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 aphyon wrote:
Yep it is still the gold standard for chaos codexes in a casual play environment. so full of lore based rules and thematic play.

the other great incarnations of codexes are spread across multiple editions. my friend who is a guard player likes the 5th edition for them best but misses the trait options of the previous codex like close order drill. i think the ork codex between 4th and 5th is best with things like the ramshackle table for trucks, the quirks of the shokk attack gun and so on, even though some of the new models would be very cool in that edition like the new vehicles/buggies. i am also a huge fan of the 5th ed codexes for blood angels and space wolves. but at the same time i still love my 3rd ed dark angels mini dex or the armageddon mini dex for black templar.

Imo some of the best Necron "lore" is from their 4th ed Vehicle Design Rules. One possible upgrade was a sepulchure that housed some lovecraftian horror. Another upgrade shrouded the vehicle in impenetrable darkness. Super cool stuff.

Insectum7 wrote:^Chaos 3.5 for the win, basically every time. Imagine a world where you could run your mixed Chaos army using one 25$ book instead of two or more 40$ ones.

aphyon wrote:Yep it is still the gold standard for chaos codexes in a casual play environment. so full of lore based rules and thematic play.

the other great incarnations of codexes are spread across multiple editions. my friend who is a guard player likes the 5th edition for them best but misses the trait options of the previous codex like close order drill. i think the ork codex between 4th and 5th is best with things like the ramshackle table for trucks, the quirks of the shokk attack gun and so on, even though some of the new models would be very cool in that edition like the new vehicles/buggies. i am also a huge fan of the 5th ed codexes for blood angels and space wolves. but at the same time i still love my 3rd ed dark angels mini dex or the armageddon mini dex for black templar.

It was the most imbalanced and exploitable codex in an edition that included Blood Angels, Black Templars, and Gav Thorpe's Eldar books. That should speak volumes.

 Just Tony wrote:
It was the most imbalanced and exploitable codex in an edition that included Blood Angels, Black Templars, and Gav Thorpe's Eldar books. That should speak volumes.

One of the problems with 40k is that the more options for fun and fluffy lists you give people, the more room you have for people who want to break min/max the system have to do so.

Trading FA slots for HS ones lets you make fluffy seige lists. And also spam more of the broken stuff.

40k has always been broken. Some editions/codexes worse then others. But it has also been fine when people know what level of game they want to play and bring lists of appropriately close power. Sometimes that mean the person playing the broken codex eases back a little, while the person playing the bottom tier army has to tighten it up a bit.

If your goal is to crush your emeny, see him diven before you, and listen to some lamentations, then you get pidgin holed into taking only the best stuff, and working the angles to get the most power out of your list as you can. Which might not fluffy. And some armies just don’t have the tools to play at that level.

For the casual player, fluff is an important part of their lists. They choose units becasue of the look and feel, how they fit into the lore or the structure of the army. For them, books like the 3.5 chaos codex are gold. That was a book that let you play your army the way you wanted it.

Even if it was a little broken (which helps with the nostalgia)

Beat me to it nevelon

Any tournament/powergamer can take any codex GW ever made in any edition and break it within about 30 minutes. 40K has never been a balanced game and never will be, in fact it cannot be now. it may have started out as a skirmish battle system for an RPG in rogue trader where you literally needed a game master to keep it straight, however now there are to many factions, to much lore and to many special items.

DUST 1947 can pull off a balanced game with hard counters for everything because there are only 4 factions and among those factions there are only 5 distinct special weapons types that are unique. otherwise everybody has access to much of the same stuff in various combos.

That is why i specified that the 3.5 chaos codex was best for casual play. where we are enjoying the game in the setting it was intended to be in, and not the most broken tourney list we can cobble together.
(in fact this was one of the earlier complaints about GWs game design team by the power gamers-they approached it as a lore based casual game totally missing many of the exploits a power gamer would see right away because that was not the design intention).

The idea of "balance" in 40K often gets boiled down to dice hammer performance for tournament play, in a casual setting that is the opposite of balance.

The most important things in this setting are

1.was the game fun and fit the feel the army has in the lore?
2.did both players have a chance at winning? (aside from appeasing the dice gods)

For this guys berserker army things like using the blessed number of 8, blood rage, destroyer upgrades for khornate vehicles (saw blades and spikes etc for running over the enemy), spikey bits and the like are just as needed for the setting of the game as black templars in righteous indignation advancing on a specific enemy that dares to fire on their squadmates, or tyranid monsters spraying acid blood on the assault troopers that just hit them.

If you put all that into the game system that has intuitive and easy to follow/understand rules like 90% of 5th ed has it is a very enjoyable game as a social activity with a bunch of your friends (or frenemies )


Remember that our group also allows players to use any codex from any edition from 3rd-7th in the confines of the 5th edition core rules. so the perceived imbalance and exploitable nature of the 3.5 chaos codex isn't really all that much of an issue.

 Nevelon wrote:
One of the problems with 40k is that the more options for fun and fluffy lists you give people, the more room you have for people who want to break min/max the system have to do so.

To be fair plenty of other armies of that era had page after page of options.

The 3.5 book just did a poor job of balancing its content by making things inappropriately costed, powerful, and/or running against the underlying structure of the game. But it'd be a relatively short list of changes to pull it into line - things like 'no, your character can't roll an Ld test to become indestructible', 'all upgrades must be paid for', and just general points, rules, and combo fixes (looking at you dread axe prince).

I think the trouble half the time is that people mix up options for fluff and power boosts. Allowing, for instance, white scars to field a lot of bikes is a fluff option. Giving them freebies on their bikes would be a power boost - and the latter is not required for the former.

 aphyon wrote:
For this guys berserker army things like using the blessed number of 8, blood rage, destroyer upgrades for khornate vehicles (saw blades and spikes etc for running over the enemy), spikey bits and the like...

This I think being an example. Running berserkers in units of 8 is fluffy. Getting freebies for running in units of 8 has no reason to exist.

 Just Tony wrote:

Insectum7 wrote:^Chaos 3.5 for the win, basically every time. Imagine a world where you could run your mixed Chaos army using one 25$ book instead of two or more 40$ ones.

aphyon wrote:Yep it is still the gold standard for chaos codexes in a casual play environment. so full of lore based rules and thematic play.

the other great incarnations of codexes are spread across multiple editions. my friend who is a guard player likes the 5th edition for them best but misses the trait options of the previous codex like close order drill. i think the ork codex between 4th and 5th is best with things like the ramshackle table for trucks, the quirks of the shokk attack gun and so on, even though some of the new models would be very cool in that edition like the new vehicles/buggies. i am also a huge fan of the 5th ed codexes for blood angels and space wolves. but at the same time i still love my 3rd ed dark angels mini dex or the armageddon mini dex for black templar.

It was the most imbalanced and exploitable codex in an edition that included Blood Angels, Black Templars, and Gav Thorpe's Eldar books. That should speak volumes.

You could build some crazy things, but you paid through the nose for them. So while armies could look really bizarre I never felt any of them was really OP in terms of points-to-value. Imo Thorpes 3rd Ed BA codex was way worse, and without even half the flavor of Chaos 3.5.

it is not a freebie blood rage is a dice roll to see if the nails overcome them, then they must move towards the nearest enemy unit even if they cannot hurt it but only on a 1 or 2 . it is actually directly fluffy, same as white scars having hit&run with lances, or blood angels specializing jump infantry as troops with reduced deep strike scatter.

All of these lore based rules add to the flavor of the game increasing the fun and immersion.

I understand it "could" be abused. i used to play in tourneys back before i got smart and understood the game for what it was meant to be, i have seen all the WAAC cookie cutter lists-nidzilla, double lash princes, iron warrior heavy support/oblit spam etc...

There is a reason i don't play that way anymore.

Win or loose if both of us are really getting into the epic back and forth of the game then i feel satisfied. i cannot say the same for the direction the game (and the attitude of many players) is heading in now, as this is the entire point of this topic.

 aphyon wrote:
it is not a freebie blood rage is a dice roll to see if the nails overcome them, then they must move towards the nearest enemy unit even if they cannot hurt it but only on a 1 or 2 . it is actually directly fluffy, same as white scars having hit&run with lances, or blood angels specializing jump infantry as troops with reduced deep strike scatter.

All of these lore based rules add to the flavor of the game increasing the fun and immersion.

Blood frenzy wasn't the freebie - pay points, get bonus.

I meant the free champion you got for having a squad of 8, or the discount alpha legion got on infiltrate, or the free siege specialist ability for the Iron Hands. They are thematic choices but there is no good reason for them to be free - they should either be compulsory with a cost, exclusive with a cost, or optional with a cost.

4e Black Templars did it right, their enhanced access to close combat wargear was paid for with reduced access to ranged units and they still had to pay the going rate for all of their upgrades on top.
5e Blood Angels did it wrong, their thematic units were just arbitrarily better and cheaper than their counterparts in the core book with no counterplay, another +1 marine book for the 5e codex creep.

i disagree, i didn't see where you get a free champion, so he paid full points for the upgrade, the alpha legion thing actually makes sense though, and the 5th ed blood angels dex most certainly did it right thematically.

Again what i am seeing here is your approach from a competitive tournament mindset of -X points for Y benefit- and not from a -these rules are how they would act in the lore- mindset that i approach the game with.

You also seem to assume it is to large of a bonus to overcome, i have had some tough games against my friends 3.5 iron warriors list, but i do win against it even in straight up kill points games. i even took a 3rd ed ravenwing force against him and cleaned his clock.

Also the argument of pay points-get bonuses is something that has been around forever in 40K, 3rd used unit composition, 5th used character unlock/chapter tactics, 8th used auras

Getting a free champion for a squad of X was hardly breaking the bank, and probably in some ways sub optimal for the squad.

All the others, Alpha Legion, Iron Warriors etc. at the very least came at an opportunity cost within the book itself.

This is during the same time period where IG doctrines, Tyranid Biomorphs and 4th Ed Marine Chapter Traits were also a thing.
It was well within acceptable balance, imo.

 aphyon wrote:
Again what i am seeing here is your approach from a competitive tournament mindset of -X points for Y benefit- and not from a -these rules are how they would act in the lore- mindset that i approach the game with.

No, what i'm saying is that the two are not mutually exclusive.
Night Lords are not suddenly less thematic if they pay for night vision. A squad of 9 thousand sons marines is not suddenly less thematic if they pay for their champion.

There is literally no lore drawback to paying the fair going rate for your rules, only a competitive one.

 Insectum7 wrote:
This is during the same time period where IG doctrines, Tyranid Biomorphs and 4th Ed Marine Chapter Traits were also a thing.

You did pay for all of those things however.

A.T. wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
This is during the same time period where IG doctrines, Tyranid Biomorphs and 4th Ed Marine Chapter Traits were also a thing.

You did pay for all of those things however.

Actually I'm not sure that you did.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Actually I'm not sure that you did.

Not being a guard player I dug it out and had a look. Veteran skills and other bonuses were costed per unit or per model with combination restrictions (i.e. no carapace armour on jungle fighters), unless you were thinking regimental organisations?
(I was going to say that close order drill was an exception, but it actually looks like really poor formatting of the organisation chart...)

Marines double-dipped on payment. Want furious assault? Pay 3 points per model and take a disadvantage. Want tank hunters as well? 3 points per model and kiss a significant block of your unit selection goodbye.

Biomorphs all had points.

A.T. wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Actually I'm not sure that you did.

Not being a guard player I dug it out and had a look. Veteran skills and other bonuses were costed per unit or per model with combination restrictions (i.e. no carapace armour on jungle fighters), unless you were thinking regimental organisations?
(I was going to say that close order drill was an exception, but it actually looks like really poor formatting of the organisation chart...)

Marines double-dipped on payment. Want furious assault? Pay 3 points per model and take a disadvantage. Want tank hunters as well? 3 points per model and kiss a significant block of your unit selection goodbye.

Biomorphs all had points.

And the "disadvantage" Trait of Isolationist (or whatever it was called), the hardly-a-disadvantage-Trait?

Maybe there weren't any freebies, but I'd call the Trait system way more abuseable than free sergeants. When people complain about Chaos 3.5, I don't think anybody is even thinking of the free sergeant potential. There were definitely combinations in all of those books which were more competitive, points or not. I ran Elite Devastators with Tank Hunters all edition and they were amazing.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Maybe there weren't any freebies, but I'd call the Trait system way more abuseable than free sergeants. When people complain about Chaos 3.5, I don't think anybody is even thinking of the free sergeant potential. There were definitely combinations in all of those books which were more competitive, points or not. I ran Elite Devastators with Tank Hunters all edition and they were amazing.

Well 3.5 gave you tank hunters on havoks without needing to take a trait/disadvantage... and that's fine, they had to spend points on the upgrade.

I'm not sure why 'all upgrades must be paid for' got picked out of the original list as if it were something controversial.

 Hellebore wrote:
It wasn't the core rules that I liked so much about 2nd, it was how well the armies represented their factions in the lists.

This is why 6th Edition killed Tau for me. The new Codex just did not represent the Tau technology and way of war at all. Tau was the smart army, they did not have much raw power, but they could make their shots count. They were not particularly fast, but they could be very mobile. After 6th edition, almost all of that was thrown out of the window, Tau became more about brute power by awesome statlines (like Riptide) or gimmicks to increase the amount of dice you could throw. All the old units were dumbed down but hey, they were cheaper, you could get more of them! My favourite Tau units - the tanks - became slow and cumbersome like Leman Russes. Entire 'high tech' feel of the army was gone, it was just another monster mash.

Kind of same thing happened with Tyranids, the army became all about flavour monster of the month. 4th Edition Tyranid Codex had tons of options and it really felt like a highly customizable army. By 7th Edition, it was just the matter of fielding the big monsters. Yawn.

 Just Tony wrote:
It was the most imbalanced and exploitable codex in an edition that included Blood Angels, Black Templars, and Gav Thorpe's Eldar books. That should speak volumes.

Ok, and? None of what you said in any way contradicts or invalidates what you quoted.

The 3.5 'Dex was fantastic. The 3.5 'Dex was broken.

The 3.5 'Dex (and the accompanying big army box) is what got me back into 40k.

A.T. wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Maybe there weren't any freebies, but I'd call the Trait system way more abuseable than free sergeants. When people complain about Chaos 3.5, I don't think anybody is even thinking of the free sergeant potential. There were definitely combinations in all of those books which were more competitive, points or not. I ran Elite Devastators with Tank Hunters all edition and they were amazing.

Well 3.5 gave you tank hunters on havoks without needing to take a trait/disadvantage... and that's fine, they had to spend points on the upgrade.

I'm not sure why 'all upgrades must be paid for' got picked out of the original list as if it were something controversial.

I just don't see freebies for running certain flavor options as being automatically problematic. If' Marines got a bonus for running 50% Tacs in their infantry, for example, that's not inherently bad. It just depends on the nature of the bonus. A free sergeant isn't breaking any banks. 7th ed Gladius wasn't crazy because you got a bonus for running a bunch of Tacs etc, it's the nature of the bonus that made it absurd (awesome). Incentives to run armies a particular way is a totally fine practice if the incentives are reasonable.

The problems with the 3.5 'Dex were largely the same problems that the 3.5 Guard 'Dex and 4th Ed Marine 'Dex had, namely that the options to gain X by giving up Y weren't really options.

If you were never going to take Y in the first place, then giving it up to gain more of X (which you were going to take) isn't actually a trade-off.

Oh no! My Iron Warriors have limited Fast Attack, but I get extra Heavy Support? I can't take Sanctioned Psykers and Storm Troopers in my Guard army, but all my troops can Deep Strike for free and get +1I when they're in close formation? I can't take allies in my Marine army*, but get Tank Hunters? How ever will my army survive this great disadvantage???



*Some allies were good, like the Kyoto-Pattern Inquisitorial Fire Team, which I brought to almost every game.

 Insectum7 wrote:
I just don't see freebies for running certain flavor options as being automatically problematic.

But what does it achieve?

From a competitive standpoint you've undermined your own attempt at points balance by some margin no matter how small, and from a non-competitive standpoint the lore players would have just paid the points.

A.T. wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I just don't see freebies for running certain flavor options as being automatically problematic.

But what does it achieve?

From a competitive standpoint you've undermined your own attempt at points balance by some margin no matter how small, and from a non-competitive standpoint the lore players would have just paid the points.

It makes lore-based choices slightly more competetive, and therefore more likely to manifest "in the wild", and that, imo, is a good thing.

considering how gw treats Cultists, you can see that their imagined, Lore foccussed, picture of a factions army should look like X you can anyways assume, that balance is a hot commodity.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
*Some allies were good, like the Kyoto-Pattern Inquisitorial Fire Team, which I brought to almost every game.

Why 'kyoto' ?

I'm guessing mystics, guns, and potentially a psychic hood / tarot?, back when 95 points for a couple of heavy bolters and a plasma gun would have been considered reasonable. The codex creep on heavy weapons was impressive in 5th when you consider that the same three servitors in the GK book cost 40 points...

 Insectum7 wrote:
It makes lore-based choices slightly more competetive, and therefore more likely to manifest "in the wild", and that, imo, is a good thing.

It ultimately means you've sacrificed some of your game balance to push players to play based on your vision of the lore.

A.T. wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I just don't see freebies for running certain flavor options as being automatically problematic.

But what does it achieve?

From a competitive standpoint you've undermined your own attempt at points balance by some margin no matter how small, and from a non-competitive standpoint the lore players would have just paid the points.

It achieves a much more enjoyable game experience.

I have fun with the full experience of playing the game(not just winning the game) in 5th because i know my boys will do X because it is what they would do in the lore with rules to reflect that.

Take just marines since it is the #1 GW product line for 40K

Look at what they have done with late 8th into 9th with primaris everything. cawl apparenetly fixed all the flaws in the various legions so now everybody is ultramarines with a different paint scheme.

there are no restricted theme builds and the variance in the chapters is restricted to what? bonus re-rolls and boosted damage output for certain weapons?

People played many of the armies they loved because they were unique like backfires love for the tau(feel you there started tau in 4th had a fully mechanized force with only a single suit, because i had to have a commander in a suit)

Ravenwing in the 3rd ed mini dex was a bike army that had highly restricted build requirements with special rules nobody else had as the payoff for their limitations. whitescars also favored bike armies but their build requirements and special rules were completely different.

The books of chaos in the 3.5 dex did the same thing. it gave people an immersive reason to love an army instead of just take the best performing primaris units and paint them color X. to go with named special character X.


The points system and the idea of "balanced" is meant as a rough way for both players armies to have a chance at winning. it isn't exact because this isn't chess (and dice are involved). there are to many variables to make it that way in 40K which is why the narrative/lore aspect is so important. and given the new playtester revelations about how GW decided to tweak points in 9th we can see it isn't even relative to balance. "we don't want chaos armies to take more cultists so we are arbitrarily raising the price on them to make them less appealing" Is not a way to develop a balanced system.

They also focused the new edition on tournament players which is exactly the opposite of the kind of games i want out of 40K.

 aphyon wrote:
I have fun with the full experience of playing the game(not just winning the game) in 5th because i know my boys will do X because it is what they would do in the lore with rules to reflect that.

That's a big, long post that skips all the way around what i've been trying to say.
I'm not suggesting that 3.5 or any other book with freebies should have lost these options, just that they should have paid a fair price or comparable limitation for them.

Again you are losing nothing out of your 'full experience of playing' if your night lords pay a point for their night vision, or if your marine squad has to buy their champion like everyone else - they still have it, they are exactly the same unit with exactly the same rules.

 aphyon wrote:
"we don't want chaos armies to take more cultists so we are arbitrarily raising the price on them to make them less appealing" Is not a way to develop a balanced system.

It could be said this is exactly what you are arguing for and I am arguing against - perhaps GW feels that the full experience of chaos involves a premium on cultists. It's really no different from putting a discount on something else at the end of the day is it?

My position would be that the cultists, like all things, should cost a fair price. No more or less than they are worth. That way if someone wants to play to their vision of the lore they are not beholden to someone elses vision.

A.T. wrote:
I'm guessing mystics, guns, and potentially a psychic hood / tarot?, back when 95 points for a couple of heavy bolters and a plasma gun would have been considered reasonable. The codex creep on heavy weapons was impressive in 5th when you consider that the same three servitors in the GK book cost 40 points...

Ordo Malleus Inquisitor w/Psycannon, 3 Gun Servitors w/2 Heavy Bolters & 1 Plasma Cannon, 2 Sages, 2 Mystics.

And why Kyoto? Because he was the first one to come up with the concept here at Dakka.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And why Kyoto? Because he was the first one to come up with the concept here at Dakka.

I never went for the psycannon on mine, but I can see the appeal.

A.T. wrote:

 aphyon wrote:
I have fun with the full experience of playing the game(not just winning the game) in 5th because i know my boys will do X because it is what they would do in the lore with rules to reflect that.

That's a big, long post that skips all the way around what i've been trying to say.
I'm not suggesting that 3.5 or any other book with freebies should have lost these options, just that they should have paid a fair price or comparable limitation for them.

Again you are losing nothing out of your 'full experience of playing' if your night lords pay a point for their night vision, or if your marine squad has to buy their champion like everyone else - they still have it, they are exactly the same unit with exactly the same rules.

 aphyon wrote:
"we don't want chaos armies to take more cultists so we are arbitrarily raising the price on them to make them less appealing" Is not a way to develop a balanced system.

It could be said this is exactly what you are arguing for and I am arguing against - perhaps GW feels that the full experience of chaos involves a premium on cultists. It's really no different from putting a discount on something else at the end of the day is it?

My position would be that the cultists, like all things, should cost a fair price. No more or less than they are worth. That way if someone wants to play to their vision of the lore they are not beholden to someone elses vision.

It is not, once again you are looking at it purely from a points perspective and not a rules based in lore perspective. every faction in nearly every army got something for free or reduced cost and it was not game breaking, it was thematic given the lore. rather it was reduced cost for master crafted weapons for the master artesians of the salamanders, stubborn for the deathwing, nightvision for the night lords because they come from a world shrouded in darkness, infiltration/stealth for the ravenguard, access to more demons than any other chaos legion for the word bearers etc..

What GW did with cultists in 9th has nothing to do with lore and everything to do with competitive play. what they are worth would depend on which chaos legion is using them. they would be more at home with the word bearers but much less so with say the iron warriors. previous editions special rules were based heavily on lore, the new edition is based on performance for points above all else, and it isn't even cross faction performance it is based on internal faction performance.

At the end of the day you may never like the "freebies" as you call them, you may think they break the game in some way by giving an opposing army a phantom points boost for a specific skill/ability, but it is a far better place IMHO for casual gamers who want to play in the universe with the back story we have all read about for decades than where the game is heading now.

Like HBMC said earlier-everything can be "good" and it can also be "broken" at the same time. the reality that i can pit 3rd ed codexes against 4th, 5th 6th or 7th and still have great games in the 5th ed rule set tells me it isn't that bad.

 aphyon wrote:
It is not, once again you are looking at it purely from a points perspective and not a rules based in lore perspective

Well we are just going to go around in circles.

So i'll just chalk this up as a Mat Ward daemons of chaos style disagreement over how games should be balanced and leave it at that.

A.T. wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
It makes lore-based choices slightly more competetive, and therefore more likely to manifest "in the wild", and that, imo, is a good thing.

It ultimately means you've sacrificed some of your game balance to push players to play based on your vision of the lore.

I don't think that's necessarily true either. There can be subtle benefits or disadvantages to various squad sizes depending on the edition. Or there's the perception of "tax" units that people don't want to take because they aren't competitive, but when taken in bulk can make up for it with some sort of bonus. It might also be that point values are built around "expected" army formulations with certain synergies which include said free bonus. You just don't know. "Balance" in 40K is an inherently sloppy concept to begin with with a lot of wiggle room. Looking for precision in point value to determine balance is a bit of a fool's errand to begin with. Army context, inter-unit synergy, terrain, mission all come in to play, and free bonuses for certain builds just falls under the category of shaping army context. It's well within the bounds of design balance.