So of all the editions of warhammer 40k, which was the most solid? By that I mean, the least rules confusion, the smoothest play and good conciseness in general.
Also, where can I get a pdf of the 3rd edition rulebook? I can't find one anywhere.
3rd and 4th gets my vote. 3rd was great flavorwise and 4th was very convinient to play.
>>44175892
3rd using just the army lists in the book
>>44175892
3rd all the way. It was such an improvement rules-wise from 2nd edition. And everything after that just seemed like an excuse to sell more books without really changing the game in any significant way.
>>44175892
>That hammer
oh baby.
>>44175892
The edition with a reprint could definitely be the best edition yet- and balanced. It's the codexes that are letting it down.
4th
It's not the best edition, but it's about the peak as far as tournament-quality 40k goes. People often forget how broken and half-finished 3rd was. It wan't until all the errata and expansions that it started getting less janky. 4th just collected those changes and added some polish.
>>44176158
>>44176137
I wish I could find a copy to look at
>http://wh40klib.ru/
>codex/old-school codex/Rulebook_3-rd_ed_Eng.pdf
didn't upload it on the mega because it is missing the second half, but I think it serves your purposes
the complete books about that edition, some codices, are in the OP though if you're looking for them too.
>>44175892
>By that I mean, the least rules confusion, the smoothest play and good conciseness in general.
7th edition, easily. It's not even close.
>>44176481
I think I have got one, actually.
>>44176848
This desu.
3rd was broke, 4th was better. 5th and 6th were just boring.
>>44176481
C'mon, can't post that without the other version.
>>44179414
Sorry
>>44179414
>>44176481
>finally get promoted to first company
>earn the right to wear tactical dreadnought armor
>promoted to the bodyguard of the captain
>he doesn't want to dirty his power armor, so my brethren and I have to carry him on a shield
>constantly drop hints that this ain't cool
>after a decade he finally gets it
>"You know, standing atop a shield is unbecoming of a commander."
>praise_be_the_emperor.jpg
>...now he's using a chair
>and he's wearing terminator armor
Being Astartes is suffering.
>>44175892
5th, 6th was nice for beginners because of pre-measuring.
7th only exacerbated the problems 6th had.
>>44176481
Chief Vitalstatistix got some sweet gear
what would that make the rest of the gauls?
1e. Least bullshit in rules yet the most flexible. Also taking wargaming history into account, 1e 40k and 3e Fantasy were the true high points. That's when they really did the most of the "mass combat role playing game" concept that made Warhammer in general unique among wargames. Now it's this awful watered down awfully balanced attempt at true wargaming. Wargaming lost its popularity by the end of the 70s. By the 80s RPGs were more popular, so GW made the one true smart decision in its career by making Warhammer which combined the two.
Age Of Sigmar's attempt at streamlined yet interesting RPG mechanics influenced wargame is an attempt to go back to that. But neckbeard fuckboys are mad that their shitty watered down piss poor balance "wargame" WHFB was shutdown because of it.
If you want real Warhammer wargaming, you play Epic/Epic: Armageddon for 40k and Warmaster for Fantasy. Now these being discontinued is the real sad fact, not WHFB.
>>44175892
4th was pretty great.
full disclosure: I got into the game in 4th edition and had to leave it since no one in my area played it anyway.
It seemed fun in vassal anyway. I don't really like how I've seen the game developed. The IG aren't even called the IG for fucks sakes!
>>44181221
>The IG aren't even called the IG for fucks sakes!
They are though. The first page of the codex calls them the imperial guard and the term is used throughout the codex.
>>44179414
>"Steady, men! The cognac almost spilled!"
4th.
If we are going by base rules only 7th by a mile. The problem in 7th is that the codexes are unbalanced as hell. But when playing Eldar vs Marine or tyranids vs Blood Angels then the game is very good.
Can you post example between the loved editions and the current ones so newbies can understand why the old were so good and the new ones suck?
>>44180986
I like you.
>>44175892
Is that Graf Eisen?
>>44189941
agreed, im just starting to play 40k and I wanna know why 3rds better?
>>44189977
I am being legit serious too. It'd be a fun as hell mini army to assemble.
>>44189941
I dont know what people are really on about, 7th edition is just 4th edition, with a couple minor changes such as: Different vehicle tables, random Charging, no consolidating into melee, overwatch, and then about two dozen special rules and some added clarification on unit types.
and honestly 3rd edition was just 4th edition but a bit clunkier in a few areas (cough assault phase cough) The core mechanics of the game have not really changed much since 3rd edition, its been mostly rules around the edge. What really makes the current edition a problem is the arms race which as been ongoing due to codex creep since 3rd edition. The result is that everyone can shit out horrible amounts of rape damage, but no one can really take it to the face anymore, so alot of units that used to be ok or worth taking because they were durable are no basically pointless because they can be easily erased by just about any unit in any army. This has continually shifted the meta to smaller and smaller set of units which are effective in each codex due to gear options/points value for firepower. This is further exacerbated by in general inconsistent balancing issues. Which is not a huge problem if you are aware of them and want to play casual games, but is an issue for new players who dont know what their doing and may start throwing waac tier combos at their friends unknowingly. Also people like 3rd because everything cost about half as much during 3rd as it does today which was in fact a reasonable price point and allowed entry into the game by more than just the 1%.
I've only played 3rd and 4th. Fourth was a lot more fun and convenient as I recall.
>>44189941
It's what they got imprinted with, pretty much. There's arguments for certain rules being better or worse as time has gone on (e.g. I started play in 4th, as IG, and I do not miss consolidate-into-combat AT ALL), but at the end of the day its a combo of rose-tinted glasses and the fact that stuff changes.
>>44191142
>7th edition is just 4th edition, with a couple minor changes such as: Different vehicle tables, random Charging, no consolidating into melee, overwatch, and then about two dozen special rules and some added clarification on unit types.
and the entire psychic phase
and superheavy/gargantuan rules
and flyer rules
and pre-measuring
and TLoS
That's just off the top of my head, and that's well before getting into how the codexes themselves have changed.
>>44191730
Consolidate-into-combat wouldn't be nearly as bad with overwatch.
>>44190171
I thought so too, but it's not. GE's big-ass drill is actually octagonal, it's got the engine at the back, and the drill's larger.
>>44191771
oh, also, the ENTIRE way missions are played. No more victory points. Detachments, custom CADs, unique formations, Unbound even existing...
There's a shit ton separating 4th from 7th, but not much (if any) of it is good for making a solid ruleset.
>>44191872
I'm pretty sure it *is* supposed to be Graf Eisen or at least heavily inspired by it.
At least it's also octagonal and has the thruster at the back.
>>44191771
>and superheavy/gargantuan rules
>and flyer rules
You had those since the 3rd. They weren't in the Rulebook but rules for them existed.
>>44191857
I'll grant you that, but I'm still leery of it from all the games I played where I didn't kill every 'nid on the field in time and the last half of the game was just no-move-no-shoot-remove-any-assaulted-units for me.
>>44192206
But in 7th it's the opposite for melee armies. Just move towards the enemy and hope enough gets there intact to do.. anything.
>>44192320
Then you understand why I'm not terribly interested in returning to the way things were. I'd rather we found some middle ground where assault is something that can actually happen reliably without it being a "game over" for anything that isn't an assault army.
>>44176771
>Horus Heresy Book III Extermonation
That made me laugh, like there's a jamaican space marine out there narrating this
>>44191142
What is it with games and upping attack power in codex creep without corresponding defensive games? Every product seems to turn into a glass cannon fest over time. Probably because the most lucrative markets have a low attention span and any sort of grinding would tune out their revenue.
I have to note 30K as an example of a well-maintained remedy to 40K in this particulare axis. Keeping the order of gameplay by not devolving all situations in dogfights takes vigilant games design and FW delivers.
>>44191142
>an issue for new players who dont know what their doing and may start throwing waac tier combos at their friends unknowingly.
Or just as equally LAAC-tier combos that will never win them any game, ever. Not that that is really worth distinguishing in modern 40K.
>>44175892
I joined in when 3:ed hit the shelves, but got lucky and actually tried a few games of 2ed as well.
Throughout the years though, me and my friends never really played the game with WAAC tournament in mind. Instead keeping to the stuff we found cool in fluff and models.
And in my honest opinion, this edition we play now, 6th, is the most model, and converting friendly edition thus far, and so gets my vote.
I can understand if you like to play in tournaments and think this edition sucks, as of balance rules and some teams being to OP. But thats not a consequence of this being 6th edition, its because Warhammer 40k was never supposed to be played at tournaments.
There are tons of better games for that out there.
>>44193082
*sigh....im tired. Its supposed to say 7th edition.
>>44193082
We are in 7th edition though
>>44180222
If I remember right the story is that the guy is paralysed but they still bring him into battle for a laugh.
>>44193082
>Warhammer 40k was never supposed to be played at tournaments.
While I agree, I also firmly believe any game where players are tasked with winning over each other (whether on the TT or video games) has everything to gain and nothing to lose from being balanced for competitive tournament play.
It's obviously not easy to do so though, particularly with GW's release model.
>>44176158
What? No. The 3rd edition rulebook was terrible. It was a fresh transition from the style of 2nd to the new style, it didn't know what it was doing.
5th had the best core rules, but the most terrible imbalance and codex creep.
>>44193691
Yup. Balance is important for all kinds of player. Whether you want a challenging tournament or you're playing a narrative game where you want your units to actually do what their cool backstory says they do without you getting mashed because you have less points of stuff really, balance is needed.
>>44179414
I hope that guy is dead or something because otherwise that's just so fucking wrong
>>44193197
See >>44193131
>>44193691
Well, the problem is that GW never sat out to make a tourney based game to begin with. Thus the somewhat loose balance system.
This makes it just about as hard as it needs to be to pick out all the good units, from the not so good units. Even from an autistic 3 year old with difficulty reading.
GW offers miniatures with a back story, and of a good standard multi part plastic, with attached rules.
Most "good" games leaning towards tournament, are based around a set of rules, then decides to produce miniatures for it.
To be fair, GW has not only mentioned that they are first and foremost a model company. And with as many teams as they have, with as much variety as they go for. Its nigh impossible for a balanced play.
We know this from early editions, see the cool and awesome Codex Chaos from that time and drool over the over expanded war gear list.... that took the players about 30 minutes to figure out "the must haves" on. And thus no one used nothing but the meta.
The best part is the same people complaining online now days on how GW ruined their good war gear list, hilarious!
Had players just played this game as intended, we might actually had have the joy of such a free war gear selection yet today.
>>44189941
in the nuts and bolts of the core game, 7th is great, game tech has progreased since 40k was first written and, while 40k does still have a lot of nonsense left in it as a legacy from its long life, it has also changed for the better in many many ways.
But where the core game mechanics are getting better, the balance of power amongst the splat books has gotten worse. there are scads of factions now and they all get their own book to themselves so even at a blistering pace of a full release every other month the first book and last book are going to be two years apart in release and separated by all the changes in design direction that happened in that time. Even with good practices and through playtesting keeping everything on the same rough powerlevel would be difficult. with the way the gw studio seems to actually work, it's doomed to being a hot mess.
old editions were basically the opposite. progressively clunkier the further back in time you go but with a flatter power curve.
with some exeptions. power curve was fucking bananas in 6th fer example.
>>44192878
I cant speak for other systems, but 40k wrote itself into a hole balance wise by not giving them enough diverse controls over different factions for balance. Really for the longest time the only things they could change for a model were weapon options (str/AP/Rng) toughnesses, saves, points cost, and where that unit fit in the CAD/FOC. They still have that problem to a certain extent now even though theyve now added formations + bonus rules for those to the list. The problem is that Unit types are standardized outside an army rather than within it. So if you are an infantry unit in 40k regardless of what army you are in you always move 6" in the movement phase. This makes i hard to have an asymmetrical balance because there are a bunch of values which cant really be altered without altering all the armies simultaneously. The only way around this is to make a new catagory, and that leads to unit type proliferation, which is one of the main issues in 7th in my opinion. There are so many unit types in the back of the book and many have redundant rolls because they needed to do something slightly different and we cant put that rule on another unit type without breaking the game. This does not help their balance. Additionally they have an issue with vehicles in that they only have 5-6 values to work with wich does not give alot of variation, you only have 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and occasionally 15. If you compare that with toughness values (there are 10) or even at this point saves, or ballistic skills, or initatives, or wounds, etc, the range of values is much smaller. Again causes balance issues.
>>44193966
>the grotanaught doesn't have at least one tooth made of gold
Regardless of the stunning conversion and paintjob, it's shit
>>44193966
I agree with all that, but it's really not that hard to put a little effort into balance if you actually care at all about it. It's just that GW doesn't, which is one of the things they rightfully deserve criticism for. I'm not saying I demand 100% PRO MLG tournie balance, but at least an attempt..
>>44194768
Well, thats the point. As I see it, GW puts the last piece of the puzzle in the players hands.
They give you the tools to do as you like, and many games out there strip you of that option, and say "you go figure it out".
Most of the balance problems you can fix yourself, you just need to tone down you're list you play a bit. Its not that hard not to take 9 riptides in a single army, or not to play the Necron Decurion detachment, or to play the cohort mechanicus with allied drop pods.
True we could all rejoice in a fix in the points system, but I do give GW props for giving units fluffy rules. I do think the eldar should be as they are, I just think they are to stinking cheap for what they bring to the table!
So bottom line is this. Most of the stuff you talk about is easily fixed by the players themselves. All except Eldar which, anyone playing, should rightfully be shunned for.
>>44195114
those tools can only be understood by people who have experience playing the game more extensively. New players will not realize that spamming riptides is OP, or that the Necron Decurion is not fun to play against, until they have already done it. This results in their play experience being sullied by things which are grossly and obviously more powerful than other options. The balance doesnt have to be exact to 19 decimal places, but atm it is so grossly imbalanced in various directions that you can stumble across a landmine and not realize it until its too late unless youve been playing since 3rd edition. This is not healthy for a game system. I wish people would just stop with the whole players should police themselves, no they shouldnt, this would be like removing refs from a professional football game and going whats the worse that can happen, if they want to play a nice friendly game they will. NO they wont, so why limit the pool of players further by making everyone wary of playing with anyone but closest friends because they dont know if the guy is going to pull out some BS OP list, when you as a company can tone it down a bit and do some of the work for them.
>>44195114
But it's not just that it's possible to make overpowered lists, it's that the internal balance is so wacky in many cases. And also: if riptides were better balanced, someone who just wants to play an army of big robots rather than being a dick on purpose could take 4 of them and everyone would be happy. Poor balance discourages many themed lists because they can end up being absolutely useless or so strong no one will want to play with you.
>>44195442
I disagree. It would be like saying one could not understand the dangers of fire, if you don't have any experience with it. Or like saying, you don't know the sharp end of a knife until you cut yourself. Id even go as far as to say, don't know alcohol will get you drunk until you try some.
These are all examples of things we know, even though we haven't personally experienced them.
By reading the rules, we already know a set of boundaries. We know a profile goes from 1-10, we know the effects of certain special rules and we sure as hell knows that a T8 model is able to take more damage than a T3 model. We know that a weapon that says S D, large blast is dangerous as hell, because the rules told us so!
To calculate the cost and effect I give to you, takes some practice of a few games for some players, but it ain't rocket surgery to figure out what things will do in todays media.
Even a beginner will quickly evolve to the state to where he knows his units, their profiles and what they are capable of (its called math hammer, even players who haven't played a single game can have a go at this and see what good and what not!).
Most of the time you can say "why did I bring this?", if the answer is in a wicked profile for a good points cost the answer is simple. You picked it to win.
If you went through length of converting, making it "you're own" and actually bothered with a backstory, then hell, props to you, you can beat me any day of the week with something like that! Same goes if you're answer is, its a cool model, and it fits the fluff.
who you want to be as a player is all up to you. Sure there will always be imbalance, but the core options are all up to you as a player, never blame GW for that! If you're a WAAC douche that that enjoys tabling people for the hell of it, or a guy just enjoying the game not even bothering aiming for a win, its all up to you!
>>44196671
only because we had someone else explain that to us at some point, or have seen examples of it. In a vacuum without someone with experience telling you these things, you wont know fire is dangerous until it burns you, or that the knife is very sharp, or that consuming too much alcohol is bad for you.
Someone who is new to wargames who picks up 40k is not going to be well versed in understanding what is wrong and right, and without the guidance of some experienced player they may make a series of foolish mistakes.
Balance is something im going to blame GW for, because at the end of the day it is a bit more fun to win than to lose, and playing a fluffy game with friends is not all there is to the game. That mentality severely limits the games scope, you should be able to play pick up games with people you dont know well, without worrying about them potentially tabling you because you brought a "fluffy" list. This whole casual gaming only enforce it yourself thought process is lazy and irresponsible
>>44196610
Again, the player who wants to play "only big robots" will quickly learn people wont play him.
But I'm saying, he wont even get to that state unless he is a care-free miniature collector of.. well, nothing but big robots, having a go at the game.
Any gamer, just flipping through a codex will quickly realize how the main build is. You have certain set of units, you look at the designs and see what you like. You're bound to like some more than the others and so on. You see the battle role of each and get the idea of "aha, so this is the basic infantry, and these 9 robots I already own are a super rare elite slot... oh I get it!".
After getting a primal interest of the game, you allocate some fluff for the hell of it, and realize the big robots are even more rare than you first imagined. As you're interest grows, you want to know how to get in to the game, so you do what any other sane person would do, you go online!
30 minutes later you know you're a complete douche if you try to go to you're local shop with a certain list, its that simple.
You don't need a last name of Mcbrain to figure this game out.
>>44196821
But you blame GW for the core of balance. Thats where I believe you're wrong.
GW sets you up with a options of rules and says, with this you can do all of these configs.
But just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
Don't blame you're incompetence for playing a over powered list, thats all I'm saying.
GW has balance, balance enough to make fun games if you want them to be. But they can just as easily be used for power playing.
I'm saying, if you do that, you most of the time do it on purpose, as I have yet to se the wandering newbie come to my shop with a complete death star tourney list, ready and painted!
What I have seen on the other hand, is careful planing in a long time investment from veteran players with a set goal to table the opponent.
>We only know things because someone explained it to us
Well no shit Sherlock! And you expect me to find a player who never opened a rule book before he bought his first army? You expect me to meet a player who never once went online to find information on how to "start fresh" or checking out army lists online?
Where have you lived the past 20 years, under a rock?
>>44197015
>Don't blame you're incompetence for playing a over powered list, thats all I'm saying.
Holy shit. I'm not that guy, I haven't read that guy's post, but this made me stop and fucking laugh. "You're stupid for picking the winning option, asshole. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go program a calculator that doesn't catch the error when you divide by 0, because you just shouldn't do that, and then go tell me friend with a broken arm to just stop using that arm and leave it alone."
Jesus Christ are you real
>>44199001
Well, I wasn't aiming it at you. It was more of a statement, so no need to get cranky. Better formulated would have been "one should not blame incompetence....", but its not wrong the way I wrote it.
And regarding "stupid for picking a winning option", there is a clear difference between playing a good solid list and a list that tables just about anyone except other WAAC players.
>>44181124
this fucking special snowdlake
>>44199777
dude the stockholme syndrome is real, are you seriously going to sit here and tell me I should not blame the company that makes a table top wargame, for said table top wargames massive imbalance, please just god damn stop. You should not have to worry about making a douche list, that shouldnt be a thing why do none of you realize that, why is it so hard to conceive of a relatively balanced wargame where most army builds are both fluffy and viable and there arent a a select few that are just head and shoulders above the rest and no one should use in casual play. God damn you people are just I dont even know anymore.
