The Non-Nostalgic Memories Thread.

[Mr Mystery]

So yeah, felt a pressing need to waffle at you, and since nostalgia is done to death (thanks, Hipsters) I thought I'd get us talking about stuff we don't miss from older editions of the game.

I'll kick off with a couple.

Rogue Trader and 2nd Edition Vehicle movement rules.

Urrgh. Headache o'clock. Three different speeds, and you could only go up or down a single bracket. Slow, Combat and Fast. And that turning template thing. Yes, they were arguably realistic, but also a total pain in the bum half the time.


3rd Edition 'Rhino Rush' Blood Angels.

Oh hey look, I've had a single round of shooting (if I'm lucky), and now all you're combat monsters are taking me apart, and simply wandering from combat to combat whilst my troops seemingly stand around picking their noses. 'Orrible, boring experience that. Who knew getting angry makes your ride go fasterer?


So that's two things I was glad to see the back of. Over to you.

[Gotthammer]

1/2" templates - what was the point?! - or basically any of the Rogue Trader blast rules tbh.

Rapid fire dice.

3+ on 2D6 saves.

That there was a giant period of time where they stopped producing the Land Raider kit (amongst others) so it was just play game how???

2nd ed Wraithguard using the vehicle damage rules and their chart having them not take any damage on a 1 (or was it 1-2?). Either way horrible to deal with.

Related: 2nd ed metal dreadnought - yes you could kill a man with it but it'd break your toes if it fell off the table.

Related: that =I= was 55 not 28mm, such a waste of resources and concept.

[Psychosplodge]

=][= was just an excuse for some pretty models. It was never going to catch on when you needed an entire second set of terrain.

I was actually quite fond of the Metal Dread, rapid fire dice and 3+ 2d6 saves :p especially the triple jam assault cannon... seriously everytime I fielded one...

The second edition SW codex though.... that gave them a bad name for a long time.

And the complete pointlessness of second edition transports.

[Renegade]

One Prince Yriel against which I have a long time grudge.

[Popsical]

90% of the second edition models were ghastly.
The format and imagery of the codexs and white dwarf were also ghastly.
Hmm. Yep you can tell i started in Rogue trader, hid from the cartoon like abomination of 2nd ed and came back in 3rd ed.
Listing my dislikes of 2nd ed would be too long indeed.
One of the few jems on 2nd ed was the SM landspeeder, still a nice model now.

Oh i forgot. My biggest cringe ever from 40k... maugan ra and his mauguitar. Really? Looks crap. Sounds terribly cringe worthy too. "Hey, this guy right, he is all in black and has like a really big gun which is black too. Wow, lets call it a guitar yeah? Yeah thats so cool!" No, just no.

[Path Walker]

Sustained Fire Dice, seriously people! And they were ace.

Space Marines in 2nd Ed were basically just "Oh, no, the rules are for you, we have our own" As they Rapid Fired and Knew no Fear.

- - - Updated - - -



One of the few jems on 2nd ed was the SM landspeeder, still a nice model now.

You wouldn't be saying that if you ever tried to use it in a game, damn thing fell apart in a stiff breeze.

[Psychosplodge]

Sustained Fire Dice, seriously people! And they were ace.


I must have autocorrected that in my head cause I'm sure I read it as sustained even as I typed Rapid :D

Did the current landspeeder come out in second? I thought it was a kit from the 3rd boxset - but its so long ago...

[Popsical]

Lol. I own 3. Araldite, only araldite.
1st and 2nd ed landspeeders were metal. 3rd ed speeder is ok but just lacks va va voom in my opinion.

[Psychosplodge]

Ah. I'd forgot there were two metal ones.

[Popsical]

The 2nd ed one is in all the HH art work. Wonder when FW will redo it.

[Psychosplodge]

Oh I remember the angular one, I'd forgot the open fronted one.

[Path Walker]

Close combat between units with mixed weapons in Second, took about 30 minutes.

[YorkNecromancer]

Save modifiers. Sounds good in theory. In practise? No-one gets a save, meaning there's no real difference in survivability between a Marine or an Ork.

2nd edition close combat - especially parrying.

Grey Knight Terminators having bolt pistols that only had four shots, which the rules stated THAT YOU HAD TO KEEP TRACK OF.

Imperial Guard squads where every soldier is equipped AGLs carrying Vortex grenades ('Hmmm. What do I fire? My lasgun, which is crap, or the auxilary grenade launcher that shoots BLACK HOLES? Choices, choices...') The IG could literally blanket the battlefield with singularities on turn one... Singularities that, on the next turn, disappeared on a 1, moved on a 2-5, or generated D3 new singularities on a 6. Because who wanted to play a game anyway?

Turn Radius Ratios. Because what I really want in my fun times is excessive use of complex maths.

Any vehicle rule involving the use of datafaxes.

2nd edition's OBSESSION with everything being on card. Mission cards, wargear cards, vehicle cards, psychic cards, Deff Dread cards... That 2nd ed boxed set had an Amazon rainforest's worth of tree in it.

Actually, scale the game up to more than a couple of squads per player, and 90% of the 1st and 2nd edition rules were godawful. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to themselves. Even the worst excesses of later editions don't come close to the insanity that was early 40K gameplay.

[Psychosplodge]

Actually, scale the game up to more than a couple of squads per player, and 90% of the 1st and 2nd edition rules were godawful. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to themselves. Even the worst excesses of later editions don't come close to the insanity that was early 40K gameplay.

Stop ruining my nostalgia

[Path Walker]

To Hit modifiers were ace though.

[Insert_nickname_here]

2nd Edition Warp Spiders. And Warp Spider Exarchs with Silent Death and Fast Shot.

[Charon]

Save modifiers. Sounds good in theory. In practise? No-one gets a save, meaning there's no real difference in survivability between a Marine or an Ork.

I actually liked them.
Not that anything changed here for "not-marines" as 5+ gets ignored most of the time anyways and 4+ is only close behind with all that cheap autocannons, assault cannons, heavy bolters,... around.
Even in this edition my Eldar Guardians get to roll saves as often as my Orcs (that is the usual 5+ cover save as their armor get ignored anyways - it might as well not exist at all). The only real difference is in melee where it significantly weakened melee units by letting imperial soliders save against nearly every attack.


2nd edition close combat - especially parrying.

That was ace. Every stat was useful, every weapon has its uses, having overwhelming numbers did actually help.
Not designed for mass combat to be fair but more cinematic than the current one.


Any vehicle rule involving the use of datafaxes.

Different Movement and damage tables for every vehicle? Hell yes. And while we at it I want also different movement ratios for the armies back.

2nd edition's OBSESSION with everything being on card. Mission cards, wargear cards, vehicle cards, psychic cards, Deff Dread cards... That 2nd ed boxed set had an Amazon rainforest's worth of tree in it.


Actually, scale the game up to more than a couple of squads per player, and 90% of the 1st and 2nd edition rules were godawful.

Yep, thats why you played 1500 points a side at most times with only a few small squads.
Upscaling was nice but the implementation was aweful. Simplification of anything while rolling a D% for point reductions. Still dont know how Space Marines ended up with an 50% price decrease while Termagants stayed at the same points.

[Erik Setzer]

The 2nd edition SW only bothered me by the fact that, IIRC, you could actually have a squad of Terminators armed with power fist, assault cannon, and cyclone missile launcher. W...T...F...

I don't miss virus grenades and certainly not the Virus Outbreak card (which even GW agreed was stupid, so they told people to take it out of their fresh decks at tournaments and tear it up).

I don't miss the original Battlewagon model. It wasn't bad, other than being surprisingly fragile. I have two of them that are broken and hard to fix (will likely end up as parts of some cobbled together vehicle). Meanwhile, my Armorcast resin versions are still holding up quite well.

I don't miss the rules about wound allocation with different equipped models leading to people making slight variations on units like Wolf Guard and then allocating wounds in a way that was advantageous to them.

I don't miss Epic 40K (Space Marine, yes; Epic 40K, heck no), especially as we're now playing a 28mm version of the game.

It's actually hard to come up with stuff I don't miss... There's a lot I miss that would be obvious, and some that might surprise people (i.e. the Stormboyz' insane chart in 2nd edition, or the Madboyz' pages and pages of random results).

- - - Updated - - -


Actually, scale the game up to more than a couple of squads per player, and 90% of the 1st and 2nd edition rules were godawful. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to themselves. Even the worst excesses of later editions don't come close to the insanity that was early 40K gameplay.

I regularly played 1500-2000 points and I'm not lying to myself when I say 2nd edition worked just fine that way. Sure, it was still a small number of squads, but honestly, I'd like to have a smaller scale game with interesting rules than a game with abstract rules requiring a lot of expensive models.

Random effects, floating vortex, chain explosions, all that madness, I loved it. It was cinematic as heck. Even when my Stormboyz would fly everywhere but where I wanted them to go, I had fun.

I'd love to find a game with that feel again. I think I'm going to have to get out of the GW store more often and play in other stores so I can check out some of these other games. At least until GW brings back a smaller scale version of 40K with detailed rules.

[This Dave]

Anyone else remember the vehicle hit location templates? Or how they never took into account anything but a stock standard Ork vehicle right out of the box, even though you had to kit bash build most of them from scratch anyways because there weren't kits for them?

[Charon]

The 2nd edition SW only bothered me by the fact that, IIRC, you could actually have a squad of Terminators armed with power fist, assault cannon, and cyclone missile launcher. W...T...F...

If I recall correctly that was not possible as the Cyclone had a special "glove" with built in targeters. So either powerfist OR Assault cannon. Aslo the cyclone was on limited ammunition and the Assault cannon had a nasty habit to jam/blow up.

[Mr Mystery]

Indeed.

I think they also FAQ'd it to prevent you taking both.

[Erik Setzer]

Right, sorry, no power fist. And they did FAQ/errata it later, but for a long time it was legal. Not many people did it, because that was a fast way to get your butt kicked.

[Psychosplodge]

No you could take the Assault cannon and cyclone, but you lost the power fist to the targeter?

[Kirsten]

I don't miss the eggs on legs sentinel. or the masses of second edition cards (or 5th edition Warhammer Magic cards). the close combat system for 2nd edition was pretty silly, not a good idea at all.

[Darren Richardson]

to be honest, I didn't really care for 2nd edition much at all, I much prefered it when they streamlined the system into 3rd, now 1st ed RT on the other hand.....

RT was aimed at being a tabletop RPG not a wargame as we know it today, so it was designed for small sized games and I like that it was benifical to have a GM overseeing the action.

Yes RT was wacky and loved it's charts but for what it was at the time it did work, not perfect, but it worked, Kinda like the Imperium itself LOL :p

[Erik Setzer]

to be honest, I didn't really care for 2nd edition much at all, I much prefered it when they streamlined the system into 3rd

I take it you didn't play an army like Orks. They lost all their flavor, both in terms of fluff and army options. All the cool artillery? Gone. Looted weapons? Gone. Boarboyz? Gone. Madboyz? Gone. Weirdboyz? Gone. They went from being a colorful, interesting army to being a bunch of greenskinned monsters aimed at close combat (and have since reversed course on that, in game terms, anyway).

[energongoodie]

Right, sorry, no power fist. And they did FAQ/errata it later, but for a long time it was legal. Not many people did it, because that was a fast way to get your butt kicked.

I did it...and I did it hard. I used 5 of them.
I was a power gamer in my teens. I do not look back at that fondly.

[Path Walker]

I did it...and I did it hard. I used 5 of them.
I was a power gamer in my teens. I do not look back at that fondly.

Power gaming is something most children seem to be fond of, I know I did with my one massive unit of Death Company with a Dreadnaught, its a childish way of playing that thankfully most people grow out of.

[Mr Mystery]

I take it you didn't play an army like Orks. They lost all their flavor, both in terms of fluff and army options. All the cool artillery? Gone. Looted weapons? Gone. Boarboyz? Gone. Madboyz? Gone. Weirdboyz? Gone. They went from being a colorful, interesting army to being a bunch of greenskinned monsters aimed at close combat (and have since reversed course on that, in game terms, anyway).

That's a case of baby out with the bath water. 3rd stripped it down too far - but the fun stuff is coming back in, thankfully without lots of charts and tables.

Cool artillery, barring the very odd Pulsa Rokkit are more or less back. Well. Hoppsplat Fieldgun is still out, though Squig Catapults are now Lobbas, after a fashion.

Looted Weapons did make it as far as 3rd Ed, but with BS2 didn't see much use.

Weirdboyz are of course back.

I'd love to see Boarboyz, Wildboyz and Madboys return, mostly because I love the mental Ork stuff - but trying to do them justice in what remains a still stripped down game must be tricky. Mayhap we'll see them in the fyootcha. Given we now have Harlequins and Skitarii, I'm not ruling anything out.

Though I remain glad to see the back of Orkstealer Hybrids and Chaos Boyz. The background has moved on somewhat, and they just don't fit that well. After all, who needs Khorne, who is merely brutal, when you can have Gork and Mork.....

[Erik Setzer]

That's a case of baby out with the bath water. 3rd stripped it down too far - but the fun stuff is coming back in, thankfully without lots of charts and tables.

Cool artillery, barring the very odd Pulsa Rokkit are more or less back. Well. Hoppsplat Fieldgun is still out, though Squig Catapults are now Lobbas, after a fashion.

Looted Weapons did make it as far as 3rd Ed, but with BS2 didn't see much use.

Weirdboyz are of course back.

I'd love to see Boarboyz, Wildboyz and Madboys return, mostly because I love the mental Ork stuff - but trying to do them justice in what remains a still stripped down game must be tricky. Mayhap we'll see them in the fyootcha. Given we now have Harlequins and Skitarii, I'm not ruling anything out.

Though I remain glad to see the back of Orkstealer Hybrids and Chaos Boyz. The background has moved on somewhat, and they just don't fit that well. After all, who needs Khorne, who is merely brutal, when you can have Gork and Mork.....


Boarboyz are easy: Ork cavalry (since cavalry is now part of the core rule set). Simple, really. Madboyz they did before with a small, simple chart, but I'd prefer a bit more variety on the chart (more possibilities would be cool, but I'd assume a six-item chart is the max they want to go, but you can still do more with that than just "+1S" or "+1T"). Wildboyz are Orks without pistols, maybe a slightly different statline. All pretty easy to fit into the current game.

I don't see a problem with Ork-Stealer Hybrids and Khorne Stormboyz, if they were in a Freebooterz style list of Ork renegades. The hybrids represent the Ork genetic structure being too hardy to mutate entirely into a Tyranid thrall, and the Khorne Stormboyz were rebellious members of Ork society (much like many of the human Chaos worshipers are). The biggest problem with those is that they likely wouldn't want to bother making models for them, so I wouldn't expect rules for them, especially as they also wouldn't be as likely to sell as Boarboyz or Madboyz.

I hold out some small amount of hope. If nothing else, maybe I can house rule some things and convert some models.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

Those 2nd edition era plastic troop boxes were horrid. Hated epic 40,000 too - ruined a great game.