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My friends joined during 7th, and I joined during 8th, and we are all currently playing 8th. I played 7th twice, using 30k armies. I don't have much experience when it comes to the edition, and no experience when it comes to older ones. Why is 7th considered the worst edition for 40k?

7th started off by addressing some issues of 6th, such as toning back the effectiveness of D weapons. But it quickly got out of control with Formation rules that cranked up the power levels of armies (quite inequally) very high. A new player coming in with a casual list could be roflstomped by lists that were nigh-impossible to even begin contending with.

Then GW cranked it up even further mid edition, with absolutely wild additional abilities (for some armies) being added to the mix. It just got totally absurd. My 1850 point Marine army started the game with 2500 points or something. My Chaos army would pile Spawn and other nasties into a building, and then I'd move the building with a psychic power, then assault out of it. It was nuts.

Personally I'd rate 7th higher than 6th, because at Insectum put it it started as a patch to that edition.
The problems were already in the Core rules, though.
- Lots of USRs of which some were 2 USRs (zealot) , others hardly ever used (rampage) , or useless rolling without effect (Soulblaze)
- Random Warlord traits and psychic powers
- Hull points turned the whole vehicle rules into bloat and vehicles into paper (HH tries to mitigate that by giving Upgrades that ignore vehicle rules to everybody...)
- Psychic phase turned most psykers into batteries for a powerful one, denying was basically impossible and the phase overall tedious and highly random
- As soon as you had psykers that could reliably get invisibility the game broke down
- taking wounds from the front looked thematic, but killed CC armies (other things added to that), add also that it lead to very strange situations when blasts hit something behind cover
- Unit types were bloated, I had to reread the difference between jump and Jet every game
- Monsters had a lot of bonuses so vehicles wanted to be and actually became monsters (dreadknight, riptide) to improve sales

- Formations of formations split the game into haves and have nots, balance was very bad due to these as they just threw some special rules around like candy

I will also add:

- Terrible fight phase. It was so strictly coded that you had no choice at all in it. After declaring the charge, the opponent could do the rest by himself. Completely railroaded.

No FAQ/Errata Support from GW until the very end (and than GW changed rules to the opposite of what everyone whas doing)

Formations with free units starting and not seen before power creep mid-edition (by the end some armies had 4000 points worth of units in a 2000 point game)

Hull Points as mix between old vehicles rules and new ones, with high rate of fire being better at killing tanks than dedicated Anti Tank weapons

Overall there was nothing that could have been solved with a Chapter Approved, but see the first point

7th core by itself was good with minor changes (like for Invisibility) which was done by FW for Horus Heresy

At least 7th had an improved version of the challenge rules, which had been terrible in previous editions.

Then 8th came and removed them altogether. And there was much rejoyce.

 TheBestBucketHead wrote:
My friends joined during 7th, and I joined during 8th, and we are all currently playing 8th. I played 7th twice, using 30k armies. I don't have much experience when it comes to the edition, and no experience when it comes to older ones. Why is 7th considered the worst edition for 40k?

Because gap between the factions was huge even just by playing average collection of models, let alone for those trying to break the game.

Rules bloat was very high, pretty much no FAQ to fix issues, and the edition still suffered from old and problematic mechanics or generic OP combinations like the AV system, the "all or nothing" AP, the clunky blast/templates, 2++ saves and re-rollable 2++ (or 3++) saves, invisibility, hundred of points of free stuff, etc...

40k community- "7th is the worst edition!"
9th- "Hold my beer!"

To me it was obvious that they were really doubling down on "buy all these models for a special bonus!" with all the special detachments that were also sold as boxes on the website.

I hate that style of army building where building a certain way gives you "free" models, it's crap. I left WM because of that. And the FOC was getting more and more broken down and degraded, along with a really bonkers psychic phase that quite a lot of the armies in the game had no way to participate in at all. If you're going to have a crazy psychic phase you can't have multiple factions with zero access to Psykers or Psyker defense. WFB has dwarves, but they get extra dispel and have runesmiths for even more magic def, as well as runes of spellbreaking and the like. Tau and Necrons got crap all, Orks have one mediocre psyker unit, and meanwhile Eldar had entire units of psykers. That's all fine and fluffy when psychic powers were relatively limited melee or shooting attacks or minor buffs, but when they changed them to be game changing magic like in WFB it really threw all balance out the window.

 Grimtuff wrote:
40k community- "7th is the worst edition!"
9th- "Hold my beer!"

Not even close, until 9th armies start getting 25% of their army for free, units can be summoned in for free (or was that 6th? Kinda blurred into one), stacked bombs with a 2++ rerolling 1s, invisibility. That alone was worth burning it down.

The TL/DR is that GW didn't care about the game as a game.

Many of the sins of 7th could have been resolved with a simple balance pass. But they never did.

I'd argue 9ths in similar spot right now - and 8th had its moments too - but usually 3-6 months in, a CA/big FAQ would come along and serve to reset the meta (roll on January 2022?). 7th was just left as an unbalanced hellscape for years.

7th edition was, as a number of people noted, the edition when GW simply stopped caring.

Formations were introduced with absurd bonuses: an AdMech formation existed which made all wargear free. Less egregious formations simply gave you 600 points of free Razorbacks, or obscene special rule bonuses. Honest to god Pay to Win.

In general a slew of 'random' tables, traits and powers, many of which possessed no value.

Massive number of frankly worthless USRs

Classic AP system (very clunky, many weapons were effectively worthless)

A wealth of rerollable 2++ saves

A return to Herohammer, with examples such as 'Smash-fether', a Space Marine captain with multiple re-rollable saves

Introduction of Knights and continuing a trend of normalising Superheavies and 'Apocalypse' D weapons.

Summoning; the ability to bring on huge numbers of free models. I can't recall if it was in 6th or 7th, but at one point summoned models could themselves summon more models.

Continuing the trend of 'Flying Circuses' - difficult to hit flying models (only 6s, unless you had dedicated anti-air, which was relatively limited at the time.

Incredible bloat of rules and options.

A confusing, and at times simply broken psychic powers section. I still have no idea how it worked. Incredibly random and with many bunk options.

Progression of the DLCification of the game also.
Formations f.e. came often with other sources. Supplements were normalised.
ETC.

It had its good sides, no primaris, Corsairs, R&H, elysians still existing. No lawtext unit limitations like PM, or the new commandos have.

But from a game standpoint, it was so horrifically balanced that even if you went out of your way to not break the game you HAD to deepdive into the mechanics and balance aspects to make a casual experience somewhat enjoyable, especially when certain factions were involved....

They are somewhat linked. 5th edition was OK, in no way good.

6th edition started out like 5th edition with three major changes. First everybody good psykick disipilines witch where trees you could pick from. This was cool, but some spells where mor eunbalanced in different codexes. Second you could start to ally in things, this was quite baffeling. Mayby you could in 5th as well, I do not remember, but in 6th it was all over the table. Lastly they introduced flyers. And that was a gak show. Mostly because they could only behit in 6's. Especially the imperial guard lascannon ship that was alreayd undercosted and had lascannons, and suddenly it got the flying only beeing hit on 6's for free. Forge world also had a 40 shot BS2+ S5 that could only be hit on 6's that was undercosted. As 6th edition went on you started seeing helldrakes everywhere. The ekdars got the wriaght knight that undercosted for what you did, it was pushed to sell the model and if it had to be priced propperly it would just be a 2 model army almost.

7th edtion I did not play but I saw from the sidelines. And it was a further exstension of the circus. I do believe one of the better armies from this era was the best unit the SM codex had, along with as many characters as you could take. (They would join and leave groups as will.) Now you cast invisabilaty with tigerius and your opponents abilaty to interact with that group was severly limited. 7th edtionw as full of things like that.

 Niiai wrote:
They are somewhat linked. 5th edition was OK, in no way good.

6th edition started out like 5th edition with three major changes. First everybody good psykick disipilines witch where trees you could pick from. This was cool, but some spells where mor eunbalanced in different codexes. Second you could start to ally in things, this was quite baffeling. Mayby you could in 5th as well, I do not remember, but in 6th it was all over the table. Lastly they introduced flyers. And that was a gak show. Mostly because they could only behit in 6's. Especially the imperial guard lascannon ship that was alreayd undercosted and had lascannons, and suddenly it got the flying only beeing hit on 6's for free. Forge world also had a 40 shot BS2+ S5 that could only be hit on 6's that was undercosted. As 6th edition went on you started seeing helldrakes everywhere. The ekdars got the wriaght knight that undercosted for what you did, it was pushed to sell the model and if it had to be priced propperly it would just be a 2 model army almost.

7th edtion I did not play but I saw from the sidelines. And it was a further exstension of the circus. I do believe one of the better armies from this era was the best unit the SM codex had, along with as many characters as you could take. (They would join and leave groups as will.) Now you cast invisabilaty with tigerius and your opponents abilaty to interact with that group was severly limited. 7th edtionw as full of things like that.

There was no allying in 5th and indeed, 4th and 5th ed codexes had basically worked to extinguish any discussion of alliances between factions (Codex Chaos Daemons has like ... maybe two mentions of Chaos Space Marines). So Allies in 6th was a massive u-turn.

I'd also like to throw Ynarri under the bus. Our entire local scene became unplayable for anyone who wasn't some form of Eldar until people got bored of fighting Eldar vs Eldar and went back to their other armies.

A bunch of interesting concepts poorly realised.

Formations for instance? A nice way to encourage “fluffy” armies over min-maxing. However, they were far from equal. Some were frankly ridiculous, including special rules and hundreds of points worth of free equipment.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
A bunch of interesting concepts poorly realised.

Formations for instance? A nice way to encourage “fluffy” armies over min-maxing. However, they were far from equal. Some were frankly ridiculous, including special rules and hundreds of points worth of free equipment.

Fluffy?!? do you mean sales driven like a certain helldrake formation that didn't even function propperly?

i member far more formations falling into spam x unit and get boni, that maybee or not work at all.

 blood reaper wrote:

 Niiai wrote:
They are somewhat linked. 5th edition was OK, in no way good.

6th edition started out like 5th edition with three major changes. First everybody good psykick disipilines witch where trees you could pick from. This was cool, but some spells where mor eunbalanced in different codexes. Second you could start to ally in things, this was quite baffeling. Mayby you could in 5th as well, I do not remember, but in 6th it was all over the table. Lastly they introduced flyers. And that was a gak show. Mostly because they could only behit in 6's. Especially the imperial guard lascannon ship that was alreayd undercosted and had lascannons, and suddenly it got the flying only beeing hit on 6's for free. Forge world also had a 40 shot BS2+ S5 that could only be hit on 6's that was undercosted. As 6th edition went on you started seeing helldrakes everywhere. The ekdars got the wriaght knight that undercosted for what you did, it was pushed to sell the model and if it had to be priced propperly it would just be a 2 model army almost.

7th edtion I did not play but I saw from the sidelines. And it was a further exstension of the circus. I do believe one of the better armies from this era was the best unit the SM codex had, along with as many characters as you could take. (They would join and leave groups as will.) Now you cast invisabilaty with tigerius and your opponents abilaty to interact with that group was severly limited. 7th edtionw as full of things like that.

There was no allying in 5th and indeed, 4th and 5th ed codexes had basically worked to extinguish any discussion of alliances between factions (Codex Chaos Daemons has like ... maybe two mentions of Chaos Space Marines). So Allies in 6th was a massive u-turn.

I played in 2nd edition briefly and there you could have a small % number of allies I think. I thought I might have gotten those and the last edition of WFB mixed up. But I remember having no allies in 5th, so probably it was not true. :-) Because I like a messy army.

My biggest problems with 6th and 7th (and to some extent 5th) was GW patched stuff that wasn't broken (in order to make ~changes~ so they had a reason to call it a new edition l instead of an errata) and the patching got out of hand.

5th toned down the Vehicle Damage Chart from 4th, made blasts scatter *always* instead of rolling to hit first (used to be only the purview of Barrage and Ordnance), changed wound allocation from a perfectly fine system into a horrendously broken one, turned the Fleet special rule into an action everyone could do, and made it harder to pile into an enemy after combat.

6th added Hull Points (worst singular change ever in an edition imo) to fix the fact that the 5th edition damage chart was so generous that vehicles basically never died. It also added challenges in Close Combat because nothing was more epic than a blood-thirster using EVERY SINGLE ATTACK on one guard sergeant and leaving the rest of the squad fine... it did fix wound allocation though, by going back to the 4th edition system. It also added the Psychic Phase because the old way powers worked was... bad or something???

7th patched 6th, continuing to dick around with vehicle damage, changed challenges, made a worse psychic phase (since 6th broke what didn't need touching, 7th tried something TOTALLY NEW!!
And then the codexes came out and it was a mess.

Chalenges wa sto make it 'more cinematic' as was their creed. And they did the same or where inspiered by the last edition of Fantasy.

It is worth pointing out that in 4th edition many of the codexes lacked a lot. The blood angels where thrusted towards melee. Their assualt marine unit was troop. And if you tok them without a jump pack you got a free rhino.

5th edition gave every one every role. And 6th edition gave every armour a flyer of some sort. Only GSC that came later (7th edition after beeing gone for many editions) does not have a flyer. Admech also got their flyer quite late.

I remember older psychic powers, at least in 5th, to be very boring and often incredibly uninteresting to make use of. Not necessarily bad just ... kinda uninteresting? It just felt like a ranged attack with extra steps in many cases.

Also random charges - a change brought in by 6th and kept by 7th (and 8th, and 9th). Staggeringly stupid.

Not to mention challenges - one of the dumbest concepts in the game. I hate 'cinematic' gak. Characters fighting one on one should just be something opponents agree to - not some forced mechanic which becomes a practical exploit for ensuring unit survival.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
A bunch of interesting concepts poorly realised.

Formations for instance? A nice way to encourage “fluffy” armies over min-maxing. However, they were far from equal. Some were frankly ridiculous, including special rules and hundreds of points worth of free equipment.

Fluffy?!? do you mean sales driven like a certain helldrake formation that didn't even function propperly?

i member far more formations falling into spam x unit and get boni, that maybee or not work at all.

I honestly never remember any of the formations being fluffy. They always just felt like a way to try and sell an arbitrary x amount of stuff.

Older psychic powers weren't ALWAYS shooting, but yeah, ones that did damage typically were. Uninteresting was fine though - considerably better than jumping through hoops like 7th's whacky phases.

It's worth noting that psychic powers worked in 4th exactly the way they do now, except they don't have their own phase and Deny the Witch isn't a thing (pay protection comes in other ways)

I guess it depends on what army you had because Traitor Legions had a bunch of formations that were background accurate and pushed quite a lot of older kits like Berzerkers, Possessed and Bikes. Same with KDK.

 TheBestBucketHead wrote:
My friends joined during 7th, and I joined during 8th, and we are all currently playing 8th. I played 7th twice, using 30k armies. I don't have much experience when it comes to the edition, and no experience when it comes to older ones. Why is 7th considered the worst edition for 40k?

7th is a combination of incredibly complicated and bloated game design carried over from previous editions and some of the most short sighted and worst ideas on how to expand the rule set.

There were over 80 special rules you had to memorize or look up. Some of those special rules just granted other special rules. There were a dozen different unit types with different movement rates, special rules, and addendums to special rules. Some of them were so similar to each other that making them different things was meaningless. Some were so rare that I literally never once saw that type of unit on the table in years of playing. Along with the codexes, it meant that in order to really see the rules you needed like 3 books so that when one rule referenced another rule in another book which then referenced another rule in another book you could keep flipping to them.

A guy made a quick reference sheet for 7th. It was 4 pages front and back, no negative space, in like... 8 font.


Then came formations. And with formations came the Super formations with the decurion.

7th is a nightmare.

 blood reaper wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
A bunch of interesting concepts poorly realised.

Formations for instance? A nice way to encourage “fluffy” armies over min-maxing. However, they were far from equal. Some were frankly ridiculous, including special rules and hundreds of points worth of free equipment.

Fluffy?!? do you mean sales driven like a certain helldrake formation that didn't even function propperly?

i member far more formations falling into spam x unit and get boni, that maybee or not work at all.

I honestly never remember any of the formations being fluffy. They always just felt like a way to try and sell an arbitrary x amount of stuff.

That's how they always felt like to me. Buy (X) models, get (X) bonus rules. And the fact that they sold bundles for them made it look even more like that.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 blood reaper wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
A bunch of interesting concepts poorly realised.

Formations for instance? A nice way to encourage “fluffy” armies over min-maxing. However, they were far from equal. Some were frankly ridiculous, including special rules and hundreds of points worth of free equipment.

Fluffy?!? do you mean sales driven like a certain helldrake formation that didn't even function propperly?

i member far more formations falling into spam x unit and get boni, that maybee or not work at all.

I honestly never remember any of the formations being fluffy. They always just felt like a way to try and sell an arbitrary x amount of stuff.

That's how they always felt like to me. Buy (X) models, get (X) bonus rules. And the fact that they sold bundles for them made it look even more like that.

He said encourage fluffy lists. Not that they were fluffy. As with everything GW does they came up with a good idea and fethed it up with their usual incompetence.

 Gert wrote:
I'd also like to throw Ynarri under the bus. Our entire local scene became unplayable for anyone who wasn't some form of Eldar until people got bored of fighting Eldar vs Eldar and went back to their other armies.

troo story

The outgoing flip flop of Ynnari in 8th and 9th was just baffling mind

7th was the edition I bowed out of and came back a few years later.

It was a messy edition and I simply couldn't keep up with buying all the models for the formations to the point it just burned me out. Had some fun games early on in the edition and it looked to be going in the right direction from 6th but no FAQs and broken codices ruined the game.

30k is based off the ruleset and it is fairly balanced, but that's due to it being largely marines vs marines.

I hated forced challenges.
I hated the Ork codex. I can't express how bad it felt, the combination of that codex and 7th. This nearly drove me out of the hobby.
Orks once again being relegated into an npc role.