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I think 3e/4e was the real sweet spot for player created chapters and Craftworlds. IG was a little tougher, but doable. At that time, Codex Space Marines was a standalone book and the individual chapters were supplements to it, more or less useless without the full Space Marine text to go with it. This meant that the real difference between a Blood Angels force and a Dark Angels force was the force organization chart (and by this I mean which units counted as troops vs fast attack, etc), a couple of special rules, and a few unique units. Otherwise, it was still mostly squads of tactical marines and devastator squads unless you did something crazy like go full Deathwing, but who could afford that? The supplementary codexes also talked about successor chapters and even provided color schemes for them and of course that opened the door and encouraged you to think of your own. So maybe you liked the rules of the Blood Angels but you didn't want a bright red army, you could paint it however you wanted and just call it a successor chapter. Fielding a generic space marine army was also fine since most of the models were just "space marine assault squad" or "space marine rhino" and this was basically how you fielded a more generic chapter like Ultramarines. Eldar was largely the same. You had the aspect warrior sets, the guardian box, and the main codex, plus the Craftworld supplement if you wanted a unique set of special rules and a variant on the normal force organization chart. Chaos, ironically, always felt more rigid since they were the remnants of the legions that fell to Horus. I'm sure there were successor chapters that fell to Chaos, but they aren't discussed nearly so much as the classic 9. Unfortunately for IG at the time, the plastic models were Catachans and because they were a drat good deal, most people ended up having Catachans as the main bulk of their IG army. There was nothing stopping you from using them as generic IG, but they were fairly silly models all things considered. I think it was the 4e IG book that let you mix and max doctrines for your force so you could really personalize your army and this was right around when the plastic Cadians came out which fit the role of generic IG much better. But knowing GW, there was probably only a single playable combination and everything else was likely a trap choice.
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Jan 8, 2017 08:57
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If I ever get a GCPS army for Warpath/Deadzone, I'm gonna paint them up as soldiers of the star-spanning Frito-Lay macrocorporation. Originally was gonna do my Enforcers up in Mountain Dew livery but that doesn't fit their fluff at all.
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Jan 8, 2017 09:10
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Drone posted:If I ever get a GCPS army for Warpath/Deadzone, I'm gonna paint them up as soldiers of the star-spanning Frito-Lay macrocorporation. I, uh, actually went with the Mountain Dew theme. Atlas Hugged posted:At least I finished up my Deadzone Enforcers while waiting for my Warpath pledge. I was actually surprised how little white and red there are in the Mountain Dew label. It's basically just light and dark green.
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Jan 8, 2017 09:15
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Leperflesh posted:My memory was that there were supposed to be (exactly?) 1000 chapters of Space Marines in the Imperium. GW has never even named more than maybe 200 of them, so that leaves enough that no gamer who ever made up their own chapter could ever be straight-up contradicted by the canon. Unfortunately, GW went down a modeling path of gradually eliminating generic space marine models - used to be you mostly could only buy chapter-agnostic little dudes, plus a smattering of special characters etc. from various factions. But then in the 1990s, more and more chapter-specific models started to proliferate, encouraging players to play one of the canonical chapters instead of making up their own. These days I have no idea if it's even possible to buy official GW models of a complete fieldable space marine army containing no chapter-specific models?
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Jan 8, 2017 10:20
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Atlas Hugged posted:I think 3e/4e was the real sweet spot for player created chapters and Craftworlds. IG was a little tougher, but doable. At that time, Codex Space Marines was a standalone book and the individual chapters were supplements to it, more or less useless without the full Space Marine text to go with it. This meant that the real difference between a Blood Angels force and a Dark Angels force was the force organization chart (and by this I mean which units counted as troops vs fast attack, etc), a couple of special rules, and a few unique units. Otherwise, it was still mostly squads of tactical marines and devastator squads unless you did something crazy like go full Deathwing, but who could afford that? The supplementary codexes also talked about successor chapters and even provided color schemes for them and of course that opened the door and encouraged you to think of your own. So maybe you liked the rules of the Blood Angels but you didn't want a bright red army, you could paint it however you wanted and just call it a successor chapter. 3rd and 4th were extremely bad for chapter bloat. You had the trait system which let everyone roll their own chapters, the official spinoff books for SW, DA, BA and BT and then, IIRC, about 12 additional chapters (all the ones not covered in the base SM book, plus things like the Cursed Legions) added by Index Astartes that you could only use if you tracked down a specific issue of WD or bought the compiled editions that they printed a grand total of once and then never again. Plastic Cadians came out at the end of 3rd ed with the Eye of Terror campaign. Also for all of 3rd and 4th Catachans had their own codex that supplemented the Codex IG. Chaos also had a ton of bloat as the base Chaos book had chapter rules for every founding legion, along with a completely different trait system (actually two trait systems because they had one for the OG 3rd ed book that was busted as hell and then a shittier replacement one in the second 3rd ed book that was still busted as hell). Also then you add in the two campaign books which added more marines and IG (13th Company, Deathworld Vets, Whiteshields). And to add the cherry on the crap sundae, GW's extremely terrible rules committee and FAQ people got really dodgy and so basically everything I listed here from 3rd that wasn't explicitly supplanted in 4th stayed even when it got confusing as hell (the Index Astartes chapters are still legal with the 4th Ed codex for instance).
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Jan 8, 2017 11:55
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Rumor is that GW stores are soon going to stop stocking Blood Bowl, and it will only be available via web order. That didn't last long.
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Jan 8, 2017 12:08
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I have finally gotten around to buying the Frostgrave Rulebook and a box of their new Barbarians. I'm excited!
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Jan 8, 2017 12:14
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Maybe you and I have different definitions of bloat. To play space marines in 3e, all you needed was the core Codex. If you wanted to play a specific canon chapter or to use the rules for one and make your own successor chapter, then you needed the core codex and then the supplementary codex for your chapter. Late in 3e you had the campaign books and some rules in WD compilations, but that was right before 4e came out anyway. The supplementary books were incredibly thin and really just added a couple of units. And since most people only played a single chapter it's not like you had to own every single list. I haven't looked at a Codex Space Marines from 3e in a long time, but I don't recall a "traits" section. Are you sure that's not something that was added later or from 4e? But the point I was getting at was that during 3e (and maybe 4e though I have a lot less experience with it) it was totally possible to play "generic" space marines and the hobby range was in fact more geared around that.
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Jan 8, 2017 12:23
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Drone posted:Rumor is that GW stores are soon going to stop stocking Blood Bowl, and it will only be available via web order. Specialist games will be flgs and mail order only. New releases will be in store for a week or so but no stock will be kept.
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Jan 8, 2017 12:41
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I think an over abundance codex "splatbooks" are a reasonable definition of bloat even if you didn't need to use them all. You didn't need many, if at all, splatbooks to play D&D 3.5 either.
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Jan 8, 2017 13:11
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Chill la Chill posted:I think an over abundance codex "splatbooks" are a reasonable definition of bloat even if you didn't need to use them all. You didn't need many, if at all, splatbooks to play D&D 3.5 either. I don't know that there were an over abundance until late in the edition and all that really says is that the game was supported. Remember, this is the edition that actually got revised rules officially published without a new edition being released. I don't think the issue with DnD 3/3.5 is that there were too many options for players. It was a question of quality control and garbage core rules. But we digress. Leper Flesh made a comment about not knowing when it became nearly impossible to field "generic" marines and I said that 3e/4e was more or less the last time and had a balance between a bunch of options for specific chapters (without those chapters deviating too much from the core) but also a solid "generic space marines" codex if you just wanted to play vanilla. Did things get bloated towards the end of the edition? Sure I guess, but I still don't see that as specifically a problem.
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Jan 8, 2017 13:18
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Its still completely possible to play vanilla marinesi n 7th. I don't know where this idea has come from.
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Jan 8, 2017 13:21
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TTerrible posted:Its still completely possible to play vanilla marinesi n 7th. I don't know where this idea has come from. People who haven't played the game for a long rear end time seeing photos and tables as the game exists today and being utterly baffled by it.
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Jan 8, 2017 13:23
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Also generic marines were trash tier until 4th added the chapter traits system and even then they weren't as good as Blood Angels or Space Wolves. Blood Angels were probably the straight up best army in 4th, although pre-Tau Empire Tau are also in the running for that nomination (they are point for point the best army once you break down the costs of individual stats, a thing someone did once), they had the Baal which was the best tank because of how much better Rending got between 3rd and 4th, and they also had the death company and BA scouts both of which were severely under costed and taking tons of one actually made the other cheaper! Also all the IA chapters basically got awesome free poo poo that made all the chapter traits look like peanuts by comparison (army wide furious assault, army wide free ward saves, just straight up +1 toughness). Yeah you could play vanilla marines in 3rd or 4th but they were just straight up worse versions of chapter specific marines, ESPECIALLY in 3rd. Except for the Dark Angels, they had one notable thing about them that wasn't Deathwing and 4th Ed just gave it to everyone (Plasma Cannons in tac squads), deathwing was still an absolute scourge of a list though. The same was true for IG, Armored Company was just better than IG straight up, and then after they added the IG army traits they somehow managed to not remove AC because of how their lovely rules were worded and it was STILL better than anything the trait system could produce (spoilers, there were three good IG traits and then a bajillion trap options). Chaos also had the Iron Warriors issue during those years, IE the most unbalanced list that GW ever let hit print (this includes borked fantasy poo poo like Slayers). So I'd say the last time a straight up vanilla marine list was on tier with a chapter list before the modern era was the eight months or so during the start of 3rd before the BA and SW codex's made it out the door. 5th was dominated by the vanilla marine list, but it wasn't actual marines, it was Chaos marines, back when they had their book where the standard chaos marine was the most effectively pointed unit in the entire game and people were fielding lists of just massive twenty man marine squads with no special or heavy weapons just tromping everywhere and shitstorming all over objectives.
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Jan 8, 2017 13:59
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4th edition Blood Angels were loving ridiculous. Half the army would pop out of rhinos and assault you on turn 1, then sweep into the second half of your army on turn 2
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Jan 8, 2017 14:00
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No one claimed it was a good game.
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Jan 8, 2017 14:17
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El Estrago Bonito posted:they had the Baal which was the best tank because of how much better Rending got between 3rd and 4th Rending didn't really change in the transition; rather, it became a universal special rule rather than the purview of two units (Genestealers and Daemonettes). Rending got added to the assault cannons, which itself got better because they dropped the stupid 'jamming' rule they had (and added +1 shot iirc). Atlas Hugged posted:I haven't looked at a Codex Space Marines from 3e in a long time, but I don't recall a "traits" section. Are you sure that's not something that was added later or from 4e? There was no trait system in 3e. Closest you can get is the Index Astartes stuff found in various WD articles at the time (which was really, just force org changes). 4e had the trait system.
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Jan 8, 2017 14:58
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I should probably stop lumping 3e and 4e together because it seems like they undid a lot of the good 3e started.
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Jan 8, 2017 15:21
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Irate Tree posted:I have finally gotten around to buying the Frostgrave Rulebook and a box of their new Barbarians. I'm excited! The barbarian box is cool and good.
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Jan 8, 2017 15:24
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I remember the trait system. There were major and minor traits and drawbacks. Everyone took the drawback that stopped you taking allies because in 4th noone ever took allies. Ever. Free trait!
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Jan 8, 2017 15:25
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Atlas Hugged posted:I should probably stop lumping 3e and 4e together because it seems like they undid a lot of the good 3e started. Nah, 4th was a big improvement on 3rd. It had its own issues, but it introduced more detailed codexes with good variety and it improved the game's assault rules. 5th was better than 4th. 6th was a dumpster fire. While they weren't necessarily successful, the designers during 4th at least put forth a legitimate effort to give players more legit options for each army that would allow for flavorful and powerful lists. The Tyranid, Chaos, and IG codexes were the best examples of this. TheChirurgeon fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Jan 8, 2017 |
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Jan 8, 2017 15:25
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TheChirurgeon posted:Nah, 4th was a big improvement on 3rd. It had its own issues, but it introduced more detailed codexes with good variety and it improved the game's assault rules. 5th was better than 4th. 6th was a dumpster fire. But didn't the scope of the game start to change by 5e so that the number of figures you needed to play was way more?
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Jan 8, 2017 15:27
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Atlas Hugged posted:But didn't the scope of the game start to change by 5e so that the number of figures you needed to play was way more? Nah, that happened in 3rd when they dropped the cost of most models by half. Space marines went from 30 ppm to 15, for example. It wasn't *that* big a deal at the time though, because the game got about 4x faster in the transition, thanks to simplified movement, squad-based focus, and streamlined shooting/combat resolution. Things have slowly inflated from then.
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Jan 8, 2017 15:28
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5th introduced TLOS and removed the area abstraction mechanics of forests. A huge step back to 80s style game design.
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Jan 8, 2017 15:29
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Uncontroversial opinion: By the standard of today no edition of 40k has ever been good
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Jan 8, 2017 15:33
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TheChirurgeon posted:Nah, that happened in 3rd when they dropped the cost of most models by half. Space marines went from 30 ppm to 15, for example. It wasn't *that* big a deal at the time though, because the game got about 4x faster in the transition, thanks to simplified movement, squad-based focus, and streamlined shooting/combat resolution. Things have slowly inflated from then. That's not quite what I meant. 3e's design goal was to get the size of games that people had been trying to play with 2e's mechanics to be manageable and it was largely successful on that front. Yes, the battles were a larger scale than what 2e was designed for, but they still weren't that big, especially since most games seemed to be played around the 1500-1750 point range, with 1000-1500 point games not being uncommon. But something changed between 3e, where it was common to take a couple of squads, a single tank, a walker, and a transport or two, to where things are now where the table is completely flooded with models. Chill la Chill posted:5th introduced TLOS and removed the area abstraction mechanics of forests. A huge step back to 80s style game design. These are basically non-negotiables for me. Everything else in the game can be solid, but like random charges in 8e Fantasy, as soon as you tell me this is how your game works I'm not playing it.
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Jan 8, 2017 15:35
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I only ever played 4th ed and that's all I can think of when 40k conversations come up
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Jan 8, 2017 15:40
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NTRabbit posted:Uncontroversial opinion: By the standard of today no edition of 40k has ever been good Yes, and the same for fantasy
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Jan 8, 2017 15:43
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I dunno, before; They cut the number of minis you got in a box (without changing the price) and pushed for having units twice the size they were in the rules; Started making huge, unwieldy monsters for every faction that were either really good or really poo poo; Showed the fans how they, GW, really felt about their not-French and 'bad guy' factions... It was better? Maybe? I dunno...
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Jan 8, 2017 16:06
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I started playing in 3rd right around the time the IA iron warriors came out. Even as a dumb 13 y/o kid with no experience of the game I recognized how advantageous having ordinance would be. I immediately painted all my dudes silver and converted a basilisk before losing interest and moving on to the superior game that was 6th edition fantasy!
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Jan 8, 2017 16:14
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I once bought a blister of Flayers and a Necron Lord. I also had an old gray core book, fourth or fifth edition, and the Sisters of Battle codex. That's the deepest I've gone into 40k.
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Jan 8, 2017 16:20
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Atlas Hugged posted:That's not quite what I meant. 3e's design goal was to get the size of games that people had been trying to play with 2e's mechanics to be manageable and it was largely successful on that front. Yes, the battles were a larger scale than what 2e was designed for, but they still weren't that big, especially since most games seemed to be played around the 1500-1750 point range, with 1000-1500 point games not being uncommon. But something changed between 3e, where it was common to take a couple of squads, a single tank, a walker, and a transport or two, to where things are now where the table is completely flooded with models. I'm still pretty sure that you are mistaken. People continued to play the same points-value games from 2nd ed to 3rd ed out of habit, but the number of models doubled from 2nd ed to 3rd ed because their points costs literally got cut in half. Some costs didn't--vehicles eventually got a bit cheaper, but the change from 2nd to 3rd is primarily when that happened, and since them some units have gotten even cheaper over time.
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Jan 8, 2017 16:41
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TheChirurgeon posted:I'm still pretty sure that you are mistaken. People continued to play the same points-value games from 2nd ed to 3rd ed out of habit, but the number of models doubled from 2nd ed to 3rd ed because their points costs literally got cut in half. Some costs didn't--vehicles eventually got a bit cheaper, but the change from 2nd to 3rd is primarily when that happened, and since them some units have gotten even cheaper over time. I'm not mistaken. This has been an ongoing discussion involving the changes in 40k over the years. The game did get bigger going from 2e to 3e, but it was still fairly small scale.
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Jan 8, 2017 17:11
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Atlas Hugged posted:I'm not mistaken. This has been an ongoing discussion involving the changes in 40k over the years. The game did get bigger going from 2e to 3e, but it was still fairly small scale. I don't know what to tell you, man. Points costs for infantry were halved from 2nd to 3rd. If you don't see how that doubles the size of armies, we can just leave it there
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Jan 8, 2017 17:28
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TheChirurgeon posted:Chaos With their 4e codex they could make a powerful list, but it certainly wasn't flavorful. Everyone worth their salt took 2x daemon princes with Lash, min troops, plague marines in rhinos, and 3x defilers. Nothing else was even close to being viable. 4e stripped out a lot of individual options for Chaos, including rules for traitor legions and having god-specific daemons. While it fell more in line with the design ethos of most 4e codices, it paled compared to the second 3e codex and their plethora of (admittedly broken) options. TheChirurgeon posted:4th edition Blood Angels were loving ridiculous. Half the army would pop out of rhinos and assault you on turn 1, then sweep into the second half of your army on turn 2 You might be thinking of the 3e BA book which was indeed busted (and more or less stayed that way through the first half of 4e). BA only got a 4e WD list which was overpriced and not that great.
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Jan 8, 2017 17:31
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Slimnoid posted:With their 4e codex they could make a powerful list, but it certainly wasn't flavorful. Everyone worth their salt took 2x daemon princes with Lash, min troops, plague marines in rhinos, and 3x defilers. Nothing else was even close to being viable. I'm talking about the early 4th ed book/late 3rd ed book, that was used for most of 4th and had legion rules and not the late 4th/early 5th book that stripped out everything cool. quote:You might be thinking of the 3e BA book which was indeed busted (and more or less stayed that way through the first half of 4e). BA only got a 4e WD list which was overpriced and not that great. Probably. The edition distinctions for codexes from 3rd-4th-5th get weird because the blood angels codex stayed legal through a large chunk of 4th. Likewise, chaos got an early 3rd codex, a late 3rd/early 4th codex, and a late 4th/early 5th codex
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Jan 8, 2017 17:35
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Slimnoid posted:With their 4e codex they could make a powerful list, but it certainly wasn't flavorful. Everyone worth their salt took 2x daemon princes with Lash, min troops, plague marines in rhinos, and 3x defilers. Nothing else was even close to being viable. I remember being completely floored by just how lame 4e codex armies were. It was such a complete 180 from the flavorful armies from the previous codex which, broken or not, definitely looked and felt like their respective legions. Lash was bizarrely unprecedented; plenty of other games have abilities that let you move or possess enemy models, but getting a whole squad to move further out-of-sequence than they get to on their own turn always seemed a bridge too far.
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Jan 8, 2017 17:42
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Atlas Hugged posted:But didn't the scope of the game start to change by 5e so that the number of figures you needed to play was way more? I thought 5th changed the scope towards transports. Since that was how I was playing my sisters it was a huge boon. Not having to remove the entire squad because your transport blew up was a vast improvement. Or was that 6th? Either way, tyranids got hive guard as a response and open top vehicles only took S3 hits so orks and dark eldar could compete and everything was fairly even. Then came the recent version and all of a sudden you had super heavies and unkillable squads running around and orks and dark eldar got worse books for ~reasons~. EDIT: 6th had that wonky wound allocation bullshit, didn't it? Nuts to that.
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Jan 8, 2017 17:55
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Just Dan Again posted:I remember being completely floored by just how lame 4e codex armies were. It was such a complete 180 from the flavorful armies from the previous codex which, broken or not, definitely looked and felt like their respective legions. The 4e Chaos book completely invalidated my Slaanesh army (sonic blasters and daemonettes EVERYWHERE) and, not too long after that, the 7th ed. Beastmen book invalidated my all-Minotaur list. I've taken a dim view of GW ever since.
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Jan 8, 2017 18:47
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TheChirurgeon posted:I don't know what to tell you, man. Points costs for infantry were halved from 2nd to 3rd. If you don't see how that doubles the size of armies, we can just leave it there I might be wrong because I don't have any of the codexes to hand and it was all a long time ago, but I think only Space Marines actually halved in points (30 to 15 per tactical Marine). Everything else reduced, but not by half. Orks I think went from around 10-12 per ork to 8 per Shoota Boy or 9 per Slugga Boy. So average army size did increase for armies of the same size, but it was only a dramatic increase for Marines.* Of course, making Marines so much cheaper while simultaneously introducing the AP rules that massively favoured power armour was one of the major problems with 3e+. *If anyone actually has comparisons of the 2e and 3e points I'd be interested in seeing them.
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