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 Da Boss wrote:
Yeah, I think it can go either way. I just prefer to believe that Mekboys are smarter than techpriests

I think that is definitely true regardless of the psychic thing above!

Point of order on that?

Neither Mekboyz or Techpriests really have any understanding of what they’re doing. Meks just sort of….make stuff. And a lot of the time they don’t know what it is they’re making, or what the resulting gun, gadget, gubbins or gizmo will do. Techpriests may know principles and that, but by no means understand them, or have any capability to apply them to things outside of a given plan.

But back on topic!

I agree with Hellebore that the predominance of Marines really didn’t help 3rd Ed. It was from that the focus on High Strength, Low AP stemmed. And from there the No Man’s Land of weapons which were rarely, if ever, fielded.

Which brings me on to another thought. And I can’t necessarily blame 3rd Ed for it. For with 3rd Ed, came my first faltering forays to Portent. Where I first encountered WAAC, Min-Max and “tournament am all” attitudes. Folk that didn’t care a joy for the background.

Now, 3rd Ed removing pretty much all flavour from Codexes didn’t really help there, but for all I know such discussions were prevalent during 2nd Ed, I just never encountered them because all I knew was my local scene.

I though mid-strength medium RoF weapons were quite popular in 3rd, because they are great at popping Rhinos and equivalent. Transport rush was a major strategy for several armies, and an autocannon is more suited to blunting a Rhino rush or Speed Freeks trukk list than a lascannon.

This sort of discussions is why I'd really love GW to reintroduce all the older editions of the game as viable choices for playing. They wouldn't need to add anything to them, just make them available again with all their expansions and erratas especially. Let the players decide which editions they want to play with their toys. Warhammer vault could be a way of doing precisely this. I know it is possible to do this already, but amassing all those old resources takes quite a lot of effort, and I'm sure more players would be open to playing "vintage" edition games if GW's stance was "play any darn edition you want as long as its one of our games". Novelty would still ensure most players would only be playing the latest and greatest.

As for me personally, I have only played 40K since.. I think 5th edition onwards? So I dont really have much experience on how the games played, but looking back on the books, 1st Edition and 2nd Edition are the ones I keep coming back to.. and I try to envision a world where those two editions would still be playable today, with access to all the current factions and units, and models especially. It would sort of be like the "Old World" of 40K if you will..

Sort of adjacent topic - but I do think this is really echos my issues of 9th->10th.

Speaking as someone "who was just about there" - I started 40k in 2nd, but *really* started in 3rd. Now, admittedly, this is perhaps because in 2nd I was less than 12 years old, but it seemed incredibly complicated, bloated, and just kind of broken. My cousin seemed to have various busted combos (but who knows whether we got the rules right.) You run into a virus or vortex grenade once and maybe you can find it funny. But inevitably all your friends start wanting to chuck them and it gets old.

I can imagine the movement to 3rd did feel like chopping off a leg, as its basically a new game. (Imo 9th->10th isn't really, but lets not argue that again). But I think because I wasn't really into 2nd, and Fantasy being the bigger game, it didn't bother me. I could effectively start fresh in 40k - with a whole generation of other people starting fresh - while keeping the 2nd edition fluff.

And the result was great. Very much non-WAAC, "fluffy" lists, the Quasi-White Dwarf soft-Highlander stuff I've talked about. Cynically, 40k is great if you are 14 and playing other 14 year olds.

I think things started to break up towards the end of the edition. I.E. I think its great all the Chaos chapters have rules, but everyone at the store only seems to be playing Iron Warriors with more heavy support choices.
But that's probably just an indication of us getting older. People who'd got jobs were free to buy better stuff, and did so. I was falling out of the hobby anyway - and it wouldn't be until I returned in 5th where the game seemed to be all WAAC all the time. (Which it probably wasn't really, but you don't need too many people to give the impression it is.)

 tauist wrote:
So I dont really have much experience on how the games played, but looking back on the books, 1st Edition and 2nd Edition are the ones I keep coming back to.. and I try to envision a world where those two editions would still be playable today

Someone compiled all of the 2nd edition rules into a 'battle bible' pdf that i'm sure is still floating around on the web. Depending on your armies and house rules the game balance was somewhere between 'clown show' and 'the entire circus' but it had its charm, and if you can get your hands on the old necromunda books you can play the old ruleset on a smaller scale to get a feel for it.

Oh, I have 2nd edition box and even the bible I think, but the bible is not an official GW product and is an eyesore to sift through. However, my biggest problem is getting anyone else interested in playing it

Well once I’m done painting my Heresy stuff, my Eldar may be next up on the slate.

I bought the models as part of an experiment, where I start off using the 2nd Ed Codex, then transpose that to 9th Ed.

No real point looking to be made, just thought it would be an interesting project for folk to follow, and see how the game has increased in size and organisation.

Now of course it’ll be 10th. But if you want to do a parallel project, I’ll give you a shout when I’m ready to go.

JNAProductions wrote:I actually like the Cover system of 3rd-7th, mostly because it promotes the kind of fantasy that fits 40k, in my opinion.

Guardsmen, Cultists, and other lightly-armored models hug cover. They need it to survive against even small arms fire from most factions.
Marines, Immortals, and other heavily-armored models don't. Their armor is more than enough until the big guns get brought out.

Not saying it was perfect, for sure, but it worked well enough.

JNAProductions wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
To-hit modifiers managed that really well though, as your protection came from being less likely to be hit - and everyone benefitted from that equally. It also meant higher BS was a more desirable trait than in 3rd.

In 3rd? Nope. Pretty much a one-way street of most benefit to light and squishy stuff.

It did not benefit everyone equally.
A BS4 model suffered a 25% reduction in hits.
A BS2 model got their hit rate halved.

And, to me, Marines generally not needing cover fits their aesthetic. They SHOULDN'T need to duck and cover against a couple of Lasguns.

8th and 9th Edition were definitely the worst, though.

Squad of 10 Cultists? Takes 24 Autogun hits to kill.
Add Cover? 30.

Squad of 5 Marines, at two wounds apiece? Takes 90 Autogun hits to kill.
Add Cover? 180.

Against the lightest, least armor-piercings weapons, Marines got the biggest benefit from Cover. That's just ass-backwards.

Meant to address this before, but I agree with JNA on this. Marines only needing cover against the big guns is more lore friendly than them skulking in the shadows at lasguns. I think it also better represents that a big part of cover is concealment- sure the lascannon can pierce through the wall, but it is much more likely to perforate a bit of masonry than hit the soldier hiding behind.

I think stat modifiers have a place in the game, but I prefer it when they are a result of player choice rather than forced by the enemy, due to the maths pointed out above.

For example, if moving/firing ordnance imposed a hit penalty on vehicle weapons rather than preventing them firing altogether, that is a choice. If you need accuracy, stay still. But moving doesn't tank the efficacy of the vehicle to kill stuff

It’s more that Marines rarely benefitted from Cover in 3rd Ed. Until 5 Man Las/Plas became commonplace.

It’s just a factor of the All Or Nothing save system. I don’t disagree that Marines should be able to walk in the open with relative impunity, but not at the cost of benefitting from cover.

Consider. 10 Guardsmen deployed in cover gain essentially a 5+ or 4+ Inv, depending on the cover. This makes them much harder to shift. Which in itself is fine.

10 Marines deployed in cover gained….nothing. At all. Unless some of the incoming fire happened to be AP3 or better.

But, if Cover gives -1 or -2 to hit? The Guardsmen and Marines receive the same overall benefit, whether or not the Marines have fewer reasons to hug cover in the first place.

People often say your favourite edition is the one you start with, but 5th was my favourite and I started in 2nd.

Now though, with some years to consider, I think my problems with 4th were pretty minor (they made transports death traps, easily fixed by ignoring a couple of rules, and the codex release schedule was bollocks). 5th toward the end was really quite bad for crappy lists and it introduced flyers as a part of the main game, which I was never keen on.

If I was gonna go back I'd go back to 3e or 4e I reckon. I have the 3e book with the lists in, which is a big point in it's favour, but no "black book" lists for Tau or Necrons is a downer. OPR 2.0 scratches the itch well enough for me.

I think MDG has a point that the game did lose something in the transition from 2 to 3, the wacky and whimsy side of things. But the core rules weren't much good for actually playing the game imo.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It’s more that Marines rarely benefitted from Cover in 3rd Ed. Until 5 Man Las/Plas became commonplace.

It’s just a factor of the All Or Nothing save system. I don’t disagree that Marines should be able to walk in the open with relative impunity, but not at the cost of benefitting from cover.

Consider. 10 Guardsmen deployed in cover gain essentially a 5+ or 4+ Inv, depending on the cover. This makes them much harder to shift. Which in itself is fine.

10 Marines deployed in cover gained….nothing. At all. Unless some of the incoming fire happened to be AP3 or better.

But, if Cover gives -1 or -2 to hit? The Guardsmen and Marines receive the same overall benefit, whether or not the Marines have fewer reasons to hug cover in the first place.

I think that trade off is worth it. Cover also came with significant movement penalties, so not requiring it unless staring down a battlecannon is very thematic IMO.

Plus, Marines did benefit from the melee defense of cover- assault grenades were much rarer in 3rd. They became sadly ubiquitous by 5th and GW may as well have stopped bothering to print the rules for models in cover striking first.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Da Boss wrote:
People often say your favourite edition is the one you start with, but 5th was my favourite and I started in 2nd.

Now though, with some years to consider, I think my problems with 4th were pretty minor (they made transports death traps, easily fixed by ignoring a couple of rules, and the codex release schedule was bollocks). 5th toward the end was really quite bad for crappy lists and it introduced flyers as a part of the main game, which I was never keen on.

If I was gonna go back I'd go back to 3e or 4e I reckon. I have the 3e book with the lists in, which is a big point in it's favour, but no "black book" lists for Tau or Necrons is a downer. OPR 2.0 scratches the itch well enough for me.

I think MDG has a point that the game did lose something in the transition from 2 to 3, the wacky and whimsy side of things. But the core rules weren't much good for actually playing the game imo.

I think 4th with some tweaks as you say, plus a couple of extras is best. I'd prsonally add the 5th edition "go to ground" by choice rules to 4th, and make the "troops bailing out of a penetrated transport" only happen on a failed Ld test for the squad inside. Using 3rd codices with 4th ed rules is my personal preference, for the flavour.

That’s…not helping your case 🤣🤣🤣

All that demonstrates is Marines and MEQ only suffered detriment from cover, as it slowed them down.

And in 2nd Ed? Terrain could still halve your movement.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That’s…not helping your case 🤣🤣🤣

All that demonstrates is Marines and MEQ only suffered detriment from cover, as it slowed them down.

And in 2nd Ed? Terrain could still halve your movement.

No, it highlights that cover has defensive bonuses (including in 2nd) not offensive ones, and the ruleset promoted Marines to go on the offensive unless facing heavy artillery. This is how Marines typically operate in the lore. Cover is slow. Marines don't like being slow, they primary MO is repeated rapid strikes unless their hand is forced into a defensive posture.

The melee defensive bonuses are mainly useful against hordes of infantry with poor access to grenades, like hormagaunts or Ork slugga boyz.

Basically cover becomes a tool for specific situations rather than a requirement for Marines. Which is how they typically fight in the lore...

Yeah re: marines needing cover, that's been quite the experience over the years.

From what I remember from 3rd onwards I found it really boring that marines essentially ignored most terrain in my games; it didn't do anything for them against my nids' ranged attacks*. Morale wasn't that impactful on them either, so all they had to do was move, shoot and/or charge. It felt uninteresting to play against.


I was really looking forward to a system where they'd use hit and armor modifiers because of it, thinking it'd make the game more tactical. So I walked willingly into 8th after a hiatus of a couple of years, completely falling for the "New GW" marketing. And then I got to experience the math posted above


*disclaimers: nid shooting essentially capped out at ap4.
- My 1-2 available warp blasts mostly went into vehicles, else they bagged maybe 2-3 marines per blast. Which isn't bad, but you couldn't get more than a couple of warp blasters in an army and they were also your only lethal ranged anti-tank weapons.
- I didn't really use the s3 ap3 flamer spore mines that were introduced in 4th(iirc?), they were very unreliable and I disliked the expensive, pewter biovore models.
- Units expecting to be charged did usually take cover. It meant they could strike first and thin out my precious charging genestealers, who somehow never managed to adapt to the fact that some prey uses cover.

 Haighus wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That’s…not helping your case 🤣🤣🤣

All that demonstrates is Marines and MEQ only suffered detriment from cover, as it slowed them down.

And in 2nd Ed? Terrain could still halve your movement.

No, it highlights that cover has defensive bonuses (including in 2nd) not offensive ones, and the ruleset promoted Marines to go on the offensive unless facing heavy artillery. This is how Marines typically operate in the lore. Cover is slow. Marines don't like being slow, they primary MO is repeated rapid strikes unless their hand is forced into a defensive posture.

The melee defensive bonuses are mainly useful against hordes of infantry with poor access to grenades, like hormagaunts or Ork slugga boyz.

Basically cover becomes a tool for specific situations rather than a requirement for Marines. Which is how they typically fight in the lore...

Not how the game worked out though. A highly abstract example follows.

If I was facing say, a Mob of 30 Shoota Boyz? The sensible thing to do in warfare is….not stand in the open. But there was nothing for Marines to gain there. So I was only a few jammy rolls away from having the unit mauled, if not wiped out. There was nothing I could do to mitigate.

That doesn’t feel right, and never will.

The glaring issue in 3rd Ed was how overpowered Close Combat was. Armies keyed to it did really well, as once you got stuck in? You could consolidate from combat to combat, or overrun. This greatly reduced and unbalanced the effectiveness of range favour armies. And that’s before we get to “being angry make it go faster” nonsense like Blood Angel Rhinos, or Black Templars getting bonus movement if I dare shoot at them in any volume. Oh, and don’t forget where I can only shoot in my own turn, combat armies fought in both player turns.

Now, the base, underlying rules did turn out for the good a few more editions in. Tweaks and changes brought it into its own. But 3rd Ed? 3rd Ed sucked more than the biggest vacuum cleaner, filled with Jimmy Carr standup DVDs piping out Dubstep through massive speakers in the middle of a black hole.

Which is massively sucky, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Well... in 3rd those 30 shoota boyz might kill a single Marine, maybe 2 within 12". They'd be exceptionally lucky to kill more than 3 or 4. On a D6 system, if the Marines were 2+ in cover they'd be very difficult to shift by shooting and would hit first against most boyz mobz in melee. It is an issue of granularity really.

Also, Blood Angels rhinos are faster because they horde an STC for better engines, not because they are angry...? I find the complaints about autocannons earlier a bit odd when complaining about Rhinos now. That is where autocannon were most effective.

Autocannon is just an example.

Shuriken Cannon, Scatter Lasers, Assault Cannon and thier ilk were awful, and only taken when you had no choice in the matter. S6 was too niche, and their AP was cack.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
If I was facing say, a Mob of 30 Shoota Boyz? The sensible thing to do in warfare is….not stand in the open. But there was nothing for Marines to gain there.

The alternatives all have their own problems: to hit modifiers penalised innacurate shots more heavily, save modifiers benefitted heavy armour more than light armour, double saves added extra rolling.

Years back when playing with the idea of a 'simplehammer' ruleset I had wondered if the old 'night shield' rule would have been better for light cover and intervening units - no extra saves, the target is just treated as being 6" further away (capped at 12"). But with oldhammer being as slow as it was at times, especially before run moves, it did just seem to give more value to heavy and special weapons and camping whereas the 3e cover system did at least encourage getting stuck in with small arms.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Autocannon is just an example.
Shuriken Cannon, Scatter Lasers, Assault Cannon and thier ilk were awful, and only taken when you had no choice in the matter. S6 was too niche, and their AP was cack.

3e assault cannon were crap. 4e assault cannon were the gold standard.

Autocannon were just too expensive and where you could get them cheaply (i.e. a 5pt upgrade on chimeras) they were excellent upgrades over the S5 and S6 weapons that struggled to shake opposing vehicles and walkers.
The game probably needed more 4+ monstrous creatures to give those weapons a niche.

A.T. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
If I was facing say, a Mob of 30 Shoota Boyz? The sensible thing to do in warfare is….not stand in the open. But there was nothing for Marines to gain there.

The alternatives all have their own problems: to hit modifiers penalised innacurate shots more heavily, save modifiers benefitted heavy armour more than light armour, double saves added extra rolling.

Years back when playing with the idea of a 'simplehammer' ruleset I had wondered if the old 'night shield' rule would have been better for light cover and intervening units - no extra saves, the target is just treated as being 6" further away (capped at 12"). But with oldhammer being as slow as it was at times, especially before run moves, it did just seem to give more value to heavy and special weapons and camping whereas the 3e cover system did at least encourage getting stuck in with small arms.

Yeah, pretty much this.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Autocannon is just an example.
Shuriken Cannon, Scatter Lasers, Assault Cannon and thier ilk were awful, and only taken when you had no choice in the matter. S6 was too niche, and their AP was cack.

3e assault cannon were crap. 4e assault cannon were the gold standard.

Autocannon were just too expensive and where you could get them cheaply (i.e. a 5pt upgrade on chimeras) they were excellent upgrades over the S5 and S6 weapons that struggled to shake opposing vehicles and walkers.
The game probably needed more 4+ monstrous creatures to give those weapons a niche.

I'm a bit confused. Autocannons cost 5pts more than a heavy bolter in almost every example I could find, to match the Chimera difference. They were cheapest for CSM squads, at 10pts. The only examples I can find where autocannons cost 10pts more than heavy bolters in the same unit was for Chaos chosen and Imperial Guard fire support squads in the rulebook lists, kept by fire support squads in the first Imperial Guard codex (but not the second). I agree this was too much, and it seems GW agreed as they reduced the price difference as 3rd progressed.

3rd did increase the price of special and heavy weapons on most units that could spam them compared to the single weapons on troop squads. This would have been good if they'd done it a bit more consistently.

A.T. wrote: The alternatives all have their own problems: to hit modifiers penalised innacurate shots more heavily, save modifiers benefitted heavy armour more than light armour, double saves added extra rolling.

Apologies if I’m seeming contrary for the sake of it, I promise that’s not the case.

In terms of 2nd Ed only…

I’d argue it made units with high ballistic skill feel more special, because unless you literally hid (Hiding being a defined thing)? They could still hit a reasonable amount of the time.

So stuff like Terminators, or Devastators with their Targetters were terrors of the battlefield, because they weren’t just accurate, they were reliably accurate.

Also worth keeping in mind that at least in 2nd Ed, to the best of my current recollection buffs to stats were fairly difficult to come by for Squads, with aforementioned Targetters being a notable instance of +1 BS on mooks.

BS2 was super rare though, as BS3 was standard, BS4 the premium, and BS5 and higher for Proper Elite and Characters.

So this factors in to Terminators, Aspect Warriors etc losing all their teeth in 3rd Ed. They just weren’t special anymore, at all.

 Haighus wrote:
I'm a bit confused. Autocannons cost 5pts more than a heavy bolter in almost every example I could find

15pt heavy bolters weren't the most in-demand options in most armies.

When it came to squad weapons though the 20pt autocannon had to compete against the 20pt missile launcher and that wasn't really a choice for the targets you'd shoot them at.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’d argue it made units with high ballistic skill feel more special, because unless you literally hid (Hiding being a defined thing)? They could still hit a reasonable amount of the time.

Something interesting about the way 2nd editions shooting rules worked showed up if you played necromunda campaigns for too long. At first the starting teams would be able to move around in and out of cover and the games flowed as players took risks but play for long enough and the BS scores and weapon bonuses outweighed the cover and you'd get rows of 'hidden' tokens everywhere.
That's why the plasma cannon was always the premium long-term investment (blast marker - shoot the barricade itself).

A.T. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’d argue it made units with high ballistic skill feel more special, because unless you literally hid (Hiding being a defined thing)? They could still hit a reasonable amount of the time.

Something interesting about the way 2nd editions shooting rules worked showed up if you played necromunda campaigns for too long. At first the starting teams would be able to move around in and out of cover and the games flowed as players took risks but play for long enough and the BS scores and weapon bonuses outweighed the cover and you'd get rows of 'hidden' tokens everywhere.
That's why the plasma cannon was always the premium long-term investment (blast marker - shoot the barricade itself).

True, but I’d argue that said flaw didn’t manifest in the same way in 2nd Ed as it did in Necromunda, because we were playing with pretty static stat lines.

Mordheim struck a nice balance though. Sure your Leader, Heroes and Youngbloods could get filthy, but your Henchmen could only increase a given stat once, which dealt with the above concern before it really manifested.

I'm too lazy to write a long counter-argument, but I need to address this:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Ork Clans? What Ork Clans?. You’re all a drab brown now, with no thematic perks on offer anywhere.

In the 2nd edition Boyz from different clans were only really differentiated by how many special or heavy weapons they could take. If you wanted to play mono-clan, your choices were very limited. In the 3rd edition, using the Chapter Approved clan rules, different clans actually had different army composition with restrictions, yet still more options than in the 2nd edition, where e.g. playing a themed Death Skulls clan meant your only themed option was Boyz that were the same as every other clan's Boyz, but they could be given kombi-weapons. In the 3rd edition Lootas actually had access to looted Imperial weapons and Death Skulls could even take more looted vehicles than other clans. Yeah, looted vehicles, something most players would consider extremely Orky, only became a thing in the 3rd edition.

Santtu wrote:
I'm too lazy to write a long counter-argument, but I need to address this:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Ork Clans? What Ork Clans?. You’re all a drab brown now, with no thematic perks on offer anywhere.

In the 2nd edition Boyz from different clans were only really differentiated by how many special or heavy weapons they could take. If you wanted to play mono-clan, your choices were very limited. In the 3rd edition, using the Chapter Approved clan rules, different clans actually had different army composition with restrictions, yet still more options than in the 2nd edition, where e.g. playing a themed Death Skulls clan meant your only themed option was Boyz that were the same as every other clan's Boyz, but they could be given kombi-weapons. In the 3rd edition Lootas actually had access to looted Imperial weapons and Death Skulls could even take more looted vehicles than other clans. Yeah, looted vehicles, something most players would consider extremely Orky, only became a thing in the 3rd edition.

Plus, a lot of units were clan-locked in 2nd- only the Evil Sunz had bikers, only the Blood Axes had kommandos. In 3rd, any clan could use these. If you used the Chapter approved clan rules, certain units might not be available to some clans, but very, very few options were fully restricted to one clan only (Evil Sunz warboss on bike, Blood Axe looted Chimera as dedicated transport for HQ, some Snakebite units taken from the Feral Orks list, all of which are available in some form to other Ork forces, and some equipment options).

I've honestly never been a big fan of 40K's cover system. I much prefer the way KT21 deals with cover with its distinction between concealed/engaged.

I suppose my ideal brew of 40K would be something like KT21 but with added vehicles and monsters, and games being sized about the same as in 1st and 2nd edition 40K.. And epic scale for anything larger than that

It seems to me that everybody that complains that third edition robbed the game of flavor are more referring to the fact that you didn't really get held to an actual military organizational structure with your armies. Your compositional requirements in second edition where twenty five percent plus must be spent on squads. An example of a squad? Literally the most elite of elite that you have in your army. You might come across a stipulation where you must run x boring squad in order to run y awesome squad and that's about it. It's like assuming that any combat or extended warfare that Britain were to get involved.It was loaded with nothing but SAS, SBS, and tactical nukes.

Army's look like actual structured armies. Not some teenager's action movie fantasy.

Also, third edition is being criticized in this thread as being the most stripped down, dull, bland, optionless version of the game ever. I went back to third edition when I had the choice of going retro and could pick any addition out of the entire field of systems that Games Workshop had made for for decades. There was extra content available for every army, including a massive number of alternative lists for said armies. This way, higher than what we got for years afterwards. Fluffers aside, more people had their cankles up for third edition because they could no longer have their cake and eat it, too.

A.T. wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
I'm a bit confused. Autocannons cost 5pts more than a heavy bolter in almost every example I could find

15pt heavy bolters weren't the most in-demand options in most armies.

When it came to squad weapons though the 20pt autocannon had to compete against the 20pt missile launcher and that wasn't really a choice for the targets you'd shoot them at.

Well, only units that could mass them had 20pt or 25pt(!) autocannons. They were 15pts in most Guard units and 10pts for a lot of CSM units.

I don't think they hold up that badly compared to missile launchers. The latter has more versatility, but autocannons are superior against AV10, 11, and 12 and against 4+ armoured infantry (granted, this is relatively rare thanks to the popularity of Space Marines). If you are facing a lot of transports, autocannons are more likely to fare better.

...once again the meta of Marines everywhere comes back as a problem.

Isn't Heavy Bolter (or equivalent) the de facto standard in anti-marine weaponry?

Santtu wrote:
I'm too lazy to write a long counter-argument, but I need to address this:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Ork Clans? What Ork Clans?. You’re all a drab brown now, with no thematic perks on offer anywhere.

In the 2nd edition Boyz from different clans were only really differentiated by how many special or heavy weapons they could take. If you wanted to play mono-clan, your choices were very limited. In the 3rd edition, using the Chapter Approved clan rules, different clans actually had different army composition with restrictions, yet still more options than in the 2nd edition, where e.g. playing a themed Death Skulls clan meant your only themed option was Boyz that were the same as every other clan's Boyz, but they could be given kombi-weapons. In the 3rd edition Lootas actually had access to looted Imperial weapons and Death Skulls could even take more looted vehicles than other clans. Yeah, looted vehicles, something most players would consider extremely Orky, only became a thing in the 3rd edition.

Looted Vehicles are indeed Orky. As is nicking guns off the enemy and using them against them. But rules wise? They were cack, because Orks had BS2. However I honestly can’t remember if you got a discount on Looted Vehicles. I don’t think you did, but as always am open to me just not remembering.

But so are Shokk Attak Guns, Lifta-Droppas, Traktor Cannons, Pulse Rokkits, Bubble Chukkas, Squig Catapults. Indeed I’ll argue they’re the epitome of the Orky outlook on life. All make use of quite phenomenal, sometimes physics bending technology. Stuff which could be put to good use in industrial settings, engineering and so on. Orks use it to make stuff go splat in new and amusing ways. Like picking up an enemy Tank, and dropping it on the enemy infantry. All thrown out for 3rd Ed, along with Bioniks, Wildboyz, Madboyz and Boarboyz. Even Weirdboyz went bye bye.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 tauist wrote:
Isn't Heavy Bolter (or equivalent) the de facto standard in anti-marine weaponry?

In 2nd Ed? Yes. S5, -2 Sv, D4 Damage (power to the people*) and two sustained fire dice. It was also my go-to shooter for messing up Avatars.

3rd Ed? Much less so, because AP4.

*bonus internet for anyone who recognises that reference, for you too are old.