Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
2nd Ed? Even a basic sword could be used to Parry - forcing your opponent to re-roll an attack die (typically their highest), which could allow you to win that fight. Power Swords also hit at S5 with I think -3 to your save.

Power Axes could be wielded one or two handed for different hitting power and so on.

Come 3rd Ed? Close Combat weapon could be a knife, or a Space Marine Chainsword and its…..hit at your own strength, and opponent gets their full save. Power Weapons just ignored armour.

This is what screwed Howling Banshees up for so many editions. I can understand it for the list in the 3rd ed rulebook - and even the 3rd edition codex - but by the time their next list came around they really needed their vanilla power weapon replacing with a Banshee Blade that gave them a strength boost. After all, it is very hard to be an elite-killing unit if you cannae wound the elites you're trying to hunt.

Indeed. Banshees got hit so hard with a Nerf Bat, I’m not entirely convinced they completely recovered.

In 2nd Ed, they were redonkulus. Striking at S5 thanks to their Power Sword. And having a pistol for two close combat weapons, rolled two attacks.

The Banshee Mask though? On the charge (and maybe first round of combat? I’d need to check) reduced the opponent to WS1.

And that mattered, because 2nd Ed Combat were essentially Duels. Both sides rolled their attack dice, and added the highest dice to their Weapon Skill. The victor score the difference in Hits on the opponent.

Each “1” rolled reduced your score by 1. Every six rolled beyond the first added 1 to your score. Any tied scores were decided by Highest Initiative.

So, not only did Banshees have a respectable WS? They nerfed yours. Their Power Sword could also parry, making your life harder. And should you get lucky? You typically lost ties, because they had Eldar Initiative.

But? The big downside was getting them safely into combat, as they were fragile. And the Falcon was a later addition, so for a good while you had no transports.

So they were natural fire magnets. But then so were the other Aspect Warriors. And trust me. You only needed one Banshee to make contact and your squad was in for a right good kicking.

In my experience having been ion the receiving end of Eldar at the time. Eldar were broken.

Warp spiders alone could nearly table my meager Space Marine force and there was next to nothing I could do about it.

Close combat was a slog. I recently looked back at the rules for second and it looked like you could use close combat to just grind a game to a stand still. It's the one part of the game I see as not really good. I would still love to play 2nd again especially now with 28 years of 40K games under my belt. The lists would be far better than they were when I was a noob with next to no money to throw at my 40K army.

I loved plasma missiles. Wonderful way to messy up a battle field.

I forgot about the four weapons in the Command squad and Blood Angels are indeed another one of the extra codices but my point stands that you still just couldn't like drop lots of those squads. I'm still feeling confident that there is no veteran squad with power weapon options across the squad.

 Just Tony wrote:
I forgot about the four weapons in the Command squad and Blood Angels are indeed another one of the extra codices but my point stands that you still just couldn't like drop lots of those squads. I'm still feeling confident that there is no veteran squad with power weapon options across the squad.

Yeah, I forget the details - the object was to cram as many power weapons in as I could. They were the bodyguard for my captain, so whatever bonuses there were, I used.

That was my CC fire brigade, which would race to the point of the line where the enemy was likely to make contact. They did their job.

 warhead01 wrote:
Close combat was a slog. I recently looked back at the rules for second and it looked like you could use close combat to just grind a game to a stand still. It's the one part of the game I see as not really good. I would still love to play 2nd again especially now with 28 years of 40K games under my belt. The lists would be far better than they were when I was a noob with next to no money to throw at my 40K army.

One of the changes I made was to reduce single combats to a single opposed roll. Same math, less time. Games go much faster.

As much as the dueling is annoying, it limits the damage cheesed-up melee monsters can do, because they can only kill what they catch. It also provides balance because you can send in a squad and save the sergeant with the power fist for last.

Aspect warriors are a lot of fun, and 3rd really neutered them. I mean the Eldar as whole got pretty screwed in terms of Shuricats being so short ranged. No wonder they resorted to Star Cannon spam, it was their most viable option.

Don’t forget Fire Dragons had their Meltaguns swapped for Fusion Guns and a “the hell am I supposed to do with that?” S6.

Or Warp Spiders becoming awful (yes they were too good in 2nd. But that’s the Nerfing equivalent of kneecapping someone because they used a word you don’t care for)

Swooping Hawks becoming…..utterly pointless. And so on.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Don’t forget Fire Dragons had their Meltaguns swapped for Fusion Guns and a “the hell am I supposed to do with that?” S6.

Or Warp Spiders becoming awful (yes they were too good in 2nd. But that’s the Nerfing equivalent of kneecapping someone because they used a word you don’t care for)

Swooping Hawks becoming…..utterly pointless. And so on.

And yet, for all of these useless things Eldar apparently had, they still wiped the floor with everyone else (except some of the 3.5 chaos cheese) all edition long. Iirc the only time they’ve ever been actually weak was 5th, when they went the entire edition with an old codex.

With very specific, very spammy lists. The overall contents of those Codexes were crap.

My local group were playing the hell out of WHFB 5e around the release of 3e, and were getting a bit tired of only playing WHFB. The same group's 40K scene was about half of us playing 2000 point 40K 2e games as the standard, you see, and if you'd done the slow-grow army buildup since release, that was fine. But to come into the game new at that scale was...daunting. So for about half the WHFB players, myself included, 40K was a spectator sport.

So 40K 3e comes out, and it's a chance for everyone to start fresh. And boy, did we. The whole WHFB group got into it, the existing 40K players either started new armies to build with us, or slowly replaced their armies with the new miniatures and only played with those to replicate the slow-grow experience.

And we got in more games with bigger armies, and we had a lot of fun spending time together as friends with 3e...

...but when we were telling 40K war stories over dinner ten years later, they were always from 2e and never 3e.

 morganfreeman wrote:
And yet, for all of these useless things Eldar apparently had, they still wiped the floor with everyone else

Being knocked down from supremely overpowered to just overpowered is still technically a nerf :p

I think the best way I can describe my own experience of 2nd ed and 3rd onwards is that if I won big and lop-sided in 2nd I probably didn't get there through skill.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
With very specific, very spammy lists. The overall contents of those Codexes were crap.

Hasn't that kind of always been the way Eldar were? A couple disgustingly overpowered units/combos buttressing an otherwise lackluster Codex?

Post 2nd Ed? Yes.

But I’m not necessarily pinning the blame for that on 3rd Ed. Yes the over-nerfing originated there, but as 4th-6th improved the underlying rules, the various incarnations of Codex Eldar remained horrifically skewed.

I think that, when posting for this thread, it should be important to make distinct the difference between the Core Rules and the Content.

For instance, this is probably nostalgia talking, but 7th Edition (the one I started in) had some reasonably solid core rules. I don't think they were perfect, certainly, but as a base? Pretty decent.
The content, though... Hoo boy, that was rough. Wild disparities in power between something like Orcs and Necrons. Complicated hoop-humping to do what you want in terms of building a list, with a ton of Formations and such altering how it worked. Layered rules.

Also, quick question: What edition did Soul Blaze start in? Was it only in 7th? Because holy crap was it a useless rule.

Lol it was 2007, fourth edition, for the tzeentch version of csms-with-icon squad. Like you said, a completely forgettable pointless rule.


Look in the filmdeg interviews - and most prior ones thus isn't new - the subjects say second edition was already created to be a collecting game and not a tactical game, it wrong to say that was third. The structural problem is already there at the time.

Without the problems that video from being g the highest earning line and from having too many cooks, GW has made very good mass battle games. People attest all the time to the merits of MESBG and Epic Armageddon

Howling Banshees were still popular enough in 3rd edition because even with S3 against T4 they skipped the whole step involving the armour save letting two thirds of the wounded marines survive. Banshees fared a lot worse against T5 or the like but they could whup marines well enough. Nobody in power armour particularly liked seeing squads of them drop out of Wave Serpents. They were as much of a part of Eldar being anti-MEQ specialists as the Starcannon was.

Striking Scorpions got to be more generalist close combat troops, though. Banshees were solidly specialised against small-ish units that relied on their armour keeping them alive. Hordes, monsters and vehicles made them sweat.

Unless my maths is wonky? And it probably is….Banshees and Marines in 3rd Ed did similar levels of damage to each other?

Now, the first bit I’ve probably gone wrong is WS. But I think both units were WS4. So each have a 1/2 chance of landing a hit.

The Marines, being S4 vs T3 had a 2/3 chance of wounding.

The Banshees, being S3 vs T4 had a 1/3 chance of wounding.

Now, with a 4+ Save, the Banshees would save 1/2 the wounds from the Marines. The Marines would save nowt, on account No Saves For You, Smelly Mon-Keigh.

So. Let’s say 10 attacks each. And I’ll round down, counting fractions as a success.

Marines should land 5 hits. Two thirds of those will wound. So 4 wounds (remember I’m rounding favourably for nice whole numbers). Banshees would save 50%, so Two Dead Banshees.

Banshees also land 5 hits. One third of which wound. So Two Dead Marines.

Of course the Banshees Helmet would help, as it was typically rare for them to strike last, letting them reduce the Marines number.

But when your Elite Close Combat Troops are doing the same damage as 10 Bog Standard Tactical Marines? Your Elites are weedy.

As I said though my maths is quite possibly off. All I ask of anyone looking to correct (and I genuinely welcome that!) is to likewise round favourably in all instances.

Yeah, though Banshees would have more attacks than Marines in most situations. 10 vs 10 means Banshees are outnumbered unless they're up against marine CC specialists.

10 attacks vs 10 attacks isn't accurate to the circumstances you'd want to play them in, though, because that would be 5 Howling Banshees getting charged by 5 tactical marines, or in a complete vacuum against 10 tac marines or 5 assault marines. Additionally, they strike first so the casualties they inflicted had an impact on how many hits they took in return.

16 points of loud elf got you a very decent amount of killing power against the standard 15 points of marine (or 25 if they're slugging it out against jump troopers) in the 7-10 HB vs 5-10 various marines situations you were aiming for. People didn't always like to run larger squads of marines because you got less big guns per point spent on them that way. Two 75-point squads of five dudes each with two sets of big guns was more popular than one 150-point squad with one set of big guns, especially because you could have twice the amount of las/plas Razorbacks that way.


All that said, Banshees were absolutely not happy about long combats. They were part of the glass cannon specialist approach several Eldar units had; overwhelming when used at the right time against the right target, outright tragic otherwise.

The Eldar close combat unit that really got screwed was Striking Scorpions in my opinion.

It’s more to demonstrate just how weedy Banshees had become.

Had Power Swords retained some kind of S bonus (as they latterly regained, but I can’t remember when) then Banshees could still have been terrors, instead of something relatively desultory fire could reduce to a Mere Annoyance.

And the same was true of most if not all Aspect Warriors.

Dark Reapers really good against MEQ. Solid rate of fire, solid range and AP3 meant even their typically smaller squad size could still dominate the field. But….thats about all they could do. They lacked the numbers/rate of fire for Horde armies, and the S to really bother monsters and vehicles.

If memory serves, Dire Avengers wound up as Slightly Better Guardians, as in 3rd they were still stuck with the pathetic 12” Shuriken Catapults.

Swooping Hawks just didn’t work. I was never terribly convinced by them in 2nd Ed, but their Grenade Pack could be good.

Fire Dragons? An entire unit of supposedly Elite Tank Hunters with a weedy Melta equivalent.

Warp Spiders? Ugh. Just utterly useless in 3rd. No AP and a short ranged, rapid fire weapon does not a useful agile unit make, despite the S6.

Shining Spears just weren’t as useful as regular Jetbikes for the extra points, because once again their Aspect Weapon was bobbins.

Striking Scorpions were OK though. 3+ Armour, Infiltrate a veritable bucket of attacks always has its place.

But for the Best of the Best an entire species had to offer? They were an embarrassment.

Yes other formerly “well, either it dies or all my dudes die” units suffered in 3rd as well. But none as heavily as Aspect Warriors.

Consider Terminators vs Banshees in 2nd Ed. As demonstrated, Banshees on the charge were all but unbeatable. Sure, the -3 save modifier would still struggle with the 3+ on 2D6 save - but because the Banshees would typically win with a solid number of hits? You could ususally bank on killing most if not all of the unit. Yes any that won their duel would almost certainly pulp a Banshee, but that was kind of part for the Banshee Path. You either charged in a broke the enemy unit in a turn, or had to accept often horrendous casualties if the combat ticked over another turn.

3rd Ed? If even two Terminators survived? They had a not terrible chance of killing up to four Banshees - just took some jammy to-hit rolls, as the 2+ to squelch took care of the rest of that equation. And you might as well not bother charging Thunder Hammer and Stormshield ones at all!

I don't know how much better they were in 2nd ed, but in 3rd ed people liked them because they had a 3+ save and their mandiblasters gave them effectively a bonus attack which all together made them much better at fighting light infantry than Banshees were. They also had access to haywire grenades wich inflicted glancing or penetrating hits on flat rolls regardless of armour value plus a power fist equivalent for their exarch, which made them more of a concern for vehicles and monsters. The exarch could even get up to S9.

Lots of people wondered if they or Banshees were best and the answer was always that it depended on how many marines you knew you were going to fight.

Even against Marines Striking Scorpions were at least OK thanks to their save and volume of S4 attacks. Plus, an Exarch with a Scorpion claw could really swing a punch up thanks to WS5.

Against Guard and equivalent? Provided they could scuttle from combat to combat, they were pretty nasty.

Dark Reapers getting demoted from a proper missile launcher with like five missile options to the "Reaper Launcher" that was pretty strictly for use against MEQ and tyranid warrior-level of monsters was a kick in the dick. Shining Spears were cool but suffered from bikers and jetbikes being solidly overcosted.

I don't know much about Warp Spiders. They had one of the odder weapons in the game but being able to teleport 12" and then toss an S6 shot into something must've had some sort of use. I don't remember them being widely recommended or cautioned against but I never paid much attention to Eldar-only discussions. Looking at the codex, that mobility and kind of gun with a 3+ save for 22 points must've been pretty okay at something.

Fire Dragons were very good at shooting marines even at only one shot each, and Swooping Hawk exarchs could have power weapons and roll extra attacks for every single attack they hit. That's just an unwholesome thing to put in a fast attack slot. Seems maybe unreliable but I guess it could do well enough if you didn't bring Banshees.

Thing is with Swooping Hawks? They were just an expensive delivery system of ablative wounds for a pretty squishy unit champion.

Overall Eldar suffered from the general increase in squad sizes not being taken into account.

Not only in terms of damage output, but if you miscalled your Aspect unit’s charge and were just out of 6”? They’re toast, even against stuff like Ork Boyz and their woeful accuracy, because instead of maybe 10 as there were in 2nd Ed? There’s now 30 of the big green gits.

Same with Termagants (up to 32 in a unit) and even your standard squad of Guardsmen, who when rapid firing could max out at 20 Lasgun shots.

Hence we saw beardy cheesy Eldar Lists, centred on the few resilient or super Killy (sometimes both!) units each iteration of their Codex contained.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So. Let’s say 10 attacks each. And I’ll round down, counting fractions as a success.

Two attacks base for banshees (pistols).

A full 10 man assault squad, plus power sword, and the veteran, and the charge would average barely more than three marine kills and will take all of the return attacks at the same init.

Charging banshees? Six marines, seven with a successful war shout free and clear before taking return fire.

3rd edition close combat was also a little different to the more recent 'pile in' style rules, depending on how the assaulting unit is positioned relative to the defenders there may not be much in the way of models to swing back, and the exarch can reposition themselves to kill a power weapon wielding character before they can swing (3s to hit and 2s to wound for the exarch).


The difference between 3rd and 2nd is that in 2nd you didn't particularly need to bother rolling with equal numbers, just remove the marines to speed up the game - the banshees parry was irrelevant because the marines rolled no attack dice against them, each banshee just rolled two dice and picked the highest and then hit the marines that many times plus one unless they double-fumble, wound on 3s and save on 6s.
And they cost less than marines.

My example used the same number of attacks for ease of reference, not necessarily in-game accuracy.

2nd Ed Banshees I just shot. A lot. That’s how I dealt with them. Sometimes I did the damage before they got to me, sometimes I didn’t. But if even a couple made it into combat? They hurt, a lot. Yes as each fought second and subsequent duels my chances of killing they went up, but at base WS0? Rarely if ever fast enough to save me from the inevitable blender.

The other thing Eldar lost were “proper” Exarchs. When they were mid-level characters in their own right, and capable of horrific acts of violence.

Not being strictly tied to squads, and not even needing a given Aspect on the field (just max on per Aspect Squad) they were decent force multipliers. They felt special, and with some judicious wargear card selection impressively Killy.

Eldar wouldn’t see their like again until the Autarch came to 40K.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
My example used the same number of attacks for ease of reference, not necessarily in-game accuracy.

2nd Ed Banshees I just shot. A lot. That’s how I dealt with them. Sometimes I did the damage before they got to me, sometimes I didn’t. But if even a couple made it into combat? They hurt, a lot. Yes as each fought second and subsequent duels my chances of killing they went up, but at base WS0? Rarely if ever fast enough to save me from the inevitable blender.

But Banshees still blenderized marines, they just did so in a slightly different way. As has been pointed out they paid a single point more than tactical marines in exchange for a power sword, ASL on anyone they charged, and extra attacks due to paired weapons. So while that tactical squad wasn't *completely* unable to defend itself, at the end of the day it might be making a whole 3-5 basic s4 attacks in return; mathmatically killing less than a single banshee after said banshees wiped out 60-70% or more of the squad.

And tactical marines are the most favorable target for the marines.

Banshees charging terminators was a freaking blood bath. Sure they'd lose more guys when the terminators struck back, but as terminators were a painful 40PPM it was a more than fair trade; and that's only if they fought a big ol' blob of 10 terminators. Smaller units would just get wiped. If banshees got ahold of any smaller / wounded squads they'd eat them up no questions asked.

And that is, again, just marines; and while marines are the poster boys they're not the only thing out there. IIRC banshees murderized pretty much anything that wasn't a unit of tough multi-wound melee beatsticks. So they weren't going to kill you a carnifex, but they could still put plenty of hurt on a unit of mega-armored nobz before being hit back.

So this is another one of those gripes about nerfs that I don't "get". Banshees had a role and they were arguable best-in-class at it; but they also couldn't blend anything they touched, and there was the potential for them to be worn down by a few survivors; rather than utterly removing the ability for their foes to strike back in most cases. Having an amazing CC unit that might take some light casualties in CC is O.K. I'd say it's actually good design, as you need to account for players being on the receiving end of stuff like this still being able to feel like they're playing the game.

The issue is one of "feeling".

Sure Banshees were still good at killing Marines from a points perspective, but when the reason for that is because Banshees are cheap it kinda kills the whole "elite space elves with power swords" vibe they supposedly have.

When ordinary catachans have sometimes hit at s4, (totally fine) and Harker still does, its interesting the studio never chose Dire Avengers and the other aspects to have natural s4. I think what that could say about the studio is more important than a statement about what's fair or feels right or the way things should be


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The chainsword losing its defensive benefit and s4 losing its -1 to armour had huge effects on the actual background.

An ordinary marine in an assault squad is hard to kill when he has those rules. I think losing those resulted in the escalation of extra elite marine squads: Vanguard, sanguinary guard and bladeguard, centering of hammernators, and probably just large parts of the Heresy background itself

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Recently-released interviews with GW production staff confirm what was long suspected: the desired revision of 2nd was derailed by Upper Management, which did not prioritize quality rules or game integrity. As we all know, 2nd was flawed because it was a work in progress. By 1998, however, a series of FAQs had been released to curb its worse excesses. The codicies saw a consistent improvement in quality as well as broadening the model range in appropriate ways (Eldar tanks, for example).

We can get a glimpse of what "2nd ed., Revised" would have looked like in Bolt Action,...

From stuff that was said back in the day, supposedly the Starship Troopers game is essentially the ruleset the studio (or at least Andy Chambers) wanted for 3rd edition. So it would still have been a significant departure from 2d edition.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Unless my maths is wonky? And it probably is….Banshees and Marines in 3rd Ed did similar levels of damage to each other?

160 points of Banshees charging 150 points of Tactical marines would do 30 attacks. Hit with 15, and kill 5. 5 Marines hit back, one attack each, and rounding up, cause 3 hits, 2 of which wound, and one of which is saved, for 1 dead Banshee.

Next Assault Phase, the Banshees do 18 attacks, 9 hits, 3 dead Marines. The Marines hit back, 2 attacks, 1 hit, rounding up, 1 wound. Then it's a 50/50 whether that manages to kill a Banshee or not. And the Marines are now below 50% and testing to run away.

Against Terminators, the numbers are even more favourable to the Banshees.
5 Termis, 210pts. Ten Banshees charge, 30 attacks, 15 hits, 5 wounds, 210 points of Terminators dead.

So, used to do the job they meant were for, Banshees were much better than a Tactical squad in combat.


Honestly, to me it just sounds like you were a big fan of 2nd edition at the time 3rd came out. I was working retail for GW at the time, and pretty much all of the people who loved 2nd for it's highly detailed, comprehensive rules, hated 3rd. And all of the people who saw 2nd as a hot mess of unbalanced, over-complicated rules loved 3rd.
It was just such a big change that it was really divisive, and remains so to this day.

Personally, 3rd is my favourite 40k, and the only one I'll still play today. Although I play it using just the lists in the main rulebook; no Codexes.
The changes made for the '3.5' version are often seen as big improvements, and at the time they were, but they were only really needed because the Codexes had altered things so much.

If I want to relive 2nd at it's best, I play Necromunda - the detail level made much more sense at the skirmish level!

 Tyran wrote:
The issue is one of "feeling".

Sure Banshees were still good at killing Marines from a points perspective, but when the reason for that is because Banshees are cheap it kinda kills the whole "elite space elves with power swords" vibe they supposedly have.

I mean, they were still elite. They cost the same as marines, an elite army, and could beat them up nicely. They were just more niched in specifically fighting MEQ than previously and the changes to the combat system made them more susceptible to return attacks from survivors.


But I guess the "feeling" is the main issue, indeed, because now only marine players were truly intimidated by them while anyone with access to chaff infantry could waste their time and anyone with access to orks or dreadnoughs could crush them.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
And you might as well not bother charging Thunder Hammer and Stormshield ones at all!

Storm shield only worked against one opponent. If a terminator is fighting two Banshees, one of them gets to bypass it.

 Tyran wrote:
The issue is one of "feeling".

Sure Banshees were still good at killing Marines from a points perspective, but when the reason for that is because Banshees are cheap it kinda kills the whole "elite space elves with power swords" vibe they supposedly have.

But they were cheap in 2nd - they cost less than marines rather than more.


As far as feeling goes 3e banshees were merely much better than marines rather than ploughing over them like unarmed grots as the 2e banshees did. And that's definitely a 2e thing - wiping out half an army with a stratagem or blowing 24" wide hole into the middle of the board was a thing, and factions could be 'thematic' such as the old necrons (the sisters Sanctuary 101 background is based on a battle report where their whole gunline was good for about one necron casualty per shooting phase).

And there was a lot of stuff with slight nuances or perks which were fun but also utterly immaterial to the game - the chainswords used by marines for example were functionally identical to regular swords save that there was a very marginal chance of being able to damage the tracks of a light vehicle with them (and launch it half way across the board with enough 6s).

3e took away most of the superfluous elements, then started bringing them back again with 3.5, then started taken them away again in 4th, then started bringing them back again in 5th... then went mad in 6th and before long you were getting back to the 2e style of massive overkill, pointless minutiae, and staggering faction imbalance which just didn't seem as popular the second time around.

Maybe I’m just being stubborn, but Banshees still sucked in 3rd Ed. They used to be a real terror. With some exceptions (Dreadnoughts and Vehickex, really tough Monsters like Carnifex), a squad of them could just…delete entire units. But because their entire defence was offence, they were far from impossible to deal with.

Then came 3rd. Where they gained nothing in protection, became slower on foot, and hit nowhere near as hard against anything.

But the same is broadly true of everyone else’s Special Sauce Killers.

Look at the Space Marine Dreadnought.

In 2nd Ed, even its weapons, even the stormbolter, were superior examples. The Lascannons could modify their hit location roll on tanks, making it more likely to hit something useful. Anything using Sustained Fire ignored the first jam (hence the Stormbolter was a superior example). The Multi-Melta could fire as a Heavy Flamer too, making it excellent for close assaults. Even the Powerfist could do its rotateyrippy thing on vehicles doing horrendous damage.

3rd Ed? Av12 was nothing to write home about. It’s WS/BS was nothing to write home about. Its weapons were nothing to write home about. It was good in combat, because it hit hard at no loss of Initiative, and so could punch tanks and characters to death quite happily. But it lacked the volume of attacks to effectively deal with infantry, even though they generally couldn’t do any damage in return. This meant I could charge it with a more or less disposable unit and keep it tied up for a turn or two on wasteful opponents. Monstrous Creatures would usually smash a Dreadnought, even if they didn’t emerge entirely unscathed.

I've taken two breaks from 40K (a year or so of not playing g).

The first was the release of 3rd edition. It felt very stripped down. I didn't come around until the Trial Vehicle and Assault rules were released.



The other time was late 7th as gameplay with allies and formations was simply awful.

Rosebuddy wrote:
I mean, they were still elite. They cost the same as marines, an elite army, and could beat them up nicely. They were just more niched in specifically fighting MEQ than previously and the changes to the combat system made them more susceptible to return attacks from survivors.

But I guess the "feeling" is the main issue, indeed, because now only marine players were truly intimidated by them while anyone with access to chaff infantry could waste their time and anyone with access to orks or dreadnoughs could crush them.

The simplification of 3rd created a series of very niche units surrounded by "meat shields."

The all or nothing nature of AP meant the death knell of multipurpose weapons and squads. Howling Banshees were specialized assault troops, but one could employ them as a maneuver element to seize terrain because they moved so quickly. Deleting the movement stat destroyed one of the easy yet effective ways to differentiate among the various troops.

Among all their nifty toys, Eldar could run fast enough to get a -1 to hit, which was very useful in avoiding incoming fire, especially from units on overwatch. The replacement of that with special rules completely undermined the goal of simplifying the system.

 Lovejoy wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Unless my maths is wonky? And it probably is….Banshees and Marines in 3rd Ed did similar levels of damage to each other?

160 points of Banshees charging 150 points of Tactical marines would do 30 attacks. Hit with 15, and kill 5. 5 Marines hit back, one attack each, and rounding up, cause 3 hits, 2 of which wound, and one of which is saved, for 1 dead Banshee.

Next Assault Phase, the Banshees do 18 attacks, 9 hits, 3 dead Marines. The Marines hit back, 2 attacks, 1 hit, rounding up, 1 wound. Then it's a 50/50 whether that manages to kill a Banshee or not. And the Marines are now below 50% and testing to run away.

Against Terminators, the numbers are even more favourable to the Banshees.
5 Termis, 210pts. Ten Banshees charge, 30 attacks, 15 hits, 5 wounds, 210 points of Terminators dead.

So, used to do the job they meant were for, Banshees were much better than a Tactical squad in combat.


Honestly, to me it just sounds like you were a big fan of 2nd edition at the time 3rd came out. I was working retail for GW at the time, and pretty much all of the people who loved 2nd for it's highly detailed, comprehensive rules, hated 3rd. And all of the people who saw 2nd as a hot mess of unbalanced, over-complicated rules loved 3rd.
It was just such a big change that it was really divisive, and remains so to this day.

Personally, 3rd is my favourite 40k, and the only one I'll still play today. Although I play it using just the lists in the main rulebook; no Codexes.
The changes made for the '3.5' version are often seen as big improvements, and at the time they were, but they were only really needed because the Codexes had altered things so much.

If I want to relive 2nd at it's best, I play Necromunda - the detail level made much more sense at the skirmish level!

Everything you've posted is correct, but since this is a sledging thread you're not really going to get much back up on it. I'm personally not here to constantly state that third edition is my super special bestest despite the fact that that's how I feel. I'm only here to correct any massive interpretations of the rules, and I'm also. quite shocked that nobody has tried to say something about consolidating 2D6" into another combat.

 Tyran wrote:
The issue is one of "feeling".

Sure Banshees were still good at killing Marines from a points perspective, but when the reason for that is because Banshees are cheap it kinda kills the whole "elite space elves with power swords" vibe they supposedly have.

I’m not just talking about points though; I admitted that tacticals were the ‘worst’ marine unit for banshees to fight on a ppm base. Banshees didn’t just kill marines; they killed damn near everything. It’s been awhile since I played third but IIRC they were best-in-class when it came to murderizing single wound / high save infantry. Guard, marines, DE, orks, crons, no one wanted to get charged by a unit of banshees because they’d blend everything which wasn’t intentionally designed to counter them (big fearless blobs and monsters, basically). Banshees even countered banshees due to their masks. In fact I think the only real competitor to banshees were genestealers, as they were fast, strong, and lethal; meaning that they had a wicked counter punch or charged and not wiped out, or would do serious damage if they got the drop (though would still suffer not insignificant losses).

I’m big into feeling in games of all stripes; it’s what makes them worth playing over one another, I get it. But a unit that utterly feths anything it touches with no recourse or harm taken other than ‘never let it do anything’ is straight up toxic design. So if that’s the feeling you’re selling, I’m not buying.

I loved 2d6 consolidation! (I played Orks, so...) it felt like over running in WFB, and I liked that mechanic too. It made layered defense a sensible strategy.

 Da Boss wrote:
I loved 2d6 consolidation! (I played Orks, so...) it felt like over running in WFB, and I liked that mechanic too. It made layered defense a sensible strategy.

I think it was probably better than the 4th edition version despite the average of 7" vs 3", because you could still shoot at the unit that advanced into contact in 3rd. Unless it did it at the end of your turn.

The change to sweeping advances catching units based on Initiative also really hurt some armies compared to others. Necrons especially as it countered IWBB and they were only I2.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Then came 3rd. Where they gained nothing in protection, became slower on foot, and hit nowhere near as hard against anything

3e banshees had longer charge ranges and were harder to kill with bolter fire than 2e banshees.

2e banshee close combat under 3e rules would be attacks first, strength 5 hits, and reduces opponents WS to 1 (if not less). That's an 8th edition pokemon-carded deathstar not a 16pt 3e model and needs the rest of the edition to be similarly skewed all over the place... which again is 2nd edition to a tee with its extra-large blast krak missile salvos and deepstriking vortex grenades but it's nothing remotely balanced as a game of skill.

Oh, I got one. If I remember correctly.

Dreadnaughts could just leave close combat on their turn and turn around and charge back in during the assault phase. Unless of course we'd played it wrong or it had been faq'd away. Can't remember.
I believer I remember Vehicles could leave combat but the question is what about walkers, am I misremembering.

 warhead01 wrote:
I believer I remember Vehicles could leave combat but the question is what about walkers, am I misremembering.

They couldn't. It was one of the problems with early oldhammer that units who were tied up often had no way to disengage short of losing combat (and often getting wiped out).

The 3e witch hunters actually used it as a strength as their 'stubborn' ability was wargear on their squad leader so you had some limited control over when you were tarpitting and when you were trying to get wiped out (sisters never won combat unless they were fighting grots but they could drag it out).

 Haighus wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
I loved 2d6 consolidation! (I played Orks, so...) it felt like over running in WFB, and I liked that mechanic too. It made layered defense a sensible strategy.

I think it was probably better than the 4th edition version despite the average of 7" vs 3", because you could still shoot at the unit that advanced into contact in 3rd. Unless it did it at the end of your turn.

The change to sweeping advances catching units based on Initiative also really hurt some armies compared to others. Necrons especially as it countered IWBB and they were only I2.

2D6” overrun thing didn’t bother me, as typically it was an on the charge acceleration, or if you broke the enemy unit.

What annoyed me was Consolidate. This was where you’d perhaps annihilated a unit entirely, and got I wanna say 3” in 3rd, which you could use to engage a new unit, albeit to the best of my proven wonky by this very thread memory, didn’t properly counter as charging.

Later editions prevented Consolidating into combat though. You had to overrun.

Rosebuddy wrote:


I don't know much about Warp Spiders. They had one of the odder weapons in the game but being able to teleport 12" and then toss an S6 shot into something must've had some sort of use. I don't remember them being widely recommended or cautioned against but I never paid much attention to Eldar-only discussions. Looking at the codex, that mobility and kind of gun with a 3+ save for 22 points must've been pretty okay at something.
.

I think they were intended to take out isolated units or harass large blobs of chaff. Their warp packs meant they usually got the charge, and they could be upgraded to have +2 attacks on the charge and have largely safe fall backs from combat. So a fully upgraded unit could put out 11 S6 shots, charge in at a favourable angle with 27 attacks and 5 power weapon attacks, take return attacks fairly well on a 3+, and then fall back and do it again if the enemy didn't/couldn't fail morale.

As mentioned, assault in 3rd only gave full attacks and weapon bonuses to models in base contact, and a single attack out to 2" (without bonuses from weapons like power fists). So I think Warp Spiders were intended to hit the flanks of a big mob where they can clear some space and only suffer a bit of return attacks, then fall back out of harm before the mob could properly get to grips with them. Would require quite a lot of finesse to use well though.

 Da Boss wrote:
I loved 2d6 consolidation! (I played Orks, so...) it felt like over running in WFB, and I liked that mechanic too. It made layered defense a sensible strategy.

I am so very sorry that you got pulled into this as it was kind of bait.

Sweeping Advance was 2D6" while consolidation was 3" to get your unit back into coherency. A common complaint about third edition was misconstruing the two mechanics as the entire army could fire upon someone who made it to a new unit through Sweeping Advance yet could not fire upon someone who consolidated into combat. 2 seconds of tactical forethought while deploying eliminated one of those while the threat of having your assaulting force completely decimated before they could swing an attack handled the other.

Haha no worries.
Yeah, I should have remembered, I was just re-reading the rules the other night based on this thread.

I still liked it though - it gave a great sense of momentum to combat.

 Da Boss wrote:
Haha no worries.
Yeah, I should have remembered, I was just re-reading the rules the other night based on this thread.

I still liked it though - it gave a great sense of momentum to combat.

Oh I wholeheartedly agree, and I thought the entire Locked mechanic from fourth edition absolutely destroyed the combat phase.

I was looking at the codex releases per edition the other day, and 3e is a real winner there.

In 1e there weren't really codex books the same as later. So starting in 2e:
13 Books total
5 Imperial (3 Marines)
1 Chaos
3 Xenos
1 Mini-Codex (assassins)
Squats did not get a codex, and neither did Necrons despite being released in 2e.
3 Supplements (I don't know much about these apart from Dark Millennium tbh!)

3e
24 books
4 of these are reprints or updates, and from here I'll only count each of these as one book, because I'm interested in the faction coverage. (Chaos, Dark Eldar, Dark Angels and Imperial Guard)
9 Imperial (4 Marines)
1 Chaos
7 Xenos
3 Supplements, 2 of which came with a lot of additional army lists for various factions.

This edition, several new factions are introduced, and every faction gets a codex. As well as that, Chapter Approved had more lists for things like Kroot Mercenaries.

4e (where my big issue is)
13 books total, if you include the White Dwarf Codex for Blood Angels.
5 Imperial (4 Marines)
2 Chaos
4 Xenos (but the Ork codex was released at the very end of the edition)
2 Supplements, with no additional army lists.

This meant that Necrons, Daemonhunters, Witchhunters, Imperial Guard (!), Space Wolves and Dark Eldar got no new codex in this edition, and Orks spent almost the entire edition with no new book. This was really crappy imo, and soured me heavily on the edition. They expanded the game a bit with the Daemons book, along with the Black Templars moving from a Supplement book to a full codex, but it was really rough for people playing the neglected factions.

5e
9 Books (!) if you count the white dwarf codex for Sisters of Battle
6(!) Imperial (4 Marines)
3 Xenos
0 Chaos (never realised that before!)

Wow, I had forgotten how terrible 5e was for codex releases. It's not like it was a short edition either!

I'll stop here, but if you were into your forces getting actual books with rules so you could play them, 3e was a great edition.

In 6th it was back to 14, but no ork codex again this edition, then in 7th they went nuts with digital supplements and so on.

2e represented a contraction in the game (deletion of Squats as well as other Rogue Trader stuff), whereas 3e was an expansion, and everyone got to have rules.
4e, while having good core rules, really didn't bother updating most factions, and 5e worsened the trend because the factions 5e did update were generally really overpowered.

Anyway. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk. To me, this sort of stuff had a big impact on my enjoyment of various editions, and is part of why I remember 3e more fondly than 4e, despite liking some of the rules in 4e a bit more.

GW seem to have their act together nowadays, but back then they were really unprofessional in how they approached their update schedule.

 Da Boss wrote:
I was looking at the codex releases per edition the other day, and 3e is a real

I don't define needing twice as many books to play the same game as "winning." If anyone was winning, it was GW.

And the fact that 3rd was a deliberate relaunch of what should have been a mature design and still managed to screw up four books so badly that they required extensive edits is a further strike against them.

I will also note that while 2nd did not have quantity of codicies, it certaintly had quality of them. I even created a "Chaos mix" for when I perused its pages, soaking up the background. With 3rd you got an army list with vignettes, nothing like the detailed breakdown - including tactical advice - you got in 2nd.

And the market has borne that out. By 2011, 3rd ed. books had zero market value. I guess they are recovering, so you can buy that at their MSRP from 1998, but 2nd ones in the same condition go for much more.

Dark Millenium was a boxed set, introducing a bunch more wargear and psychic power cards. And I *think* new Datafaxes, but don’t quote me on that.

The only other non-codex expansion I can think of would be Warhammer 40,000 Battles, which if not a White Dwarf Presents volume, was definitely a compilation of WD published articles.

I genuinely can’t think what the third book in that group would be?

I dunno, I reckon the Tau, Necron and Dark Eldar players are pretty happy they got their books.

You don't need to own all the books, only the ones for your army. So I reject that as an argument tbh - these books were cheaper than the 2e books as well, so for the average player it was less expensive.

I think the expansion to include those armies was a real improvement to the game, I think Eldar should have been Dark Eldar all along anyway.

2e promised me a Squat codex and then never delivered.

Edit to add, and be fair: 2e codexes were amazing, I loved them. So much background, so many variant armies, lovely colour sections. The 2e Chaos Codex is a brilliant book. they were worth the money. 3e, especially the earlier ones, are much lighter and I wasn't a huge fan of the "Default Imperial Perspective" thing they tried out in it.

Mad Dok: My list says Storm of Vengeance, looks like a Dark Angels campaign book of some sort? Never came across it, personally!

Cheaper because they’d been gutted.

Compare Codex Ultramarines and its content to Codex Space Marines and its content, and tell me with a straight face the saving was worth it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also Storm of Vengeance does compute, but that was a campaign boxed set that came with new scenery (Necromunda plastic frame bulkhead things and cardboard)

So like Dark Millenium, in terms of added value was so much more than a book.

Fair enough, but I'm still sore over my Squat codex! I called the Mail Order guys to try and order one, it was an awkward conversation! They said there'd be more in Codex Squats in the starter, the lying bastards!

I think the fact that everyone got a book in 3e is important, and editions that don't manage that are worse for it.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
I was looking at the codex releases per edition the other day, and 3e is a real

I don't define needing twice as many books to play the same game as "winning." If anyone was winning, it was GW.

And the fact that 3rd was a deliberate relaunch of what should have been a mature design and still managed to screw up four books so badly that they required extensive edits is a further strike against them.

I will also note that while 2nd did not have quantity of codicies, it certaintly had quality of them. I even created a "Chaos mix" for when I perused its pages, soaking up the background. With 3rd you got an army list with vignettes, nothing like the detailed breakdown - including tactical advice - you got in 2nd.

And the market has borne that out. By 2011, 3rd ed. books had zero market value. I guess they are recovering, so you can buy that at their MSRP from 1998, but 2nd ones in the same condition go for much more.

Oh, yeah? Try looking up prices now. I'm in the process of hunting down books for 3rd edition so I could have a complete set of hard copies at my house and it is not easy, nor is it as cheap as you make it out to be anymore.

I'm also strongly moved by your desire to want to read a novel inside your codex. Some of us play the game to play the game. If I want a novel? I'll go buy a novel.

And before I forget: calling more content a bad thing is probably the hottest take I've gotten in this thread. And if your argument is for book streamlining? Every army except the Tau, which was introduced that edition, and the Necrons, which were given rules in White Dwarf, were all included inside the main rule book. Every anti-3rd argument thus far has had a pro-3rd counter argument with the exception of "making my own movie role playing during a table top war game," which you are more than welcome to have. They even made Inquisitor so the second edition people who love that stuff could get back to it. How did that wind up doing, anyway?

 Da Boss wrote:
You don't need to own all the books, only the ones for your army. So I reject that as an argument tbh - these books were cheaper than the 2e books as well, so for the average player it was less expensive.

I disagree - a big part of the game is knowing what you are up against and because GW specialized in weird rules, you needed to be able to know them or someone was going to say "Yep, it's in the book, I win!" and what are you going to do? Demand they hand their copy over?

Serious players collected all the books because that was how you learned not just the game, but the lore behind them. While I didn't care for the Tau, it would be madness to just be blissfully ignorant of their background and rules, which meant buying the book.

2e promised me a Squat codex and then never delivered.

GW's catalog of broken promises are spread out over many editions, not just 2nd.

Mad Dok: My list says Storm of Vengeance, looks like a Dark Angels campaign book of some sort? Never came across it, personally!

Yeah, it's a scenario pack. GW was into those things for both 40k and fantasy. I have it and also the rare Codex: Battles, which is a bound WD compilation of battle reports and rules for the Battle Bunker, Adeptes Arbities and the Razorback. Cool nostalgia trip.

I want to also go on record by saying that having Codex Ultramarines establishing that every empty headed player looked at my Crimson Fists and called them Ultramarines pissed me off to no end.

 Da Boss wrote:
Fair enough, but I'm still sore over my Squat codex! I called the Mail Order guys to try and order one, it was an awkward conversation! They said there'd be more in Codex Squats in the starter, the lying bastards!

I think the fact that everyone got a book in 3e is important, and editions that don't manage that are worse for it.

Sisters of Battle didn’t! Not properly.

Even then I think that was into 4th Ed?

 Da Boss wrote:
Fair enough, but I'm still sore over my Squat codex! I called the Mail Order guys to try and order one, it was an awkward conversation! They said there'd be more in Codex Squats in the starter, the lying bastards!

.

Leads me to ask, what about playing them from the Black Codex in 2nd ? I saw Imperial Guard being played from that book even after the codex was already out.

Would a codex have been an improvement?


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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Fair enough, but I'm still sore over my Squat codex! I called the Mail Order guys to try and order one, it was an awkward conversation! They said there'd be more in Codex Squats in the starter, the lying bastards!

I think the fact that everyone got a book in 3e is important, and editions that don't manage that are worse for it.

Sisters of Battle didn’t! Not properly.

Even then I think that was into 4th Ed?

The guy playing the sisters of Battle from Chapter Approved where I was at the time was always winning. So much cheese.

 Da Boss wrote:

I think the expansion to include those armies was a real improvement to the game, I think Eldar should have been Dark Eldar all along anyway.

How do you mean? I agree, I think having a bad and a default eldar faction is terrible and Dark Eldar should drop the dark from their name to become the default eldar.

 warhead01 wrote:
The guy playing the sisters of Battle from Chapter Approved where I was at the time was always winning. So much cheese.

I'm curious as to what they managed to get up to with the chapter approved sisters - they were still BS 3 at that point, the exorcist had rhino armour and AP 3, only characters generated faith points and only units led by characters and the seraphim could use them (though to be fair you could take one priest per unit).

So, I think it is fair to say that the early codices of 3rd were worse value for lore than the 2nd edition codices. Plus, it is clear that a lot of that lore was split out into other publications, so the price could build rapidly if collecting all sources (such as needing White Dwarf/Index Astartes for more Marine lore).

However, for the most part I think the quality of the Imperial lore in 3rd edition codices was very high and better than a lot of codex lore from 2nd (in some cases polishing the core laid down in 2nd), so not as good overall but what was there was gold. This carries over to 3rd edition lore from other sources, like White Dwarf or the background books from Black Library towards the end of the edition and into 4th (like the Sabbat Worlds Crusade book). That era had the strongest lore of 40k IMO.


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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Fair enough, but I'm still sore over my Squat codex! I called the Mail Order guys to try and order one, it was an awkward conversation! They said there'd be more in Codex Squats in the starter, the lying bastards!

I think the fact that everyone got a book in 3e is important, and editions that don't manage that are worse for it.

Sisters of Battle didn’t! Not properly.

Even then I think that was into 4th Ed?

Codex: Witch hunters was in 3rd edition, and you could easily run an army solely made of Sisters in that codex. I think it qualifies as a Sisters of Battle codex. They did have two other approved lists in 3rd edition too (rulebook and Chapter Approved).

A.T. wrote:

 warhead01 wrote:
The guy playing the sisters of Battle from Chapter Approved where I was at the time was always winning. So much cheese.

I'm curious as to what they managed to get up to with the chapter approved sisters - they were still BS 3 at that point, the exorcist had rhino armour and AP 3, only characters generated faith points and only units led by characters and the seraphim could use them (though to be fair you could take one priest per unit).

It was a total gimmick list. Some kind of imperial cultist unit with a flamer weapon that they would trigger for auto hits when they were charges and could pour faith points through to just kill models. I can't exactly recall how it worked but he had a lot of that kind of unit and minimal actual sisters supported by an excelsis tank but I can't remember what else was in the list. Many many years later I found out he was using two different sets of battle tech dice that looked identical except that the symbol on one set was a 6 and on the other set was a 1. I am very sure that was a contributing factor to his wins, more than the cheesy list he'd put together. I may have that Chapter Approved around somewhere but I wouldn't know where to begin looking for it.

That guy has been kicked out and banned from nearly ever game store in the state of Florida. Or so the legends say.

That sounds like Redemptionists, although the rules as presented are a little... off. The exterminators, for example, did not autohit, but had a hit role varying from 3+ to 6+ depending on the number in the squad.

From what you are saying though, they may have just been cheating.

 Haighus wrote:
That sounds like Redemptionists, although the rules as presented are a little... off. The exterminators, for example, did not autohit, but had a hit role varying from 3+ to 6+ depending on the number in the squad.

From what you are saying though, they may have just been cheating.

It's been far too many years for me to know if he was cheating, not counting the dice and I only learned about that a few years ago. I had no idea at the time.
Has to have been Redemptionists.

A.T. wrote:

 warhead01 wrote:
I believer I remember Vehicles could leave combat but the question is what about walkers, am I misremembering.

They couldn't. It was one of the problems with early oldhammer that units who were tied up often had no way to disengage short of losing combat (and often getting wiped out).

The 3e witch hunters actually used it as a strength as their 'stubborn' ability was wargear on their squad leader so you had some limited control over when you were tarpitting and when you were trying to get wiped out (sisters never won combat unless they were fighting grots but they could drag it out).

To clarify - in 2nd edition, dreadnoughts and robots were explicitly allowed to just walk out of combat on their own turn, unless they were fighting a model of similar size.

In 3rd ed that rule was removed, and dreadnoughts could be locked up for the entire game by engaging them with a unit with a better WS that couldn't hurt them.

pelicaniforce wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:

I think the expansion to include those armies was a real improvement to the game, I think Eldar should have been Dark Eldar all along anyway.

How do you mean? I agree, I think having a bad and a default eldar faction is terrible and Dark Eldar should drop the dark from their name to become the default eldar.

I don't disagree but by the time they explored the lore about who they were, it was 4th edition. The 3rd edition codexes were not filled with lore. The lore about Vect was all of 3-5 paragraphs. The other 2 characters were 2-3 paragraphs each. They were short and just rules. 4th edition saw lore make a come back. I remember each codex being $20 and the Dark Angels codex being $10. I remember playing my Praetorian Guardsmen. My army was a mix of GW's American soldiers - Mordians and Catachans. My mom got me the Praetorian box for Christmas - it's still my favorite army as it has the greatest nostalgia value. I just remember painting the army in HS for several weeks. I then got to play it in our store league. I ended up tying for first place. I also remember playing in multiple tournaments with the army with my favorite game being against a Dark Eldar player. I hit his Raider with a Basalisk cannon and rolled a 6 to damage which left no survivors.

Over time, the codexes increased another $5 over the edition too.

pelicaniforce: Yeah my preferred Eldar are the decadent piratical raiders rather than the Craftworld Eldar.

Now, Craftworld Eldar are pretty cool, and I love the designs for those miniatures, but I think Eldar work better as pirates. I think Dark Eldar went too far in making them torture obsessed Hellraiser people. There's room for that, but I'd rather a more Rogue Trader-esque style to my Eldar.

 warhead01 wrote:
It was a total gimmick list. Some kind of imperial cultist unit with a flamer weapon that they would trigger for auto hits when they were charges and could pour faith points through to just kill models... Many many years later I found out he was using two different sets of battle tech dice that looked identical except that the symbol on one set was a 6 and on the other set was a 1

Redemptionists, divine guidance, cheating and loaded dice - yes, that would definitely make a mess of any elite-unit opponent that couldn't deal with hordes of conscript-type units.

Divine guidance ignored armour on a 6 to wound and was the cornerstone of the latter 3e Witch Hunters firepower as well (of course they couldn't mass up 5pt grunts to use it on - the latter WD zealot rules didn't allow them to use faith). When the 5e sisters cruddace-dex came out it was restricted to the retributors only and sisters players generally acknowledged that it had been a bit of a crutch.

And then 6e eldar came out and every shuriken and mono-web weapon got divine guidance free and without the activation test all game long, because the strongest aspect of the old sisters was a footnote in the power creep of the faction...

 Da Boss wrote:
pelicaniforce: Yeah my preferred Eldar are the decadent piratical raiders rather than the Craftworld Eldar.

Now, Craftworld Eldar are pretty cool, and I love the designs for those miniatures, but I think Eldar work better as pirates. I think Dark Eldar went too far in making them torture obsessed Hellraiser people. There's room for that, but I'd rather a more Rogue Trader-esque style to my Eldar.

Yeah, it would be nice to see them beef up Corsairs a bit. In my army, it will be the Corsairs who bring aircraft to the Archon's force; he'll have to make a deal in order to get them to join.

 Da Boss wrote:
pelicaniforce: Yeah my preferred Eldar are the decadent piratical raiders rather than the Craftworld Eldar.

Now, Craftworld Eldar are pretty cool, and I love the designs for those miniatures, but I think Eldar work better as pirates. I think Dark Eldar went too far in making them torture obsessed Hellraiser people. There's room for that, but I'd rather a more Rogue Trader-esque style to my Eldar.

Yeah, I've long thought that if it were up to me, the "Dark" Eldar would be so named because they were descended from outcasts and technicians deep in the webway who superscienced their souls down to a size that Slaanesh was no longer interested in and mainly interacted with the outside post-apocalyptic galaxy via raiding. Would be more room for grey and underdogs that way. You can still have the haemonculi and their madness plus gladiators and their bloodthirst but they're just one facet of it all.

 Haighus wrote:
That sounds like Redemptionists, although the rules as presented are a little... off. The exterminators, for example, did not autohit, but had a hit role varying from 3+ to 6+ depending on the number in the squad.

From what you are saying though, they may have just been cheating.

This goes back to the need to have your own reference copy so you can "fact check" things.

The other thing about 2nd was that each book could have multiple lists. Obviously Angels of Death was two factions, but there were also variant lists, optional rules and so on. Chaos had three lists in it, Tyranids had two, and the faction options for Orks allowed for very different themes that effectively amounted to different lists. Speed Freeks or Grot swarm? Goffs and Nobs also worked, as did the Ork Artillery Park.

Just so much variety, neat little vignettes that it's no wonder why those books are still in demand.

 insaniak wrote:
To clarify - in 2nd edition, dreadnoughts and robots were explicitly allowed to just walk out of combat on their own turn, unless they were fighting a model of similar size.

In 3rd ed that rule was removed, and dreadnoughts could be locked up for the entire game by engaging them with a unit with a better WS that couldn't hurt them.

Yes, thanks for yet another example of how 3rd ed. dreadnoughts were totally wrecked. In 2nd, you could bog them down with chaff, unless it was another dread or a monster, it could literally lever its way out of the combat and then hose it down with shooting.

Someone talked about the "feel" of the rules, and the 2nd rules felt right. Big robots and monsters can and should be able to just trundle where they want, heedless of screaming grots trying to distract them.

With 3rd, everything was simplified, made more generic, bland. Power weapon. Close combat weapon. Vague abstractions that replaced two-handed chain axes, swords with their parry, and so on.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
That sounds like Redemptionists, although the rules as presented are a little... off. The exterminators, for example, did not autohit, but had a hit role varying from 3+ to 6+ depending on the number in the squad.

From what you are saying though, they may have just been cheating.

This goes back to the need to have your own reference copy so you can "fact check" things.

The other thing about 2nd was that each book could have multiple lists. Obviously Angels of Death was two factions, but there were also variant lists, optional rules and so on. Chaos had three lists in it, Tyranids had two, and the faction options for Orks allowed for very different themes that effectively amounted to different lists. Speed Freeks or Grot swarm? Goffs and Nobs also worked, as did the Ork Artillery Park.

Just so much variety, neat little vignettes that it's no wonder why those books are still in demand.

[

Eh... 3rd wasn't lacking for list variety, the rulebook lists all had 3 additional variants in the appendices. However, it is true that the lists were spread over a lot of publications overall rather than being contained in one volume.

By the end of 3rd, Orks, for example, had 9 lists, Eldar had 7 (8 if you counted the new Dark Eldar, 9 if you included the experimental Harlequin list), Chaos had 10, Space Marines something like 13, Imperial Guard had about 10, most of which got rolled into the doctrines system (except the armoured company and deathworld veteran lists), Tau even had Kroot mercenaries and 'nids got seeder swarms and an experimental genestealer cult list.

 Haighus wrote:
Eh... 3rd wasn't lacking for list variety, the rulebook lists all had 3 additional variants in the appendices. However, it is true that the lists were spread over a lot of publications overall rather than being contained in one volume.

By the end of 3rd, Orks, for example, had 9 lists, Eldar had 7 (8 if you counted the new Dark Eldar, 9 if you included the experimental Harlequin list), Chaos had 10, Space Marines something like 13, Imperial Guard had about 10, most of which got rolled into the doctrines system (except the armoured company and deathworld veteran lists), Tau even had Kroot mercenaries and 'nids got seeder swarms and an experimental genestealer cult list.

Right, and that's a problem because each new arrival had to differentiate itself with new special rules, new abilities, new models and of course none of these got adequate playtesting, which was impossible with such a sprawling design.

I mean, you just rattled of 60 army lists. That's obscene. It's only purpose is to push more models out there (and sell more books) and this goes back to my point that just trying to keep track of what's out there was hugely expensive (especially if you have to buy your book twice), and then the edition ends and you get to do it all over again.

I quit the "GW Hobby" when I realized that the changes coming to 4th ed. 40k and 7th ed. WHFB were not intended to fix or improve anything, merely stir the pot and sell more stuff.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

Yes, thanks for yet another example of how 3rd ed. dreadnoughts were totally wrecked. In 2nd, you could bog them down with chaff, unless it was another dread or a monster, it could literally lever its way out of the combat and then hose it down with shooting.

Someone talked about the "feel" of the rules, and the 2nd rules felt right. Big robots and monsters can and should be able to just trundle where they want, heedless of screaming grots trying to distract them.

Have you ever seen ants take down a much larger insect? How about a snake? There are videos of it out there, so I'm not going to link something potentially upsetting. Suffice it to say that exists. And while not pleasant to watch, it's fascinating in just how the tiny creatures literally swarm all over their much larger quarry. Sure some of them fall off as whatever they're trying to kill flails around / even wipes them off, but they're rapidly all over its body and it's unable to extract itself from the situation.

Just to be clear, that is what a dread vs screaming grots fight would be.

Likewise, have you ever played Dawn of War? 1,2, or 3. Dreadnoughts (and lots of other large gribblies) feature in those games, and frequently end up in melee with smaller adversaries. And when said dreads / carnifex's try to leave melee in those games they're frequently unable; as a foe that wants to melee them is EASILY able to keep up with such a ponderous war engine. The only way to extract a dreadnought from a mob of screaming boyz is to have the dreadnought kill all those boyz, or have some nearby friendlies shoot them dead / until they run away.

I find it hilarious that you think dreadnoughts walking out of combat, then hosing down said combat with their guns, is the correct "feel" of the game when it's literally anything but. Dreads, carnifexes, and the like are large and ponderous things. Insanely powerful, but not exactly agile and fast. This is why you yourself used the word trundle. So the idea that they can walk out of combat and then shoot said unit from range is entirely based on gameplay. It represents that said unit would acknowledge it's not their turn, and stand in place, so the dread could do that. While in actuality they would be climbing all over the damn thing like ants; wipe five off, and another ten are now climbing up the arm you just used to wipe.

Again, it's totally fine to not like 3rd edition and favor 2nd. No problem; people are entitled to their opinions. But let's not pretend that a gamey elements are some supreme narrative story-telling device, when in actuality the way the rules shifted is a vastly better representation of how those situations would go.

 morganfreeman wrote:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

Yes, thanks for yet another example of how 3rd ed. dreadnoughts were totally wrecked. In 2nd, you could bog them down with chaff, unless it was another dread or a monster, it could literally lever its way out of the combat and then hose it down with shooting.

Someone talked about the "feel" of the rules, and the 2nd rules felt right. Big robots and monsters can and should be able to just trundle where they want, heedless of screaming grots trying to distract them.

Have you ever seen ants take down a much larger insect? How about a snake? There are videos of it out there, so I'm not going to link something potentially upsetting. Suffice it to say that exists. And while not pleasant to watch, it's fascinating in just how the tiny creatures literally swarm all over their much larger quarry. Sure some of them fall off as whatever they're trying to kill flails around / even wipes them off, but they're rapidly all over its body and it's unable to extract itself from the situation.

Just to be clear, that is what a dread vs screaming grots fight would be.

Likewise, have you ever played Dawn of War? 1,2, or 3. Dreadnoughts (and lots of other large gribblies) feature in those games, and frequently end up in melee with smaller adversaries. And when said dreads / carnifex's try to leave melee in those games they're frequently unable; as a foe that wants to melee them is EASILY able to keep up with such a ponderous war engine. The only way to extract a dreadnought from a mob of screaming boyz is to have the dreadnought kill all those boyz, or have some nearby friendlies shoot them dead / until they run away.

I find it hilarious that you think dreadnoughts walking out of combat, then hosing down said combat with their guns, is the correct "feel" of the game when it's literally anything but. Dreads, carnifexes, and the like are large and ponderous things. Insanely powerful, but not exactly agile and fast. This is why you yourself used the word trundle. So the idea that they can walk out of combat and then shoot said unit from range is entirely based on gameplay. It represents that said unit would acknowledge it's not their turn, and stand in place, so the dread could do that. While in actuality they would be climbing all over the damn thing like ants; wipe five off, and another ten are now climbing up the arm you just used to wipe.

Again, it's totally fine to not like 3rd edition and favor 2nd. No problem; people are entitled to their opinions. But let's not pretend that a gamey elements are some supreme narrative story-telling device, when in actuality the way the rules shifted is a vastly better representation of how those situations would go.

I can see some situations where it's appropriate to walk out freely.

A Carnifex vs. Grots, for instance-mechanically, hit on a 5+, wound on a 6, save on a 2+. Less than a 1% chance of any attack doing a wound.
And lorewise, Grots might be able to cling onto it and slow it, slightly, but without actual melee weapons they ain't hurting it significantly enough to matter.

However, let's replace Grots with Marines, of basically any stripe. These are superhuman killing machines capable of ripping a tank's hatch off with their bare hands. Mechanically, sure, the only difference here is a better hit roll, but lorewise the difference is much more immense than that. A Carnifex COULD walk away from Marines... But not without risk.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
Eh... 3rd wasn't lacking for list variety, the rulebook lists all had 3 additional variants in the appendices. However, it is true that the lists were spread over a lot of publications overall rather than being contained in one volume.

By the end of 3rd, Orks, for example, had 9 lists, Eldar had 7 (8 if you counted the new Dark Eldar, 9 if you included the experimental Harlequin list), Chaos had 10, Space Marines something like 13, Imperial Guard had about 10, most of which got rolled into the doctrines system (except the armoured company and deathworld veteran lists), Tau even had Kroot mercenaries and 'nids got seeder swarms and an experimental genestealer cult list.

Right, and that's a problem because each new arrival had to differentiate itself with new special rules, new abilities, new models and of course none of these got adequate playtesting, which was impossible with such a sprawling design.

I mean, you just rattled of 60 army lists. That's obscene. It's only purpose is to push more models out there (and sell more books) and this goes back to my point that just trying to keep track of what's out there was hugely expensive (especially if you have to buy your book twice), and then the edition ends and you get to do it all over again.

I quit the "GW Hobby" when I realized that the changes coming to 4th ed. 40k and 7th ed. WHFB were not intended to fix or improve anything, merely stir the pot and sell more stuff.

Games Workshop released stuff during Second Edition that was also not thoroughly play tested and highly imbalanced. Releases in projects for 2nd edition were also profit driven we're sold an excuse to sell models. My biggest question to you is why is it that things that were done during Second Edition were perfectly fine yet done in Third Edition were the worst things Games Workshop ever did?

 morganfreeman wrote:

Spoiler:

Have you ever seen ants take down a much larger insect? How about a snake? There are videos of it out there, so I'm not going to link something potentially upsetting. Suffice it to say that exists. And while not pleasant to watch, it's fascinating in just how the tiny creatures literally swarm all over their much larger quarry. Sure some of them fall off as whatever they're trying to kill flails around / even wipes them off, but they're rapidly all over its body and it's unable to extract itself from the situation.

Just to be clear, that is what a dread vs screaming grots fight would be.

Likewise, have you ever played Dawn of War? 1,2, or 3. Dreadnoughts (and lots of other large gribblies) feature in those games, and frequently end up in melee with smaller adversaries. And when said dreads / carnifex's try to leave melee in those games they're frequently unable; as a foe that wants to melee them is EASILY able to keep up with such a ponderous war engine. The only way to extract a dreadnought from a mob of screaming boyz is to have the dreadnought kill all those boyz, or have some nearby friendlies shoot them dead / until they run away.

I find it hilarious that you think dreadnoughts walking out of combat, then hosing down said combat with their guns, is the correct "feel" of the game when it's literally anything but. Dreads, carnifexes, and the like are large and ponderous things. Insanely powerful, but not exactly agile and fast. This is why you yourself used the word trundle. So the idea that they can walk out of combat and then shoot said unit from range is entirely based on gameplay. It represents that said unit would acknowledge it's not their turn, and stand in place, so the dread could do that. While in actuality they would be climbing all over the damn thing like ants; wipe five off, and another ten are now climbing up the arm you just used to wipe.

Again, it's totally fine to not like 3rd edition and favor 2nd. No problem; people are entitled to their opinions. But let's not pretend that a gamey elements are some supreme narrative story-telling device, when in actuality the way the rules shifted is a vastly better representation of how those situations would go.

In 3rd edition, a dreadnought in combat with grots would have pasted a few grots, and the rest would have run away. That wasn't the problem. The problem was when the dreadnought wound up in combat against an opponent with better WS but no weapons that could hurt it. The end result was an eternally drawn combat that neither side could escape from. In 2nd edition, the dreadnought could have just walked away from the smaller opponent, or the opponent could have voluntarily broken and run away. In 3rd, they just stayed there for the rest of the game... which was neither a more realistic outcome, nor one that made for a more fun game.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

Spoiler:

Haighus wrote:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
That sounds like Redemptionists, although the rules as presented are a little... off. The exterminators, for example, did not autohit, but had a hit role varying from 3+ to 6+ depending on the number in the squad.

From what you are saying though, they may have just been cheating.

This goes back to the need to have your own reference copy so you can "fact check" things.

The other thing about 2nd was that each book could have multiple lists. Obviously Angels of Death was two factions, but there were also variant lists, optional rules and so on. Chaos had three lists in it, Tyranids had two, and the faction options for Orks allowed for very different themes that effectively amounted to different lists. Speed Freeks or Grot swarm? Goffs and Nobs also worked, as did the Ork Artillery Park.

Just so much variety, neat little vignettes that it's no wonder why those books are still in demand.

[

Eh... 3rd wasn't lacking for list variety, the rulebook lists all had 3 additional variants in the appendices. However, it is true that the lists were spread over a lot of publications overall rather than being contained in one volume.

By the end of 3rd, Orks, for example, had 9 lists, Eldar had 7 (8 if you counted the new Dark Eldar, 9 if you included the experimental Harlequin list), Chaos had 10, Space Marines something like 13, Imperial Guard had about 10, most of which got rolled into the doctrines system (except the armoured company and deathworld veteran lists), Tau even had Kroot mercenaries and 'nids got seeder swarms and an experimental genestealer cult list.

Right, and that's a problem because each new arrival had to differentiate itself with new special rules, new abilities, new models and of course none of these got adequate playtesting, which was impossible with such a sprawling design.

I mean, you just rattled of 60 army lists. That's obscene. It's only purpose is to push more models out there (and sell more books) and this goes back to my point that just trying to keep track of what's out there was hugely expensive (especially if you have to buy your book twice), and then the edition ends and you get to do it all over again.

I quit the "GW Hobby" when I realized that the changes coming to 4th ed. 40k and 7th ed. WHFB were not intended to fix or improve anything, merely stir the pot and sell more stuff.

Ok, I've added the quoted text from you back in for context which you chose to snip out for some reason.

So, you say that 2nd was good because it has variant lists with different compositions and special rules, but 3rd was bad because it had variant lists with different compositions and special rules?

Re. playtesting- 3rd overtly had experimental lists that were modified due to feedback before the approved version was released. Did 2nd have anything like that, or are you assuming it was better playtested because (as you stated earlier in the thread) you chopped out the unbalanced bits?

2nd and 3rd were proper wonky, and each in their own way.

However, 3rd had a hobbling that 2nd didn’t. And it’s not one I can lay at GW’s door.

The Internet.

3rd Ed got going just as I started to explore the Internet and Forums (oh hi, Portent!). As I’ve mentioned before, that indelibly coloured my view of it, as it was my first unpleasant brush with “WAAC and sod the background” gamers.

Now, I can’t and won’t say those sorts of folks didn’t exist in 2nd Ed. But I can and will say they never darkened my doorway or had any contact with me.

As such, my friends and opponents in the store just…fielded what we could afford. We didn’t know words like meta or tier. Well. We knew tier, but that was about Posh Cakes, understanding the more tiers the posher and fancier your cake was.

That is a lasting impression. And by no means a fair one. But add in it’s greatly simplified nature made 3rd pretty easy to Mathammer, and it felt like a flaw in the game at the time, even though I’m now conscious it mostly came from outside agencies.

 morganfreeman wrote:
Likewise, have you ever played Dawn of War? 1,2, or 3. Dreadnoughts (and lots of other large gribblies) feature in those games, and frequently end up in melee with smaller adversaries. And when said dreads / carnifex's try to leave melee in those games they're frequently unable; as a foe that wants to melee them is EASILY able to keep up with such a ponderous war engine. The only way to extract a dreadnought from a mob of screaming boyz is to have the dreadnought kill all those boyz, or have some nearby friendlies shoot them dead / until they run away.

Walkers just needed to be treated the same way as other vehicles - not locked in combat between rounds. They might still be unable to move away if surrounded but they could shoot and be shot at (the surrounding unit providing cover penalties as usual) and are still going to be attacked if base to base in the combat phase. Similarly the infantry can step away in their turn.
Walker/MCs could remain locked, perhaps excepting immobilised walkers.

It wasn't just a problem of dread being tied down by two screaming grots as you could also have entire units stuck indefinitely in combat with an armoured sentinel - for example the sanguinor himself leading a full squad of lightning claw terminators, Lemartes, and a sanguinary priest can do nothing against this unarmed tin-can except to fish for boxcars with a couple of krak grenades each turn.

Mad Dok: I think the Internet does ruin games, but I'm not sure I'd put the blame at 3e's feet. I think it got much worse later.

I think some games are "one and done" a set of rules, maybe a second edition at some point to clear things up, but other than that, it's just done. Those games don't get a lot of discussion on the internet, because people know there's nothing more coming and the internet loves hype and especially new intellectual puzzles to decode when "solving" a game.

The other type of game is the GW main game style - churn and constantly provide new material for people to think about and new game puzzles to "solve" for people who are interested. Tracking this, solving new problems and thinking about them is a whole hobby in itself for a lot of people.

The problem with the Internet is that now you've got thousands of brains all "solving" at the same time, and so the best solutions are found really fast, and then propagated. Lots of people reading discussions find these solutions and copy them. It becomes the received wisdom.

I hate that. I quite enjoy the process of discovering and "solving" a game with some friends, but it's generally a pretty slow process as we experiment with models we have built and painted and we may never get all the way there. But as soon as someone in the group goes online to a game that focuses on a churn of releases and gameplay puzzles, they find all the discussion about the best builds and lists and come in with the solution already, and start giving everyone a hiding. Then, if you don't do the same, you're at a big disadvantage.

You see this in all sorts of games predicated on the "new release" model - magic the gathering, warhammer of all types, even dungeons and dragons.

That's part of the appeal with playing "one and done" and older games that no one is talking about online. You still get to organically discover the game together through play.

Also, those netlists tend to be for a prevalent style of play* and can often fall flat if you change the context.

People have mentioned 3.5th Iron Warriors a few times in part due to their extra heavy support slot. However, I distinctly recall a battle report with 3.5th Iron Warriors facing off against Salamanders, where the IW were defenders in a bunker assault mission.

This mission is supposed to represent an engagement on a previously-quiet segment of the frontline where the initial defending forces are a basic garrison. Specialised support units have to rush into the battle to plug the gap after the enemy assaults the defences. What this means is that only HQs and Troops can be deployed by the defender at the beginning of the game, and everything else is in reserve.

The IW list was skewed to heavy support, and hadn't got enough troops and HQ to adequately man their defences. They took heavy losses early on and the heavy support was too little too late as it couldn't be brought to bear quickly enough once it arrived (the Basilisk had to wait a turn to fire, for example). The Salamanders captured 2/3 bunkers.

However, if it had been a basic mission it probably would have looked very different. This highlights to me the importance of mission variety in creating list variation.

Another good example is that most Terminators were lackluster from 3rd through 7th. But stick them in Zones Mortalis and they were solid, because you couldn't bring superior numbers to bear on them, heavy long-ranged firepower was neutered or unavailable, and they could decisively beat most individual squads opposing them in a given corridor. In that circumstance, a space-efficient, tough, close-quarters unit was ideal. Also matches their preferred deployment scenario in lore too.


*Often a tournament standard with a focus on repeatability and symmetry.

It’s not Netlisting so much. Whilst not to my tastes, it is of course one of many approaches a player can take.

But it was the people. The “if you’re not WAAC, you’re disrespecting me because that’s how I play”.

Having any and all conversation be broken down to “but it’s not optimal”, with seemingly very few understanding why a given list worked annoyed me. As did conversation about how to “psyche out” your opponent.

I mean, nobody makes a living going to tournaments, or even winning them. Yet the discussions seemed to believe it was like MTG, where those at the top could make a handsome living from prize money.

Add in the general “but it’s just not 40K anymore”, and it’d a recipe for a chip on my shoulder.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In fact. Bragging Rights.

We all enjoy Bragging Rights, yeah? Gathering tales of victory and derring do.

As covered before, 2nd Ed gave you sagas to tell. Magnificent tales of genius and luck and the right turret landing on the right thing at the right time and making it go squish.

3rd Ed? Because of the WAAC crowd? “Well I added tall billboards to my Ork Trukks because the rules don’t say I can’t and it allowed them to block LoS in such a way my opponent could barely target anything, aren’t I a tactical genius and not a cheating little scrote “

3rd was core-mechanically still deep enough to not be flat out a solved listbuilding simulator that the more recent editions have become though, partially due to a push and incorporation of the tournament scene.
I do think that with 3rd there was a slow push torwards a more tournament orientated mindset.

That said, you are playing a wargame, at the end it is a competitive game and i expect that even IF we are playing a narrative campaign that my opponent aims to play as competently as possible.

But to facilitate a more responsible army maintenance playstyle and not just frontloading of firepower damn the consequences we saw with things like suicide terminatiors, we'd require better mission / army survivability mechanics/ campaign mechanics.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

We all enjoy Bragging Rights, yeah? Gathering tales of victory and derring do.

As covered before, 2nd Ed gave you sagas to tell. Magnificent tales of genius and luck and the right turret landing on the right thing at the right time and making it go squish.

3rd Ed? Because of the WAAC crowd? “Well I added tall billboards to my Ork Trukks because the rules don’t say I can’t and it allowed them to block LoS in such a way my opponent could barely target anything, aren’t I a tactical genius and not a cheating little scrote “

That's just unsportsmanlike.

I think there's a massive difference with a WAAC mindset and a highly competitive one. The later doesn't pull above but then again is probably also not inclined to rules lawerying either. The former is just honestly grounds to not play said person anymore.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
We all enjoy Bragging Rights, yeah? Gathering tales of victory and derring do.

As covered before, 2nd Ed gave you sagas to tell. Magnificent tales of genius and luck and the right turret landing on the right thing at the right time and making it go squish.

Different people have different criteria. I might joke about the time I won a game through sheer dumb luck but I don't consider a victory worth bragging about if I didn't earn it through my own skill.

But subtle strategic choices are often not all that interesting outside of the game itself, and for some people not inside the game either. The afore mentioned banshees for example being a circumstantially advantageous unit in 3rd compared to a massively skewed fist of god in 2nd.


I've had the turret smash myself - Imperial Guard squad leader with a bolt pistol, an ork vehicle, a 6" backflip and a dead warboss and retinue behind a building. There was also one time playing tyranids where the landraider just spontaneously caught fire and wiped out the whole crew before the game started while Brother Bethor, wielder of the standard of devastation, simply keeled over and dropped dead mid-deployment.

You got that same 2e experience playing apocalypse some times - like the game where an ork rok missed its target titan by about five feet and simply wiped 90% of another players army off the board instead. Certainly a magnificent tale of luck but not something to brag about IMO.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
3rd Ed? Because of the WAAC crowd? “Well I added tall billboards to my Ork Trukks because the rules don’t say I can’t and it allowed them to block LoS in such a way my opponent could barely target anything, aren’t I a tactical genius and not a cheating little scrote “

How was 2nd ed any different?

By the rules as written you could model your ork vehicles however you wanted and then 'shake off' orks on a drive by to strategically disembark them. Older editions of 40k and WHFB were full of insane shenanigans (god help anyone playing fantasy orcs with their formation wheeling loonie catapult).

I think if you're a competitive player and you use netlists, I just don't really respect you. I know that's harsh, but anyone can google "good list" and show up. List building is a huge part of 40K and people can't even be bothered doing it themselves.

I've read here that the modern game is even more point and click, but it was already becoming like that in 5e.

2e was certainly a lot harder to game that way, because it was so random.

A.T. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
3rd Ed? Because of the WAAC crowd? “Well I added tall billboards to my Ork Trukks because the rules don’t say I can’t and it allowed them to block LoS in such a way my opponent could barely target anything, aren’t I a tactical genius and not a cheating little scrote “

How was 2nd ed any different?

By the rules as written you could model your ork vehicles however you wanted and then 'shake off' orks on a drive by to strategically disembark them. Older editions of 40k and WHFB were full of insane shenanigans (god help anyone playing fantasy orcs with their formation wheeling loonie catapult).

The difference was The Internet.

I can hand on heart say I never encountered such cheating shenanigans during 2nd Ed. But, as I wasn’t online then, my whole point is that 3rd Ed came unfairly tainted by greater communication with the wider community, many of whom just didn’t seem like fun opponents.

Perspective without a conclusion. And me being much too young and inexperienced of ways of t’internet to not care what the next person reckons.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I can hand on heart say I never encountered such cheating shenanigans during 2nd Ed. But, as I wasn’t online then, my whole point is that 3rd Ed came unfairly tainted by greater communication with the wider community, many of whom just didn’t seem like fun opponents.

I guess it's going to be different for everyone - who they play against, what settings they play in, what influences they do and do not have access to.

But that's not the fault of the system. Could you imagine 2nd ed rules being the competitive play standard today?

Which I’ve not argued. My memories of 3rd are tainted by it - but that’s not to say “therefore 3rd was the cause”.

I still think 2nd was the superior game and a lot more fun, but I have to account for outside influences on my opinion on 3rd as a whole.

A.T. wrote:

 morganfreeman wrote:
Likewise, have you ever played Dawn of War? 1,2, or 3. Dreadnoughts (and lots of other large gribblies) feature in those games, and frequently end up in melee with smaller adversaries. And when said dreads / carnifex's try to leave melee in those games they're frequently unable; as a foe that wants to melee them is EASILY able to keep up with such a ponderous war engine. The only way to extract a dreadnought from a mob of screaming boyz is to have the dreadnought kill all those boyz, or have some nearby friendlies shoot them dead / until they run away.

Walkers just needed to be treated the same way as other vehicles - not locked in combat between rounds. They might still be unable to move away if surrounded but they could shoot and be shot at (the surrounding unit providing cover penalties as usual) and are still going to be attacked if base to base in the combat phase. Similarly the infantry can step away in their turn.
Walker/MCs could remain locked, perhaps excepting immobilised walkers.

It wasn't just a problem of dread being tied down by two screaming grots as you could also have entire units stuck indefinitely in combat with an armoured sentinel - for example the sanguinor himself leading a full squad of lightning claw terminators, Lemartes, and a sanguinary priest can do nothing against this unarmed tin-can except to fish for boxcars with a couple of krak grenades each turn.

I've been thinking more about the walkers comment I made before and I believe our, my group's, issue at the time was just miss understanding the difference between vehicles and walkers. as best I remember it. Vehicles couldn't be locked into close combat where walkers could. (I really need to look for my 3rd rule book. )

I think their could have been a good universal solution, some kind of test rolled by the player with the walker to let it leave combat or two check, one by each player rolled against each other with some kind of scale based on the number of models or their LD stats. Something reminiscent of the old Fear and terror rules back in 2nd but streamlined for 3rd. However this would have to be applied to evenly so things that were fearless or the equivalent would still have to roll because no one wants to get squished by a big angry brick trying to walk over them. A death or Glory would still be on the table for the models around the walker because why not, it's all in good fun.
How that would sake out I couldn't say.


As to the Net lists stiff. I find it a total yawn. My most competitive friend, some time referred to as skrumgrod, was addicted to perfecting his army list and constantly adjusting it ever so many games. I spend hours I'm sure crafting his doom. I feel like completive play and net lists were not hugely a positive in the end. The two merge together to the is it worth it attitude which I get but also feel is lazy. It just further sub divides the kinds of players out there. I enjoy a good win but I also enjoy a good game. I guess net lists reek of game store kids to me. You get to know them humor them some times but hope they grow out of their intense need to always win. It's just a personal preference, do what ever you want. I recall though that the less painted models they had the more that stuff irked me.

This has been the best thread on Dakka in months!


I really want to sell all of my stuff and get out completely. If my friends would ever decide to play older editions of try out the Prohammer I would gladly stay in for as long as we could ride that ride. I miss when 40K was fun.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

A.T. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I can hand on heart say I never encountered such cheating shenanigans during 2nd Ed. But, as I wasn’t online then, my whole point is that 3rd Ed came unfairly tainted by greater communication with the wider community, many of whom just didn’t seem like fun opponents.

I guess it's going to be different for everyone - who they play against, what settings they play in, what influences they do and do not have access to.

But that's not the fault of the system. Could you imagine 2nd ed rules being the competitive play standard today?

In a sick way I would love to see that. Like watching a train wreck in slow motion or faces of death. A sick delight or a guilty pleasure.

I got out in 6th edition but "came back" in the last 5 years or so with Grimdark Future. I didn't have a group any more so I asked a non-wargamer friend to play, and he quickly took to GF. The OPR stuff is handy for that because it's so easy to learn. I'm having a great time making scenery and armies, and he's having fun playing with what I make.

So I'd say unless you need the money, if you're getting out pack your stuff up into storage rather than selling it. I'm glad I didn't sell too much of my stuff, I had loads of fun repainting some old metal 2e and 3e Imperial Guard minis that had long ago belonged to my older brother, that I had dragged around with me through many house moves and two moves to a different country!

My biggest regret was selling the predominance of my stuff for fantasy and 40K when the systems left me behind. It wasn't until my brother slapped some sense in Me by pointing out we could simply go to older editions where we enjoyed the game that I realized I had made a huge mistake.


On the plus side, I get to experience the joy of rebuilding some of these armies from the ground up. A daunting task from the sound of it, but it's been an actual Delight rebuilding my 6th edition fantasy stuff, and I'm thoroughly elated that I was able to get the 40K Ork Army I actually wanted instead of the one I had collected. Well, once I get six to eight trukks...

 Da Boss wrote:
I got out in 6th edition but "came back" in the last 5 years or so with Grimdark Future. I didn't have a group any more so I asked a non-wargamer friend to play, and he quickly took to GF. The OPR stuff is handy for that because it's so easy to learn. I'm having a great time making scenery and armies, and he's having fun playing with what I make.

So I'd say unless you need the money, if you're getting out pack your stuff up into storage rather than selling it. I'm glad I didn't sell too much of my stuff, I had loads of fun repainting some old metal 2e and 3e Imperial Guard minis that had long ago belonged to my older brother, that I had dragged around with me through many house moves and two moves to a different country!

As someone who has lugged hundreds of metal guardsmen around, I understand the pain of dragging it around. That stuff adds up in weight.

Even the plastic once you accummulate enough.

It's the old metal sentinels that really do you in!

I currently own about 5 armies. I could sell 2 and a half and be happy. My Ork army is massive and I have down sized at least twice in the last 5 or 6 years. I enjoyed building and painting a Primaris only army in as close to 2nd edition BA colors as I could get but I don't really want to keep it. If I could find a fan dex porting that over to 2nd I'd think about keeping it and I was given an old death Guard army back after a dear friend passed away in like 21'. ( His hart stopped I think.) I would like to get a few more HH/30K vehicles to round out that collection because that would be perfectly usable for any game edition I would like to play and I would keep my Imperial Guard it is a total kit-bash made from historical and 3rd party plastic models. I just never even get any of it out for any reason now and it's been like 3 years since I even looked at any of that stuff.
All my terrain is stuff I have made myself as well. I'm a hobbyist at hart.

I love my IG. as a project it was exactly what I had always wanted to do and an army that I would have loved to have had years ago.

Lots of green stuff. Bouski meets Moebius is the best way I would describe it. I still have a few sprues left to finish and then all of that needs to meet Blanche, just a little.

It feels more than a little over whelming to have all of that just sitting in boxes. Heck I would just sell at like a 10 dollars over nib price and be happy, if it becomes possible.

I'm still saving plastic bottles and other junk for building more terrain on the off chance I get in the mood to do so. I'd like to really push the grimdark feel and turn it more into Necromuna style terrain. I could almost justify that if I was able to play a small skirmish game but at this point have no one to roll dice with.
Sad face goes here.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Which I’ve not argued. My memories of 3rd are tainted by it - but that’s not to say “therefore 3rd was the cause”.

I still think 2nd was the superior game and a lot more fun, but I have to account for outside influences on my opinion on 3rd as a whole.

2nd is my fav version of the game, while RT is very close to my heart, 2nd played better.

The randomness of 2nd is what made the game hard to "solve" & also very, very fun.

Unfortunately back then(as so still today) the other person is the main variable in gaming fun. Play against someone that's the complete opposite (waac vs caac) and the experience will, more often than not be suboptimal. But play someone that is on a similar wavelength and the experience can be quite fun, even tho the game might not be "fair"(i.e. mauled).

"Playing against the spirit of the game", ie what would today be called competitively, was definitely a thing back when 2nd was current. White Dwarf used to tell people not to do it on a regular basis, oh how time changes things!

Dai wrote:
"Playing against the spirit of the game", ie what would today be called competitively, was definitely a thing back when 2nd was current. White Dwarf used to tell people not to do it on a regular basis, oh how time changes things!

Is the spirit of the game cooperative?
Because, as best I can see, it's a direct fight between two (or more) sides, with a defined winner and loser.

Obviously you should be sporting and, outside of actual tournaments, you should be doing your best to make sure everyone has fun. But it's still a competitive game.

Cooperative and Sporting.

Sporting is of course super subjective. I like a bit of banter and chit chat during the game. Not derogatory banter, just a bit of back and forth about our luck with the dice and “well, I didn’t see that coming” banter.

But I get that’s not to everyone’s taste.

I find people bemoaning their codex during a game unsporting, as it’s often done to the exclusion of allowing for my own impact. Even then, there’s degrees to it, isn’t there? Constant moaning isn’t the same “man in last edition I’d have had a better save” type stuff.

If my opponent is taking their time, then rushing me in their own turn, that to me isn’t being a good sport. Likewise if I’m being leisurely in my turn and then chivvying my opponent along, that’s rude and uncalled for.

It also depends on format and arena. If I’m at a tournament, I know I need to be more timely with my own turn/activation, because we’re both against the clock

And I have met opponents who’ve dallied then rushed me, and constantly bemoaned their codex, list and dice. I think the worst I’ve had of that was actually 8th Ed Fantasy, where I properly stomped my opponent with a series of carefully orchestrated flanking moves and other cunning manoeuvres. Only to be told I’d merely “diced” my opponent. No comment on my skill, or how I danced around his line to prevent charges he was hoping for in his next turn.

Proper bad loser/bad winner stuff.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Dai wrote:
"Playing against the spirit of the game", ie what would today be called competitively, was definitely a thing back when 2nd was current. White Dwarf used to tell people not to do it on a regular basis, oh how time changes things!

Is the spirit of the game cooperative?
Because, as best I can see, it's a direct fight between two (or more) sides, with a defined winner and loser.

Obviously you should be sporting and, outside of actual tournaments, you should be doing your best to make sure everyone has fun. But it's still a competitive game.

Doesn't really bother me if people play competitive, it's a very different game from 2nd edition which yeah I do feel was best played at least partly co operative to have a good time. I was just mildly amused how much things have changed.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Dai wrote:
"Playing against the spirit of the game", ie what would today be called competitively, was definitely a thing back when 2nd was current. White Dwarf used to tell people not to do it on a regular basis, oh how time changes things!

Is the spirit of the game cooperative?
Because, as best I can see, it's a direct fight between two (or more) sides, with a defined winner and loser.

Obviously you should be sporting and, outside of actual tournaments, you should be doing your best to make sure everyone has fun. But it's still a competitive game.

It was never really intended as a competitive game at the beginning, no. I mean, yes, you're battling an opponent in order for one side to win, but both the way the rules worked and the constant encouragement of the game's writers pushed players towards working together to make it fun, rather than just trying to win. And outside of tournaments, that's generally how I saw the game played. When rules issues cropped up during a game, it was always a toss-up between what made the most sense in the rules as written, and what seemed like it would be the most fun to play out on the table.

3rd edition was where the rules started to tighten up and the game started to be viewed more as a challenge to be won, rather than a cinematic experience to be enjoyed by both players.

 insaniak wrote:
It was never really intended as a competitive game at the beginning, no. I mean, yes, you're battling an opponent in order for one side to win, but both the way the rules worked and the constant encouragement of the game's writers pushed players towards working together to make it fun, rather than just trying to win. And outside of tournaments, that's generally how I saw the game played. When rules issues cropped up during a game, it was always a toss-up between what made the most sense in the rules as written, and what seemed like it would be the most fun to play out on the table.

3rd edition was where the rules started to tighten up and the game started to be viewed more as a challenge to be won, rather than a cinematic experience to be enjoyed by both players.

Yes, there was absolutely a shift in player attitude. I think one of the big factors was the issue of the psychic phase. If no players bring psykers, you don't even need to get the cards out, so it was important in 2nd to ask your opponent what kind of game they wanted to play. If psykers were going to be used, you knew things could get really wild and wacky, and it would be more of a WAAC environment.

If not, then things were going to be more "wargame" and less "space fantasy." The lack of fixed scenarios meant that you had to talk over mission cards, and while these could be a random draw, some required pre-game discussion ("Bunker Assault" needs a bunker, for example.) The same was true of strategy cards. There was actually a lot of pre-game discussion because the game required collaboration to work.

With 3rd you could just assume everyone was playing "Cleanse", set up and fight over the table quarters. Games became seen more as tournament prep, and the default response to someone complaining about a really lop-sided WAAC army was: "Well, yeah, but that would never survive in a tournament."

I guess another factor is that by the time 3rd Ed came out? I was a working man. Full time jobs mean your hobby time is now a premium.

As such, a single bad experience with an opponent hit that bit harder, because that’s one of maybe two games I’d get in that week rendered a chore, especially when more than ever, I was playing to relax.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
If psykers were going to be used, you knew things could get really wild and wacky, and it would be more of a WAAC environment.

I would disagree with this assessment. The groups I played with always used psykers, because psykers were one of the big things that made the 40K setting so cool and because we found the psychic phase a lot of fun. While it could certainly be abused, it was also often a good leveller for lop-sided armies, simply because the outcome was so unpredictable due to the cards and random chance.

Also, it was rare you got to choose your Psychic Powers.

Sure, with enough in your army drawing from a given power set you could guarantee a power appeared - but little good say, Vortex did you on a Lvl 2 Psyker compared to your Lvl 4. It could still be cast, but was easier to Nullify.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Might dig out my Dark Millenium tomorrow and remind myself what the various powers and discipline covered.

It was unfortunate that Imperial psykers wound up with such a broad pool of powers to choose from, as it allowed you to tailor your psykers in a way that just wasn't available to other factions.

In my homebrew edit I restrict psykers from every faction to their own decks, with only a single power chosen from any other. That vastly reduces the chances of Librarians and Astra Teles showing up with Vortex. Although I'm also tempted to allow psykers to each choose from a fresh deck, so you can't do the old multiple-psykers-to-guarantee-the-power trick. I've seen some other homebrew rules to just choose powers with points costs, as was done in some later editions, but I don't like that approach as much for 2nd ed as some powers would just become 'must take' options.

 insaniak wrote:
I would disagree with this assessment. The groups I played with always used psykers, because psykers were one of the big things that made the 40K setting so cool and because we found the psychic phase a lot of fun. While it could certainly be abused, it was also often a good leveller for lop-sided armies, simply because the outcome was so unpredictable due to the cards and random chance.

It doesn't matter if you agree, that was the way gaming went on around here. Everyone had psyker lists, it was just part of the negotiation - points, missions, psykers.

I think part of the aversion in these parts was that a lot of people got into 40k after burning out on herohammer, and so an optional magic system appealed to them.

Another factor (perhaps related) was that if you dropped the psychic phase, you could run more models in the same amount of time. People were always trying to find ways to push up point totals. The local culture seemed to have a lot of veteran miniatures players who jumped into GW because it was awash with opponents, unlike Micro-Armor or Napoleonics. That certainly described me.

In the larger picture, I think it speaks well of the design that games were fun with or without them.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
2nd and 3rd were proper wonky, and each in their own way.

However, 3rd had a hobbling that 2nd didn’t. And it’s not one I can lay at GW’s door.

The Internet.

3rd Ed got going just as I started to explore the Internet and Forums (oh hi, Portent!). As I’ve mentioned before, that indelibly coloured my view of it, as it was my first unpleasant brush with “WAAC and sod the background” gamers.

Now, I can’t and won’t say those sorts of folks didn’t exist in 2nd Ed. But I can and will say they never darkened my doorway or had any contact with me.

As such, my friends and opponents in the store just…fielded what we could afford. We didn’t know words like meta or tier. Well. We knew tier, but that was about Posh Cakes, understanding the more tiers the posher and fancier your cake was.

That is a lasting impression. And by no means a fair one. But add in it’s greatly simplified nature made 3rd pretty easy to Mathammer, and it felt like a flaw in the game at the time, even though I’m now conscious it mostly came from outside agencies.

Hmmm.....an interesting point. But the "internet" only became a problem down here (rural Appalachia and surrounding areas in Kentucky), in about late 4th/early 5th. So I'll consider that a problem based on region. But definitely an interesting point, Dok.

I'll be blunt: I never played 2nd. I DO however have a 2nd edition Chaos codex. It's quite nice, IMHO. I appreciate the lore, as well as the inclusion of non-astartes forces. But it leaves me cold. An Iron Warriors force is no different than a Night Lords force, or an Alpha Legion force. 3.5 fixed that. That's why I, personally, love 3rd (and most of 4th). THAT CODEX. Argue about core rules and such all you want, but that book will forever define 40k for me.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
An Iron Warriors force is no different than a Night Lords force, or an Alpha Legion force.

They could be, though. You could take a tank-heavy Iron Warrior army, or a troop-heavy, no daemon Night Lord army (although 2nd ed was before NL were really described as being particularly anti-daemon) or an infiltraty Alpha Legion force. It was just left up to the players, rather than defined in the book. Which, honestly, is preferable to me. Later codexes and indexes boring down on specific chapters in some ways took away choice from the players. Every Night Lords force, or Dark Angel force, or Ulthwe force doesn't need to be the same. Codexes should certainly allow for those specific, ultra-fluffy builds. But they should also allow the players the freedom to field footslogging White Scars or bike-heavy Salamanders, or Daemon-heavy Iron Warriors, or Blood Angels without Death Company.

While there were a few options in some codexes that were locked being Special Characters (not ideal!), for the most part the 2nd ed codexes allowed that freedom.

Also worth keeping in mind outside of Space Wolves who played very differently, the only real differences between Vanilla Marines, Dark and Blood Angels were some unique units.

Dark Angels tended to favour Terminators and Landspeeders, because of Deathwing and Ravenwing. Ravenwing were probably the most different, as we got not only special rules (extra -1 speed modifier, and we ignored at least our own speed modifier) but a much more shooty Landspeeder with HB and Assault Cannon.

Blood Angels, and I’m yet to review the Angels of Death Codex I got the other week, had Death Company and their special characters, with Mephiston being an absolute beast.

 insaniak wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
An Iron Warriors force is no different than a Night Lords force, or an Alpha Legion force.

They could be, though. You could take a tank-heavy Iron Warrior army, or a troop-heavy, no daemon Night Lord army (although 2nd ed was before NL were really described as being particularly anti-daemon) or an infiltraty Alpha Legion force. It was just left up to the players, rather than defined in the book. Which, honestly, is preferable to me. Later codexes and indexes boring down on specific chapters in some ways took away choice from the players. Every Night Lords force, or Dark Angel force, or Ulthwe force doesn't need to be the same. Codexes should certainly allow for those specific, ultra-fluffy builds. But they should also allow the players the freedom to field footslogging White Scars or bike-heavy Salamanders, or Daemon-heavy Iron Warriors, or Blood Angels without Death Company.

While there were a few options in some codexes that were locked being Special Characters (not ideal!), for the most part the 2nd ed codexes allowed that freedom.

In 3rd, such lists were generally presented as archetypes though, and there was always the default version of the list you could run if you wanted. For example, using the standard Codex: Space Marines list for footslogging White Scars, or having an Ulthwe army built on the Wild Riders list.

It gets a little wonky for loyalist Space Marines specifically due to a Chapter being a really small unit in its own right* and this somewhat applies to Chaos Space Marines, but for every other faction the variant lists are almost entirely an archetype that can be used by any subfaction.


*Lorewise, a thousand individuals doesn't give a lot of room for multiple specialisations in the same way an entire planet or craftworld does.

 Haighus wrote:
In 3rd, such lists were generally presented as archetypes though, and there was always the default version of the list you could run if you wanted.

There do seem to be two broad positions taken by players on this :
1) It's an evil sunz army so I have taken a lot of bikes, it's a bad moons army so I have taken a lot of flash gitz.
and 2) It's an evil sunz army because I get better bikes, it's a bad moons army because I get better flash gitz.

Though codex-set penalties/restrictions do limit potentially abusive wombo-combos where free choice books do not.

Yeah, the choice is: make a themed list, which due to the points system generally being based off of an "all comers" take a bit of everything army, will be skewed, sometimes good, sometimes bad because you took more of a unit they weren't expecting you to take so many of.

OR

They make the themed list for you, with special rules to compensate for the weaknesses of the skew list and perhaps limitations to tone down the strengths, bringing it into the realm of an "all comers force" despite being made of unusual units.

In my view, both are valid approaches, but I prefer the first. For one, it puts the ball in the player's court and makes them take ownership over their choices. In WFB 6th, 7th and 8th edition I often played a "common" orcs and goblins army. This meant no black orcs, no savage orcs and no night goblins. It also meant my list wasn't as strong as it could have otherwise been. I didn't really care, I felt it was thematic to have the "common" greenskins represented, and that the coalition of tribes represented by the more usual list should be the exception rather than the rule.

When the designers try to make compensatory skew lists people are invariably unhappy with them and often at least one list in that paradigm will be overpowered relative to the meta and will become really common in games.

I think stuff like Doctrines came the closest to getting this sort of idea right, but I'm not sure we should ever be trying to make an entire army of guys on motorbikes a fair, take all comers army because it's just sort of a silly concept. No offense, ravenwing players. It's a cool concept, but still silly.

A.T. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
We all enjoy Bragging Rights, yeah? Gathering tales of victory and derring do.

As covered before, 2nd Ed gave you sagas to tell. Magnificent tales of genius and luck and the right turret landing on the right thing at the right time and making it go squish.

Different people have different criteria. I might joke about the time I won a game through sheer dumb luck but I don't consider a victory worth bragging about if I didn't earn it through my own skill.

But subtle strategic choices are often not all that interesting outside of the game itself, and for some people not inside the game either. The afore mentioned banshees for example being a circumstantially advantageous unit in 3rd compared to a massively skewed fist of god in 2nd.


I've had the turret smash myself - Imperial Guard squad leader with a bolt pistol, an ork vehicle, a 6" backflip and a dead warboss and retinue behind a building. There was also one time playing tyranids where the landraider just spontaneously caught fire and wiped out the whole crew before the game started while Brother Bethor, wielder of the standard of devastation, simply keeled over and dropped dead mid-deployment.

You got that same 2e experience playing apocalypse some times - like the game where an ork rok missed its target titan by about five feet and simply wiped 90% of another players army off the board instead. Certainly a magnificent tale of luck but not something to brag about IMO.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
3rd Ed? Because of the WAAC crowd? “Well I added tall billboards to my Ork Trukks because the rules don’t say I can’t and it allowed them to block LoS in such a way my opponent could barely target anything, aren’t I a tactical genius and not a cheating little scrote “

How was 2nd ed any different?

By the rules as written you could model your ork vehicles however you wanted and then 'shake off' orks on a drive by to strategically disembark them. Older editions of 40k and WHFB were full of insane shenanigans (god help anyone playing fantasy orcs with their formation wheeling loonie catapult).

Ah, the old "Fanatic Slingshot." Always heard about it but never saw anyone ballsy enough to try to pull it off.

And despite playing 3rd for its entirety and THEN some, I've never come across that "billboard" example or anything remotely like it. If that were the case you'd have seen infantry models all in the "prone" position instead of the combat rush pose we all know and love. I'm gonna say that one's solely a Forum Bogeyman - a hypothetical used as a condemnation of the system yet never actually appearing. Doc said it himself when he said that 3rd Ed. was the first edition that was highly visible and scrutinized online, you don't think there'd be BOOKS of posts about that? Hell, the "cigarette pack Rhino" still gets brought up to this day.

 Da Boss wrote:
When the designers try to make compensatory skew lists people are invariably unhappy with them and often at least one list in that paradigm will be overpowered relative to the meta and will become really common in games.

I think stuff like Doctrines came the closest to getting this sort of idea right, but I'm not sure we should ever be trying to make an entire army of guys on motorbikes a fair, take all comers army because it's just sort of a silly concept. No offense, ravenwing players. It's a cool concept, but still silly.

I'm firmly in the camp of "let player choice create the specialist lists." I feel the 2nd ed. Chaos lists had plenty of flexibility and your choice of Mark of Chaos, unit selection and they way you used them (actual doctrine, not a special rule) gave the army its flavor.

When you start creating micro-lists for every sub-faction, the temptation is exactly that - well, we chose not to give them bikes, so they get bonus artillery! Or they can't have heavy tanks, so their bikes are twice as good. It sells books and models, but it makes for a terrible situation in terms of rules.

What those lists did is create a situation where every list had an optimal function and because of that, everyone was pushed in that direction. Just simply taking a bike-heavy force without special rules was silly when there were armies built around the idea.

To put it another way, if I decide not to use tanks, why should I get special bonus bike rules? Isn't the choice good enough on it's own?

The books of 2nd ed. really had a ton of options in them (many of which GW never even supported with models), and the flexibility of army composion made it possible for players to run themed armies just fine. Watching the 31 flavors of Space Marines roll out in 3rd, even while other factions had no book, but were using get-you-by rules, was just awful.

I agree about the best solution to "Special" lists - let the players make them special, and make them responsible for dealing with the choices they've made in giving their force a theme.

I can see why designers would be tempted down the "special list" route, and I don't think it's entirely cynical. I think it's an interesting design challenge, but I also think they often half-assed it.

On the 31 flavours of Marines thing, look I really don't like any of the extra Marine codexes. I think it should be 1 codex for marines and grey knights should be a squad, not an army.

But come on. 2e had 3 Marine codexes out of 13, 3e had 4 out of 20 not counting reprints and campaign supplements, 5 out of 20 if you are counting Daemonhunters as a Marine codex (which I think is fair).
23% Marine books in 2e vs 25% Marine books in 3e is not that big of a difference.

The issue absolutely gets magnified because Marines ALWAYS get an update in every edition, including a bunch of new models, while other armies often had to wait 2 editions in the cold before getting an update.

But I don't lay the blame for that at 3e's door.

 Da Boss wrote:
But come on. 2e had 3 Marine codexes out of 13, 3e had 4 out of 20 not counting reprints and campaign supplements, 5 out of 20 if you are counting Daemonhunters as a Marine codex (which I think is fair).
23% Marine books in 2e vs 25% Marine books in 3e is not that big of a difference.

The issue absolutely gets magnified because Marines ALWAYS get an update in every edition, including a bunch of new models, while other armies often had to wait 2 editions in the cold before getting an update.

But I don't lay the blame for that at 3e's door.

There are a couple of differences, though. The 2nd ed. Marine books were spaced out over several years and - more importantly - they were mostly about background. How much of the Horus Heresy was sketched out through those three books? I had no interest in Angels of Death to play, but I did like reading the book. Same with Space Wolves.

The army mechanics were not that different. Space Wolves were somewhat unique, but the other three lists were almost identical in practice. Yeah, different special characters but Ravenwing and Deathwing were just special unit types, not a different way of fighting. A friend put it this way: Space Wolves get veteran heavy weapons, Dark Angels get veteran Terminators, Blood Angels veteran assault squads and Ultras get veteran tactical squads.

They were therefore quite balanced overall.

Now look at 3rd. For one thing, they cranked out three Marine books in the first few months: Space Marines, Black Templars and Blood Angels. Way to front-load the game, guys. The differences between the chapters went deeper now, and chapter special rules cut into org charts and such.

Add in the 3rd ed. trend towards specialization and it's very different.

Black Templars didn't get a "codex" until the Armageddon Codex came out, and it was, what, four pages maximum? Near the end of 3rd Edition? DARK ANGELS came out early on, but what little changed for those lists should have made the process easy to roll out. Gav Thorpe's inability to write simply balanced rules struck here, and Jervis Johnson's Dark Angels Codex was much more balanced despite having essentially three lists inside. You still had barely any difference between a normal Codex chapter and Dark Angels unless you went pure Ravenwing or Deathwing. Blood Angels were worse because of them being red, which gave them unpointed benefits and a "weakness" that was easily worked around. The problem wasn't the edition, the problem was them not reining in their more imbalanced writers.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Dai wrote:
"Playing against the spirit of the game", ie what would today be called competitively, was definitely a thing back when 2nd was current. White Dwarf used to tell people not to do it on a regular basis, oh how time changes things!

Is the spirit of the game cooperative?
Because, as best I can see, it's a direct fight between two (or more) sides, with a defined winner and loser.

Obviously you should be sporting and, outside of actual tournaments, you should be doing your best to make sure everyone has fun. But it's still a competitive game.

It isn't just a question of cooperative or competitive- there's a third category: Narrative.

A narrative game IS still competitive... It's just that competition is secondary to the narrative. Like you tried to win... You tried really hard to win. But sometimes the foot of Gork (or is it Mork?) just scatters into your best laid plans. And you KNEW that could happen when you chose to play the game, but you played anyway because it would make a cool story.

There's evidence to this day that GW doesn't actually play the game the same way customers do- they literally pick "rule of cool" narrative lists all the time and they thought that everybody did. It's weird, because yes, it is clear that they are mechanically catering to tournament play... But somehow they still seem to assume people will build narrative lists instead of optimized ones.

Rogue Trader reads like a roleplaying game that uses models,,, And while the shift in second was extreme, you can still see the RT roots. Now the only thing I remember about 3rd is the Witch Hunter dex, which is still one of the greatest books GW has ever produced. But see, as a Sisters player, we had to use that book in 3rd, 4rth and 5th. I think one of those had a WD Dex, which I did play once or twice, but the only thing I remember is Frateris Militia units.

The 3rd ed dex was compatible with the rules for all three editions, and it's what I used most often because it's the book I used to build the army... I should say armies because that's how it was built: 1500 point Penitent Legion led by Inquisitors and Arbites + 1500 Holy Choir army of nuthin but nuns. That book included it's own antagonist rules and units and narrative missions, that's how hardcore it was!

I think all the narrative rulesets that came after, whether it's Cityfight or BRB progression systems and minigames, I think they were all efforts to help players try to find their way to playing the game more like its designers played it. Strats, love'em or hate'em, marked a clear shift toward tournament friendly, as did so many other features of 8th-10th... But GW still tried to keep the narrative spirit alive with Crusade and campaign books.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
But come on. 2e had 3 Marine codexes out of 13, 3e had 4 out of 20 not counting reprints and campaign supplements, 5 out of 20 if you are counting Daemonhunters as a Marine codex (which I think is fair).
23% Marine books in 2e vs 25% Marine books in 3e is not that big of a difference.

The issue absolutely gets magnified because Marines ALWAYS get an update in every edition, including a bunch of new models, while other armies often had to wait 2 editions in the cold before getting an update.

But I don't lay the blame for that at 3e's door.

There are a couple of differences, though. The 2nd ed. Marine books were spaced out over several years and - more importantly - they were mostly about background. How much of the Horus Heresy was sketched out through those three books? I had no interest in Angels of Death to play, but I did like reading the book. Same with Space Wolves.

What're you on about exactly? An easy Google search would show you that SM related codex releases for every edition also span a # of years. 10 being no different btw - we're a year in & all we have Codex wise is SM & DA. Only 2/7 Marine factions currently being sold have their actual Codex so far & the edition ends July 2026....

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Now look at 3rd. For one thing, they cranked out three Marine books in the first few months: Space Marines, Black Templars and Blood Angels. Way to front-load the game, guys.

I think 20+ years is clouding your memory a bit.
SM (1998, right alongside the Dark Eldar), BA (98), DA (99) - then we go a whole year (April 2k) & 5 other Codexes before the next dose of SM, the SW, arrive.

So… to the post that said the first three Codecs were marines, your rebuttal is that they were?

Also, only 2/7 Space Marine factions have their books now.
How many factions do GSC have?
Nids? Eldar have three, but are probably only getting two Codecs (Harlequins in the Eldar one, most likely). CSM have four, admittedly-but they can’t intermix detachments like Loyalists can. Guard only gets one. Ad Mech only gets one.

Marines get way too much focus-though admittedly, that’s not an edition specific complaint. That’s a GW complaint.

 JNAProductions wrote:
So… to the post that said the first three Codecs were marines, your rebuttal is that they were?

Also, only 2/7 Space Marine factions have their books now.
How many factions do GSC have?
Nids? Eldar have three, but are probably only getting two Codecs (Harlequins in the Eldar one, most likely). CSM have four, admittedly-but they can’t intermix detachments like Loyalists can. Guard only gets one. Ad Mech only gets one.

Marines get way too much focus-though admittedly, that’s not an edition specific complaint. That’s a GW complaint.

Look, I get that this is a "sledge on 3rd" thread. I really do get it, but I also get that facts and data should be correct if used in an argument against something. That's the crux of it. The Templars left a PTSD level impression on CvT, and it's coloring his comments. I'll freely admit that they went WAY overboard with that codex, but I also am aware enough to not punish an entire edition for one codex. If that was the case, I'd sandbag 3rd over Chaos 3.5 alone.


Sledge away, by all means. But all I ask is that you sledge in good faith and that the facts don't get bypassed for preference.

 JNAProductions wrote:
So… to the post that said the first three Codecs were marines, your rebuttal is that they were?

Except, they weren't - ccs hasn't been too clear. Wikipedia maintains a list of Codex release dates, for some reason, and if we're willing to accept that as being an accurate source, it spells out the following as the release order:

- Codex: Space Marines (October 98)
- Codex: Dark Eldar (November 98)
- Codex: Blood Angels (December 98)
- Codex: Chaos Space Marines (February 99)
- Codex: Dark Angels (May 99)
- Codex: Orks (July 99)
- Codex: Assassins (July 99)
- Codex: Eldar (August 99)

The above extends to cover the full first year of 3rd ed, with books/pamphlets defined as "Codex Supplements" in italics. IG would appear in November 99, Catachans in February 2000, Space Wolves in April 2000, and Craftworld Eldar in June 2000, then Codex: Armageddon (with 4 supplemental lists in) in August 2000, before we get the next full Codex in February 2001 with the Tyranids. I'm guessing 2000 was a WHFB release year, given the lack of full Codex books, or the Armageddon campaign derailed things.

While the first three full Codexes in 3rd featured 2 in power armour - and 4 of the first 5, if you include the Angels of Death - it wasn't like GW was in a particular rush to get Codexes into peoples' hands. With BA, DA and SW being supplements to the main SM 'dex, rather than full books in their own right, I imagine the early two were released to allow the Studio to concentrate on CSM, Orks and Eldar, while still getting something out there. I do feel sorry for Tyranid players, though, needing to wait over two years to get a full Codex. In an idea world, the "core" Codexes for existing factions (plus Dark Eldar) should've been out first, and ideally all within a year.

 Dysartes wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
So… to the post that said the first three Codecs were marines, your rebuttal is that they were?

Except, they weren't - ccs hasn't been too clear. Wikipedia maintains a list of Codex release dates, for some reason, and if we're willing to accept that as being an accurate source, it spells out the following as the release order:

- Codex: Space Marines (October 98)
- Codex: Dark Eldar (November 98)
- Codex: Blood Angels (December 98)
- Codex: Chaos Space Marines (February 99)
- Codex: Dark Angels (May 99)
- Codex: Orks (July 99)
- Codex: Assassins (July 99)
- Codex: Eldar (August 99)

The above extends to cover the full first year of 3rd ed, with books/pamphlets defined as "Codex Supplements" in italics. IG would appear in November 99, Catachans in February 2000, Space Wolves in April 2000, and Craftworld Eldar in June 2000, then Codex: Armageddon (with 4 supplemental lists in) in August 2000, before we get the next full Codex in February 2001 with the Tyranids. I'm guessing 2000 was a WHFB release year, given the lack of full Codex books, or the Armageddon campaign derailed things.

While the first three full Codexes in 3rd featured 2 in power armour - and 4 of the first 5, if you include the Angels of Death - it wasn't like GW was in a particular rush to get Codexes into peoples' hands. With BA, DA and SW being supplements to the main SM 'dex, rather than full books in their own right, I imagine the early two were released to allow the Studio to concentrate on CSM, Orks and Eldar, while still getting something out there. I do feel sorry for Tyranid players, though, needing to wait over two years to get a full Codex. In an idea world, the "core" Codexes for existing factions (plus Dark Eldar) should've been out first, and ideally all within a year.

For further clarity, Codex: Armageddon is where Black Templars finally showed up in their own list. They didn't get a dedicated codex till 4th edition.

The other 4 lists in Codex: Armageddon were Ork speed freeks, Salamanders, mechanised Imperial Guard, and Armageddon PDF (yeah there are actually 5 lists in the book that states it contains 4, although the later two are pretty small tweaks to the standard IG codex and you can combine into a mechanised PDF force).

Codex: Armageddon is how I rough out a Salamanders list to this day.

So I guess I'll give ONE thing to 3rd in that arena

 Just Tony wrote:
Look, I get that this is a "sledge on 3rd" thread. I really do get it, but I also get that facts and data should be correct if used in an argument against something. That's the crux of it. The Templars left a PTSD level impression on CvT, and it's coloring his comments. I'll freely admit that they went WAY overboard with that codex, but I also am aware enough to not punish an entire edition for one codex. If that was the case, I'd sandbag 3rd over Chaos 3.5 alone.
Sledge away, by all means. But all I ask is that you sledge in good faith and that the facts don't get bypassed for preference.

The Black Templars were the epitome of that edition. They featured very prominently in the artwork on the box. I'm merely accepting GW's decision to use them as the flagship Marine chapter at its launch.

If my math is correct, there are 14 books listed and within them were rules for 7 flavors of space marine (which includes Chaos). That some hefty fan service for the boys in power armor.

And to reiterate - the 2nd ed. books were as much about background as anything else. The central narrative of the 40k universe is the Horus Heresy and its aftermath, so piecing it together via the perspectives of the various chapters is appropriate.

In 3rd, they were basically selling army lists, and to reiterate, each list got it special goodies that usually offset whatever disadvantage they got.

 PenitentJake wrote:
A narrative game IS still competitive... It's just that competition is secondary to the narrative. Like you tried to win... You tried really hard to win. But sometimes the foot of Gork (or is it Mork?) just scatters into your best laid plans. And you KNEW that could happen when you chose to play the game, but you played anyway because it would make a cool story.

There's evidence to this day that GW doesn't actually play the game the same way customers do- they literally pick "rule of cool" narrative lists all the time and they thought that everybody did. It's weird, because yes, it is clear that they are mechanically catering to tournament play... But somehow they still seem to assume people will build narrative lists instead of optimized ones.

The problem with giving GW the benefit of the doubt on this is that they were the ones pushing tournaments and going with hyper-legalistic rules arguments that blatantly violated the spirit of the rules. For example, the core rules say movement affects shooting, but some players twisted an ork upgrade to allow a vehicle to count as stationary while moving.

The sensible, "narrative-driven" approach would be to say "Guys, get a clue - stationary means it doesn't move. Stop using cheaty rules exploits!"

But that's not what GW did. They said that if you rolled well, your cheat worked. The company itself was endorsing rules exploits, and players picked up on that attitude.

Going to point out again that whilst Black Templars were the poster faction on the rulebook and in the starter set, they didn't actually get subfaction rules until a third of the way through the edition. Before that they were identical to Ultramarines in rules.

I also want to reiterate that I firmly think that 3rd edition had better quality lore than 2nd (on the whole), but I do agree the early codices in particular were significantly devalued with much less lore within them (although the lore they did have was great). However, across the sources* in the edition lore was fantastic and laid down more-or-less the current version of 40k lore to this day (pre-Great Rift). The 2nd edition versions were the foundations but substantially polished from 3rd onwards.


*Especially White Dwarf and the contemporary Black Library background books.

...


Really? That's it? One piece of artwork, maybe featured in the painting tutorial, and they're the poster child of the edition? Like how they were on the cover of the Space Marines codex? No, wait, that was the Crimson Fists. Like how they featured in every battle report? Not even close. They were rules wise identical to Ultramarines and every other non-deviant chapter until Codex Armageddon. I'm seriously curious now where the BT hate REALLY comes from.

And as far as the "Every list got goodies to offset the negatives?" That happened in 2nd Edition as well. Once again, every argument has thus far been sledging for the same things that your preferred edition did. Just say "super special bestest." It's what I do, and it's very liberating to make it clear you're showing a preference rather than attempting to frame it as empirical data.

 Just Tony wrote:
[spoiler]Really? That's it? One piece of artwork, maybe featured in the painting tutorial, and they're the poster child of the edition? Like how they were on the cover of the Space Marines codex? No, wait, that was the Crimson Fists. Like how they featured in every battle report? Not even close. They were rules wise identical to Ultramarines and every other non-deviant chapter until Codex Armageddon. I'm seriously curious now where the BT hate REALLY comes from.

No, it wasn't one piece of artwork, they were quite literally the POSTER CHILD of the edition. Rule book, boxed set, promotional materials.

And as far as the "Every list got goodies to offset the negatives?" That happened in 2nd Edition as well. Once again, every argument has thus far been sledging for the same things that your preferred edition did. Just say "super special bestest." It's what I do, and it's very liberating to make it clear you're showing a preference rather than attempting to frame it as empirical data.

So are you. You're trying to pretend that the Black Templars weren't the face of 3rd edition. That's empirical data. You want the starter box, you get Black Templars. Rule book? Black Templars. I'm not making them the face of the edition - they were an obscure paint job buried in one of the 2nd edition codecies prior to 1998. GW elevated them.

And as far as "empirical data," it's an indisputable fact that GW massively increased the amount of special rules, and each army came with it's own fun little trick. As was pointed out a page or so ago, you could create themed marine (or Chaos or Ork, or Eldar) armies in 2nd simply through your choice of units and style of play. You may want to review that, because it's the thrust of what I am talking about.

In 2nd, you made a "theme" army through unit selection; in 3rd you got special rules that allowed you to bypass the org chart and get "compensated" for not taking the units you didn't want anyway.

That pushed up the power curve and GW accelerated this process by abandoning common sense and embracing rules lawyering so that "stationary" vehicles can actually move.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
You want the starter box, you get Black Templars. Rule book? Black Templars. I'm not making them the face of the edition - they were an obscure paint job buried in one of the 2nd edition codecies prior to 1998. GW elevated them.

The cover was Templars, the rules and lore inside the book was not - the 'typical space marine army' (literally the name of the page in the rulebook) was ultramarines, as were the marines in the example battle report.

In the whole rulebook the Templars were only mentioned in passing amongst a list of chapters and in a few of the pictures of models. The space marine rulebook codex did have a section on variant chapter rules - the templars were not included.

They were the face of 3rd edition in the same way orks were the face of 5th edition - except you couldn't paint the orks blue and call them ultramarines :p

That's so weird, they had them on the box art but barely mentioned them? I 've no dog in this fight but GW gonna GW.

A.T. wrote:
In the whole rulebook the Templars were only mentioned in passing amongst a list of chapters and in a few of the pictures of models. The space marine rulebook codex did have a section on variant chapter rules - the templars were not included.

The Emperors Champion was an HQ option in the 3rd edition Space Marine Codex.

I'm not what the last few posts are actually arguing about...

My views on 3rd Edition are rather more positive than many. I think it was, overall, a far better game that the current iteration of WH40k.

Some personal context (since this is always a factor when discussing WH40k's different versions):
I have been involved in WH40k since RT. I bought nearly all the RT-era models, and even painted a lot of them, but didn't play the game very often. It seemed to me that it didn't feel quite sure what kind of game it was. I initially liked the look of 2nd Edition as a game, but I didn't like its aesthetics and found it clunky to play. When 3rd Edition arrived, I was actually losing interest in WH40k. 3rd Edition got me back into the game in a big way - the the point where I built and painted whole armies and attended several tournaments.

The bad (getting this out of the way first):
1. The level of abstraction was quite high, especially after the granularity of 2nd Edition.
2. There was an in-built imbalance between monstrous creatures and vehicles.
3. The codexes were sparsely illustrated and skimped on flavour.
4. The level of model support was pretty poor by today's standards, and of course most of the models were metal.

The good:
1. It was dynamic. Games moved fast (in my experience) tended to reward good tactics.
2. It balanced shooting and melee.
3. Vehicles fought differently to other models.
4. While list building was quite restrictive compared to the current approach, it led to more 'realistic' looking armies. I can see why GW has made army lists a lot more flexible (because people want to use their favourite toys, and that sells more models), but in my view this hasn't made the game better.
5. It was, for the most part, better balanced than current iterations. Various armies that went through periods of being in favour (and there were definitely some match-ups that were one-sided), but it didn't feature the wild swings we see now.

3rd Edition was also when I joined Dakka. The community was growing and vibrant. There was still plenty of whining, it overall it was very positive. The relative lack of model support also fostered a lot of creativity in terms of modelling. It was a good time to be in the hobby, and I miss it.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
In 2nd, you made a "theme" army through unit selection; in 3rd you got special rules that allowed you to bypass the org chart and get "compensated" for not taking the units you didn't want anyway.

Which rules allowed the bypassing of the Force Org? Other than the 3.5 Chaos Codex nothing is coming to mind.
You mean Craftworld Eldar?
Dark Angels could always run all Terminators/Landraiders/Dreadnaughts or Speeders/Bikes couldnt they?
Blood Angels had the cool random Death Company Roles but that was an army rule for a unit... not really bypassing force org.
Space Wolves had to take an HQ for every 750 points they were using or whatever but again that was an army rule and not really altering the Force Org.
The mutating Tyranids was 4th.
The Nobz and Grey Knights were 4th or 5th.

Dai wrote:
That's so weird, they had them on the box art but barely mentioned them? I 've no dog in this fight but GW gonna GW.

I suppose it helps sales to keep changing the colour of the space marine on the cover, get the kids to buy new models rather than 2nd hand.
Templars were promptly replaced as the cover marine faction by Crimson Fists in the actual codex. It was at least more interesting than their long stretch of ultramarines.


Speaking of being limited by models the latter 5e Sisters of Battle codex was equal parts amusing and depressing using the same models they had painted for the 3rd edition release. Cruddace had a 'making of' journal on the GW website to paint up the half dozen extra models for the 5e command squad - to give some indication of how little he cared about the whole thing he only got as far as base coating them before packing it in, an effort equalled by the rules where he didn't even change the points cost after copy/pasting it from the marine dex.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:


As was pointed out a page or so ago, you could create themed marine (or Chaos or Ork, or Eldar) armies in 2nd simply through your choice of units and style of play. You may want to review that, because it's the thrust of what I am talking about.

Sure, but like 10th: the thing is, "defining" your army using these methods falls apart when a different army makes the EXACT same choices, proving to you that YOUR dudes are not YOUR dudes.

"Look, I'm playing White Scars, and I know this because I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Ultramarines; I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Blood Angels; I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Space Wolves; I brought the maximum number of bikes (even though Space Wolves live in a frozen wasteland of ice and snow where bikes are as practical as bikinis) and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

So yeah, how did you actually think your expression of your chapters uniqueness was unique when ANY Chapter could do it?

And again, don't get me wrong: I understand why some people think flavour rules for subfactions is limiting, and I get the "flanderization" argument, and even I've said on record that it's nice to be able to use the new Drukhari detachment with the same army that used the old one. I get it. But that doesn't mean that people get to pretend that making a choice that's available to any other subfaction makes your faction unnique, because it objectively doesn't. If I can do anything you can do by making the same choices, your abilities are not unique, and no amount of you saying so (or thinking so) will make it true.

It doesn't mean that either system is superior to the other- it's a matter of preference. But unless there is a thing that your subfaction can do that other subfactions cannot, there is nothing meaningfully unique about your subfaction except your paint job (which doesn't affect the game at all) or your lore (which also doesn't affect the game at all).

Uptonius wrote:

A.T. wrote:
In the whole rulebook the Templars were only mentioned in passing amongst a list of chapters and in a few of the pictures of models. The space marine rulebook codex did have a section on variant chapter rules - the templars were not included.

The Emperors Champion was an HQ option in the 3rd edition Space Marine Codex.

Ironically the Emperors Champion was genericised to all Space Marine flavours (incl. Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Space Wolves) by Chapter Approved 2003.

Uptonius wrote:

A.T. wrote:
The space marine rulebook codex did have a section on variant chapter rules - the templars were not included.

The Emperors Champion was an HQ option in the 3rd edition Space Marine Codex.

I refer to the marine codex in the rulebook itself (with the templars on the cover) as it had a mini chapters section for Blood Angels, Dark Angels, and Wolves prior to the release of their own books.

The actual 3e templars codex had an ork on the cover... (codex:armageddon)

 Haighus wrote:

Uptonius wrote:

A.T. wrote:
In the whole rulebook the Templars were only mentioned in passing amongst a list of chapters and in a few of the pictures of models. The space marine rulebook codex did have a section on variant chapter rules - the templars were not included.

The Emperors Champion was an HQ option in the 3rd edition Space Marine Codex.

Ironically the Emperors Champion was genericised to all Space Marine flavours (incl. Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Space Wolves) by Chapter Approved 2003.

The Emperor's Champion in the Space Marine Codex was already available to any Chapter; in fact, it's the only non-Chapter specific Special Character in the Codex!

 Lovejoy wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

Uptonius wrote:

A.T. wrote:
In the whole rulebook the Templars were only mentioned in passing amongst a list of chapters and in a few of the pictures of models. The space marine rulebook codex did have a section on variant chapter rules - the templars were not included.

The Emperors Champion was an HQ option in the 3rd edition Space Marine Codex.

Ironically the Emperors Champion was genericised to all Space Marine flavours (incl. Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Space Wolves) by Chapter Approved 2003.

The Emperor's Champion in the Space Marine Codex was already available to any Chapter; in fact, it's the only non-Chapter specific Special Character in the Codex!

Eh... Characters weren't really locked to subfactions at the time Codex: Space Marines was published in 1998, but the entry does say "A Black Templars army...":

Maybe they edited it in a reprint?

The Chapter Approved: 2003 entry is:

This one explicitly notes it can be taken by any Chapter, and I don't see why they'd bother if the previous incarnation was already generic.

 Haighus wrote:

Eh... Characters weren't really locked to subfactions at the time Codex: Space Marines was published in 1998, but the entry does say "A Black Templars army...":....
Maybe they edited it in a reprint?

I reckon it must be a reprint thing... my copy definitely has all the other characters as 'An Ultramarines army may...' or 'A Crimson Fists army may...', but has the Emperor's Champion as 'any Space Marine army over 1000 points':

 Lovejoy wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

Eh... Characters weren't really locked to subfactions at the time Codex: Space Marines was published in 1998, but the entry does say "A Black Templars army...":....
Maybe they edited it in a reprint?

I reckon it must be a reprint thing... my copy definitely has all the other characters as 'An Ultramarines army may...' or 'A Crimson Fists army may...', but has the Emperor's Champion as 'any Space Marine army over 1000 points':

Interesting That aligns much closer with the Chapter Approved. I didn't realise they reprinted the Marine dex in 3rd. Looking closer, the version I've got states reprinted in 1999 on the title page.

 PenitentJake wrote:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:


As was pointed out a page or so ago, you could create themed marine (or Chaos or Ork, or Eldar) armies in 2nd simply through your choice of units and style of play. You may want to review that, because it's the thrust of what I am talking about.

Sure, but like 10th: the thing is, "defining" your army using these methods falls apart when a different army makes the EXACT same choices, proving to you that YOUR dudes are not YOUR dudes.

"Look, I'm playing White Scars, and I know this because I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Ultramarines; I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Blood Angels; I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Space Wolves; I brought the maximum number of bikes (even though Space Wolves live in a frozen wasteland of ice and snow where bikes are as practical as bikinis) and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

So yeah, how did you actually think your expression of your chapters uniqueness was unique when ANY Chapter could do it?

And again, don't get me wrong: I understand why some people think flavour rules for subfactions is limiting, and I get the "flanderization" argument, and even I've said on record that it's nice to be able to use the new Drukhari detachment with the same army that used the old one. I get it. But that doesn't mean that people get to pretend that making a choice that's available to any other subfaction makes your faction unnique, because it objectively doesn't. If I can do anything you can do by making the same choices, your abilities are not unique, and no amount of you saying so (or thinking so) will make it true.

It doesn't mean that either system is superior to the other- it's a matter of preference. But unless there is a thing that your subfaction can do that other subfactions cannot, there is nothing meaningfully unique about your subfaction except your paint job (which doesn't affect the game at all) or your lore (which also doesn't affect the game at all).

I’m sorry, do you think all the Great Companies fight the same?

Uptonius wrote:


The Emperors Champion was an HQ option in the 3rd edition Space Marine Codex.

True, but IIRC the champion wasn’t called out as being specific to the Black Templars in the third codex. I remember running one with my dark angels, understanding it to be fluffy, then getting blind-sided in 4th when that stuff was cleared up and elaborated on.

 morganfreeman wrote:

Uptonius wrote:


The Emperors Champion was an HQ option in the 3rd edition Space Marine Codex.

True, but IIRC the champion wasn’t called out as being specific to the Black Templars in the third codex. I remember running one with my dark angels, understanding it to be fluffy, then getting blind-sided in 4th when that stuff was cleared up and elaborated on.

See the conversation above- at least one version of the codex locked it to Black Templars, but another print did not. Chapter Approved clarified with access to all Marine flavours.

 RaptorusRex wrote:

Spoiler:

 PenitentJake wrote:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:


As was pointed out a page or so ago, you could create themed marine (or Chaos or Ork, or Eldar) armies in 2nd simply through your choice of units and style of play. You may want to review that, because it's the thrust of what I am talking about.

Sure, but like 10th: the thing is, "defining" your army using these methods falls apart when a different army makes the EXACT same choices, proving to you that YOUR dudes are not YOUR dudes.

"Look, I'm playing White Scars, and I know this because I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Ultramarines; I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Blood Angels; I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Space Wolves; I brought the maximum number of bikes (even though Space Wolves live in a frozen wasteland of ice and snow where bikes are as practical as bikinis) and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

So yeah, how did you actually think your expression of your chapters uniqueness was unique when ANY Chapter could do it?

And again, don't get me wrong: I understand why some people think flavour rules for subfactions is limiting, and I get the "flanderization" argument, and even I've said on record that it's nice to be able to use the new Drukhari detachment with the same army that used the old one. I get it. But that doesn't mean that people get to pretend that making a choice that's available to any other subfaction makes your faction unnique, because it objectively doesn't. If I can do anything you can do by making the same choices, your abilities are not unique, and no amount of you saying so (or thinking so) will make it true.

It doesn't mean that either system is superior to the other- it's a matter of preference. But unless there is a thing that your subfaction can do that other subfactions cannot, there is nothing meaningfully unique about your subfaction except your paint job (which doesn't affect the game at all) or your lore (which also doesn't affect the game at all).

I’m sorry, do you think all the Great Companies fight the same?

Reread my post and the post I was responding to, and what I meant should be obvious. The good Commissar, like many before him, was advocating for a system in which subfaction identity was mostly about fluff, unit choice and playstyle rather than having unique rules. And that's a valid preference, and I understand the reason for it. But it also allows people to play their Spacewolves identitically to how a Whitescars play might design and play there army.

So if your question is do I think that all Spacewolf companies play the same, no I don't. But I also don't believe that any of them ride bikes as well as Whitescars, because nothing in the fluff of either chapter has ever indicated that this is the case. As I result, a system which allows you to build a SW bike army that's identical to and as good as a WS bike army doesn't suit my preferences; I believe a system that allows this undermines the fluff of both SW and WS, because... And again, I cannot stress this enough, references to WS lightning raids and bikes in the lore are many, consistent, and have been for multiple editions, while the references to SW being particularly good at those things in the lore are non-existant, or at best, inconsistent.

Yes, according to Toussaint, 2nd came closer to letting you do it. Yes, 10th lets you do it. And yes, I can see why many players might prefer this type of system. But it isn't lore friendly to have SW be as good at bikes as WS.

It is more lore friendly than every Ultramarine player having to run a "Blue WS" army if they want to have a good bike list.

I'd argue it's lore friendly to have all marines great on bikes, I'd argue it's lore friendly to allow white scars to have more of them, as they have a preference for them. I don't consider it lore friendly for them to be objectively better by enough that they need rules perks.

If you're playing a stereotypical army, build the stereotype. A stereotypical space wolves army won't have 3+ unit of bikes, which isn't to say they can't, but we're talking about the stereotypes here.

Honestly? I'm fine with White Scars bikers being better than Ultramarines bikers so long as a White Scars bike army isn't better than an Ultramarines bike army. Yes that takes more effort to do well through adequate points costs etc.

 PenitentJake wrote:

Sure, but like 10th: the thing is, "defining" your army using these methods falls apart when a different army makes the EXACT same choices, proving to you that YOUR dudes are not YOUR dudes.

"Look, I'm playing White Scars, and I know this because I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Ultramarines; I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Blood Angels; I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Space Wolves; I brought the maximum number of bikes (even though Space Wolves live in a frozen wasteland of ice and snow where bikes are as practical as bikinis) and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

So yeah, how did you actually think your expression of your chapters uniqueness was unique when ANY Chapter could do it?

...vs...

"Look, I'm playing White Scars, and I know this because I'm using the White Scars codex."

"I'm playing Ultramarines; I'm using the White Scars codex, because I wanted a biker army, but I painted them blue."

"I'm playing Blood Angels; I'm using the White Scars codex, because I wanted a biker army, but I painted them red."

"I'm playing Space Wolves; I'm using the White Scars codex, because I wanted a biker army, but I painted them whatever the hell colour 'Fang' is."

...

 insaniak wrote:

 PenitentJake wrote:

Sure, but like 10th: the thing is, "defining" your army using these methods falls apart when a different army makes the EXACT same choices, proving to you that YOUR dudes are not YOUR dudes.

"Look, I'm playing White Scars, and I know this because I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Ultramarines; I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Blood Angels; I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Space Wolves; I brought the maximum number of bikes (even though Space Wolves live in a frozen wasteland of ice and snow where bikes are as practical as bikinis) and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

So yeah, how did you actually think your expression of your chapters uniqueness was unique when ANY Chapter could do it?

...vs...

"Look, I'm playing White Scars, and I know this because I'm using the White Scars codex."

"I'm playing Ultramarines; I'm using the White Scars codex, because I wanted a biker army, but I painted them blue."

"I'm playing Blood Angels; I'm using the White Scars codex, because I wanted a biker army, but I painted them red."

"I'm playing Space Wolves; I'm using the White Scars codex, because I wanted a biker army, but I painted them whatever the hell colour 'Fang' is."

...

My response:
No, you're just playing blue/red/"fang" colored White Scars. I know this because you're using the White Scars codex/rules.
What you tell yourself is your own business.
What color you choose to paint your stuff, or even if you paint it? Doesn't matter to me.

The end result is the same, though. In both cases, you're using the same rules and the same army list... the only difference is what you choose to call them.

 insaniak wrote:
The end result is the same, though. In both cases, you're using the same rules and the same army list... the only difference is what you choose to call them.

The requirement of a white scars specific rule in the example is what breaks things. If it was "space marine bikers" rules then sure, but the fact people were encouraged to proxy as the "wrong" army to have their stuff work because the rules were intrinsically tied to a specific fluff relevant name is the issue.

Once you divorce flamers and meltas from Salamanders and instead pair them to "marine force that specialises in flamers and meltas", people gain creativity without breaking narrative stride.

Never the less, this wasn't too much of a problem in 3rd where irrc largely it was still based off what you chose to include to carry the theme, apart from those lucky few with additional rules supplements and the 3.5 chaos book.

Dudeface wrote:
Never the less, this wasn't too much of a problem in 3rd where irrc largely it was still based off what you chose to include to carry the theme, apart from those lucky few with additional rules supplements and the 3.5 chaos book.

Ironically the 3.5 book kind of killed one of the things that made chaos unique.

Loyalists were traditionally uniformly painted generalist battle brothers. Oldschool chaos was a disparate warband made up of more specialised sub-factions, and while the daemons stayed that way the marines gradually moved to being loyalists with spikes.

Definitely a problem Chaos has faced. At different points, they’ve been presented as disparate, temporarily aligned warbands, Spiky Marines, hyper competent, super incompetent, still capable of fielding massive, near Legion sized forces and Mere Handfuls.

So depending on when you got started, your take on Chaos can be pretty different from the next person, because GW Can’t Decide.

Whilst I’d say the current range, whilst not faultless, is the most coherent and interesting in a long while? Where are the mutations and gribbly body horror? Like tentacle arms, unusual legs and that. Where is the literal mark of chaos upon their benighted flesh?

Doesn’t even need in-game rules, just go with the visual. Because gorgeous as the current models are, they’re entirely missing the wackiness and manky corruption of the earliest models.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Definitely a problem Chaos has faced. At different points, they’ve been presented as disparate, temporarily aligned warbands, Spiky Marines, hyper competent, super incompetent, still capable of fielding massive, near Legion sized forces and Mere Handfuls.

Sounds pretty Chaotic. Chaos should encompass all of those things. Just as it can reward your devotion with daemon princedom or spawnhood.

 insaniak wrote:

 PenitentJake wrote:

Sure, but like 10th: the thing is, "defining" your army using these methods falls apart when a different army makes the EXACT same choices, proving to you that YOUR dudes are not YOUR dudes.

"Look, I'm playing White Scars, and I know this because I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Ultramarines; I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Blood Angels; I brought the maximum number of bikes and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

"I'm playing Space Wolves; I brought the maximum number of bikes (even though Space Wolves live in a frozen wasteland of ice and snow where bikes are as practical as bikinis) and all my infantry are in transports and we focus on hit and run tactics."

So yeah, how did you actually think your expression of your chapters uniqueness was unique when ANY Chapter could do it?

...vs...

"Look, I'm playing White Scars, and I know this because I'm using the White Scars codex."

"I'm playing Ultramarines; I'm using the White Scars codex, because I wanted a biker army, but I painted them blue."

"I'm playing Blood Angels; I'm using the White Scars codex, because I wanted a biker army, but I painted them red."

"I'm playing Space Wolves; I'm using the White Scars codex, because I wanted a biker army, but I painted them whatever the hell colour 'Fang' is."

...

This never bothered me though- the dude who wanted the Ultramarine bikers so he used blue Marines with the White Scars dex? That was fine, because in that arrangement, it's clear that the player is using a work around, rather than- "No, nobody actually specializes in anything, and nobody is better than anybody at anything else. I mean, the lore says they specialize, but that's not how the game works. Anyone who wants to can use the game to reflect the lore if they choose to, but that's the work around, not the default."

Dudeface wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
The end result is the same, though. In both cases, you're using the same rules and the same army list... the only difference is what you choose to call them.

The requirement of a white scars specific rule in the example is what breaks things. If it was "space marine bikers" rules then sure, but the fact people were encouraged to proxy as the "wrong" army to have their stuff work because the rules were intrinsically tied to a specific fluff relevant name is the issue.

Once you divorce flamers and meltas from Salamanders and instead pair them to "marine force that specialises in flamers and meltas", people gain creativity without breaking narrative stride.

Never the less, this wasn't too much of a problem in 3rd where irrc largely it was still based off what you chose to include to carry the theme, apart from those lucky few with additional rules supplements and the 3.5 chaos book.

This is a spectrum though. Few people argue that there shouldn't be ordinary Marines and veteran Marines, yet veterans are just better versions (more subtly so before 5th edition). So if you think that is acceptable for both to be choices, the existence of a variant list with veteran bikers vs the default with ordinary bikers is also acceptable. The devil is in the details, in which the veteran unit is more capable but has drawbacks that prevent it being the better choice (like a higher points cost).

This works for everything- the list specialising in flamers and meltas shouldn't be better than the list that isn't, even if the individual capabilities are higher.

If you take the corollary to the extreme, why bother having different units and codices at all? So where should the line be drawn in variations? I do accept that balancing becomes harder with more lists, but I reiterate my position that mission variety discourages skew lists.

ccs wrote:
My response:
No, you're just playing blue/red/"fang" colored White Scars. I know this because you're using the White Scars codex/rules.
What you tell yourself is your own business.
What color you choose to paint your stuff, or even if you paint it? Doesn't matter to me.

It's useful to go back and look at 2nd for a moment. All marine armies had the same composition rules using the three types of units: characters, squads and support. Squads - which were required - included Terminators, tactical, scouts, bikes, assault and devastators. So one could create whatever flavor of force one desired.

All the specialist chapters got was a limited choice of special squads with special rules - and they paid extra points for them. If you wanted veteran assault marines, you played a Blood Angels chapter (or took them as allies). Same with Ravenwing, veteran tactical squads, etc.

What set your army apart was simply the composition and doctrine you used, which had the virtue of limiting the size of the rule book.

With 3rd, the org chart came into being and units could count towards different slots on different lists. The simplification of core rules (and shortening of the stat line) also required more special rules to create differences, and this was exacerbated by the all-or-nothing AP system and the cookie-cutter vehicle profile. The designers also varied the point values for the same weapons depending on what unit they were in, and players exploited this as well.

What that meant was armies necessarily had to be specialized, which created further design complexity, further worsened balance issues, and created a have/have not hierarchy and pushed the focus of the game more towards list creation and less towards tactical operations.

In 2nd, there were many really good, flexible options. You didn't have to be required to take "line units" because they were good on their own. As mentioned long ago, heavy bolters were really useful against everyone, so having a few was just common sense. In 3rd, balancing AP was a crucial and failing to do it could result in a blowout loss, which was annoying.

Yes, you could engineer a lop-sided game in 2nd, but amassing 100 hormaguants or a fleet of discs of Tzeentch was pretty unique (and expensive) way to do it. Starcannon spam was far more economical.

Composition in 2nd edition is all over the place, and includes examples that are fundamentally the same as FOC swapping. For example, Ork warbikes were support, unless you took Evil Sunz mobz as battleline and upgraded them with warbikes.

Imperial Guard had this bizarre, complex system that vaguely approximated the company and platoon structure in the lore of the book and tied units to a specific regiment. Except the only regiment that had different rules was rough riders- a Cadian and Catachan squad were identical. In addition, it meant that whilst Ratlings, Ogryns, and Storm troopers were battleline, in practice they were restricted by the system above as much as being elites in later editions.

 Haighus wrote:
Composition in 2nd edition is all over the place, and includes examples that are fundamentally the same as FOC swapping. For example, Ork warbikes were support, unless you took Evil Sunz mobz as battleline and upgraded them with warbikes.

Imperial Guard had this bizarre, complex system that vaguely approximated the company and platoon structure in the lore of the book and tied units to a specific regiment. Except the only regiment that had different rules was rough riders- a Cadian and Catachan squad were identical. In addition, it meant that whilst Ratlings, Ogryns, and Storm troopers were battleline, in practice they were restricted by the system above as much as being elites in later editions.

Right, but that's a feature to me, not a bug. The IG rules made sense insofar as they are not very flexible as an organization. Basically if you wanted armor, you had to take infantry to support it. That's fine.

I hated the FOC because it imposed totally inappropriate limits on force selection and did nothing to improve game balance. In fact, it made it worse by forcing factions to choose junk units in order to check a box, while more fortunate factions would slide around those restrictions and take nothing but the cream of the list.

The rules for 2nd were very loose, and that was a good thing because it allowed players the freedom to do specific scenarios while maintaining some sort of parity in terms of characters and heavy weapons/allies.

What that allowed was totally fluffy and appropriate lists, such as a terminator strike team or an "air assault" force of jump packs and land speeders. It supports a narrative form of gaming where you and your opponent talk about what combinations/restrictions make sense from a fluff and balance perspective.

The FOC was GW saying "yeah, never mind worrying about that, it's fixed," and people absolutely adopted that attitude. It was understood in 2nd that "legal" was not balanced because of the skew. Going all WAAC on someone with with a tweaked list was socially frowned upon because anyone could do that.

In 3rd that became an art form, and the internet fueled that to the extent that list discussions needed their own dedicated space because they spammed up the regular discussions. Nobody carried about "killer lists" in 2nd because everyone knew you could do it, but it was lame. Throwing 100+ hormaguants was simply a matter of model purchases and doing it was - if nothing else - a commendable financial commitment, but no one acted like they'd discovered the cure for cancer or a lost civilization.

In 3rd people did do that, and it was a sub-competition of people critiquing one another, arguing that the list wasn't optimized enough, or pointing out how that list was bad, but THIS list would beat it.

To be fair, the internet was in its infancy, so maybe 2nd ed. list-building could have gotten that way, but I don't think so because there is a community today, and perhaps because it's out of print, no one approaches the game with that kind of competitiveness. Or if they do, it's open and wrapped in irony ("My mates and I decided what was the weirdest, cheatiest list possible. Here's what we came up with...")

My point stands, however: the FOC was part of the professionalization of 40k, an assumption that cooperative play was for losers and the best and greatest relied on GW's fickle balancing efforts to guide their path of victory.

No, WAAC was happening during 2nd. I was on the receiving end of it. You know what else was happening in 2nd edition that bled into third? NAAC: Narrative At All Costs. You seem to act like the only thing destroying the player base was people playing competitive, but here's the funny thing: competitive play did not block out narrative play, but narrative play most assuredly blocked out competitive play nine times out of 10. Position The Knack players were some of the most gatekeeping people I've ever met in my life and they most assuredly treated the game as if their way of playing was the only way of playing, whereas your competitive players welcomed any challenge because they were there for the game. This once again dips back to some people wanting a role-playing game in their war game or vice versa, not realizing that those things probably should be kept separate. Games Workshop themselves realize this, and that's why they came out with Inquisitor to scratch that itch.

Also, I'm going to go ahead and throw the BS flag down on the entire optimization garbage that you keep spouting. The thing about competitive play is that you are more often than not completely unaware of who you were going to wind up playing, unless you had to make a list as equally able to Dish it to whomever you're playing and have a chance of surviving. This meant that star cannon spam would be absolutely useless against 2/3 of the Army's being played. This doesn't sound like the best bit of odds, does it? It definitely doesn't seem like a logical choice if you're trying to prepare to go up against anyone. To me it sounds like you had a TFG in your group during Third Edition who specialized the list against you and you've held it against them pretty much ever since. I'm also going to go ahead and throw down that by your logic second edition ruin 40K because Crimson fists were the poster child of the game before second came along.

I'll go ahead and suggest this once again, even though I understand that this is a sledge thread and I should just back out instead of Defending the addition that's getting sledged against people making off base comments. Just say "super special bestest" and that's all the explanation you need. That way you don't have to get caught spouting stuff that is flat out untrue.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

Spoiler:

 Haighus wrote:
Composition in 2nd edition is all over the place, and includes examples that are fundamentally the same as FOC swapping. For example, Ork warbikes were support, unless you took Evil Sunz mobz as battleline and upgraded them with warbikes.

Imperial Guard had this bizarre, complex system that vaguely approximated the company and platoon structure in the lore of the book and tied units to a specific regiment. Except the only regiment that had different rules was rough riders- a Cadian and Catachan squad were identical. In addition, it meant that whilst Ratlings, Ogryns, and Storm troopers were battleline, in practice they were restricted by the system above as much as being elites in later editions.

Right, but that's a feature to me, not a bug. The IG rules made sense insofar as they are not very flexible as an organization. Basically if you wanted armor, you had to take infantry to support it. That's fine.

I hated the FOC because it imposed totally inappropriate limits on force selection and did nothing to improve game balance. In fact, it made it worse by forcing factions to choose junk units in order to check a box, while more fortunate factions would slide around those restrictions and take nothing but the cream of the list.

The rules for 2nd were very loose, and that was a good thing because it allowed players the freedom to do specific scenarios while maintaining some sort of parity in terms of characters and heavy weapons/allies.

What that allowed was totally fluffy and appropriate lists, such as a terminator strike team or an "air assault" force of jump packs and land speeders. It supports a narrative form of gaming where you and your opponent talk about what combinations/restrictions make sense from a fluff and balance perspective.

The FOC was GW saying "yeah, never mind worrying about that, it's fixed," and people absolutely adopted that attitude. It was understood in 2nd that "legal" was not balanced because of the skew. Going all WAAC on someone with with a tweaked list was socially frowned upon because anyone could do that.

In 3rd that became an art form, and the internet fueled that to the extent that list discussions needed their own dedicated space because they spammed up the regular discussions. Nobody carried about "killer lists" in 2nd because everyone knew you could do it, but it was lame. Throwing 100+ hormaguants was simply a matter of model purchases and doing it was - if nothing else - a commendable financial commitment, but no one acted like they'd discovered the cure for cancer or a lost civilization.

In 3rd people did do that, and it was a sub-competition of people critiquing one another, arguing that the list wasn't optimized enough, or pointing out how that list was bad, but THIS list would beat it.

To be fair, the internet was in its infancy, so maybe 2nd ed. list-building could have gotten that way, but I don't think so because there is a community today, and perhaps because it's out of print, no one approaches the game with that kind of competitiveness. Or if they do, it's open and wrapped in irony ("My mates and I decided what was the weirdest, cheatiest list possible. Here's what we came up with...")

My point stands, however: the FOC was part of the professionalization of 40k, an assumption that cooperative play was for losers and the best and greatest relied on GW's fickle balancing efforts to guide their path of victory.

So you are saying that 2nd was good because it allowed you to take broad lists with lots of flexibility, unless you were Guard because the Guard isn't very flexible, even though the Guard codex wouldn't let you make a force that matches lore in that very codex:

(Note, you could build an armoured company in 3rd, and an artillery company in the list released at the beginning of 4th based on the 3.5th IG codex).

So Space Marines can run an unsupported Terminator strike but Guard cannot have an armoured spearhead. "Tax units" are good for Guard only.

Meanwhile, 3rd is bad because now it makes everyone take their basic troop units in the default rules?

In addition, the FOC is recommended for 3rd but is explicitly optional and they give suggestions for varying the FOC. If your gaming group was not willing to play games without the FOC or with a modified FOC for a narrative mission, that was a problem with your gaming group. Plus, there were 4 different FOCs provided in the 3rd edition rulebooks for different types of mission. They had different required units (all have at least one troops) and force list variety for different roles to fit the narrative. Did they provide balance alone? No. But it definitely helps to limit spam, especially when using different FOCs across different mission types. It also generates lists that follow typical formations for various forces more closely. Sole Terminator strike forces are rare outside the Deathwing. Terminator strikes supporting Tactical squads in Drop pods is more common.

Honestly, it sounds more like your community changed when the edition did, and that is as much part of why you don't like 3rd as the rules changes. You had a good group in 2nd that put effort in to avoid cheesing the game and were willing to make houserules. You didn't have that in 3rd.

[quote=Just Tony 813680 11669336 e47b71fd13f664c2bec433620d152314.png

Also, I'm going to go ahead and throw the BS flag down on the entire optimization garbage that you keep spouting.

So you're actually saying that no one ever optimized the FOC? Um, okay.

The thing about competitive play is that you are more often than not completely unaware of who you were going to wind up playing, unless you had to make a list as equally able to Dish it to whomever you're playing and have a chance of surviving. This meant that star cannon spam would be absolutely useless against 2/3 of the Army's being played.

Power armor troops of various types were grossly overrepresented in the codices released and I'm pretty sure the sales figures are representative of that. GW hung its hat on space marines, launched a doomed lawsuit to protect their monopoly on the models, so while they were not the majority of factions, they were well-represented in tournaments and every other measure of popularity I saw. When in doubt, use AP 3 because - like Colt Malt Liquor - it works every time. But I could be wrong, it was a long time ago. Maybe Dark Eldar took the 40k world by storm, which is why people were giving away the figures. Nobody gave away marines.

I'll go ahead and suggest this once again, even though I understand that this is a sledge thread and I should just back out instead of Defending the addition that's getting sledged against people making off base comments. Just say "super special bestest" and that's all the explanation you need. That way you don't have to get caught spouting stuff that is flat out untrue.

The difference is that 2nd ed. players happily admit their flaws. They're known, and while some embrace the psychic phase or guys getting set on fire and spending the rest of the game running in a circle, we can also admit that it was time-consuming and limited force sizes.

There are also known ways to mitigate them, which is why the " 2nd problems" thread is so mellow. There's just not much to argue about.

It's interesting that almost none of the 3rd edition stuff can be defended on its own - it's always "Well, 2nd sucked so..."

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
[quote=Just Tony 813680 11669336 e47b71fd13f664c2bec433620d152314.png

Also, I'm going to go ahead and throw the BS flag down on the entire optimization garbage that you keep spouting.

So you're actually saying that no one ever optimized the FOC? Um, okay.

The thing about competitive play is that you are more often than not completely unaware of who you were going to wind up playing, unless you had to make a list as equally able to Dish it to whomever you're playing and have a chance of surviving. This meant that star cannon spam would be absolutely useless against 2/3 of the Army's being played.

Power armor troops of various types were grossly overrepresented in the codices released and I'm pretty sure the sales figures are representative of that. GW hung its hat on space marines, launched a doomed lawsuit to protect their monopoly on the models, so while they were not the majority of factions, they were well-represented in tournaments and every other measure of popularity I saw. When in doubt, use AP 3 because - like Colt Malt Liquor - it works every time. But I could be wrong, it was a long time ago. Maybe Dark Eldar took the 40k world by storm, which is why people were giving away the figures. Nobody gave away marines.

I'll go ahead and suggest this once again, even though I understand that this is a sledge thread and I should just back out instead of Defending the addition that's getting sledged against people making off base comments. Just say "super special bestest" and that's all the explanation you need. That way you don't have to get caught spouting stuff that is flat out untrue.

The difference is that 2nd ed. players happily admit their flaws. They're known, and while some embrace the psychic phase or guys getting set on fire and spending the rest of the game running in a circle, we can also admit that it was time-consuming and limited force sizes.

There are also known ways to mitigate them, which is why the " 2nd problems" thread is so mellow. There's just not much to argue about.

It's interesting that almost none of the 3rd edition stuff can be defended on its own - it's always "Well, 2nd sucked so..."

People were giving away dark elf figures because people didn't know how to run the army. That's addressing the first ridiculous point in your post. The second ridiculous point is that assuming all in whatever played was Marines and nothing else was represented. The hyperbole is ridiculous, you need to just stop.

It's funny because people were defending Third Edition in this very thread with simply "it was good to have structure", "the vehicle rules were much more logical", or "armies actually look like armies", but yeah, we can go ahead and sweep that under the rug because for some odd reason you only read what you want to read.

Here's another point for you to consider: Third Edition as a rule set was simply adjusted upon all the way up until 7th when 8th switch the Paradigm completely, well second edition was so great they trashed it and revamped the entire system from the ground up rather than simply try to make adjustments. Take of that what you will.


And as far as propagation of marine armies? That was happening in every Edition because Elite armies are smaller and cost less to buy. Regardless of everything going plastic or not that is still the case.

 PenitentJake wrote:
"No, nobody actually specializes in anything, and nobody is better than anybody at anything else. I mean, the lore says they specialize, but that's not how the game works. Anyone who wants to can use the game to reflect the lore if they choose to, but that's the work around, not the default."

Why do you interpret 'specialize' to mean 'is the absolute best at without peer'? Those aren't synonymous.

It can be the case that White Scars specialize in mounted warfare and do it the most, but also that Ultramarines are capable of fielding comparably-effective forces at a tactical level, and that on the tabletop the difference isn't significant enough to account for.

If you can't enjoy White Scars being good at bikes unless nobody else is allowed to be good at bikes too, that's entirely on you. It isn't failing to reflect the lore just because it isn't giving out unique bonuses to appease a simplistic 'power level' view of the lore.

I thought people gave away the original dark eldar because the models were pretty hard to like, but that could have just been my local gaming circle. I mean the jetbikes were excellent for the time, but whenever someone mentions old dark eldar I only see that head with the ginormous conical haircut with the hair painted skull white. You know the one.

The original DE Jetbikes were pretty cool, because they were fairly modular. The two halves of the faring were different lengths, but interchangeable, and you could mount them horizontally or vertically. The blade vanes and guns could also be positioned in different orientations.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Maybe Dark Eldar took the 40k world by storm, which is why people were giving away the figures.

If you've never seen a 3e codex Dark Eldar list then try to imagine a faction that can bring somewhere in the ballpark of two dozen strength 8 AP 2 weapons backed by five troop units and multiple vehicles... in a 1000pt game.

Old DE really put the cannon into glass cannon.

 catbarf wrote:


Why do you interpret 'specialize' to mean 'is the absolute best at without peer'? Those aren't synonymous.

To specialize literally means to study and practice one skill to the exclusion of others, which is literally what you have to do to be the best. And sure, one who specializes isn't going to necessarily be better at that skill than others who also specialize in that skill, but all the specialists are going to be better at the skill than those who don't specialize in it.

And why do you assume that for subfactions to be equally effective, all must have equal access to all specializations? Why can't your Ultramarines lean into their own specialty instead of you insisting that that also have access to everyone else's specialty?

Your army doesn't have to be as good at hit and run attacks as mine to be equally effective. Or is the issue just that you're uncomfortable in a setting where subfactions have disadvantages as well as advantages?

 catbarf wrote:

It can be the case that White Scars specialize in mounted warfare and do it the most, but also that Ultramarines are capable of fielding comparably-effective forces at a tactical level, and that on the tabletop the difference isn't significant enough to account for.

Ultramarine forces can be as effective as Whitescars forces; they just aren't likely to do it by being equally proficient bikers, because not a scrap of anything in the lore indicates that they are equally proficient in the lore, while a great many things in both the lore and the version history of the game DO imply that they are NOT equally proficient bikers.

 catbarf wrote:

If you can't enjoy White Scars being good at bikes unless nobody else is allowed to be good at bikes too, that's entirely on you. It isn't failing to reflect the lore just because it isn't giving out unique bonuses to appease a simplistic 'power level' view of the lore.

When the lore says a subfaction is as good at bikes as Whitescars are, I'm fine. You know, Ravenwing, Doomrider, etc. If you're not cool playing Ultramarines with both their strengths AND their weaknesses, why not just make up your own chapter name?

Now look, the worst part here dude is that by coming at me, you make me double down and entrench into a position that I've already stated numerous times is no more or no less valid than the opposite position. Numerous times I've talked about how I understand why people like the detachment system being the source for flavour rules; when the Drukhari got their second detachment, I talked about how nice it was to be able to use it without feeling obligated to use a different paint scheme.

I see your point of view- it's valid.

But even if I was convinced that everybody should be able to be as good at everything as everyone else- and to be clear, I'm not- there are other serious problems with this detachment system. Blood Angels have access not only to the detachments in their own dex, they also have access to the detachments in the SM book. Meanwhile, Sisters get four- not even one for each Order.

9th was bloated, but I knew there were six Orders of Battle Sisters, and I could tell them apart by how they played. That felt closer to the experience that space marine players have been taking for granted since 2nd edition than anything that ever came before. We weren't equal- no one ever will be. But I felt like my subfaction was a part of my identity. It was the first and only time in the game's history that I've been able to say "This model is from the Sacred Rose" and have it mean as much as saying "This model is a Blood Angel."

To go from that to four detachments is pretty sour, even though I will admit that it's nice to know that when I do get the lowly four detachments that us second class folk are allowed to have, I'll be able to play any of the four guilt free regardless of what colour my models are.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:


It's interesting that almost none of the 3rd edition stuff can be defended on its own - it's always "Well, 2nd sucked so..."

As someone who's not been super involved in this thread: Lol-wot?

Every single one of your posts is about how 2nd edition was so much better than 3rd because of X Y Z. Why is that a valid argument, but the opposition of 3rd being better because Z Y X is not?

Furthermore, this thread is about why someone hated 3rd and loved 2nd. It's literally in the first paragraph of the OP. And every post you or Doc have made; how it was better in 2nd and 3rd ruined everything!

I've been keeping out of the discussion for a bit because it's kind of pointless, and this particular comment really highlights that. That there's no salient points left to be made in favor of 2nd or detraction of 3rd, so it's time to just flip the tables and change the rules to keep attacking 3rd that way. I genuinely think you should take some advice given several other times: Just admit that 2nd is your special-bestest-best edition. I mean that's fine, having an opinion and a preference is O.K. Hell I even respect that, but the attempts at trying to maintain a façade that it's anything else is just getting sad.

 PenitentJake wrote:
To specialize literally means to study and practice one skill to the exclusion of others, which is literally what you have to do to be the best. And sure, one who specializes isn't going to necessarily be better at that skill than others who also specialize in that skill, but all the specialists are going to be better at the skill than those who don't specialize in it.

And why do you assume that for subfactions to be equally effective, all must have equal access to all specializations? Why can't your Ultramarines lean into their own specialty instead of you insisting that that also have access to everyone else's specialty?

Your army doesn't have to be as good at hit and run attacks as mine to be equally effective. Or is the issue just that you're uncomfortable in a setting where subfactions have disadvantages as well as advantages?

'Specialists will be better at the skill than those who don't specialize it' is an incredibly general statement. What expertise does that specialization translate to? Strategic flexibility? Logistical independence? Reduction of Clausewitzian friction from well-practiced drill? Does it mean they can operate a specialized tactical model at an operational scale? Does it enable field officers to operate independently under mission tactics? Does any of it manifest as a tangible difference in a game where superhuman reflexes and centuries of experience yields a single point of WS over a conscript?

The way you're approaching this goes something like: The Air Force only operates aircraft and specializes in aircraft, but the Navy operates both aircraft and ships, so Air Force aircraft in Team Yankee should get +1 to hit. Which is silly. The Air Force does specialize in air operations, and I can give you a dozen things that that translates to in practice, but none of them will be visible at the scale of a tactical wargame. If someone complains that not giving Air Force a special bonus is failing to be realistic or historically accurate or lore accurate, they are wrong.

I'm very comfortable with subfactions having disadvantages and advantages. I'd like to see that implemented, actually; if taking a White Scars or Ravenwing biker force came with disadvantages to offset their better capabilities (higher per-man cost, maybe?) it would be easier to tolerate them getting to be the Specialest Bestest Biker Boys to the exclusion of everyone else. But there aren't disadvantages currently. There are only advantages to select from, and under the prior paint=rules system, if the advantage assigned to your subfaction doesn't benefit your army, sucks to suck. Want to play a biker army? Sorry, you didn't paint your guys correctly, so we can't give you a bonus that helps you. If we do, the guy who painted his toy soldiers in the correct color will throw a tantrum and hold his breath until he passes out.

What I'm uncomfortable with is a game that has always supported and been built around Your Dudes (even within the context of a defined subfaction), and has a rich wealth of background that depicts subfactions fighting in a variety of ways, going 'Hey, that thing you want to do? That thing that your guys sometimes do in the lore? That's the wrong way to play them, here's a bonus to encourage you to play them more stereotypically'. The current system of freebie bonuses still isn't my favorite either, and still encourages min-maxing to a degree I don't like, but it gets away from the awkward counts-as that defined 8th Ed for me. The guy who gets upset now that other people can play bikers too was already getting upset that other people were counting their Marines as White Scars and y'know what, maybe there's a point where the enjoyment of the guy who jealously guards the fictional supremacy of his subfaction shouldn't be weighed more heavily than the enjoyment of everyone else who just wants Their Dudes to not suck on the tabletop.

Now as I've said before when this topic comes up, I'd much rather see subfaction representation layered on as an additional dimension rather than either nonexistent or used to drive detachments. Giving each subfaction an extra stratagem and enhancement, on top of the ones provided by the chosen detachment, would allow for some inherently balanced (associated CP/points costs) subfaction-specific flavor without the paint scheme being the single most important element of an army's identity.

Space Marines getting more toys and rules support than anyone else remains a perennial problem. At least we no longer need to deal with bizarre subfaction characterization like Death Korps being strictly worse at armor and artillery than Catachans, which you can't tell me with a straight face was more lore-accurate than what we have now.

 catbarf wrote:
There are only advantages to select from, and under the prior paint=rules system, if the advantage assigned to your subfaction doesn't benefit your army, sucks to suck. Want to play a biker army? Sorry, you didn't paint your guys correctly, so we can't give you a bonus that helps you

Reminds me of when the sisters first got faction rules and the close combat difference between Bloody Rose and the rest were night and day, to the point where you wonder how much of the rest of the codex was nerfed in testing to accommodate such a huge swing.
Must have sucked to have been playing a Valorious Heart assault force and then picking up 6+ FnP instead of doubling your close combat punch.

Tying rules to paint jobs is always a problem. I remember when I was playing in 2e, I painted my guys (awfully) as Blood Angels because 1. They were in all the fiction and art and 2. The fiction with Brother Raphael talking about Baal Secundus and so on just really caught my imagination.

I thought they were just normal space marines - I didn't really know there was a special book for them, and I just used the Codex Army Lists that came with the starter to make my armies because there wasn't a Codex Space Marines the same way there was a Codex Chaos, Orks and Eldar, and I didn't know what Ultramarines were really.

3e came along and I finally had a Codex Space Marines, which was very exciting. Then very early in the edition Codex Blood Angels got released. It was dirt cheap and so I quickly picked it up, and found out that my Space Marines were actually pretty different - I was supposed to have a bunch of these Death Company guys, an indeterminate number actually. And I apparently should have been running more close combat orientated squads, and assault marines, and rhinos. My army was tactical squads, scout squads and a small terminator squad.

It was so expensive and disheartening that I actually just switched factions to Orks with what Gorkamorka stuff I had, and waited for the Brian Nelson re-sculpts to be released and finally make the Ork army fit my imagined conception of them.

I know this is about 3rd edition, but do you guys prefer the way 10th is doing it with detachments over chapter / world tactics?

 catbarf wrote:


I'm very comfortable with subfactions having disadvantages and advantages. I'd like to see that implemented, actually; if taking a White Scars or Ravenwing biker force came with disadvantages to offset their better capabilities (higher per-man cost, maybe?) it would be easier to tolerate them getting to be the Specialest Bestest Biker Boys to the exclusion of everyone else. But there aren't disadvantages currently.

First, we're not talking about "currently", because currently, flavour rules don't come from subfaction- they come from detachment. What we're talking about are the differences between 9th and 10th. You like 10th's system better, and as I've said, I too see its advantages, and I agree that your point of view is valid, even if I have a different preference.

 catbarf wrote:


There are only advantages to select from, and under the prior paint=rules system, if the advantage assigned to your subfaction doesn't benefit your army, sucks to suck.

No, that is literally the disadvantage that you are claiming doesn't exist. It's an opportunity cost. Wanna specialize in hit and run attacks? Great. That is an advantage, because you better at hit and run attacks, but it's a disadvantage because you can't ALSO specialize in siege tactics.

 catbarf wrote:


Want to play a biker army? Sorry, you didn't paint your guys correctly, so we can't give you a bonus that helps you. If we do, the guy who painted his toy soldiers in the correct color will throw a tantrum and hold his breath until he passes out.

This is disingenous too- you can play any army as a bike army. You just can't play an army that's BETTER bikes than other non-specialized bike armies unless you pick one that actually specializes in using bikes. Because in order to BE better at bikes than other armies, you do have to use them more often in order to improve beyond the level of average- you become the best at something by practicing it.

I may be advocating for a system where yes, a biker specialist is going to be better at biking than on a non- specialist biker.

What I don't understand is that you seem to want a system where that same biker specialist is still the "bestest biker" on Tuesdays when they use the bike detachment, but ALSO the bestest siege guy on Thursdays when they use the siege detachment, but also the bestest stealth guy on Saturdays when they use the stealth detachment and ALSO the bestest hand to hand on Mondays when they use the hand to hand detachment.

And you present this as evidence that you don't mind subfactions having disadvantages?

 catbarf wrote:

What I'm uncomfortable with is a game that has always supported and been built around Your Dudes (even within the context of a defined subfaction), and has a rich wealth of background that depicts subfactions fighting in a variety of ways,

Is this honestly what you see when you look at 40k? Because I haven't seen any stories about Ultramarine Bikers, and I haven't seen stories about Whitescar devsatators. I mean, both exist- I see them in the dexes, but I don't remember reading this fiction or seeing these excerpts and I certainly don't remember an edition other than 10th that allowed me to field suped-up White Scar Devastators cuz my dudes!

You can say you've seen it, and maybe you have- I'm not the biggest marine fan, their ubiquity in 40k makes them boring to me.

But by all means, feel free in your response to cite sources about the time when the "Your Dudeness" of the game allowed us to field suped-up WS Devs, or amazing BA Snipers, or whatever.

 catbarf wrote:

going 'Hey, that thing you want to do? That thing that your guys sometimes do in the lore? That's the wrong way to play them, here's a bonus to encourage you to play them more stereotypically'.

That's not actually the way specialist rules work it's more like "That thing you guys SOMETIMES do in the lore? Your never going to be as good at as someone who does it OFTEN in the lore, and they aren't going to be as good at it as someone who ALWAYS does it in the lore... Because in real life, that's how skill development actually works."

 catbarf wrote:

The current system of freebie bonuses still isn't my favorite either, and still encourages min-maxing to a degree I don't like, but it gets away from the awkward counts-as that defined 8th Ed for me.

First of all, good to know you're not entirely satisfied with this system either. I suppose that's as close as I'll get to having you acknowledge the validity of my preference the way I've acknowledged the validity of yours.

But regarding that "awkward count-as thing"? I preferred the honesty of it. I preferred someone just saying "Hey, I really like bikes, but I hate painting white- can I play these blue marines using the WS dex?" to "Oh, my Ultramarines really are as good at bikes as the White Scars."

 catbarf wrote:

The guy who gets upset now that other people can play bikers too was already getting upset that other people were counting their Marines as White Scars

I'm sure some did, but as explained above, I wasn't one of them. I always preferred the honesty of "I like this colour and I like that ability, so I'm using both together" over "No, this devastator heavy siege force that like to stand still and kill things at range so much that they've learned to do it better than other forces really genuinely IS a Whitescars army... It's just a Whitescars army in a different formation."

 catbarf wrote:

Now as I've said before when this topic comes up, I'd much rather see subfaction representation layered on as an additional dimension rather than either nonexistent or used to drive detachments. Giving each subfaction an extra stratagem and enhancement, on top of the ones provided by the chosen detachment, would allow for some inherently balanced (associated CP/points costs) subfaction-specific flavor without the paint scheme being the single most important element of an army's identity.

And I think this is a great compromise- as I've said, I see the advantage of having special rules provided by detachment rather than subfaction, and if I did have SOME markers of subfaction Identity, I'd like the detachment system even more. Heck, even as it stands, it's not a deal breaker for me- I'm gonna play 10th, and I'm sure I'll have some fun with it. It would REALLY take the sting out of getting a mere 4 detachments for Sisters if I also had a relic and an enhancement specific to each Order.

 catbarf wrote:

Space Marines getting more toys and rules support than anyone else remains a perennial problem. At least we no longer need to deal with bizarre subfaction characterization like Death Korps being strictly worse at armor and artillery than Catachans, which you can't tell me with a straight face was more lore-accurate than what we have now.

If there was ever a time where Catachans were better at Artillery and Armour thanKrieg, that was a problem. I'm not familiar with all the ins and outs of those rules, so I can't comment further than that.

@Pentitent Jake,

In the 8th Edition Codex, Catachan vehicles could reroll one of the dice for weapons when determining the number of shots. So if you went heavy into armour and artillery you went Catachan to get that bump in rate in fire.

But anyhoo.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
@Pentitent Jake,

In the 8th Edition Codex, Catachan vehicles could reroll one of the dice for weapons when determining the number of shots. So if you went heavy into armour and artillery you went Catachan to get that bump in rate in fire.

But anyhoo.

There's nothing says that Catachans can't wear great coats & gasmasks.

So if I like the idea of a bunch of plains loving mongol guys and I happen to love painting white and red. I also see them as being a force who are defending the locals from invading forces, protecting their charges and fortress. I love dreadnoughts, I love marine firepower and I really hate painting bikes.

Now do I deserve to have a factually worse army for opting to not follow the flanderisation?

Black templars played a key defensive role on armageddon, holding the docks and defending the line - yet their rules do not represent this. They're one of, if not the premier void chapters, that fluff is not represented in rules and never has.

To spice it up, red corsairs are the hit and run equivalent to white scars, randomly they also now seemingly are the bike faction for chaos, but I don't recall them ever being "bike specialists" like their rules suggest.

Dudeface wrote:
So if I like the idea of a bunch of plains loving mongol guys and I happen to love painting white and red. I also see them as being a force who are defending the locals from invading forces, protecting their charges and fortress. I love dreadnoughts, I love marine firepower and I really hate painting bikes.

Now do I deserve to have a factually worse army for opting to not follow the flanderisation?

Black templars played a key defensive role on armageddon, holding the docks and defending the line - yet their rules do not represent this. They're one of, if not the premier void chapters, that fluff is not represented in rules and never has.

To spice it up, red corsairs are the hit and run equivalent to white scars, randomly they also now seemingly are the bike faction for chaos, but I don't recall them ever being "bike specialists" like their rules suggest.

I would say paint the army the way you like, take the rules you like and call the chapter whatever you want to call it. Don't call it White Scars though, because it clearly isn't.

And as for Corsairs, they aren't bike specialists RIGHT NOW because subfactions don't mean anything right now. RIGHT NOW Corsairs are whatever detachment their player wants them to be. They ARE hit and run when the use the hit and run detachment, but they're just as much duelists as the EC when they choose to use that detachment; they're just as much terror troops as Night Lords when they choose to do that detachment. They're just as daemony as Word Bearers when they choose to to use that detachment.

Yes tthis is flexible. Yes this makes you able to everything with Corsairs as good as anybody else can do it.

How it is that Corsairs can be so good at everything that they can be as good at what YOU want them to be good at as they are is another question entirely- I mean, in order to be able to be the best Terror Troops, they must devote much of their time to practice Terror Tacics, but of course, that would still leave them enough time to also be the Best Fast Attack, and of course even the amount of time they devote to become the best at those two things won't prevent them from having the time to also practice enough to be the best at Daemoning.

Being good at a particular type of battle used to be a defining characteristic of a subfaction, but this is no longer the case. Now, every subfaction is exactly as good at any type of combat as any other subfaction. The only characteristics that actually define subfactions anymore are the characteristics that don't affect what happens on the table at all- namely, colour choice and associated works of lore and fiction. With the exception that if either the lore or the fiction says they are particular good at anything, because again all subfactions can now do anything as well as any other subfaction can, even if lore says otherwise.

Even your White and Red dreadnought heavy defenders of territory YOUR DUDES- aren't any better at using dreads and defending territory than any NOT YOUR DUDES subfaction, because the second they decide to use the same detachment, any uniqueness you thought YOUR DUDES had is gone.

All DUDES are as good at being YOUR DUDES as YOUR DUDES now.

Oh.... Caveat: If you are a BA, DA, or SW, you can still have YOUR DUDES, so long as YOUR DUDES choose one of the BA, DA or SW detachments that other DUDES aren't allowed to choose. But if your DUDES happen to decide that they want to behave more like someone else's DUDES when they feel like it, then anyone can behave like YOUR DUDES again.

When everyone can be as good at anything as anyone else, being good at something is no longer a part of anyone's identity.

So Jake-for you, the rules and the lore are one and the same?

A (sub)faction identity that is being the best at something seems awfully fragile. It means no one in a galaxy sized setting is allowed to be as good at your "dudes" whichs seems awfully restrictive.

I guess it makes more sense if you limit it to Space Marines First Founding Chapters, but if you start including Successors there should be some that are as good as "your dudes".

And of course once you expand the scope outside Space Marines, subfaction focused rules just don't make any sense at all.

 PenitentJake wrote:
...How it is that Corsairs can be so good at everything that they can be as good at what YOU want them to be good at as they are is another question entirely- I mean, in order to be able to be the best Terror Troops, they must devote much of their time to practice Terror Tacics[sic], but of course, that would still leave them enough time to also be the Best Fast Attack, and of course even the amount of time they devote to become the best at those two things won't prevent them from having the time to also practice enough to be the best at Daemoning...

I wonder if this is where the disconnect is occurring. Why must it be something where all Corsairs are the best Terror Troops? Why can we not play a Corsairs sub-force that chooses or is forced to focus on bikes or daemons due to circumstances (a leader who's just super into that, accumulated experience from a long campaign where they couldn't do Terror Tactics and had to adapt or die, exposure to alternate tactics while serving under a different warband, etc)?

 waefre_1 wrote:

I wonder if this is where the disconnect is occurring. Why must it be something where all Corsairs are the best Terror Troops? Why can we not play a Corsairs sub-force that chooses or is forced to focus on bikes or daemons due to circumstances (a leader who's just super into that, accumulated experience from a long campaign where they couldn't do Terror Tactics and had to adapt or die, exposure to alternate tactics while serving under a different warband, etc)?

This also leans into the comment someone made earlier about '1000 marines doesn't give much scope for multiple specialisations'... except the general assumption back in 2nd edition was that games weren't just happening in the 'current' time period, but were in theory taking place anywhere in the 10000 year period between the Heresy and the 'current' time. That's how the game included a whole bunch of special characters who were canonically dead. So your force of twenty or thirty Ultramarine bike specialists isn't necessarily a part of the same troop pool as your force of twenty to thirty Ultramarine assault specialists.


And that's of course ignoring the fact that codex chapters have entire companies dedicated to different specific fighting styles... And that we even have examples in the Black Library books of Marine Captains choosing to eschew their chapters' normal combat methods in favour of adopting their personal style for their company.

 JNAProductions wrote:
So Jake-for you, the rules and the lore are one and the same?

It's the ideal I strive for; it isn't always possible, but I try to get as close as I can.

Games are interactive fiction for me; rules help me tell stories. In D&D, I roll my six stats- but then I come up with the story to explain why I have those stats, and then I think about the influence those stats would have on the character's behaviour.

Sometimes, I have to make up extra rules in order for it to work. So I'm running a GSC army through a campaign right now- there are 22 Purestrains stuck on a ship, and if they can figure out how to get to the surface, they have to find a territory where they'll hide, and they'll have to attack vulnerable Imperial Citizens to create brood brothers. Those brood brothers can fight, or they can sit battles out to to procreate the first wave of Acolytes... Who can than fight or sit out to create Neophytes, etc.

Obviously, GW's rules don't force a GSC to field only what it infects, steals or breeds.... But that's how I play. In truth, what I do is closer to Inquisitor 28 than 40k. And it was easy to do that with the amount of material we had in 9th, but it's way harder in 10th. How do you make an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor different from an Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor in 10th?

You don't. Because you can't even make a Howling Griffin different than a Son of Medusa using 10th ed rules. Each is just as good at doing anything as the other. The only difference is paint and words that have no effect on the game whatsoever. Unless you're BA, SW or DA, why have subfactions at all? Just paint'em whatever, say they came from wherever and you're good, cuz none of it makes a lick of difference anyway. The only thing that actually matters in the game is what you choose to be best at for any given battle.

 PenitentJake wrote:
Unless you're BA, SW or DA, why have subfactions at all? Just paint'em whatever, say they came from wherever and you're good, cuz none of it makes a lick of difference anyway.

In a game at the scale of 40K, that's honestly seems the best approach to me. This is a game where the level of abstraction puts an ork boy and a human at identical levels of physical strength.

Subfaction specialisation is, IMO, better left for the likes of Kill Team.

 Tyran wrote:
A (sub)faction identity that is being the best at something seems awfully fragile. It means no one in a galaxy sized setting is allowed to be as good at your "dudes" whichs seems awfully restrictive.

I guess it makes more sense if you limit it to Space Marines First Founding Chapters, but if you start including Successors there should be some that are as good as "your dudes".

And of course once you expand the scope outside Space Marines, subfaction focused rules just don't make any sense at all.

Yes, you're correct to a point. I focus my language in a debate to the point I'm responding too, so I haven't had a chance to talk about or address some of these ideas as clearly as I could.

So first, remember that I don't consider the words "good, better, best" to have much meaning. I say when I'm arguing with CB that Whitescars bikers should be better than the bikers of other chapters... But how that is expressed is still up for debate. Maybe your bestness at biking means you can advance and charge, while my bestness at biking means that I hit harder in melee from a bike than I do on foot, and maybe Dudeface's bestness at biking means that his bike units automatically pass battleshock tests. In all cases, these rules reflect background that includes bike specialization; all three units have bikers that can be better than armies who don't specialize in bikes.

As for the successor piece, that's kinda what I meant when I replied to Dudeface- go ahead, paint'em white and Red, fill your army with Dreads, don't include a single biker... Fine. Just don't call em Whitescars, cuz they ain't. They're maybe a Whitescar successor. Or maybe not- whatever.

And I object to the "outside of marines, subfaction focused rules don't make sense" - the issue is that those other factions haven't had decades worth of rules differentiation the way marines have. Ninth might have been the first time that you heard Dalyth Sept see their Kroot as equals; if Tau were space marines, you'd have been told about the uniqueness of Dalyth since the dawn of the Tau army; heck, in some editions, the Dalyth would have had their own dex or supplement, and maybe even a unique unit.

Another good example here is Sisters. Like, you can look at the detachment we currently have, and it REEKS of OoOML. The Martyrdom of Saint Katherine; the Martyrdom of those who died at Armageddon, or Sanctuary 101. OoOML has ALWAYS been associated with a cult of martyrdom, and these detachment rules reflect that perfectly.

But have we had more than an edition to figure out the character of the Ebon Chalice or the Sacred Rose?

The idea with all the subfaction identities we were given in 9th is that they were meant to be a starting point for other factions to become as developed as marines. Heck, if in 10th, instead of making subfactions meaningless, they had maybe given Sacred Rose and Bloody Rose a bespoke unit. Heck, maybe by edition 15, we'd have a stand-alone Age of Apostasy game- even that would be more inclusive than HH and LI.

But then GW blinked at the wheel, and made subfactions meaningless to all but a small selection of Loyalist Marine Chapters.

 insaniak wrote:

In a game at the scale of 40K, that's honestly seems the best approach to me. This is a game where the level of abstraction puts an ork boy and a human at identical levels of physical strength.

Subfaction specialisation is, IMO, better left for the likes of Kill Team.

That's reasonable, for sure. But keep in mind that the "scale" of 40k is a construct created mostly by stores and tournaments. Currently, the "scale" of 40k according to GW is 1k to 3k points... And that's because they invented Combat Patrol to replace the previous 500 point game.

In 9th, I played an Inquisitor leading a 5 man Fortis KT and a Watchmaster leading a 5 man Proteus KT. That was 4 units and 25 PL. It's not much bigger than a KT, but it's a playable army. Heck, these days, I could throw those both into a Blackstar since Primaris can ride in them now.

The game isn't 2k points. Stores and tournaments MAKE the game 2k points, and players go along with it because it's easier than swimming upstream trying to find or create players who are brave enough to break the orthodoxy.

 PenitentJake wrote:

As for the successor piece, that's kinda what I meant when I replied to Dudeface- go ahead, paint'em white and Red, fill your army with Dreads, don't include a single biker... Fine. Just don't call em Whitescars, cuz they ain't.

Except we know that a bikeless WS force is still a WS force.
They existed (mostly in pictures) before, and after, the WD article that brainwashed you all into thinking the ONLY way to play WS was as a biker force.
Even within that Index Astartes article you are told that WS DO use dreads & non-bikers.

ccs wrote:

 PenitentJake wrote:

As for the successor piece, that's kinda what I meant when I replied to Dudeface- go ahead, paint'em white and Red, fill your army with Dreads, don't include a single biker... Fine. Just don't call em Whitescars, cuz they ain't.

Except we know that a bikeless WS force is still a WS force.
They existed (mostly in pictures) before, and after, the WD article that brainwashed you all into thinking the ONLY way to play WS was as a biker force.
Even within that Index Astartes article you are told that WS DO use dreads & non-bikers.

Yes, you're right. It was JUST a White Dwarf article that convinced us of that.

It wasn't the edition where they could take more bikes than FOC allowed other units. It wasn't the bike on the cover of every WS supplement I ever saw. To be fair, the WS traits in 9th weren't specifically bike related, but they were hit and run themed. Again, I don't play marines, and I didn't play in either 6th or 7th... But I'm sure they've had rules that exemplify speed in more than two editions.

I mean, here's the second paragraph of the chapter's description in the Warhammer Wiki:

Known and feared throughout the Imperium of Man for their highly mobile way of war, the White Scars are considered the masters of the lightning strike and hit-and-run attack and are particularly adapted to the use of the Astartes Assault Bike as their mechanical steeds and their forces contain an unusually large number of Bike Squads compared to other Chapters.

And here's exactly what the Lex says about their use of dreads:

Many outsiders have made the claim that the White Scars did not use Dreadnoughts. This is not true. Those they maintained were rarely seen in battle and were few in number, but they did exist and held a strange position within the Legion. As a warrior society uniquely bound to the fierce joys of battle and the simple pleasures of a physical existence, the eternity of silence and separation endured by those incarcerated within a Dreadnought chassis held a particular horror for the White Scars. Despite this revulsion, to be assigned to live on in a Dreadnought shell is seen as neither punishment nor as an honour, but rather somewhere in between. Dreadnoughts among the White Scars were known as the Uhaan Solban, the Guardians of the Morning and Evening Stars in the Chogorian tongue. This poetic title is typical of the Legion’s tendencies, and hid a rather more practical purpose. It was only the Akoghlanlar, the apothecaries, and the Iron Khans of the armoury who sought them out, both to perform maintenance and for ritual reasons tied closely to their own obscure creeds.[40a]

Dreadnoughts are viewed in the White Scars with something resembling both pity and awe. Some of their Dreadnoughts undergo the Tseverle, or re-branding. This discards their old name and takes up a new one to represent their rebirth as a towering Dreadnought. These warriors chose their own names from the great arch of the Baatarbish, a monument to the Undying Heroes of the Chapter.[59b]

Yep. Just a WD article.

 PenitentJake wrote:

ccs wrote:

 PenitentJake wrote:

As for the successor piece, that's kinda what I meant when I replied to Dudeface- go ahead, paint'em white and Red, fill your army with Dreads, don't include a single biker... Fine. Just don't call em Whitescars, cuz they ain't.

Except we know that a bikeless WS force is still a WS force.
They existed (mostly in pictures) before, and after, the WD article that brainwashed you all into thinking the ONLY way to play WS was as a biker force.
Even within that Index Astartes article you are told that WS DO use dreads & non-bikers.

Yes, you're right. It was JUST a White Dwarf article that convinced us of that.

It wasn't the edition where they could take more bikes than FOC allowed other units. It wasn't the bike on the cover of every WS supplement I ever saw. To be fair, the WS traits in 9th weren't specifically bike related, but they were hit and run themed. Again, I don't play marines, and I didn't play in either 6th or 7th... But I'm sure they've had rules that exemplify speed in more than two editions.

I mean, here's the second paragraph of the chapter's description in the Warhammer Wiki:

Known and feared throughout the Imperium of Man for their highly mobile way of war, the White Scars are considered the masters of the lightning strike and hit-and-run attack and are particularly adapted to the use of the Astartes Assault Bike as their mechanical steeds and their forces contain an unusually large number of Bike Squads compared to other Chapters.

And here's exactly what the Lex says about their use of dreads:

Many outsiders have made the claim that the White Scars did not use Dreadnoughts. This is not true. Those they maintained were rarely seen in battle and were few in number, but they did exist and held a strange position within the Legion. As a warrior society uniquely bound to the fierce joys of battle and the simple pleasures of a physical existence, the eternity of silence and separation endured by those incarcerated within a Dreadnought chassis held a particular horror for the White Scars. Despite this revulsion, to be assigned to live on in a Dreadnought shell is seen as neither punishment nor as an honour, but rather somewhere in between. Dreadnoughts among the White Scars were known as the Uhaan Solban, the Guardians of the Morning and Evening Stars in the Chogorian tongue. This poetic title is typical of the Legion’s tendencies, and hid a rather more practical purpose. It was only the Akoghlanlar, the apothecaries, and the Iron Khans of the armoury who sought them out, both to perform maintenance and for ritual reasons tied closely to their own obscure creeds.[40a]

Dreadnoughts are viewed in the White Scars with something resembling both pity and awe. Some of their Dreadnoughts undergo the Tseverle, or re-branding. This discards their old name and takes up a new one to represent their rebirth as a towering Dreadnought. These warriors chose their own names from the great arch of the Baatarbish, a monument to the Undying Heroes of the Chapter.[59b]

Yep. Just a WD article.

So, a White Scars force with three Dreadnoughts, three squads of Devastators, a Terminator Captain, a brick of Terminators, and a few squads of Intercessors. Is that list wrong? Do White Scars not have three Dreads, twelve heavy weapons, and eleven suits of Terminator armor?

Wearing flanderisation as a badge of honour for an army is IMO depressing.

40k was at its best when it was more than planet of hats.

 JNAProductions wrote:

So, a White Scars force with three Dreadnoughts, three squads of Devastators, a Terminator Captain, a brick of Terminators, and a few squads of Intercessors. Is that list wrong? Do White Scars not have three Dreads, twelve heavy weapons, and eleven suits of Terminator armor?

It isn't "wrong," it is just uncharacteristic of what the chapter would send to a battle according to their lore as written. Certainly, the Chapter HAS Dreadnoughts and heavy weapons, and yes, they usually send some to every battle, but they do tend to send at least some mobile units in addition to those units.

There are narrative reasons to field a force like this... But the very fact that they are units who don't typically benefit from the tactics most typically employed becomes a part of the narrative. Like their mobile forces get drawn out by a convincing decoy force and then the base assault units arrive from reserves, and now this somewhat a-typical White Scars force must hold out until the mobile forces can double back.

In the modern version of the game, it's just: "Oh, the forces which made it advantageous for us to be a swift assault detachment have been drawn out and distracted. I guess we're a heavy siege detachment now; without our bikes we're as good at this as the Iron Warriors are!"

So honestly dude, is it flanderization, or just a better story?

In no version of the rules where White Scars got mobile assault or bike enhancements would the force you described have a penalty. In 9th, in fact, the WS bonus would have at least some applicability- they could declare charges even if they advanced or fell back. They would be able to fire Assault weapons without penalty even if they advanced. In the bike rules (in 3rd I think they had something called "born to the saddle" and "hit and run" and then I think they lost those and picked up the rule that let them make bikes troops), the units you've mentioned wouldn't benefit from the rules, but that isn't the same as having a penalty. When you don't have a bonus, you aren't fighting anyone at a disadvantage unless they DO have a bonus. If you had an actual penalty, you would be worse than other units that merely lacked a bonus.

So under the system I prefer, you get a bonus if you choose to play your faction according to it's lore, but if for some reason you choose not to do that (Your Dudes!), that's fine, and while your choice may not make the most of the available bonus, it doesn't incur a penalty either. Games have narrative appeal, because sometimes the missions or the force I'm up against will allow may to exploit my specialism and sometimes it won't.

In the system that you imply you prefer, nobody's better at anything than anyone else, regardless of what the lore that ostensibly made you choose the subfaction you're playing says to the contrary. There's no situation that poses a greater challenge to you than any other situation, because all you do to deal with any situation is just switch the detachment you're using. Where IS the narrative in that? Where's the risk? Where's the dramatic tension?

 PenitentJake wrote:

So under the system I prefer, you get a bonus if you choose to play your faction according to it's lore, but if for some reason you choose not to do that (Your Dudes!), that's fine, and while your choice may not make the most of the available bonus, it doesn't incur a penalty either. Games have narrative appeal, because sometimes the missions or the force I'm up against will allow may to exploit my specialism and sometimes it won't.

In the system that you imply you prefer, nobody's better at anything than anyone else, regardless of what the lore that ostensibly made you choose the subfaction you're playing says to the contrary. There's no situation that poses a greater challenge to you than any other situation, because all you do to deal with any situation is just switch the detachment you're using. Where IS the narrative in that? Where's the risk? Where's the dramatic tension?

In the system you prefer the opportunity cost (points) for the rules are baked into the profiles of the units for the army. If I build a list that doesn't benefit from those perks (and yes white scars had mounted/bike relics/traits/strats as well), I am by definition at a disadvantage and penalised for my choice if another arbitrary set of rules would have been 100% beneficial.

But with regards marines, the entire point of them is they're good at everything. I don't think the beleaguered guard regiment holding back the nids will have written their chances off because a force of foot intercessor white scars piled out a repulsor instead of some fists.

This is how it goes in my head:

I like the detachment system. I think a Marine should go back to being a Marine - and any advantages are a function of equipment/organisation.

In the context of "ur-Marines", then sure, BA may be stabbier, White Scars swifter, Raven Guard stealthier and Ultramarines better organised. But 40k isn't just a game of Marines - or a D100 RPG system. When you run a D6 based system from Grots to Titans, these variances disappear. How much more stabby is a Blood Angel compared not with say an Ultramarine, but with a Genestealer?

I guess to go back to the topic. This system might have worked better in 2nd - where armies were smaller, and there wasn't much out there bigger than what is today a fairly modest tank. I don't think it works today. There are a range of issues I didn't like in 3rd-7th - but as a system for running larger armies, with diverse and expanding rosters, I think it was pretty good.

Dudeface wrote:

 PenitentJake wrote:

So under the system I prefer, you get a bonus if you choose to play your faction according to it's lore, but if for some reason you choose not to do that (Your Dudes!), that's fine, and while your choice may not make the most of the available bonus, it doesn't incur a penalty either. Games have narrative appeal, because sometimes the missions or the force I'm up against will allow may to exploit my specialism and sometimes it won't.

In the system that you imply you prefer, nobody's better at anything than anyone else, regardless of what the lore that ostensibly made you choose the subfaction you're playing says to the contrary. There's no situation that poses a greater challenge to you than any other situation, because all you do to deal with any situation is just switch the detachment you're using. Where IS the narrative in that? Where's the risk? Where's the dramatic tension?

In the system you prefer the opportunity cost (points) for the rules are baked into the profiles of the units for the army. If I build a list that doesn't benefit from those perks (and yes white scars had mounted/bike relics/traits/strats as well), I am by definition at a disadvantage and penalised for my choice if another arbitrary set of rules would have been 100% beneficial.

But with regards marines, the entire point of them is they're good at everything. I don't think the beleaguered guard regiment holding back the nids will have written their chances off because a force of foot intercessor white scars piled out a repulsor instead of some fists.

This is how it goes in my head:

Spoiler:

"Hey Dave, reinforcements! White Scars no less!"
"On bikes Tim?"
"No on foot, they've all god the big guns too!"
"Oh... we're gonna die Tim"
"Why? They're astartes, the emperors angels!"
"Because they don't have bikes"
"I don't see why that matters, they're still walking tanks and headshotting with every round?"
"You see Tim, they're only better than anyone else on a bike, what we needed to survive is the fists"
"BUT THEY'RE MARINES DAVE!"
"Ah yes Tim, but these guys are specialists at... *checks notes* falling back. The Imperial Fists would have been 16% better with a bolter"
"They're great at... running away..."
"That's right Tim, so unless they're larping as another chapter today, we're dead"
"COMMISAR! WATCH FOR THE WHITE SCARS FALLING BACK!"

I get that this is a joke, but lorewise it does make a difference which Marines turn up to a given battle. A lot of Guard units would be pretty wary if it was the Marines Malevolent or Flesh Tearers who turned up- the battle might be won but chances are the Guard units get extra minced in the process... Many Marine Chapters liaise poorly with allied Guard units and they suffer as a result.

Anyway, I think subfactions only work if better units have meaningful drawbacks that mean they don't form better armies, like costing more points. This isn't how the current paradigm has worked for what, 3 editions? So I agree detachments are better in that context.

Also, why does this topic always return to White Scar bikes? No one seems to talk about much more entrenched subfactions. If we go this route, why should Deathwing Terminators get different rules to normal Terminators, for example? Yet they have for 9 editions of the game. Many of those editions had a higher points cost to compensate, which I personally think was fine.

Well it is hard to be a White Scar player. An army can be powerful, but not lore accurate or it can be weaker/weak and lore accurate. When it becoms both weaker/bad and is not lore accurate, you are not going to find many players talking about the army.
I mean what, after the sm codex leak, is there to say about WS. Bikes, bike characters and all things that make people want to play WS for the lore is gone, and powerwise they are bad too. Their special character is cheap, but meh. And their "detachment" has zero synergy with the army rules. Space Wolves do better then WS out of the WS detachment.

Deathwatch is the same. Horrible set of rules and GW pro activly punishing DW players for sharing a codex with "marines". Which by the way is core part of the problem. It is impossible to balance a bike/terminator/etc army when multiple armies use the same units. Only some , like lets say BT, have much better rules.

My view is that no space marine subfactions should really exist, and certainly not with different rules.

If you want your Space Vikings, model them that way. Want to run an all terminator force or an all bike force? Just do it.

Make the core book relatively flexible (things like letting bolt pistol and close combat weapon equipped squads be troops) and you've got most bases completely covered, and everything else is aesthetics.

I obviously understand why this will never happen, but I think I'd like 40K more if it worked that way.

Dudeface wrote:


But with regards marines, the entire point of them is they're good at everything. I don't think the beleaguered guard regiment holding back the nids will have written their chances off because a force of foot intercessor white scars piled out a repulsor instead of some fists.

In years gone by, if someone picked a force whose lore they liked, and they came up against a mission or an enemy who minimized the advantages provided by their sub faction choice, that was seen as part of the narrative and it was understood that not every force was good at everything. Heck, people used to whine about secondaries because they said the game was too predictable when you got to choose their own victory condition.

These days, if YOUR DUDES aren't able to be super optimized for every situation, you whine and complain that your being persecuted. You get three squares a day, and once upon a time that was fine, but now if you don't get caviar every meal, all food sucks. It's fething ridiculous.

Did you like 2nd better than 10? Guess what- 2nd had subfaction bonusses (at least for marines)
Did you like 3rd better than 10? Guess what- 3rd had subfaction bonuses.
Did you like 4rth better than 10th? I know this will shcock you, but their were subfaction bonuses
Did you like 5th better than 10th? A cynic would say there's a fething pattern here
Did you like 6th better than 10th? Well, I honestly can't say for sure, cuz 6th gutted sisters so I disappeared
Did you like 7th better than 10th? Well not 100% sure about this one either, cuz I had one dex and it seemed that the rules came from formations.

I won't ask about 8th and 9th, but maybe you get the point.

And yes, certainly the hype is that "marines are good at everything" but that is not a good story or an interesting faction, and 10th's power by detachment system doesn't just apply to marines. All orks are as good at everything as every other Ork too. All nids are as as good at everything as all other nids.

Again, I get your point. It's valid. I see why many people prefer it. You don't have to be wrong for me to be right.

Neither system is better or worse.

Yours is more flexible. Mine is more characterful. Both are acceptable, and both can be fun.

I just created an Order of Sororitas for a challenge on another site. I wrote a detailed history, and then I thought about how that Order would be different than other Orders. Essentially, their story is they are Fiery Heart Sisters who got cut off from the Imperium before the Martyrdom of Saint Katherine, so they never had to deal with that grief; they never experienced the aftershock of the slaughter at Armageddon or Sanctuary 101, and they never developed the cult of Martyrdom that we see in Order of Our Martyred Lady.

So I looked in my 9th ed dex and I picked 6 strats that weren't included in the one detachment sisters currently have, I came up with a dteachment rule and four enhancements. And now my sisters can fight like the background says they should... But it's stupid to me that because it's a detachment, it has to be available to all the other Orders too, even the Order of Our Martyred Lady (whose flavour rules this detachment was spefifically designed to replace). This seems like a flaw to me- again, because I play narratively. The issue for me isn't whether the Sisters of Saint Katherine's Aegis are more or less powerful than either their opponents or the Order of Our Martyred Lady... It's about whether or not they can do the things on the battleground that the lore implies that the do, and that they don't do things on the table if the lore suggests they don't typically do those things.

Whether or not they are powerful or balanced against this opponent or that opponent isn't relevant to me- I only care that they empowered to behave on the table in a way that is consistent with their lore. Against some opponents, in some missions, they may be weaker than their opponents, and against other opponents in other missions they will be weaker, and that's just a part of the story.

The subfaction system is nominally O.K. from a lore perspective. While marines are supposed to be (and broadly are) good at everything, I can get behind nominal bonuses based on who they belong to, such as Raven Guard being able to infilitrate better, Ultra Marines being all-rounders, and Black Templars being extra stabby. With that said these bonuses should really be small and primarily on the unit side. White Scars having an elite biker unit with falchions to target-market, so on and so forth.

That said I think that the current iteration, detachments, is vastly superior to what we used to have. As has been stated marines are supposed to be good at everything, so it makes no sense to punish a UM player for playing bikes by making it so white scar default bikers are just better. Likewise, as has been stated, it's absurd to force guard players into catachans to specialize in explosives.

I unironically think HH has marine subfactions right. The legions draw 99% of their roster from the same generic list supplemented by a couple of unique elite units, some unique wargear, topped off with one or two small situational buffs as their legion effect. This differentiates the legions, and what they specialize in, but they can still field identical lists (baring their elite unit or two) and those lists are, in all but the most extreme cases, at equal strength.

What really differentiates the legions are their RoW, which modifiers what can be taken and confers much larger bonuses. However each legion has not only its own couple of rites, but also access to a large shared pool. So ultra-marines can absolutely run a bike heavy company and excel at it, just as WS can, only their excellence is going to come in a somewhat different area. Different, but equal, strengths.

Unfortunately this sort of design takes actual time, brain power, and care. All things which GW has made clear it will not dedicate towards modern 40k.

Well, there’s a fine balance. And consistency is the key.

Consider Blood Angels and Dark Angels.

In 2nd Ed, they had some special “us only” units and maybe an extra rule or two. Other than that, they really weren’t massively different to Ultramarines.

In 3rd Ed?

Dark Angels found their previously unique Landspeeder loadout not only heavily nerfed, but shared with other Chapters. Ravenwing could re-roll difficult terrain and gained a 6+ save due to Jink. Deathwing were Unbreakable, but arguably most useful could mix combat and ranged options in a single squad.

Blood Angels? Well you’re faster than other Marines, charge better than other Marines. Sometimes your troops are just improved because reasons, and we’ve made your vehicles faster because reasons…..

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Well, there’s a fine balance. And consistency is the key.

Consider Blood Angels and Dark Angels.

In 2nd Ed, they had some special “us only” units and maybe an extra rule or two. Other than that, they really weren’t massively different to Ultramarines.

In 3rd Ed?

Dark Angels found their previously unique Landspeeder loadout not only heavily nerfed, but shared with other Chapters. Ravenwing could re-roll difficult terrain and gained a 6+ save due to Jink. Deathwing were Unbreakable, but arguably most useful could mix combat and ranged options in a single squad.

^That's a hefty misrepresentation, as those stated Dark Angels differences had analogous special rules in 2nd ed.
Ravenwing had an additional -1 to-hit them if they were moving over 10", and Ravenwing were "Expert Riders", meaning bikers got to re-roll their "skid tests" (additional turns at high speed). Additionally, they never suffered a -1 to-hit modifier for shooting at high speed.
Deathwing in 2nd were Immune To Psychology, and could likewise mix Assault Weapons and Heavy Weapons in their squads.

As for their Land Speeders being unique to them . . . well I bought one of those Dark Angel Land Speeder models for my UM army in 2nd ed, and just used the weapon-swap rules in Dark Millenium to give it a Heavy Bolter and Assault Cannon.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Blood Angels? Well you’re faster than other Marines, charge better than other Marines. Sometimes your troops are just improved because reasons, and we’ve made your vehicles faster because reasons…..

Bad codex is just bad codex, I'm afraid. May Gav Thorpe never live down the 3rd ed BA book. :/

In 2nd, the Red Grail did add speed to BAs within 12", as well as increase their Strength and WS though. The Shroud of Sanguinius also caused Frenzy (must charge enemy and double attacks) when activated. The groundwork had been laid in 2nd, it was just rightfully limited behind wargear choices and not pushed out to the whole army.

The TLDR however is that the faults of the BA codex weren't at all a product of the 3rd ed design ethos, as evidenced by the DA codex translating from 2nd to 3rd quite faithfully. The 3rd ed Blood Angels problem is purely a codex problem.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

The difference is that 2nd ed. players happily admit their flaws.

Haha. I think it took you a long time to admit that 2nd ed could be heavily powergamed. And I don't think you did it "happily"

This opportunity popped into my head though, when catching up:

 insaniak wrote:
It was unfortunate that Imperial psykers wound up with such a broad pool of powers to choose from, as it allowed you to tailor your psykers in a way that just wasn't available to other factions.

In my homebrew edit I restrict psykers from every faction to their own decks, with only a single power chosen from any other. That vastly reduces the chances of Librarians and Astra Teles showing up with Vortex. Although I'm also tempted to allow psykers to each choose from a fresh deck, so you can't do the old multiple-psykers-to-guarantee-the-power trick. I've seen some other homebrew rules to just choose powers with points costs, as was done in some later editions, but I don't like that approach as much for 2nd ed as some powers would just become 'must take' options.

The move in that situation would be to just take a lvl 4 Inquisitor Lord anyways (I always did for my Tournament armies). A Level 4 Librarian was 196 points base, while the Inquisitor Lord was 210 when upgraded to a lv. 4 psyker. For a mere extra 14 points you got +1 WS, BS, W, I and Attacks, plus Immune to Psychology, which is a massive upgrade! It also unlocked the Nemesis Force Weapon Wargear card, and a guilt-free draw from the Inquisition powers to-boot

A lot of 2nd ed tournaments down this end of the world disallowed allies, which removed the Inquisitor from the equation.

Insectum7 wrote: That's a hefty misrepresentation, as those stated Dark Angels differences had analogous special rules in 2nd ed.
Ravenwing had an additional -1 to-hit them if they were moving over 10", and Ravenwing were "Expert Riders", meaning bikers got to re-roll their "skid tests" (additional turns at high speed). Additionally, they never suffered a -1 to-hit modifier for shooting at high speed.
Deathwing in 2nd were Immune To Psychology, and could likewise mix Assault Weapons and Heavy Weapons in their squads.

As for their Land Speeders being unique to them . . . well I bought one of those Dark Angel Land Speeder models for my UM army in 2nd ed, and just used the weapon-swap rules in Dark Millenium to give it a Heavy Bolter and Assault Cannon.

Ravenwing were horrible to fight against in 2nd Ed because of those rules.

Not only did I suffer no to-hit modifier for bombing it around at Top Speed, but you could easily end up around -3 to hit them in return. Add in the Assault Cannon was really nasty, and Heavy Bolter pretty damned handy due to much smaller squad sizes, and a Ravenwing Landspeeder really pulled its weight. Never mind catching opponents in the open, I could go actively hunting them.

Their main limitation was being pretty so-so at best against vehicles, as the Assault Cannons armour penetration pool wasn’t all that great.

But in 3rd Ed? Awful weapons, and lost the majority of their special rules. Sure I could pack a Multi-Melta, but when I’m only marginally harder to wreck than other Landspeeders, it was hard to feel like we didn’t get the poopy end of the stick when it came to playing a different flavour of Marines.

So the earlier complaint was that 2nd Ed. did it with less special rules and simple unique unit selection while 3rd was burdened with too many special rules, but NOW the complaint is that third had LESS special rules? Aren't these two things mutually exclusive?