So I hit a breaking point with 9th edition recently because I realized I was just playing Magic the Gathering again. The best wargames are ones where you use a simple set of units to accomplish something cool with positioning or tactics. Currently, 40k is huge on combos and playing "Gotcha" strategems at exactly the right moment before you forget them and its too late because you can only use it during one very specific part of the attack sequence or whatever. The game is often decided by what things your brought and your ability to remember when you need to press your I Win button, which makes it so massively stressful to me because you have to be constantly thinking about the exact thing you are about to do, because if you mess up that sequence you will lose. The stress is so much higher than in 3rd because with that ruleset, once you have learned what all the general rules do, you can always know what is going to happen in a situation, so you dont need to obsess over it the way you do now.
I for one, LIKED blast templates, flamers, deepstriking and scattering. It added a bit of skill to where you put your models, not just cramming everyone as closely as you could.
I remember fondly the fistfights with my brother in my youth over the exact number of models hit or correct scatter direction ❤ Still wonder why they changed it ...
I've always disliked stratagems. I think the worst aspect of them is that you always need to be thinking about when to use them. Some are before shooting, some are during. Some are before you roll for morale, some are after. I think if their use was confined to the command phase, the game would flow better as you would only need to consider what you have available at a single point during the game, rather than it being something you constantly have to consider. Either that or reduce the number available to 5-10 so you can feasibly remember them all.
Yeah. I have no problem with the idea of a restricted resource that you need to 'spend' well, or get choice in, but I think AoS achieves that much better by only having a few 'free' things to spend Command Points on and then unlocking one or two more with unit choice. The sheer scale of Stratagems, with armies having access to a pool of 40 or so special rules, so many that you don't really have a clue what your opponent can do, and have to check to see what extra STUFF you could activate each phase, makes them such a slog.
I'd like to change stratagems so you pick X stratagems at the beginning of the game, and those are the stratagems you have available to you, where X changes depending on the battle size.
Yeah, I sank like 200 to 300 bucks into 40K before playing my first match and experiencing basically what you outline in this video. It is a lot to keep up with, so I ended up playing OPR's Grimdark Future so that I can use the same models, but the mental load is so much more reasonable.
Precisely. One Page Rules is a lot more like Chess, as Ian described. The rules, even when you factor in the army-specific ones, are fairly simple to learn and keep straight in your head. It's the way you apply those rules during play that matters.
I've been playing since 4th, and this was a great walk down memory lane as you covered the variations. 6th drove me away, 7th was awful, 8th brought me back, but far and away for me, 5th was best.
I agree 5th felt the cleanest. 6th and 7th were a mess. I really liked 8th when it first came out but they soon started to ladle too much other stuff on top- and strategems are too much for my brain to cope with. I end up with loads of cheat sheet reminders and I still forget to use stuff.
@@KneeCapHill 3-7 and 8-9 noticeably have different dna. They play pretty differently so it comes down to if you like the new style of editions. I find 9 to have a LOT of army to army mental load which ive just have to accept isnt as fun as when most of the rules were in the core rule book like in 3-5, but not painfully so like in 6-7
I appreciate everything 8th and 9th have done to simplify things, but Im not a fan of the stratagem part of the game. I just want to focus on moving my minis around the table.
Honestly the simplicity of 3rd edition is the reason I keep coming back to it... Me and a couple of friends still play that way every now and again... (Though obviously not over the past year)... Fantastic video I would love to see you breaking down each edition of faction during an edition..
As a kid and young adult I always thought I was not cleaver enough to understand 40k rules so just painted the minis, I was so glad when 8th clicked for me and was able to play the game. It's awesome the way you have visualised the rules changes.
Thanks! Yeah, I was midway through an official Heresy event when I did the 'demo game' of 8ed and I was like 'why do I have to keep playing 7ed all weekend!!!'
Those added graphics in this are so aesthetically pleasing, I'm envious. Personally a small part of me that played 3rd and 4th Ed misses things like blast markers and different armour values for different sides of the vehicles, but the game does feel a lot smoother, and I like where the hobby has gone recently.
As much of a fan of 40K as I am, the turn structure really holds the game back. I think it's telling how spinoff games as far back as Epic 3rd edition through Battlefleet Gothic, and more recently the new Necromunda and Kill Team all manage alternating activations, but they can't seem to break with the old turn structure on the flagship system.
Yeah, never understood how wargames got to that point of "you move/activate everything, then I move/activate everything." Imagine playing chess like that...
@@crimsonbrother it makes it go faster than it already does. if you did alternating activations at the level of a match play game it would double the time it takes to get things moved. and it just depends on the game in question. Battletech has more rules than 40k ever did even with its trig vehicle movement. But you can pick and chose how man of the optional rules you put in.
@@patrickflying17 I disagree that alternating turns would add time. Each would perform the same number of actions/rolls as you would for moving the whole army at once. It's just structured in a different flow.
alternating activations definitely reduce downtime - if a player can do stuff with only one (or few) units at the time, then other player(s) don't have to wait long for their turn.
I really like the modelling and painting side of the hobby, but the size of the rule set, and the ever-changing nature of the rule set, are big reasons why I've never been very interested in the gaming side of the hobby Bizarrely though, I do enjoy reading the rules from second and (especially the tables from) first edition - I guess because they're so long and detailed they almost seem like lore
imho, the specific editions to me feel like: 8th: general rules are dead simple, and designed for quick resolution of mass attacks, but there are things that imho shouldn't be simplified the way they were: the melee combat doesn't take into account the enemy's Weapon Skill, vehicles are just yet another units, and, instead of more complex mechanics, there are TONS of various faction-, and unit-specific special rules 3rd - kinda nice, although it has some weirdness and rules that seem like they would, in certain cases, require to go through attacks one by one. Still, army creation is easier. And melee combat and vehicles are actually different. The problems with Codexes (not all factions getting the same amount of love, with some having latest 3rd edition rules strewn across old White Dwarf issues) make it hard to get into, tho. One Page Rules (Grimdark Future) - rules so fast and simple that the simplifications from 8th editions hurt less.
@@paulyg405 I never played 2nd, but from what I've heard, you could spend 1k points on a single Chaos Terminator squad and still have a really good chance at winning. A lot of this was because of the way close-combat worked. As you say, it was detailed and kinda clunky.
I used to play back in 3rd and then my best friend started using opiates and my army disappeared.... anyway I quit. Now I'm in my 30s and a friend was convinced to move to the city I'm currently in and he plays 9th 40k. He asked me to play but I said no, the price and I'm still hurt as my friend from before passed away from his fight with opiates. BUT my friend who moved here decided to bribe me with a space wolves army (I had played S. Wolves in 3rd). He dropped $250 and got me an army. And I've really gotten excited about it and I love the new rules lay out. If you can just learn one faction and it's synergies you can play well and the core rules are simple. Back in the day I hated anything artistic like the model painting, after all I'm a chemist now. That said I'm really getting into painting my models in dirty dark grey blue models that really lean into that dark, dirty 80s sci-fi fantasy art style. Oh I also had 3 terminators and 3 jump pack guys and a couple random units from my late friends dark angels army that I found and repainted. I'm running them in my army to kinda remember my friend who passed. We used to play 40k before opiates and it's nice to kinda remember those days.
Thanks for sharing that. Sad to hear about your one friend falling in his fight w opiates. Solid that your other friend bought you an army. Cherish ppl like that, they too rare. Good luck to you dude.
One thing I'd say in favour of all the strategems, warlord traits and relics is that they (in friendly games) allow your units to feel epic even if they are not top tier unit choices. If you have a supobtimal, let's say, CSM unit... well, it still gets to use all the strategems, buffs, boosts that the hyperoptimal CSM units can, which opens up the game a lot, makes most models have a chance to do great things... in a friendly setting.
There is one thing that I feel was a severe loss from WH: Fantasy, and 40k 7th edition into AoS and 40k 8th edition, and that was falling back being replaced with battle shock. I feel that the ability to have units completely break and fall back is not only more realistic, but it forces adaptive strategy and is more interesting than just loosing models come battleshock.
I remember playing 2nd Ed. and there being some fairly ridiculous stuff you could do. I know once we did a tower defense sort of mission where we made rules for a fortress (the Ghostbusters fire station toy), and my friend's face when I just ploughed a Rhino full speed into it and a Terminator squad piled out with thunder hammers. He was like "we're gonna rain death down on your lads" - until the sergeant pulled out his single vortex grenade and vapourised the wall. Even worse as luck would have it the vortex moved directly along the length of the wall, took out the lascannon on the side of his parked tank inside, then disappeared. He was just like "I'm not even mad". I also made a conversion of Wazdakka Gutsmek. Just the horror on the guys in store's face when they realised I could legit put an Ork in mega armor on a bike with a battlecannon on top.
This channel is such a breath of fresh air! Great content, astonishingly good infographics. I’d love to hear more about the cultural history of GW as they went from grimdark heavy metal satire to a brand with massive high street presence, to a brand that’s starting to move back towards its source material
i agree. pretty streamlined but not too shallow. I have not played an 8th or 9th edition game, however the comparison i hear most about it is that it's 2nd edition that has been streamlined.
It's beyond me why they keep overhaulingnthe core game rules every so often. Want to balance the game? Change the mini datasheets. Leave the core rules alone
Speaking about simple rules, I just remembered some rules I found out as I was young: At the start of the 00s a spanish rpg publisher (nosolorol) published a miniature skirmish book called "semper fidelis". it was generic for fantasy, sci fy, you could mix them so you can use your warhammer fantasy miniatures vs your w40k miniatures, it had armies lists with points (some of them adapted from warhammer and warhammer 40k) and all that. Every miniature had a character sheet. There were only the name, inventory a few stats as percentages: Health, armor, range weapons hability and melee weapons hability. the weapons had a sheet with how many damage they do and range. Every miniature had 5 actions per turn (the same as in X-COM: move, shoot, "wait" [in the middle of the enemy turn you had one action]). - Movement: For humans the movement was 5cm for every move action. - Fight: If a miniature was able to "see" a enemy, it could shoot (and if it was close, it could do a melee attack). Then you throw your dices for your character hability. If the percentage is lower as what your character has, its a success. - Damage: If the hit character has armor, you can throw an armor save. If you had less than the number shown, the armor saved your character and the armor loses 10 points (if armor was 20% and you got 15 in your dices, then you save your character but the armor has now 10%). If not, then the damage is applied to armor first and then life. For health its very similar. You make a save throw. If you fail the character dies. If you success he lives but life is [weapon damage] less. Thats all. Bikes and horses move 10cm instead of 5. Tanks had other rules that I forgot. Magic is a weapon type (so a fireball works the same as a pistol). There were also rules for grenates and explosives. It was super easy to adapt this to a dungeon crawler withe chests to improve a character gear and after surviving a game the players could get a new level (+10% health, +10% hability), and you can make games like "these dark eldars found a planet where there are skavens, so now they are fighting in a sewer". And all that in under 100 pages. After the bloating of w40k my friends and I that started in 1998 with w40k third edition, tried warhammer fantasy and this other rules. And we loved them because as in chess: They are easy to learn but the good thing is that they allow complex strategies. The games with this were very similar to nowadays kill team.
Oh, man I am happy I remembered this. I was searching for those rules but I wasnt able to find them (too old, too niche, in spanish...) But I just found them in boargamegeek. There are the rules in pdf to download. Im doing that right now to remember as I was young 20 years ago. Just search there for "semper fidelis" and check the one where a barbarian is fighting vietnam war GIs comming out of a portal.
As a casual touranemnt player (someone who mostly enjoys tournaments for the chance to meet and play against new people) and someone who just enjoys swinging down to the local club and challenging the people there, I do think that 40k has reached the point where the mental load becomes a bit too much for it to be fun for me. The core rules are, in my opinion, the best they've ever been in 40k's history (and I have played, though not played during, every edition), but GW has shown a lack of restraint when it comes to designing units, armies and also stratagems, making it rather tough to just go up against an army you're not too familiar with, as the entire game can be won or lost on a decisive stratagem or some obscure special rule on some unit. I would welcome a return of universal special rules, for three reasons. First of it would be easier for me and my opponent to explain what our units do, it would also limit the number of similar variants, that are still different enough that they can't be treated as the same thing and it would also limit what the rules writers can really do, preventing them from complicating things (well, as long as they keep getting told to stick to universal special rules as much as possible). And then avoid USR bloat as well
Very nice analysis. One additional thing to think about when discussing rules bloat IMO is power creep. Like when in Star Trek, every new bad guy had to easily beat down Worf to establish how strong they were. In 40k, seemingly every new addition adds super powerful abillities and weapons - so much so that it invalidates the strength of existing armies. Just my thoughts.
Yeah. agreed. I was trying to keep this just about 'scale of core rules' and had to keep editing this down as other rules stuff kept creeping in! Like how, midway through 5ed, the designers realised walker rules didn't really work and started making walking robots count as Monstrous Creatures, to the point where the two or three models still actually using the Walker rules (Dreadnoughts, War Walkers, Sentinels) just became irrelevant!
@@ArbitorIan Its why I pretty much am sticking with the release 8th ed and just the indices that got released before the codexes. I may get a codex for lore and colour schemes but it was very well balanced at the start, so avoid power creep issues. Plus I don't want to have to buy a load of new stuff to do the current edition every 4ish years.
I’ve not actually played 8th or 9th after being out off the game during 6 and 7 but recently I’ve been tempted to get back in. Enjoying your videos, hope to see many more
Late to the conversation, but my take on this is one thing I think they wanted to address in 8th. People want to play the game in different ways. Narritive play doesnt require the same rules and constant meta shifts that competitive play needs. I think 9th is the golden era of competition play, which is fantastic. My brother has never loved 40k more. But I would love a 'casuals edition' at 8th edition index levels of complexity. So we still get the rules updates that make sense like 2 wound Marines and T5 orks, but don't have the 6 million special rules and power creep that are starting to hit hard like with the new Admech codex.
As someone who started playing in 5th, played a bit of 6th (stopped before 7th) and returned in 9th; I love the simplified core rules set but I HATE stratagems. The worst was (pre-9th codex) when I had to look through multiple books of stratagems to figure out if I had one that was applicable at any given time. Now even with my 9th codex, it's like 4 pages and there's no quick way to determine which ones apply to which units in which phase other than reading the first sentence. Not to mention, it feels like a lot of things that used to be wargear or flat upgrades for points, are now stratagems. I would love for stratagems to either be removed entirely or to be pared back to like a dozen per army TOPS. Great video, Ian!
I started in 3rd edition. and I distinctly remember calling it quits at the start of 6th edition due to how many super heavies and D strength weapons permeated my local GW store. I adored playing the old multi table mega battles at the time (effectively GW stores running narrative open play games). But because I played Inquisition with a supplement of Imperial Guard heavy on infantry. I got really tired of just getting pie plated off the table from the escalation of rule scope. I swapped over to Fantasy at the tale end of its 6th edition and honest it felt like a breath of fresh air in terms of how much more balanced it felt and its ruleset felt more consistent compared to 40K at the time. I've recently started to return to 40K and 8th def piqued my interest in simplification of rules. Though I've noticed 9th seems to be getting bloated again with how many stratagems are everywhere.
Great summary as with your other videos. I really appreciate all the effort you go to in researching the background, dates, sources and in the graphics. I made the jump from 2nd to 8th so missed all the fun in between. I’ve been enjoying 8th and 9th though. Will be interesting to see how they develop it and whether they move to something else or keep the base system static for a while. Thanks again!
This is exactly the kind of content I'm looking for! I'm getting back into WH for the first time since WH40K RT & 2nd Edition and I am fascinated by the changes that have occurred since I've been out. After learning the basics of 9th I decided to look up earlier editions and my mind was blown by how things have ebbed & flowed. Going to your patreon right now!
I played 3rd in High School alot my group all dropped out about same time before 4th, then when I came back later a glance at the new books put me off getting back into it. Happy to hear it's been streamlimed again.
As someone who played at tournament level largely during 4th to 5th edition (3rd was when I started but I was pre-teen at the time so was mostly casual), this is a great explanation of what I was feeling when 6th started to really stretch the rules to breaking point.
I droppeb out halfway through 2nd until a year ago, so this is well handy. you can tell you've written guides,your videos are really clear and concise and enjoyable to watch, nice one.
This video has so much relevance right now as we head into 10th edition. It popped up in my UA-cam feed and I hope it does for other people too. Your explanation of the path of the game is great and it will be curious to see what complexity trap we fall into in 10tb.
12:15 I can't disagree more with that, and I think time proved me right. One thing that the game lost with the removal of templates (and armor facing for vehicles) is the EXTREMELY important positioning any good wargame should have. Without it your vehicles can just moonwalk around and shoot from their back with all their front facing guns and your troops will only care about line of sight and distance between points. We totally lost the formation aspect of the game, or rather, we lost any punishment for just blobing all your troop around a aura giver, which lead to the cancerous (and still ever present) deathstar and castling syndrome the game is now glued in. We lost both in realism, flavor, and actual strategical depth, and all that for what? To remove the grossly exaggerated few argument the templates could bring when it came to knowing what was or not under it.... as if the current aura, "within" and "wholly withing" rules we still have today didn't have the EXACT same problem. No, 8th (and 9th) are not better than 3rd style edition, because they cut what was actually part of the essential building blocks of a wargame (formation and positioning) under the pretense of simplifying the game, but then put in place a WAY more complicated and heavy system with the stratagems.
3rd edition has three phases per turn. THREE. Every model falls into a category for movement, which means you can easily see how much range a model has. Threat assessment is very easy because of this. I quit after 6th edition came out. Played a few games with it, but there was so much RNG involved, planning moves became unnecessarily difficult. I remember having three units ready to assault the same enemy, but I rolled 5" inch or lower for all three and failed to get into close combat. Under the older rules, I needed to be within 6", which I was, but now I got f'ed by dice rolls. It felt like losing against the rules, not against my opponent.
These videos are great. I look forward to when this channel blows up. Think you'd ever do a T'au video? Specifically, their release in 2001, the fan reactions, GW's response to same, their current disuse, etc? I know T'au are generally unpopular, but they have so much untapped potential.
Yeah, maybe. I think one of the issues with doing a video about Tau is that they haven't really changed that much since release - a bit like Necrons. Their rules have changed a bit, but the models and concept are mostly the same. I think maybe a 'new factions of 3ed' video might be interesting, though, because Tau, Necrons and Dark Eldar were all introduced within a few years of each other, and very few new factions have been introduced before or since.
Whats strange is that I have now played 4th edition a lot... and....... Its fun. It looks complex, and it seems obtuse at first (in terms of organization on where things are placed in the rule books.) And its... FUN! :0 It has been an absolute blast playing!! I think the more simple Warhammer tries to be... The honest- the worse it has been to play. 10th is.... EEeehhhh??? 9th was- my first edition, but was still very confusing. And when you list out all the different "you shoot. if you have blast weapons, then you do these steps. and then these steps." It sounds WAY more complex than it actually is to play. It took me and my buddy literally yesterday, like- 3 hours? and it was a blast!! But then 8th, 9th, and 10th, and it was... Remember all of these rules on your models data card. Remember all your weapons' special rules. Remember x, y, z. And it- LOOKS deceptively simple. But its so confusing, and frustrating to play.
Great video - i stopped playing during 2nd edition and started again during 7th, so this is a really helpfull explained for what the F happened in the interim
Ha! No worries - I mostly made them for myself at first, but then it turned out to be so useful that it became this big thing that everyone was contributing to for years. I remember being in LA and playing a game at the old Frontline Gaming and some hobby-aid manufacturers turned up with a goodie bag when they realised I'd written them, just as a thankyou for making their life easier! Wish I could remember who it was, but the community can be a really heartwarming place to be sometimes!
Update this video! New video even! With 9th retrospective + looking into 10th ed! (Maybe wait till we have more concrete 10th info?) but yeah would absolutely love to hear your take on where the entire span of 9th fits into the context of 3rd-8th eds with 10th on the horizon. Cheers!
Fab explanation! Took a break after 3rd and came back to the mess of 7th. 8th is nicely streamlined and seems smooth. (Cant comment on 9th). For me, my fave RPG is 1st ed, narrative battle is 3rd and mass battle is 8th and i still play them all with great gusto!
@@jmalkvideos they’re in the one-off games tab on their website. Mainly just smaller games, adaptions of other, more niche games (like a more accessible adaption of little wars, the first ever tabletop war game and a favorite hobby of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing) or more experimental stuff, like a one page ttrpg or a war game without any rules for distances
You nailed it with the concept of mental load - bloat - in 9th. Horus Heresy returned at exactly the right time for players feeling fatigue from Combohammer. Cutting CP doesn’t reduce the load of stratgems, it just sharpens their economy.
An interesting and well executed video. I've always had this issue with any of GW's tabletop games, as someone with dyslexia large rule books that start to become more and more convoluted and drag on and on really put me off. Typically I just get frustrated reading them, not understanding going back reading again, getting half way through, forgetting what something means and having to again go back and check just make the whole experience very joyless. I used to be able to steal the use of my brothers far more rule oriented brain and he was the de facto DM for most games of this style (although its likely we made many, many mistakes), sadly growing up and moving from home has left me to try and figure it out with my lackluster memory. I was recently making a Necromunda gang and to be honest I just found the experience annoying. Buuut that could just be me and my brain.
I remember playing the Dark Angels at a time where you were playing extra points for their stupid blood lineage negative bonus. Games Workshops has been playing the Adeptus Administratum for so many years
Great video! Been playing 40k since second edition, stopped with 8th. The while Strategems really ruined the experience for me. It turned the game from a battle between players and their skill+luck, to who has access to the better unique rule. I still play 3rd edition from time to time, mainly stick the lists in the back of the main rule book. Really find the penalties to moving with a Rapid Fire weapon add a great layer of tactical nuance to the system. Rumour has it that Andy Chambers who helped write 3rd edition, wanted 4th edition to be a whole different game. GW didn't want that, so he worked briefly with Mongoose Publishing and made the phenomenal Starship Troopers The Miniatures game. That all being said, I think that Grimdark Future by One Page Rules (got a few videos of their games on my channel) are where it is at.
Love your videos, i used to play a lot competively in five edition, with six and all the supplement and extra books i felt Lost and left the game. I'm back now in nine and i'm enjoying It a lot!
Great analysis for sure! Have been around since 2nd ed and left at 7th. Missed 8 and picked up 9th again, but am starting to veer towards one page rules. The issue of bloat in 8th and 9th I feel is less mental burden and more prohibitive in cost now. The game is just less than a year old now but we are already back up to multiple books for the same armies already with codexes, supplements and field manual FAQ updates that mess with points in the other books. While this won't affect all games (especially if you're not a tourney player) there is pressure to "keep up" just to try and be accurate for points. The cost of these books is also prohibitive - it almost feels like a paper subscription system to be honest and I'm having to bow out again due to not having the disposable income. I totally admit I don't have to use all the books and am taking the choice to say no, but it's certainly annoying when books you have paid the money for are partially invalidated a couple of months after (especially with costs being what they are in Australia).
The shift to 3rd from second felt so watered down and 2nd edition might be my favourite rules set to this day with 8th edition coming in a close 2nd place. I haven't attempted 9th, I tried to recreate a couple of 8th edition lists to run in 9th and couldn't as the rules and weapons options had changed so I haven't bothered. If I do start playing again, I would like to develop 8th edition out more. Give Terminator Armour the 3+ on 2D6 like back in 2nd edition; I played my mates 2k Deathwing army using 2nd terminator save throw but dropping the wounds down to 1 and it was a really awesome game, I still won a bit too easily so I really want to try again at full wound capacity. The loss of a terminator should feel like an epic event. I will say though that the shift from 2nd edition to 3rd edition allowed tournament play to be a thing and that is where 40k really took off. I've played in a few tournaments over the years but my preferred play style is a game that takes an entire afternoon.
The very first 3rd edition was playable with just the main book. They had the entire army lists printed in it, you could get some terrain and a few models and be ready to go. Armour reduction sounds neat. Marine 3+ power armour drops down once you start shooting them with heavy bolters and autocannons. And how vehicles can explode from a lucky hit, instead of having a mountain of Wounds. We did not have fun calculating who can hit who even in brawls between five orks in Gormakorka.
@@SusCalvin Perhaps if it was your first edition. The shift between 2nd to 3rd was very jarring as it was a complete overhaul. Everything felt watered down.
@@aarondunn6759 Fighting an assault with just a handful of orks in Gorkamorka was a lot of work. I think those rules work better at that sort of skirmish level but not if 10 blokes with jetpacks are charging into 20 orks and you need to constantly figure out who is hitting who.
@@aarondunn6759 Necromunda and later Gorkamorka kept a lot of the 2nd ed rules but toned it down to a skirmish game. Close combat, armour, weapons, cover etc work similarly but it's a skirmish between two gangs/mobs of a half-dozen models instead of two armies.
As someone who has been around since 2nd Ed 40K but haven’t played much because of rules bloat this was refreshing to watch. Stratagems we’re/are a shit system to introduce into a game that’s meant to be tactical NOT strategic. Its supposed to be about rushing to cover popping up blasting the enemies then making a lucky dice roll, not painting my army a specific color stacking complimentary strategem cards and face rolling little kids down at the FLGS. Update this video soon please. Curious to hear your take on 10th
I played 3rd to 9th Edition and for me 7th Edition was the best one. The USR was very useful and the thousands of rule errors from 6th were cleaned up. The main problem was the formations, detachments and combination of Rulebook+Codex+Supplement+Campaign rules for certain armies which created ridiculous violence spirals. But the moment 8th came out everyone thought this would be the saviour of 40k but practically i must say i never saw so many friends and people i know leave 40k before in all these years and i blame the game system mainly for it. The modern 40k rules lack any soul in my oppinion and 7th was the epitome of 3rd-6th but Rogue Trader and 2nd had definitely more of a feel of "rules made to represent the models". Unlike 8th and 9th were everything feels like "models which represent the rules". The tactical depth of modern 40k is pathetic to say the least and i have played it on national and European Tournaments. Its more of a Dicehammer then anything else and games like Star Wars Legion are much better at conveying rules, which represent the fluff and the spirit of the models and their background. 40k has become mostly dice rolling with some fancy miniatures being positioned in such a way as the rules make sense. Noone can explain to me, that a Baneblade shoots all of its weapons by looking from its leftmost antenna 60" over the battlefield unto the other side of the map first turn and exterminates a full unit that was hiding from an Alpha Strike, just because the Antenna can see a tiny part of a single base through a small crack between two plastic walls which werent glued correctly. It might be streamlined rules which simplify the process, but for me its like a body without a soul: dead.
To me 7th edition was almost unplayable bad. Renember decution and riptide formations? Chapter master smashfukker? The flying circus? Do you remeber how broken summoning was, and how every faction could summon demons, including imperial factions? Do you remember how broken invisibility was? And do you remember how many games was decided when rolling for psychic powers?
@@PepsiMagt Yes you are right but most of this (except Psychic Shriek or Invisibility) are not Basic Rule Book. The problem was, as you summed it up, the Codexes, Supplements, Campaign Books which felt like the arms race between USA and USSR. But the basic rules were much better then any other edition of 40k in my oppinion. And looking at the current escalation of power and how many books you need to play an army i feel like this edition is even worse then 7th.
After having had 9th edition around for a year now, I fear that we actually may have arrived at a quasi-7th edition situation already. The difference being that we don't necessarily have bloated core rules as much as a bloated army level. Especially now with Auras and certain rules affecting only units with certain keywords. In this respect, 9th edition 40k feels like the worst version of Warmachine/Hordes at the end of its 2nd iteration. Also, while many 8th edition codices are still in effect, some 9th edition codices already have 1 or even 2 additional publications with supplemental rules (Adeptus Mechanicus being the worst offender here). Man, 9th edition is only 1 year young and I'm already eyeing my 4th edition 40k rulebook and OnePageRules with longing.
Came here to say this - the rapid release of documents in 8th and 9th has accelerated us to a place of severe bloat at a surprising speed. After a few months off it, I find myself not really wanting to play 9th because of all the stuff I'm going to have to remember. Litanies, auras, traits, prayers, relics, stratagems - and that's before even thinking about all the special rules actually on the datasheets themselves. So many things in this game can do so unique actions that the first few times you play against any given army, so much of it feels like gotcha moments. At this point, the 7th Ed in Horus Heresy feels much simpler to me than 9th 40K.
i literally am setting up a 5th ed game between my chaos nurgle and imperial guard because i cannot keep up with all the extra rules and abilities, i also play grimdark which is like 4/5th ed with alternating activations and it has much more paid content to make the game more robust if thats your thing.
I started playing 40k when I bought the 2nd edition Dark Angels codex when it came out in 1996-ish? Took a break at the start of 5th edition and just recently came back to the game in 9th, and am working on a pure Deathwing Terminators army! Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
Interesting timing for me to come across this video having just watched some batreps with new Ad mech and Sisters codexes, both of which from the looks of it are absolutely loaded with rules to forget, misinterpret or otherwise spend forever looking up and trying to remember instead of actually playing the game. It's like they're going out of their way to undo all the good work they did with 8th simplifying things...
Great video! I feel that current 40k is a really enjoyable game, where you can play rather than try to remember and double check every 10 minutes how that rule works. There has been simplification and there are some ideas from previous editions that I would like to see coming back (rear armour on vehicles giving +1 to wound, for example), but overall its in a really good position. Its is true that warlord traits and relics can be a bit too much (specially since a lot of them are just worse than others and just fill the page with words), but since you just have to deal with the ones selected during the match, is not that bad. For the stratagems, maybe we could select a limited pool of them at the begining of the match, depending on game size, and spending CP to been able to choose more of them. Similar to how psykers work. Armies like space marines just have soo many that it can get ridiculous
I loved this video. I started playing in 90s in middle school with a Rogue Trader book and played every edition. With a heavy focus from 2000-2012. I made it a goal to play at least a handful of games in 6-8th, and am now returning by this summer to learning 9th and the combo focus really blew me away. Before I could have 4-5 2K point armies and switch them out to play and currently I really have to just focus on one army for how much I play because the strategims and combos require sooo much research and memory. So interesting how I use to collect an play half a dozen armies for fun over the year and now deciding the game really encourages me to just focus on learning one well. As player of the game for a few decades, loved this video.
I keep an eye out for videos like this as some one who’s working on his own tabletop skirmish/war game it easy to read the rules and think ok that works but I always tend to not think about rule bloat.
I also came to the game in the late 2nd and early 3rd edition stage. It was lovely, all throughout and including 5th edition. 4th is probably my favourite, especially because I really dig the terrain rules from that time. Then uni came along, and that, in connection with the ridiculousness of 6th and 7th edition, made lose interest in the game for around 7 years. And then 8th came along, and it felt like 3rd all over again. Brilliantly easy to get into, while at the same time incorporating pretty much everything that came before rather smoothly, even though I miss the tactical dimension of vehicle armour values (trying to get behind tanks was a a fun challenge in and of itself in the ancient times). Current 40k with its stratagems is something I'm not fully behind, but maybe that's more a thing of practice. It's one of those "power to the players" design choices that benefit players for knowing what to do in the right moment, which is a good thing, at least on paper. And I also love the fact that GW really learned how to make each army feel as they are described in the lore, especially with the 9th edition codexes. However, I'm right there with you, as that creates a potential monstrosity of interlocking and synergising rules you need to keep in mind. I really hope they don't take it farther than they have until now, as that could easily break handling the game for casual players (like me, to be honest).
I think 8th and 9th have way more mental load like you said at the army level, i like to build a list to its full potential without spamming. I think its easier to keep one large main rule set straight rather than tons of unique army specific rules. nobody likes it when their opponent teaches them about their army specific rules by housing you with them! lol great video!
The loss of granularity IS a thing. See morale, as an example. Also, I find there is a certain intellectual dishonesty on the designer's part. Creating a skeleton of a base system with glaring "holes" then bolt on specific bespoke rules for each unit is not efficient. And oh - there is also a lack of granularity in decision making, say move or shoot for heavies, which had bolted on directly rerolls (to "fix" snapshots even if it wasn't necessary) or indirectly with stratagems which are closer to a card game concept.
Fully agree with your thoughts on each edition. I painted as a kid back in 3rd. Tried to put some armies together and wrap my head around the rules right around the launch of 7th, but quickly gave up. Have found the current set (no hull points, blast markers etc) waaaay more straight forward. I've even had a few very small games with my 4 year old and watch battle reports from play on tabletop as entertainment.
A truly good analysis, it clarified many things I hadn't fully realized before. Also, it matches almost perfectly what happened to me: started with 3rd edition and enjoyed it a lot, grown increasingly frustrated from the overbloat of rules, seriously considered stop playing with 7th edition, started again with 8th and enjoyed it again. My main issues, rather than the rule set, is with GW's policies, expecially with the prices ones and all that comes with them. But minis and setting are still good, not to mention I still enjoy playing with my group of friends, so all in all I still keep on playing. Would be curious to test Grimdark Future though, I've heard good things about it and, from a quick read to free basic rules on their site, it seems an interesting rule set.
Really good video, I enjoyed the 8th edition games I've played much more than the 4th edition ones I've had, hopefully when I do get a chance to play 9th it will be fun too!
Nice Video, putting the finger on something i felt was there but couldnt really voice. I started playing in 6th and it was a nightmare. In our group of friends (we were around eight to ten ppl) only two had memorized a significant amount of the rules, so anytime they werent present we had to look up so much stuff the games got really long.
Got interested in 40k around 2010 my dad found the ultramarines movie in a bargain bin, I was at a lost after watching the movie it keep using terms and phrases that weren't explained in the movie. I found the setting fascinating like there was more to it that was either cut or left out because it was based on something that fans wouldn't need explained to them. Then I started looking around for more info and I found the Dawn of War RTS, and wow a movie I thought was some indie film or a reboot of a forgotten IP had a huge amount of content and was still going got me into Warhammer. Never played any of the tabletops the local tabletop scene was non existent, at most I would get a Yu-gi-oh game or a board game and when most of my gaming group entered their twenties, they either dropped gaming to start families or went purely digital. For years my 40k tabletop experience was just being a spectator watching bat reps and I'm glad that was it in hindsight looking back at all the rules and models that have come and gone, I'm glad I didn't get into 6th right when 7th came out or get into 7th when 8th came out. I never had to worry about having a sub par army or having to replace old rules or having no new rules(armies I was interested in were Astral claws, Death Korps, Eldar corsairs and Orks.) I wished I could've play the skirmish games like Necromunda and Gorkamorka when I was younger and had more free time and friends who were still interested in playing non video games, still watching bat reps might get into the table top scene online, but work and all that.
This has been a neat listen as someone who designs rules for my own games and as someone who has just started 40k this year. Without my relentless love of rules and friends that are almost as keen as I am to know what's going on I would have a really hard time ever playing a game like 40k. But it does sound and feel like I've chosen a good time to get into it
At about 13:11, you make a point of saying that additional army rules aren't a big deal for most players. I agree in principle. Most people aren't going to be playing against these armies, but oftentimes not knowing about a particular stratagem can dramatically change tactical decisionmaking. A lot of flavor is built around comboing stratagems from these army books and army rules that outright create exceptions to the core systems. Take the Red Corsairs, for example. They have a special army rule that allows them to advance and charge. Common and flavorful, and something you'd be pretty upfront about at the beginning of a game. Now imagine that it's turn three, the Corsair player's Chaos Marine squad has two models left and their opponent had decided to ignore the squad in their previous shooting phase. The Corsairs player then tells his opponent about a stratagem called "More Where They Came From" and that he can redeploy that CSM squad at full strength within 6" of a board edge. I don't think the stratagem is all that unbalanced, but it sucks something awful when you make a tactical decision and your opponent pulls what feels like a gotcha out of his ass. The problem I find with a lot of army design in 9th now is that they're built around army rules that make blatant exceptions to the core rules and combo-building stratagems which are most effective when your opponent doesn't know about them. I agree that it's not exactly a problem from a rules-design standpoint, but from a gameplay-experience standpoint getting surprised by unexpected stratagems just feels like shit. As a casual player without any close friends who play the game, I never feel like I really know what my opponent's army is going to be capable of and it just pushes me away from wanting to play.
Yup. These videos are great. Its official. Now i have to 100% push these videos in other comment sections to ensure Ian overtakes those mincraft turds. Society won't ever change without effort. UA-cam's algorithm is not functioning as advertised so we need to make an effort to spread the word.
My introduction to the game was 5th edition. That was the first game I played. After that game, 6th came out, and that was where I played most of my games. I took an unplanned break through almost all of 7th (and jeez, and I glad I did), so coming back to 8th was an absolute breath of fresh air. I love that if I don't need to know it, I don't, and my opponent brings it up when necessary. I'll then do a bit of research after the game, learn the basics of that army, and then I'm done, I don't need to study for hours before a game.
There's no way 8th & 9th are less complex than 3rd & 4th. Stratagems, Command Traits, and having to have wound counters on everything makes the game far more taxing. Not to mention in 9th that Terrain Keywords (FML). I'll keep playing modified 3rd forever while the 9th ruleset is out.
I loved 2nd edition. So much more character than 3rd. I remember when 3rd edition came out. My friends and I never really bothered to move on and I’ve not played since.
Great video! I got into GW in the early 90s and had the 2nd Ed box, but I was always more interested in the minis and painting side of things, and only recall playing a few simplified games. I dropped out of the hobby before 3rd Ed came out and got back into it with the launch of 9th, so it's interesting to see what happened in between. The core rules/basic machanics are straighforward enough, and the variety of armies and units (and therefore miniatures) is probably the main appeal of 40k for me, but, putting aside the variations within factions (e.g. dynasties, plagues companies etc), the abilities, detachment abilities, auras, stratagems, battle-round-based changes (e.g. Command Protocols), that come with it are making me wonder if I've chosen the wrong game. Gonna stick with 500-1000pt games I think!
8 sides of A4?! And that's condensed?! I remember 3rd Ed came with reference sheets in the starter box that were double sided and that was everything you needed! Yikes on several bikes...
I got into 40K 2nd edition and it was insanely complicated. Then got back into it in 5th but couldn’t really keep up. I’m glad they made the rules more streamlined in 8th but wish they didn’t have to have so many special rules for each faction.
I'm a former Shadowrun GM, and this reminds me of that so much. Keeping track of combat when you had people shooting at each other, plus a Decker hacking into the opposition, plus a Rigger using drones or a vehicle was..... mind-melting.
Great break down my sentiments exactly. I deal with strategems by pretending they don't exist lol. They are just another phase of the game you can ignore and still get a fun time in.
I really think this is what they should have done with Open War. Make a 'basic' set of rules - standard six missions, maelstrom cards, only war cards, build armies using any system, no secondaries, no stratagems, etc. Then really push this as 'standard 40k', pitched as a quick way to set up a fair game with some tactics (rather than the current throwaway 'do whatever you like'). Then market Crusade and Matched Play as 'expansions' or 'advanced' games. At the moment, we can all play without stratagems and secondaries, but finding players to do that is hard as it's not pushed as the norm.
This is one of the reasons I started with warmachine and hordes. Back then, it was the easier to get into game, better player base where I started war gaming, and more affordable.
This perfectly sums up the issues I had with trying to get into the new necromunda. Too many new rules and books. Badly organised books with rules all over the place. In the old necromunda all the weapons for whichever gang were largely the same in the new one each gang gets its own gang specific weapons. My friend and I found that we spent more time flicking back and forth trying to find rules and weapon profiles etc than actually playing the game which sucked all the enjoyment out of it and ultimately led to us selling up. ☹️
I was tempted to comment before the end of the video, just to vent. Having watched til the end, I can now confidently disagree with your conclusion =) Frame of reference: I was introduced to the game in 3rd, really got started in 4th, played through 5th and 6th, sold most of my stuff off in the beginning of 7th for far better alternatives back then, dipped a toe back in during index 8th and then kept my two small forces even though I stopped playing when 8th codices caught up with those. I tried 9th, briefly. Imo, lots of your points make sense, but I draw a completely different conclusion, because after 3rd you left out each editions codices in your analysis. 4th and 5th practiced effective streamlining, making the game less clunky and really leaned on the USRs. Sure, there were more core rules than in 8th or 9th, but they were there for everyone. Every player needed to follow those core rules and once you used the relevant sequence of events, it wasn’t hard to get familiar with them. It’s not like roll to hit, wound and save are tough mechanics and the tables can be put on a cheat sheet. Me and my group had them memorised, because they were built with a certain logic. Unit entries then only brought their profile, a set of USRs that everyone used and a rule or 2, that was archetypical to that unit. When you played against a new opponent, he could tell you „my Hormagaunts have fleet“ or „these troops get feel no pain“ and you‘d get a gist of their force. Nowadays every single unit needs to have bespoke special rules, that may be similar but slightly different to those of other units or other factions, just to add some of that granularity back into the game, that was dumbed down hard to „make it simpler“. What’s even worse, is that many of these special rules are not even there all of the time, but need to be triggered by stratagems. You can play 5 times against the same opponent, maybe learn his force enough that you think you know how they work and Boom! A unit does something completely new thanks to the magic of a card he never used before. I miss 5th ed. Much less bloat in the codices, no flyers and heavy vehicles and stuff to worry about. I especially miss the „complicated“ rules for vehicles. It’s so dumb to kill a landraider with a bolt gun. It’s even dumber, that my flimsy dark eldar paper planes can’t be shot down with a lascannon. I could play 4th and 5th ed without ever picking up a single book, I knew my profiles, the core rules and all my USRs, even the vehicle damage tables were saved up there after a handful of games. I haven’t played a single turn of 8th or 9th ed _without_ picking up the codex or the stratagem cards. I can’t even begin to learn the same for my regular opponent’s forces, nevermind other forces in the game I might encounter in a store. That’s why I play middle earth strategy battle game nowadays. Sure, the miniatures are lacking to some degree, but the rules are much, much better, imo. You know why? The rules manual is a big fat tome. Everyone plays with the same core rules. They are complex at first, until you understood, what the point of a certain rule is. Then they become quite intuitive. Models have a profile, a handful of USRs and 1 or 2 special rules, that really define said unit. The game is full of character and tactical decisions, that your opponent can try and guess in order to be a step ahead of you. Unlike 40k, where you just stand opposite each other and see who can roll dice better. Guess what, he who has the most OP codex does. It makes me sad everytime I think about, because I thoroughly enjoy 40k. Just not the game at the moment. I‘m in the process of making my own 5th edition, incorporating some of the cooler ideas of younger versions. =)
I didnt Like the transition to 3rd Edition, it made sense rules complexity wise but gw also changed pricing at that time and changed minimum amount of models in a unit to sell more. But yes 2nd Ed Was great fluffwise, but if the one dude wasnt there who had All the rules you were fucked
You could play 3rd edition right out of the core book. GW printed early army lists for most factions in the game. You get no sub-factions (no Marine chapters, unless you count "call your chaplains wolf priests" a chapter) and some relatively small factions are missing (Harlequins, genestealer cults). But you can get a few models together and play a full game with only that book. The basic rules for 3rd ed are pretty simple. No special cases stacked on top of special cases with characters and units bringing their own special rules yet.
Gonna add another suggestion to try one of the versions of Grimdark Future. The basic rules are simple and easy to pick up, and there's a lot less dice rolling and games getting drawn out due to 3+ levels of saves keeping models on the far longer than they probably should.
I basically haven't played 40k for about 20 years since I was a kid, and I picked up the Indomitus box with the intention of getting back into a bit of painting and playing. It seems I chose a good moment to do so!
So I hit a breaking point with 9th edition recently because I realized I was just playing Magic the Gathering again. The best wargames are ones where you use a simple set of units to accomplish something cool with positioning or tactics. Currently, 40k is huge on combos and playing "Gotcha" strategems at exactly the right moment before you forget them and its too late because you can only use it during one very specific part of the attack sequence or whatever. The game is often decided by what things your brought and your ability to remember when you need to press your I Win button, which makes it so massively stressful to me because you have to be constantly thinking about the exact thing you are about to do, because if you mess up that sequence you will lose. The stress is so much higher than in 3rd because with that ruleset, once you have learned what all the general rules do, you can always know what is going to happen in a situation, so you dont need to obsess over it the way you do now.
Yup, agreed!
So what you are saying is that 40K went from being Magic the gathering to YuGiOh because that's honestly a good description of YuGiOh
I just returned to 9th after previously playing 4-6th editions and "This feels more like Magic The Gathering than Warhammer" was exactly what i said.
3-7th was a better time I’d take decurion all over again to the crap we have now
@ArbitorIan do you still have that rules aide sheet?
I for one, LIKED blast templates, flamers, deepstriking and scattering. It added a bit of skill to where you put your models, not just cramming everyone as closely as you could.
I remember fondly the fistfights with my brother in my youth over the exact number of models hit or correct scatter direction ❤ Still wonder why they changed it ...
Holy shit dude, you are on a roll!
Also, as someone who only reads novels, and never plays the game, this is invaluable.
I've always disliked stratagems.
I think the worst aspect of them is that you always need to be thinking about when to use them. Some are before shooting, some are during. Some are before you roll for morale, some are after. I think if their use was confined to the command phase, the game would flow better as you would only need to consider what you have available at a single point during the game, rather than it being something you constantly have to consider. Either that or reduce the number available to 5-10 so you can feasibly remember them all.
Yeah. I have no problem with the idea of a restricted resource that you need to 'spend' well, or get choice in, but I think AoS achieves that much better by only having a few 'free' things to spend Command Points on and then unlocking one or two more with unit choice. The sheer scale of Stratagems, with armies having access to a pool of 40 or so special rules, so many that you don't really have a clue what your opponent can do, and have to check to see what extra STUFF you could activate each phase, makes them such a slog.
I'd like to change stratagems so you pick X stratagems at the beginning of the game, and those are the stratagems you have available to you, where X changes depending on the battle size.
@@HivefleetMagoladon 3 stratagems total, one use each, and only one stratagem per turn could be nice.
hey malcom in the middle has a 40k channel. good for you :)
@@Ondemasthat’s basically how 2e did it and it worked great.
Yeah, I sank like 200 to 300 bucks into 40K before playing my first match and experiencing basically what you outline in this video. It is a lot to keep up with, so I ended up playing OPR's Grimdark Future so that I can use the same models, but the mental load is so much more reasonable.
Precisely. One Page Rules is a lot more like Chess, as Ian described. The rules, even when you factor in the army-specific ones, are fairly simple to learn and keep straight in your head. It's the way you apply those rules during play that matters.
One Page Rules! One Page Rules! *chanting continues*
Seriously, I want my local tournaments to move to OPR permanently XD
I agree. It should alway come back to smooth gameplay like chess. You should be able to add layers depending on how much time you want to spend.
I've been playing since 4th, and this was a great walk down memory lane as you covered the variations.
6th drove me away, 7th was awful, 8th brought me back, but far and away for me, 5th was best.
I agree 5th felt the cleanest. 6th and 7th were a mess. I really liked 8th when it first came out but they soon started to ladle too much other stuff on top- and strategems are too much for my brain to cope with. I end up with loads of cheat sheet reminders and I still forget to use stuff.
Same! I literally quit when 6th came out, and returned to the game with 8th.
Is 9th "good"?
Absolutely agree, I still play 5th!
@@KneeCapHill 3-7 and 8-9 noticeably have different dna. They play pretty differently so it comes down to if you like the new style of editions. I find 9 to have a LOT of army to army mental load which ive just have to accept isnt as fun as when most of the rules were in the core rule book like in 3-5, but not painfully so like in 6-7
I appreciate everything 8th and 9th have done to simplify things, but Im not a fan of the stratagem part of the game. I just want to focus on moving my minis around the table.
Agreed, the game seems to be getting more and more abstracted. 10th is even worse in this regard.
Honestly the simplicity of 3rd edition is the reason I keep coming back to it... Me and a couple of friends still play that way every now and again... (Though obviously not over the past year)... Fantastic video I would love to see you breaking down each edition of faction during an edition..
As a kid and young adult I always thought I was not cleaver enough to understand 40k rules so just painted the minis, I was so glad when 8th clicked for me and was able to play the game. It's awesome the way you have visualised the rules changes.
Thanks! Yeah, I was midway through an official Heresy event when I did the 'demo game' of 8ed and I was like 'why do I have to keep playing 7ed all weekend!!!'
Same here! I was totally lost as a 13 year old in 3rd edition, but it makes sense now. Though my Tau still miss jump shoot jump hahaha
8th is where it all went wrong
Those added graphics in this are so aesthetically pleasing, I'm envious.
Personally a small part of me that played 3rd and 4th Ed misses things like blast markers and different armour values for different sides of the vehicles, but the game does feel a lot smoother, and I like where the hobby has gone recently.
As much of a fan of 40K as I am, the turn structure really holds the game back. I think it's telling how spinoff games as far back as Epic 3rd edition through Battlefleet Gothic, and more recently the new Necromunda and Kill Team all manage alternating activations, but they can't seem to break with the old turn structure on the flagship system.
It's one of the reasons I love Grimdark Future from One Page Rules. It uses alternating activations, and the game is better for it.
Yeah, never understood how wargames got to that point of "you move/activate everything, then I move/activate everything." Imagine playing chess like that...
@@crimsonbrother it makes it go faster than it already does. if you did alternating activations at the level of a match play game it would double the time it takes to get things moved. and it just depends on the game in question. Battletech has more rules than 40k ever did even with its trig vehicle movement. But you can pick and chose how man of the optional rules you put in.
@@patrickflying17 I disagree that alternating turns would add time. Each would perform the same number of actions/rolls as you would for moving the whole army at once. It's just structured in a different flow.
alternating activations definitely reduce downtime - if a player can do stuff with only one (or few) units at the time, then other player(s) don't have to wait long for their turn.
I started with 2nd and drew the line in the sand with 6th. Went back to 5th and never regretted it.
ahh dude! you were behind that 1page 40k thing??? those simplified rules were genius and definitely helped me learn those older editions. Respect!
Not me! I just did a load of reference sheets in 6/7ed. One Page 40k I think was a whole new rules system?
I really like the modelling and painting side of the hobby, but the size of the rule set, and the ever-changing nature of the rule set, are big reasons why I've never been very interested in the gaming side of the hobby
Bizarrely though, I do enjoy reading the rules from second and (especially the tables from) first edition - I guess because they're so long and detailed they almost seem like lore
imho, the specific editions to me feel like:
8th: general rules are dead simple, and designed for quick resolution of mass attacks, but there are things that imho shouldn't be simplified the way they were: the melee combat doesn't take into account the enemy's Weapon Skill, vehicles are just yet another units, and, instead of more complex mechanics, there are TONS of various faction-, and unit-specific special rules
3rd - kinda nice, although it has some weirdness and rules that seem like they would, in certain cases, require to go through attacks one by one. Still, army creation is easier. And melee combat and vehicles are actually different. The problems with Codexes (not all factions getting the same amount of love, with some having latest 3rd edition rules strewn across old White Dwarf issues) make it hard to get into, tho.
One Page Rules (Grimdark Future) - rules so fast and simple that the simplifications from 8th editions hurt less.
@@paulyg405 I never played 2nd, but from what I've heard, you could spend 1k points on a single Chaos Terminator squad and still have a really good chance at winning. A lot of this was because of the way close-combat worked. As you say, it was detailed and kinda clunky.
You would love 3rd edition.
I used to play back in 3rd and then my best friend started using opiates and my army disappeared.... anyway I quit. Now I'm in my 30s and a friend was convinced to move to the city I'm currently in and he plays 9th 40k. He asked me to play but I said no, the price and I'm still hurt as my friend from before passed away from his fight with opiates. BUT my friend who moved here decided to bribe me with a space wolves army (I had played S. Wolves in 3rd). He dropped $250 and got me an army. And I've really gotten excited about it and I love the new rules lay out. If you can just learn one faction and it's synergies you can play well and the core rules are simple. Back in the day I hated anything artistic like the model painting, after all I'm a chemist now. That said I'm really getting into painting my models in dirty dark grey blue models that really lean into that dark, dirty 80s sci-fi fantasy art style. Oh I also had 3 terminators and 3 jump pack guys and a couple random units from my late friends dark angels army that I found and repainted. I'm running them in my army to kinda remember my friend who passed. We used to play 40k before opiates and it's nice to kinda remember those days.
Thanks for sharing that. Sad to hear about your one friend falling in his fight w opiates. Solid that your other friend bought you an army. Cherish ppl like that, they too rare. Good luck to you dude.
Sorry about your friend dude. Glad you have another friend that sounds like a great person.
One thing I'd say in favour of all the strategems, warlord traits and relics is that they (in friendly games) allow your units to feel epic even if they are not top tier unit choices.
If you have a supobtimal, let's say, CSM unit... well, it still gets to use all the strategems, buffs, boosts that the hyperoptimal CSM units can, which opens up the game a lot, makes most models have a chance to do great things... in a friendly setting.
Strategems should just be abilities on the character sheet. Change my mind.
There is one thing that I feel was a severe loss from WH: Fantasy, and 40k 7th edition into AoS and 40k 8th edition, and that was falling back being replaced with battle shock. I feel that the ability to have units completely break and fall back is not only more realistic, but it forces adaptive strategy and is more interesting than just loosing models come battleshock.
I remember playing 2nd Ed. and there being some fairly ridiculous stuff you could do. I know once we did a tower defense sort of mission where we made rules for a fortress (the Ghostbusters fire station toy), and my friend's face when I just ploughed a Rhino full speed into it and a Terminator squad piled out with thunder hammers. He was like "we're gonna rain death down on your lads" - until the sergeant pulled out his single vortex grenade and vapourised the wall. Even worse as luck would have it the vortex moved directly along the length of the wall, took out the lascannon on the side of his parked tank inside, then disappeared.
He was just like "I'm not even mad".
I also made a conversion of Wazdakka Gutsmek. Just the horror on the guys in store's face when they realised I could legit put an Ork in mega armor on a bike with a battlecannon on top.
Ah the vortex grenades, the mix of excitement and nerves when seeing which way it was going to drift 😂
This channel is such a breath of fresh air! Great content, astonishingly good infographics.
I’d love to hear more about the cultural history of GW as they went from grimdark heavy metal satire to a brand with massive high street presence, to a brand that’s starting to move back towards its source material
I always think of an 80's british glam metal band LP cover when I think Warhammer.
3rd - 4th editions are still what I consider the best versions of the game
i agree. pretty streamlined but not too shallow. I have not played an 8th or 9th edition game, however the comparison i hear most about it is that it's 2nd edition that has been streamlined.
It's beyond me why they keep overhaulingnthe core game rules every so often.
Want to balance the game? Change the mini datasheets. Leave the core rules alone
Great material! Exquisite journey through the history of WH rules. Thank you for this.
for me it was 4th and 5th
Speaking about simple rules, I just remembered some rules I found out as I was young: At the start of the 00s a spanish rpg publisher (nosolorol) published a miniature skirmish book called "semper fidelis". it was generic for fantasy, sci fy, you could mix them so you can use your warhammer fantasy miniatures vs your w40k miniatures, it had armies lists with points (some of them adapted from warhammer and warhammer 40k) and all that.
Every miniature had a character sheet. There were only the name, inventory a few stats as percentages: Health, armor, range weapons hability and melee weapons hability. the weapons had a sheet with how many damage they do and range. Every miniature had 5 actions per turn (the same as in X-COM: move, shoot, "wait" [in the middle of the enemy turn you had one action]).
- Movement:
For humans the movement was 5cm for every move action.
- Fight:
If a miniature was able to "see" a enemy, it could shoot (and if it was close, it could do a melee attack). Then you throw your dices for your character hability. If the percentage is lower as what your character has, its a success.
- Damage:
If the hit character has armor, you can throw an armor save. If you had less than the number shown, the armor saved your character and the armor loses 10 points (if armor was 20% and you got 15 in your dices, then you save your character but the armor has now 10%). If not, then the damage is applied to armor first and then life.
For health its very similar. You make a save throw. If you fail the character dies. If you success he lives but life is [weapon damage] less.
Thats all. Bikes and horses move 10cm instead of 5. Tanks had other rules that I forgot. Magic is a weapon type (so a fireball works the same as a pistol). There were also rules for grenates and explosives. It was super easy to adapt this to a dungeon crawler withe chests to improve a character gear and after surviving a game the players could get a new level (+10% health, +10% hability), and you can make games like "these dark eldars found a planet where there are skavens, so now they are fighting in a sewer". And all that in under 100 pages.
After the bloating of w40k my friends and I that started in 1998 with w40k third edition, tried warhammer fantasy and this other rules. And we loved them because as in chess: They are easy to learn but the good thing is that they allow complex strategies. The games with this were very similar to nowadays kill team.
Oh, man I am happy I remembered this. I was searching for those rules but I wasnt able to find them (too old, too niche, in spanish...) But I just found them in boargamegeek. There are the rules in pdf to download. Im doing that right now to remember as I was young 20 years ago. Just search there for "semper fidelis" and check the one where a barbarian is fighting vietnam war GIs comming out of a portal.
As a casual touranemnt player (someone who mostly enjoys tournaments for the chance to meet and play against new people) and someone who just enjoys swinging down to the local club and challenging the people there, I do think that 40k has reached the point where the mental load becomes a bit too much for it to be fun for me. The core rules are, in my opinion, the best they've ever been in 40k's history (and I have played, though not played during, every edition), but GW has shown a lack of restraint when it comes to designing units, armies and also stratagems, making it rather tough to just go up against an army you're not too familiar with, as the entire game can be won or lost on a decisive stratagem or some obscure special rule on some unit.
I would welcome a return of universal special rules, for three reasons. First of it would be easier for me and my opponent to explain what our units do, it would also limit the number of similar variants, that are still different enough that they can't be treated as the same thing and it would also limit what the rules writers can really do, preventing them from complicating things (well, as long as they keep getting told to stick to universal special rules as much as possible). And then avoid USR bloat as well
Very nice analysis. One additional thing to think about when discussing rules bloat IMO is power creep. Like when in Star Trek, every new bad guy had to easily beat down Worf to establish how strong they were. In 40k, seemingly every new addition adds super powerful abillities and weapons - so much so that it invalidates the strength of existing armies. Just my thoughts.
Yeah. agreed. I was trying to keep this just about 'scale of core rules' and had to keep editing this down as other rules stuff kept creeping in! Like how, midway through 5ed, the designers realised walker rules didn't really work and started making walking robots count as Monstrous Creatures, to the point where the two or three models still actually using the Walker rules (Dreadnoughts, War Walkers, Sentinels) just became irrelevant!
@@ArbitorIan Its why I pretty much am sticking with the release 8th ed and just the indices that got released before the codexes. I may get a codex for lore and colour schemes but it was very well balanced at the start, so avoid power creep issues. Plus I don't want to have to buy a load of new stuff to do the current edition every 4ish years.
I’ve not actually played 8th or 9th after being out off the game during 6 and 7 but recently I’ve been tempted to get back in. Enjoying your videos, hope to see many more
9th is super bloat
Late to the conversation, but my take on this is one thing I think they wanted to address in 8th. People want to play the game in different ways. Narritive play doesnt require the same rules and constant meta shifts that competitive play needs.
I think 9th is the golden era of competition play, which is fantastic. My brother has never loved 40k more. But I would love a 'casuals edition' at 8th edition index levels of complexity. So we still get the rules updates that make sense like 2 wound Marines and T5 orks, but don't have the 6 million special rules and power creep that are starting to hit hard like with the new Admech codex.
As someone who started playing in 5th, played a bit of 6th (stopped before 7th) and returned in 9th; I love the simplified core rules set but I HATE stratagems. The worst was (pre-9th codex) when I had to look through multiple books of stratagems to figure out if I had one that was applicable at any given time. Now even with my 9th codex, it's like 4 pages and there's no quick way to determine which ones apply to which units in which phase other than reading the first sentence. Not to mention, it feels like a lot of things that used to be wargear or flat upgrades for points, are now stratagems. I would love for stratagems to either be removed entirely or to be pared back to like a dozen per army TOPS. Great video, Ian!
I started in 3rd edition. and I distinctly remember calling it quits at the start of 6th edition due to how many super heavies and D strength weapons permeated my local GW store. I adored playing the old multi table mega battles at the time (effectively GW stores running narrative open play games). But because I played Inquisition with a supplement of Imperial Guard heavy on infantry. I got really tired of just getting pie plated off the table from the escalation of rule scope.
I swapped over to Fantasy at the tale end of its 6th edition and honest it felt like a breath of fresh air in terms of how much more balanced it felt and its ruleset felt more consistent compared to 40K at the time.
I've recently started to return to 40K and 8th def piqued my interest in simplification of rules. Though I've noticed 9th seems to be getting bloated again with how many stratagems are everywhere.
Great summary as with your other videos. I really appreciate all the effort you go to in researching the background, dates, sources and in the graphics. I made the jump from 2nd to 8th so missed all the fun in between. I’ve been enjoying 8th and 9th though. Will be interesting to see how they develop it and whether they move to something else or keep the base system static for a while. Thanks again!
This is exactly the kind of content I'm looking for! I'm getting back into WH for the first time since WH40K RT & 2nd Edition and I am fascinated by the changes that have occurred since I've been out. After learning the basics of 9th I decided to look up earlier editions and my mind was blown by how things have ebbed & flowed. Going to your patreon right now!
I played 3rd in High School alot my group all dropped out about same time before 4th, then when I came back later a glance at the new books put me off getting back into it. Happy to hear it's been streamlimed again.
As someone who played at tournament level largely during 4th to 5th edition (3rd was when I started but I was pre-teen at the time so was mostly casual), this is a great explanation of what I was feeling when 6th started to really stretch the rules to breaking point.
I droppeb out halfway through 2nd until a year ago, so this is well handy. you can tell you've written guides,your videos are really clear and concise and enjoyable to watch, nice one.
Another awesome video, congrats dude!!
This video has so much relevance right now as we head into 10th edition. It popped up in my UA-cam feed and I hope it does for other people too. Your explanation of the path of the game is great and it will be curious to see what complexity trap we fall into in 10tb.
12:15 I can't disagree more with that, and I think time proved me right.
One thing that the game lost with the removal of templates (and armor facing for vehicles) is the EXTREMELY important positioning any good wargame should have.
Without it your vehicles can just moonwalk around and shoot from their back with all their front facing guns and your troops will only care about line of sight and distance between points. We totally lost the formation aspect of the game, or rather, we lost any punishment for just blobing all your troop around a aura giver, which lead to the cancerous (and still ever present) deathstar and castling syndrome the game is now glued in.
We lost both in realism, flavor, and actual strategical depth, and all that for what? To remove the grossly exaggerated few argument the templates could bring when it came to knowing what was or not under it.... as if the current aura, "within" and "wholly withing" rules we still have today didn't have the EXACT same problem.
No, 8th (and 9th) are not better than 3rd style edition, because they cut what was actually part of the essential building blocks of a wargame (formation and positioning) under the pretense of simplifying the game, but then put in place a WAY more complicated and heavy system with the stratagems.
3rd edition has three phases per turn. THREE. Every model falls into a category for movement, which means you can easily see how much range a model has. Threat assessment is very easy because of this.
I quit after 6th edition came out. Played a few games with it, but there was so much RNG involved, planning moves became unnecessarily difficult. I remember having three units ready to assault the same enemy, but I rolled 5" inch or lower for all three and failed to get into close combat. Under the older rules, I needed to be within 6", which I was, but now I got f'ed by dice rolls. It felt like losing against the rules, not against my opponent.
Wow! Look at that subscriber count! Well done! Lovin' the content thus far. Keep it up.
"Ugh. Stratagems" Couldn't agree more.
These videos are great. I look forward to when this channel blows up. Think you'd ever do a T'au video? Specifically, their release in 2001, the fan reactions, GW's response to same, their current disuse, etc? I know T'au are generally unpopular, but they have so much untapped potential.
Yeah, maybe. I think one of the issues with doing a video about Tau is that they haven't really changed that much since release - a bit like Necrons. Their rules have changed a bit, but the models and concept are mostly the same. I think maybe a 'new factions of 3ed' video might be interesting, though, because Tau, Necrons and Dark Eldar were all introduced within a few years of each other, and very few new factions have been introduced before or since.
Whats strange is that I have now played 4th edition a lot... and....... Its fun. It looks complex, and it seems obtuse at first (in terms of organization on where things are placed in the rule books.)
And its... FUN! :0
It has been an absolute blast playing!!
I think the more simple Warhammer tries to be... The honest- the worse it has been to play. 10th is.... EEeehhhh??? 9th was- my first edition, but was still very confusing.
And when you list out all the different "you shoot. if you have blast weapons, then you do these steps. and then these steps." It sounds WAY more complex than it actually is to play.
It took me and my buddy literally yesterday, like- 3 hours? and it was a blast!!
But then 8th, 9th, and 10th, and it was... Remember all of these rules on your models data card. Remember all your weapons' special rules. Remember x, y, z. And it- LOOKS deceptively simple. But its so confusing, and frustrating to play.
All this bloat is the reason i love Warcry so much. Such a simple ruleset means you can concentrate on what you're doing in the game.
Great video - i stopped playing during 2nd edition and started again during 7th, so this is a really helpfull explained for what the F happened in the interim
Wow. Jumping straight in at 7ed must have been.....a lot!
Emprah bless you for for those cheat sheets!
Ha! No worries - I mostly made them for myself at first, but then it turned out to be so useful that it became this big thing that everyone was contributing to for years. I remember being in LA and playing a game at the old Frontline Gaming and some hobby-aid manufacturers turned up with a goodie bag when they realised I'd written them, just as a thankyou for making their life easier! Wish I could remember who it was, but the community can be a really heartwarming place to be sometimes!
Update this video! New video even! With 9th retrospective + looking into 10th ed! (Maybe wait till we have more concrete 10th info?) but yeah would absolutely love to hear your take on where the entire span of 9th fits into the context of 3rd-8th eds with 10th on the horizon.
Cheers!
13:13 this graphic is amazing.
Fantastic video.
Fab explanation!
Took a break after 3rd and came back to the mess of 7th. 8th is nicely streamlined and seems smooth. (Cant comment on 9th).
For me, my fave RPG is 1st ed, narrative battle is 3rd and mass battle is 8th and i still play them all with great gusto!
And all of this insanity is why One Page Rules exists!
Ooh I'd not seen OPR before, I love it! Looks chill and friendly :)
I mainly focus on their one-offs, but yeah, they're really cool
Came here to say this. Fantastic rules.
@@proto303 what are their one-offs?
@@jmalkvideos they’re in the one-off games tab on their website. Mainly just smaller games, adaptions of other, more niche games (like a more accessible adaption of little wars, the first ever tabletop war game and a favorite hobby of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing) or more experimental stuff, like a one page ttrpg or a war game without any rules for distances
Me and my friends got in fresh in 8th edition and we've never touched stratigums or warlord gear. We still enjoy the game.
You nailed it with the concept of mental load - bloat - in 9th. Horus Heresy returned at exactly the right time for players feeling fatigue from Combohammer. Cutting CP doesn’t reduce the load of stratgems, it just sharpens their economy.
An interesting and well executed video. I've always had this issue with any of GW's tabletop games, as someone with dyslexia large rule books that start to become more and more convoluted and drag on and on really put me off. Typically I just get frustrated reading them, not understanding going back reading again, getting half way through, forgetting what something means and having to again go back and check just make the whole experience very joyless. I used to be able to steal the use of my brothers far more rule oriented brain and he was the de facto DM for most games of this style (although its likely we made many, many mistakes), sadly growing up and moving from home has left me to try and figure it out with my lackluster memory. I was recently making a Necromunda gang and to be honest I just found the experience annoying. Buuut that could just be me and my brain.
great video dude, really enjoy your presentation and subject depth. Liked and subbed! look forward to more!
Awesome video. This is very important that many people overlook. Keep up the good work.
I recently got out my old guard and discovered that what had been 1750 points in forth/fifth was now just a hair over 1000 points.
I remember playing the Dark Angels at a time where you were playing extra points for their stupid blood lineage negative bonus. Games Workshops has been playing the Adeptus Administratum for so many years
Great video!
Been playing 40k since second edition, stopped with 8th. The while Strategems really ruined the experience for me. It turned the game from a battle between players and their skill+luck, to who has access to the better unique rule.
I still play 3rd edition from time to time, mainly stick the lists in the back of the main rule book. Really find the penalties to moving with a Rapid Fire weapon add a great layer of tactical nuance to the system.
Rumour has it that Andy Chambers who helped write 3rd edition, wanted 4th edition to be a whole different game. GW didn't want that, so he worked briefly with Mongoose Publishing and made the phenomenal Starship Troopers The Miniatures game.
That all being said, I think that Grimdark Future by One Page Rules (got a few videos of their games on my channel) are where it is at.
Love your videos, i used to play a lot competively in five edition, with six and all the supplement and extra books i felt Lost and left the game. I'm back now in nine and i'm enjoying It a lot!
Great analysis for sure! Have been around since 2nd ed and left at 7th. Missed 8 and picked up 9th again, but am starting to veer towards one page rules. The issue of bloat in 8th and 9th I feel is less mental burden and more prohibitive in cost now. The game is just less than a year old now but we are already back up to multiple books for the same armies already with codexes, supplements and field manual FAQ updates that mess with points in the other books. While this won't affect all games (especially if you're not a tourney player) there is pressure to "keep up" just to try and be accurate for points. The cost of these books is also prohibitive - it almost feels like a paper subscription system to be honest and I'm having to bow out again due to not having the disposable income. I totally admit I don't have to use all the books and am taking the choice to say no, but it's certainly annoying when books you have paid the money for are partially invalidated a couple of months after (especially with costs being what they are in Australia).
The shift to 3rd from second felt so watered down and 2nd edition might be my favourite rules set to this day with 8th edition coming in a close 2nd place. I haven't attempted 9th, I tried to recreate a couple of 8th edition lists to run in 9th and couldn't as the rules and weapons options had changed so I haven't bothered. If I do start playing again, I would like to develop 8th edition out more. Give Terminator Armour the 3+ on 2D6 like back in 2nd edition; I played my mates 2k Deathwing army using 2nd terminator save throw but dropping the wounds down to 1 and it was a really awesome game, I still won a bit too easily so I really want to try again at full wound capacity. The loss of a terminator should feel like an epic event.
I will say though that the shift from 2nd edition to 3rd edition allowed tournament play to be a thing and that is where 40k really took off. I've played in a few tournaments over the years but my preferred play style is a game that takes an entire afternoon.
The very first 3rd edition was playable with just the main book. They had the entire army lists printed in it, you could get some terrain and a few models and be ready to go.
Armour reduction sounds neat. Marine 3+ power armour drops down once you start shooting them with heavy bolters and autocannons. And how vehicles can explode from a lucky hit, instead of having a mountain of Wounds.
We did not have fun calculating who can hit who even in brawls between five orks in Gormakorka.
@@SusCalvin Perhaps if it was your first edition. The shift between 2nd to 3rd was very jarring as it was a complete overhaul. Everything felt watered down.
@@aarondunn6759 Fighting an assault with just a handful of orks in Gorkamorka was a lot of work. I think those rules work better at that sort of skirmish level but not if 10 blokes with jetpacks are charging into 20 orks and you need to constantly figure out who is hitting who.
@@SusCalvin I never played Gorkamorka so I have no opinion on it.
@@aarondunn6759 Necromunda and later Gorkamorka kept a lot of the 2nd ed rules but toned it down to a skirmish game. Close combat, armour, weapons, cover etc work similarly but it's a skirmish between two gangs/mobs of a half-dozen models instead of two armies.
Only problem with your channel is I've already seen every video XD
Seriously quality videos keep it going!!
As someone who has been around since 2nd Ed 40K but haven’t played much because of rules bloat this was refreshing to watch. Stratagems we’re/are a shit system to introduce into a game that’s meant to be tactical NOT strategic. Its supposed to be about rushing to cover popping up blasting the enemies then making a lucky dice roll, not painting my army a specific color stacking complimentary strategem cards and face rolling little kids down at the FLGS.
Update this video soon please. Curious to hear your take on 10th
I played 3rd to 9th Edition and for me 7th Edition was the best one. The USR was very useful and the thousands of rule errors from 6th were cleaned up. The main problem was the formations, detachments and combination of Rulebook+Codex+Supplement+Campaign rules for certain armies which created ridiculous violence spirals.
But the moment 8th came out everyone thought this would be the saviour of 40k but practically i must say i never saw so many friends and people i know leave 40k before in all these years and i blame the game system mainly for it. The modern 40k rules lack any soul in my oppinion and 7th was the epitome of 3rd-6th but Rogue Trader and 2nd had definitely more of a feel of "rules made to represent the models". Unlike 8th and 9th were everything feels like "models which represent the rules".
The tactical depth of modern 40k is pathetic to say the least and i have played it on national and European Tournaments. Its more of a Dicehammer then anything else and games like Star Wars Legion are much better at conveying rules, which represent the fluff and the spirit of the models and their background.
40k has become mostly dice rolling with some fancy miniatures being positioned in such a way as the rules make sense. Noone can explain to me, that a Baneblade shoots all of its weapons by looking from its leftmost antenna 60" over the battlefield unto the other side of the map first turn and exterminates a full unit that was hiding from an Alpha Strike, just because the Antenna can see a tiny part of a single base through a small crack between two plastic walls which werent glued correctly.
It might be streamlined rules which simplify the process, but for me its like a body without a soul: dead.
To me 7th edition was almost unplayable bad. Renember decution and riptide formations? Chapter master smashfukker? The flying circus? Do you remeber how broken summoning was, and how every faction could summon demons, including imperial factions? Do you remember how broken invisibility was? And do you remember how many games was decided when rolling for psychic powers?
@@PepsiMagt Yes you are right but most of this (except Psychic Shriek or Invisibility) are not Basic Rule Book.
The problem was, as you summed it up, the Codexes, Supplements, Campaign Books which felt like the arms race between USA and USSR.
But the basic rules were much better then any other edition of 40k in my oppinion.
And looking at the current escalation of power and how many books you need to play an army i feel like this edition is even worse then 7th.
After having had 9th edition around for a year now, I fear that we actually may have arrived at a quasi-7th edition situation already. The difference being that we don't necessarily have bloated core rules as much as a bloated army level. Especially now with Auras and certain rules affecting only units with certain keywords. In this respect, 9th edition 40k feels like the worst version of Warmachine/Hordes at the end of its 2nd iteration. Also, while many 8th edition codices are still in effect, some 9th edition codices already have 1 or even 2 additional publications with supplemental rules (Adeptus Mechanicus being the worst offender here). Man, 9th edition is only 1 year young and I'm already eyeing my 4th edition 40k rulebook and OnePageRules with longing.
Came here to say this - the rapid release of documents in 8th and 9th has accelerated us to a place of severe bloat at a surprising speed. After a few months off it, I find myself not really wanting to play 9th because of all the stuff I'm going to have to remember. Litanies, auras, traits, prayers, relics, stratagems - and that's before even thinking about all the special rules actually on the datasheets themselves. So many things in this game can do so unique actions that the first few times you play against any given army, so much of it feels like gotcha moments.
At this point, the 7th Ed in Horus Heresy feels much simpler to me than 9th 40K.
i literally am setting up a 5th ed game between my chaos nurgle and imperial guard because i cannot keep up with all the extra rules and abilities, i also play grimdark which is like 4/5th ed with alternating activations and it has much more paid content to make the game more robust if thats your thing.
I started playing 40k when I bought the 2nd edition Dark Angels codex when it came out in 1996-ish? Took a break at the start of 5th edition and just recently came back to the game in 9th, and am working on a pure Deathwing Terminators army! Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
I love when you do this kind of retrospectives, thanks
Nice one, this has filled in a few gaps for me, having missed out 3rd-8th. Getting back into the hobby right now is great.
Interesting timing for me to come across this video having just watched some batreps with new Ad mech and Sisters codexes, both of which from the looks of it are absolutely loaded with rules to forget, misinterpret or otherwise spend forever looking up and trying to remember instead of actually playing the game. It's like they're going out of their way to undo all the good work they did with 8th simplifying things...
Great video!
I feel that current 40k is a really enjoyable game, where you can play rather than try to remember and double check every 10 minutes how that rule works.
There has been simplification and there are some ideas from previous editions that I would like to see coming back (rear armour on vehicles giving +1 to wound, for example), but overall its in a really good position.
Its is true that warlord traits and relics can be a bit too much (specially since a lot of them are just worse than others and just fill the page with words), but since you just have to deal with the ones selected during the match, is not that bad.
For the stratagems, maybe we could select a limited pool of them at the begining of the match, depending on game size, and spending CP to been able to choose more of them. Similar to how psykers work. Armies like space marines just have soo many that it can get ridiculous
I loved this video. I started playing in 90s in middle school with a Rogue Trader book and played every edition. With a heavy focus from 2000-2012. I made it a goal to play at least a handful of games in 6-8th, and am now returning by this summer to learning 9th and the combo focus really blew me away. Before I could have 4-5 2K point armies and switch them out to play and currently I really have to just focus on one army for how much I play because the strategims and combos require sooo much research and memory. So interesting how I use to collect an play half a dozen armies for fun over the year and now deciding the game really encourages me to just focus on learning one well. As player of the game for a few decades, loved this video.
This is a big reason why I've always been into the world of 40k but Battletech has been what i fond more fun on TT
I keep an eye out for videos like this as some one who’s working on his own tabletop skirmish/war game it easy to read the rules and think ok that works but I always tend to not think about rule bloat.
I also came to the game in the late 2nd and early 3rd edition stage. It was lovely, all throughout and including 5th edition. 4th is probably my favourite, especially because I really dig the terrain rules from that time. Then uni came along, and that, in connection with the ridiculousness of 6th and 7th edition, made lose interest in the game for around 7 years. And then 8th came along, and it felt like 3rd all over again. Brilliantly easy to get into, while at the same time incorporating pretty much everything that came before rather smoothly, even though I miss the tactical dimension of vehicle armour values (trying to get behind tanks was a a fun challenge in and of itself in the ancient times).
Current 40k with its stratagems is something I'm not fully behind, but maybe that's more a thing of practice. It's one of those "power to the players" design choices that benefit players for knowing what to do in the right moment, which is a good thing, at least on paper. And I also love the fact that GW really learned how to make each army feel as they are described in the lore, especially with the 9th edition codexes. However, I'm right there with you, as that creates a potential monstrosity of interlocking and synergising rules you need to keep in mind. I really hope they don't take it farther than they have until now, as that could easily break handling the game for casual players (like me, to be honest).
I think 8th and 9th have way more mental load like you said at the army level, i like to build a list to its full potential without spamming. I think its easier to keep one large main rule set straight rather than tons of unique army specific rules. nobody likes it when their opponent teaches them about their army specific rules by housing you with them! lol great video!
The loss of granularity IS a thing. See morale, as an example. Also, I find there is a certain intellectual dishonesty on the designer's part. Creating a skeleton of a base system with glaring "holes" then bolt on specific bespoke rules for each unit is not efficient.
And oh - there is also a lack of granularity in decision making, say move or shoot for heavies, which had bolted on directly rerolls (to "fix" snapshots even if it wasn't necessary) or indirectly with stratagems which are closer to a card game concept.
Fully agree with your thoughts on each edition. I painted as a kid back in 3rd. Tried to put some armies together and wrap my head around the rules right around the launch of 7th, but quickly gave up. Have found the current set (no hull points, blast markers etc) waaaay more straight forward.
I've even had a few very small games with my 4 year old and watch battle reports from play on tabletop as entertainment.
A truly good analysis, it clarified many things I hadn't fully realized before. Also, it matches almost perfectly what happened to me: started with 3rd edition and enjoyed it a lot, grown increasingly frustrated from the overbloat of rules, seriously considered stop playing with 7th edition, started again with 8th and enjoyed it again. My main issues, rather than the rule set, is with GW's policies, expecially with the prices ones and all that comes with them. But minis and setting are still good, not to mention I still enjoy playing with my group of friends, so all in all I still keep on playing.
Would be curious to test Grimdark Future though, I've heard good things about it and, from a quick read to free basic rules on their site, it seems an interesting rule set.
Really good video, I enjoyed the 8th edition games I've played much more than the 4th edition ones I've had, hopefully when I do get a chance to play 9th it will be fun too!
Thanks for the deep dive! As someone who started playing in 8th, I love hearing the horror stories of past editions.
Nice Video, putting the finger on something i felt was there but couldnt really voice. I started playing in 6th and it was a nightmare. In our group of friends (we were around eight to ten ppl) only two had memorized a significant amount of the rules, so anytime they werent present we had to look up so much stuff the games got really long.
This was a cracking explanation, the chart really helped too
Would be interesting to hear your take on this matter in 9th edition - now over 18 months later.
You talk about how difficult it was to keep track of this stuff. It wasn't that bad at all.
Got interested in 40k around 2010 my dad found the ultramarines movie in a bargain bin, I was at a lost after watching the movie it keep using terms and phrases that weren't explained in the movie.
I found the setting fascinating like there was more to it that was either cut or left out because it was based on something that fans wouldn't need explained to them.
Then I started looking around for more info and I found the Dawn of War RTS, and wow a movie I thought was some indie film or a reboot of a forgotten IP had a huge amount of content and was still going got me into Warhammer.
Never played any of the tabletops the local tabletop scene was non existent, at most I would get a Yu-gi-oh game or a board game and when most of my gaming group entered their twenties, they either dropped gaming to start families or went purely digital.
For years my 40k tabletop experience was just being a spectator watching bat reps and I'm glad that was it in hindsight looking back at all the rules and models that have come and gone, I'm glad I didn't get into 6th right when 7th came out or get into 7th when 8th came out. I never had to worry about having a sub par army or having to replace old rules or having no new rules(armies I was interested in were Astral claws, Death Korps, Eldar corsairs and Orks.)
I wished I could've play the skirmish games like Necromunda and Gorkamorka when I was younger and had more free time and friends who were still interested in playing non video games, still watching bat reps might get into the table top scene online, but work and all that.
This has been a neat listen as someone who designs rules for my own games and as someone who has just started 40k this year. Without my relentless love of rules and friends that are almost as keen as I am to know what's going on I would have a really hard time ever playing a game like 40k. But it does sound and feel like I've chosen a good time to get into it
At about 13:11, you make a point of saying that additional army rules aren't a big deal for most players. I agree in principle. Most people aren't going to be playing against these armies, but oftentimes not knowing about a particular stratagem can dramatically change tactical decisionmaking. A lot of flavor is built around comboing stratagems from these army books and army rules that outright create exceptions to the core systems. Take the Red Corsairs, for example. They have a special army rule that allows them to advance and charge. Common and flavorful, and something you'd be pretty upfront about at the beginning of a game. Now imagine that it's turn three, the Corsair player's Chaos Marine squad has two models left and their opponent had decided to ignore the squad in their previous shooting phase. The Corsairs player then tells his opponent about a stratagem called "More Where They Came From" and that he can redeploy that CSM squad at full strength within 6" of a board edge. I don't think the stratagem is all that unbalanced, but it sucks something awful when you make a tactical decision and your opponent pulls what feels like a gotcha out of his ass.
The problem I find with a lot of army design in 9th now is that they're built around army rules that make blatant exceptions to the core rules and combo-building stratagems which are most effective when your opponent doesn't know about them. I agree that it's not exactly a problem from a rules-design standpoint, but from a gameplay-experience standpoint getting surprised by unexpected stratagems just feels like shit. As a casual player without any close friends who play the game, I never feel like I really know what my opponent's army is going to be capable of and it just pushes me away from wanting to play.
Yup. These videos are great. Its official. Now i have to 100% push these videos in other comment sections to ensure Ian overtakes those mincraft turds. Society won't ever change without effort. UA-cam's algorithm is not functioning as advertised so we need to make an effort to spread the word.
My introduction to the game was 5th edition. That was the first game I played. After that game, 6th came out, and that was where I played most of my games. I took an unplanned break through almost all of 7th (and jeez, and I glad I did), so coming back to 8th was an absolute breath of fresh air. I love that if I don't need to know it, I don't, and my opponent brings it up when necessary. I'll then do a bit of research after the game, learn the basics of that army, and then I'm done, I don't need to study for hours before a game.
There's no way 8th & 9th are less complex than 3rd & 4th. Stratagems, Command Traits, and having to have wound counters on everything makes the game far more taxing. Not to mention in 9th that Terrain Keywords (FML). I'll keep playing modified 3rd forever while the 9th ruleset is out.
I loved 2nd edition. So much more character than 3rd. I remember when 3rd edition came out. My friends and I never really bothered to move on and I’ve not played since.
3rd kinda killed the game for me. suddenly my 2500 points of Orks, no longer exist. i didnt even look at the hobby again until 8th
I've only played 3rd, but aomething about 2nd always seemed magical. Recently bought a bunch of old school models and rule books.
Third was awesome! I played three or four games of 2nd, which I loved. But 3rd was smooth.
Same for me, 2nd edition was a masterpiece and I stopped the hobby at 3rd edition.
Great video! I got into GW in the early 90s and had the 2nd Ed box, but I was always more interested in the minis and painting side of things, and only recall playing a few simplified games. I dropped out of the hobby before 3rd Ed came out and got back into it with the launch of 9th, so it's interesting to see what happened in between. The core rules/basic machanics are straighforward enough, and the variety of armies and units (and therefore miniatures) is probably the main appeal of 40k for me, but, putting aside the variations within factions (e.g. dynasties, plagues companies etc), the abilities, detachment abilities, auras, stratagems, battle-round-based changes (e.g. Command Protocols), that come with it are making me wonder if I've chosen the wrong game. Gonna stick with 500-1000pt games I think!
8 sides of A4?! And that's condensed?!
I remember 3rd Ed came with reference sheets in the starter box that were double sided and that was everything you needed!
Yikes on several bikes...
YEP. The entire 8ed Core Rules were shorter than my 7ed Reference sheets!!
8th ed was exactly what the game needed.
Same as AoS core rules, but lessons learned on implementation.
I got into 40K 2nd edition and it was insanely complicated. Then got back into it in 5th but couldn’t really keep up. I’m glad they made the rules more streamlined in 8th but wish they didn’t have to have so many special rules for each faction.
I'm a former Shadowrun GM, and this reminds me of that so much. Keeping track of combat when you had people shooting at each other, plus a Decker hacking into the opposition, plus a Rigger using drones or a vehicle was..... mind-melting.
Great break down my sentiments exactly. I deal with strategems by pretending they don't exist lol. They are just another phase of the game you can ignore and still get a fun time in.
I really think this is what they should have done with Open War. Make a 'basic' set of rules - standard six missions, maelstrom cards, only war cards, build armies using any system, no secondaries, no stratagems, etc. Then really push this as 'standard 40k', pitched as a quick way to set up a fair game with some tactics (rather than the current throwaway 'do whatever you like'). Then market Crusade and Matched Play as 'expansions' or 'advanced' games.
At the moment, we can all play without stratagems and secondaries, but finding players to do that is hard as it's not pushed as the norm.
This is one of the reasons I started with warmachine and hordes. Back then, it was the easier to get into game, better player base where I started war gaming, and more affordable.
This perfectly sums up the issues I had with trying to get into the new necromunda. Too many new rules and books. Badly organised books with rules all over the place. In the old necromunda all the weapons for whichever gang were largely the same in the new one each gang gets its own gang specific weapons. My friend and I found that we spent more time flicking back and forth trying to find rules and weapon profiles etc than actually playing the game which sucked all the enjoyment out of it and ultimately led to us selling up. ☹️
I was tempted to comment before the end of the video, just to vent. Having watched til the end, I can now confidently disagree with your conclusion =)
Frame of reference: I was introduced to the game in 3rd, really got started in 4th, played through 5th and 6th, sold most of my stuff off in the beginning of 7th for far better alternatives back then, dipped a toe back in during index 8th and then kept my two small forces even though I stopped playing when 8th codices caught up with those. I tried 9th, briefly.
Imo, lots of your points make sense, but I draw a completely different conclusion, because after 3rd you left out each editions codices in your analysis. 4th and 5th practiced effective streamlining, making the game less clunky and really leaned on the USRs. Sure, there were more core rules than in 8th or 9th, but they were there for everyone. Every player needed to follow those core rules and once you used the relevant sequence of events, it wasn’t hard to get familiar with them. It’s not like roll to hit, wound and save are tough mechanics and the tables can be put on a cheat sheet. Me and my group had them memorised, because they were built with a certain logic. Unit entries then only brought their profile, a set of USRs that everyone used and a rule or 2, that was archetypical to that unit. When you played against a new opponent, he could tell you „my Hormagaunts have fleet“ or „these troops get feel no pain“ and you‘d get a gist of their force.
Nowadays every single unit needs to have bespoke special rules, that may be similar but slightly different to those of other units or other factions, just to add some of that granularity back into the game, that was dumbed down hard to „make it simpler“. What’s even worse, is that many of these special rules are not even there all of the time, but need to be triggered by stratagems. You can play 5 times against the same opponent, maybe learn his force enough that you think you know how they work and Boom! A unit does something completely new thanks to the magic of a card he never used before.
I miss 5th ed. Much less bloat in the codices, no flyers and heavy vehicles and stuff to worry about. I especially miss the „complicated“ rules for vehicles. It’s so dumb to kill a landraider with a bolt gun. It’s even dumber, that my flimsy dark eldar paper planes can’t be shot down with a lascannon.
I could play 4th and 5th ed without ever picking up a single book, I knew my profiles, the core rules and all my USRs, even the vehicle damage tables were saved up there after a handful of games.
I haven’t played a single turn of 8th or 9th ed _without_ picking up the codex or the stratagem cards. I can’t even begin to learn the same for my regular opponent’s forces, nevermind other forces in the game I might encounter in a store.
That’s why I play middle earth strategy battle game nowadays. Sure, the miniatures are lacking to some degree, but the rules are much, much better, imo. You know why? The rules manual is a big fat tome. Everyone plays with the same core rules. They are complex at first, until you understood, what the point of a certain rule is. Then they become quite intuitive. Models have a profile, a handful of USRs and 1 or 2 special rules, that really define said unit. The game is full of character and tactical decisions, that your opponent can try and guess in order to be a step ahead of you. Unlike 40k, where you just stand opposite each other and see who can roll dice better. Guess what, he who has the most OP codex does.
It makes me sad everytime I think about, because I thoroughly enjoy 40k. Just not the game at the moment.
I‘m in the process of making my own 5th edition, incorporating some of the cooler ideas of younger versions. =)
Hey Daniel, are you over on dakkadakka? You should check out ProHammer Classic which is a sort of "improved" 5th edition.
I didnt Like the transition to 3rd Edition, it made sense rules complexity wise but gw also changed pricing at that time and changed minimum amount of models in a unit to sell more. But yes 2nd Ed Was great fluffwise, but if the one dude wasnt there who had All the rules you were fucked
You could play 3rd edition right out of the core book. GW printed early army lists for most factions in the game. You get no sub-factions (no Marine chapters, unless you count "call your chaplains wolf priests" a chapter) and some relatively small factions are missing (Harlequins, genestealer cults). But you can get a few models together and play a full game with only that book.
The basic rules for 3rd ed are pretty simple. No special cases stacked on top of special cases with characters and units bringing their own special rules yet.
Gonna add another suggestion to try one of the versions of Grimdark Future. The basic rules are simple and easy to pick up, and there's a lot less dice rolling and games getting drawn out due to 3+ levels of saves keeping models on the far longer than they probably should.
I basically haven't played 40k for about 20 years since I was a kid, and I picked up the Indomitus box with the intention of getting back into a bit of painting and playing. It seems I chose a good moment to do so!