoyed the 4th Ed Vortex weapons, where GW even said in the weapon rules "don't even think about taking any form of save, as the Vortex is not interested in your Synapse, Adamantium Mantle, or any other rules, just remove them". It was balanced somewhat by being a one-use weapon but overall pretty fun when you slap down a 10" template and just sweep it off the board.

Anyone who doesn't miss green rods has no heart. Anyone who wants metal back has no brain.

Anyone who doesn't miss indexes has no heart. Anyone who wants hull points back has no brain.

 ZergSmasher wrote:
Dare I say it, 7th edition's Formations. They were cool thematic ways to build your army beyond the basic detachments and gave you some extra abilities for doing so, at the cost of flexibility.

Still, some of them are remembered fondly, at least by me. Most of the ones in the Khorne Daemonkin book were cool without being OP as balls (let's face it, I just miss that army all around and hope GW decides to redo it at some point). And I played the Ravenwing and Deathwing Strike Forces from the Dark Angels book a lot, and they certainly didn't break the game and made it fun to run those elements of my army.

Some formations and detachments had hints of fluff, but mostly it was just bloat for the bloat throne. Units that were overcosted and needed to be fielded together with other units to be anywhere near worth using, instead of bad but fluffy combinations of units made worth using in combination by way of buffs.

The SM detachment is the only one that got things right in terms of requiring Devastators, Tacs and Ass Marines, but it failed incredibly hard in the balance and theme department because it turned SM into a mechanised horde. Necrons had a few formations that made sense, but more misses than hits and decurion detachments did not make sense for Necrons in the first place.

I thought I would miss them, but I really haven't.

Forgeworlds insanely expensive 'big' scenery pieces like the anphelion base, fortress walls, and trench networks. Very cool for the handful of people who remortgaged their house to buy one.

-Guardsman- wrote:
...but the arguments about the direction of the scatter and which models were covered or not were often a nightmare.

Put six numbered arrows on the blast and roll a d6 instead of a scatter dice, and have a conservative maximum upper limit on hits per blast/template. Fixes most problems in theory.

Basically, the playstyle of the game where you only ever cracked out the rulebook when there was a disagreement, and even then it was pretty damn vague.

It made playing with likeminded folks who just wanted to use the game as sort of a silly arbiter of 'let's throw guys on the table and see what happens' an absolute blast...and it made the terrible horrible things that donkey-caves could do by....ahem...."Interestingly" interpreting the letter of the rules absolutely miserable and gakky.

As a society I think we just need to bring back 'sometimes its OK to punch people for having gakky attitudes.'

 the_scotsman wrote:
Basically, the playstyle of the game where you only ever cracked out the rulebook when there was a disagreement, and even then it was pretty damn vague.

It made playing with likeminded folks who just wanted to use the game as sort of a silly arbiter of 'let's throw guys on the table and see what happens' an absolute blast...and it made the terrible horrible things that donkey-caves could do by....ahem...."Interestingly" interpreting the letter of the rules absolutely miserable and gakky.

As a society I think we just need to bring back 'sometimes its OK to punch people for having gakky attitudes.'

Expanding on that the infamous "dreadsock" might fit the the topic at hand .

Vehicle facings are something tons of people miss yet I distinctly remember them almost never coming in to play in lots of peoples games. Like literal years of reading/watching batreps, I think I can count on two hands the number of times I saw armor facings come into play (aside from melee attacks always hitting rear armor on non-walkers).

Ultimately, the mechanic just served to disincentive movement. Attack ranges are so long in this game that people would just set up parking lots in their deployment zone or set up a vehicle midboard with its ass up against a terrain piece and then leave it there. The "fantasy" of armor battles with tanks jockeying to get at their opponents' weaker facings never happened.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Vehicle facings are something tons of people miss yet I distinctly remember them almost never coming in to playin lots of peoples games. Like literal years of reading/watching batreps, I think I can count on two hands the number of times I saw armor facings come into play (aside from melee attacks always hitting rear armor on non-walkers).

Ultimately, the mechanic just served to disincentive movement. Attack ranges are so long in this game that people would just set up parking lots in their deployment zone or put a set up a vehicle midboard with its ass up against a terrain piece and then leave it there. The "fantasy" of armor battles with tanks jockeying to get at their opponents' weaker facings never happened.

I think that owed more to the punitive 'how much can you shoot for how fast you move as a vehicle' rules more than anything else. In particular in 7th when the monster v vehicle gap got really egregious any tank you set up on the board would just get absolutely nailed by some flying coldstar suit or eldar jetbikes or something flying into the rear armor.

Armor facings, and directional wound allocation, promoted movement. Sometimes that tac squad you had pushed forward would get the flank shot with the ML, or outflanking scout bikers would rapid fire krack grenades into someone’s rear armor.

I liked it, but I do think the few times it came out were not worth the arguments about what guns had LOS, or where your non-box vehicle was getting shot.

The vehicles didn't move in either of those scenarios.

Infantry has always had a incentive to move, by virtue of being relatively short ranged and the primary objective capturer.

True. Depending on the edition vehicles were either a way to be able to get heavy weapons where they needed to be (like MMs on speeders and such) or overpriced buckets of guns you could either use, or move. Like the classic phobos LR, which wanted to be both a gunboat with the godhammers, or a battlefield taxi with the cargo, was priced assuming it was doing both, but were mutually exclusive.

Guessing ranges for indirect fire weapons

 vict0988 wrote:
Anyone who doesn't miss green rods has no heart. Anyone who wants metal back has no brain.

Anyone who doesn't miss indexes has no heart. Anyone who wants hull points back has no brain.

That's not it works.

The rules for being unable to fall back. They made sense from a narrative perspective because retreating from melee in good order is really hard, but in practice it meant that the moment a good fast melee unit made it to your lines the game was over.

-Guardsman- wrote:
Surely most of us agree, however, that space dwarfs would no longer fit the current 40k setting, which has evolved away from "Tolkienesque fantasy in space".

*looks at 40k*

I'm sorry, a setting with army lists which support 3 (or 4, depending on your POV on Ynnari) flavours of Elf, Orcs, Halfings and Ogres has "has evolved away from "Tolkienesque fantasy in space"" and doesn't have room for Dwarfs?

Start selling whatever you're smoking, you'll make a fortune.

chaos 3.5 codex

if you want this back you hate game balance and either didn't play then or played CSM.

die toten hosen wrote:
chaos 3.5 codex

if you want this back you hate game balance and either didn't play then or played CSM.

14 years and still they cry.

The Newman wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
Anyone who doesn't miss green rods has no heart. Anyone who wants metal back has no brain.

Anyone who doesn't miss indexes has no heart. Anyone who wants hull points back has no brain.

That's not it works.

The rules for being unable to fall back. They made sense from a narrative perspective because retreating from melee in good order is really hard, but in practice it meant that the moment a good fast melee unit made it to your lines the game was over.

Ah, I get it now. I hated the fall back rules a lot, playing Necrons I found it in no way narratively satisfying so I was just left with losing good units for no real reason.

Gangster GSC would clash with the mining aesthetic so it's not something GW should bring back, but something I'd love to see done as a conversion project. The old Wulfen death frenzy as well, Wulfen got done dirty in the SM 9th ed update, but at the same time, I don't think it was healthy for them to murderize melee units while being so weak to shooting and feel no pains are always a chore to resolve. The Necron combo that made all ground difficult and dangerous would also count, having to roll to see if every unit that moves T1 takes damage would be a chore and slowing an entire army's movement by 2" would take up too much of Orikan's power budget.

Multi-die armor penetration rules. They made weapon choice interesting and also prevented small arms from exploding vehicles (with very rare exceptions). This comes from 2nd ed where placement of vehicles and troops made a difference. The problem was that you couldn't fast roll any attacks and you needed a chart of some kind to find out how many of which dice you rolled when shooting at a vehicle.

For example:
http://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2009/2/7/18805_md-WD187REVIEW11.JPG

Forge world settings and armies. Some of that was the coolest stuff in 40k. Look at the amphlion project for one. Veteran doctrines as well.

edit: I did not read this thread properly.

Ork biker nob deathstars. They were absolutely devastating and made orks a real threat in a time where the book was pretty much garbage outside of green tide and hidden PK nobs.

Hand sculpted minis.

CAD design can make some amazing minis in terms of complexity and can work really well for huge centerpiece models but most of the CAD models feel like they were churned off a production line, there's no real personality to them. The older sculpts of Archaon, Bel'akor and The Emperors Champion still have way more character than the over-designed models we have now, there's a lot or artistry and stylistic choices based on limitation lost in CAD design. On a technical level the CAD designs great and the level of detail is amazing, but when I look at Guilliman or any AoS models I don't think many people would consider them iconic models that people will remember for decades after they've been replaced. That said for every iconic hand sculpted mini there's 20 deformed abominations that not even a mother could love.

Blast Templates. It would be simple to do - Large and small blast markers, place them so the centre is at most at your maximum range, then roll to hit for every model partially covered by the marker.
But then, you’ll still have the same arguments about placement, cover and all the same. Still, I do miss the old pie plates.