"Best version of Warhammer 40k ever?" Topic

Rogue Trader
2nd Edition (including various WD articles and compilation books)
3rd Ed
4th Ed
5th Ed
6th Ed
Never liked any of them
Never played it.

Me? I'd be stuck b/t 3nd and 3rd Ed. but if forced to choose the 3rd.

Thanks for any input.

Rogue Trader

Rogue Trader was the only version worthy of mention.

2nd ed

I think my friends and I had the most fun playing 2nd edition. The scenarios I devised were loads of fun, close combat wasn't the be all end all it seems to be now, and we just had a blast in general. The minis released in 2nd edition were an all time low for quality and cartoonishness though.

Rogue Trader has a special place in my heart, although now that I'm reading back through it all it certainly is overly complicated- especially when you factor in the Compendium, Compilation, and Battle Book (does anyone remember that terrible vehicle hit system with a grid/template for each vehicle? YUCK!).

I'm sort of partial to the alternate universe version, in which Rick Priestley took up remote control aircraft in 1986. He woke up one morning thinking, "In the grim darkness… hey, a P-51D--cool!"

Allen

Rogue Trader with a leaning toward 2nd Edition.

Jeff

Rogue Trader

no such thing

Rogue Trader.
Some of the rules changes in 2nd make sense/are more playable… but all in all Rogue Trader still has the most wide open potential. The later versions feel like wearing an official GW corset.

Someone go start a similar poll about Warhammer Fantasy… I've never played that and have no opinion… but always wondered if some old version from the Wayback might suit me.

Its like asking which kind of game do you prefer: RPG or Table top game with super heroes or tabletop game which emphasizes building the cheesiest army with the newest codex? I guess I'd go with Rogue Trader because it has the least "cheese" without all of the extra stuff added in.

3rd edition, but that was the only one I ever really played

Rogue Trader absolutely sucked as a set of rules. What it had going for it now is nostalgia, plus a boatload of really whacky, fun, and interesting stuff. Plus it was my gateway drug, so it will always have a place in my heart.

But to be honest, after it was all said and done, I didn't ever really PLAY it that much.

I didn't really play 40k much until 3rd edition. I muddled my way through 2nd and 3rd and enjoyed the fluff, the models and the hobby, but again, I still didn't really PLAY that much. Though the psychic powers with the card game within the game was fun.

And who could dislike Orks on hoverboards with chainswords and biker squats on trikes?

3rd got me playing a lot more and I would have described it as more of a time when it was a complete hobby for me. There were things I didn't like about it and today, I simply don't play 40k at all now that I'm into historicals, but I gotta say, 3rd got the models on the table for me and a lot of my friends. It was much better when it was stripped down on release of 3rd. Plus fluff wise, it had gone back to the darker, gloomier, goth appeal it first had (and then some).

Today, I just see 40k as a copy of a copy of a caricature of itself. Plus skulls. Lots and lots of skulls.

It's hard for me to take seriously. But that's just my opinion as an older gamer than I once was.

I still feel that anyone that claims to have actually enjoyed actually playing, as in rolling the dice and going through the motions of resolving play, with Rogue Trader is either lying to be elitist or blinded by nostalgia.

:) Big Evil Grin…

2nd edition. Rogue Trader was too detailed for a sizable wargame and 3rd began the dumbbing down of 40k. 2nd edition was juuuuuuust right.

2nd for me. 3rd killed the game, and I sold everything. I've recently been given an army for whatever edition we are up to now. I've had a couple of games and it is far better than it was in 3rd, but still nowhere near as much fun as 2nd was.

Rouge Trader

The one with the Fatmarines patrolling the mean streets looking for graffitti artists. i.e. Rogue Trader.

2nd was the one that got me started.

I started with 2nd and thought that was fun but thought the game was VASTLY improved by 3rd edition. No longer was some tricked-out, cheesy character going to walk all over the other side and kill every last model they had, lascannon shots all bouncing off of him and everything.

It made it into more of a wargame and less of a skirmish hero hammer game.

Laserburn

Laserburn

2nd ed. Edition I played most and ad the most fun with. Plus, it begat Necromunda, which is a good time in its own right.

Can I suggest removing the "Never liked any of them" option.

Whenever this features in polls it always seems to lead to people posting to complain about the particular rule system/figures etc which isn't the point of the poll.
[and lets face it…certain people here don't need much of an excuse to whinge about GW ]

Presumably if you don't like any of them you won't want to participate in the poll??

Rogue Trader.

I played through 2nd ed too, though I wasn't keen on some aspects of it (characters and vehicles especially). The rules were certainly slicker in places than RT and better geared towards mass battles, but that doesn't really appeal to me because I think that mass battles are inappropriate for the context (you can imagine how much I appreciate the crammed tabletops of current 40k).

3rd ed was appalling, it absolutely killed any interest I had in keeping up with new editions of 40k and was what drove me back to Rogue Trader. So I guess I owe 3rd ed a vote of thanks for that.

Laserburn Imperial Commander.

Rogue Trader!
Although the 2nd still has something good.

I can't understand why GW semplifies so much its games.
To have more teens playing 'em?

When I bought RT and WFB 1st I was a teen and I enjoyed both much more.

RRR

2nd!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!! !!!!! !!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!! !! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! jammed.

toss between 3rd and 4th. 2nd was more hero-hammer, and with dark millenium, became a game of Magic. Wasnt a real fan of 2nd, except for the fluff.

another vote for Rouge….:-)

I came into the game with Second Edition. We had a lot of fun with it but the overpowered characters eventually killed our enthusiasm. When Third came out we all jumped in again full force and had a lot of fun. I've played every version since and had good games, but playing historicals took me away and I've never really gone back too often. I still love the models, though.

Rogue Trader

For those of you who said Rogue Trader: What are your real reasons? (if you don't mind me asking)

Is it the rules, nostalgia, the fluff, dislike of GW today compared to then?

I really am curious. Don't get me wrong, I look back fondly on those early days of gaming 40k…but it wasn't because of the rules.

The current version is the strongest version rules wise.

Rogue Trader is a great book. It is still fun to sit down and read. It is the only set of 40k only rules for which that is the case. (3rd ed. Fantasy and Realms of Chaos are also still great reads.) But it had more in common with RPGs then wargames and with more then just a few figures it becomes unplayable. We tried playing it again a few years ago and as Iron Ivan Keith said, it sucked. Rogue Trader's place now is on the bookself. Oh, and don't get me started on R.T.'s vehicle supplement, what were they thinking!?

5th PLUS Apocalypse or Planetstrike

Much more fun with others. I don't mind 5ths tournament style but the big battles and objective battles are always the best.

I like Rogue Trader best for several reasons…
First, the scale of it seems a lot smaller… we've never tried to play HUGE armies with it. It feels closer to an RPG for me… what with all the funky details.
It also seems to invite cobbling together whatever forces you like… using odd beasties… space pirates… cthulhuoid entities. It's wide open.

I actually like the use of a GM to adjudicate the scenario and environment of the battle.

The rules ARE clunky/chunky… seem to invite tinkering… and get help by bringing in stuff from 2nd… but at the same time they're lacking in the gawdawful homogenization for the sake of 'tournaments' that later editions succumbed to. I like that it doesn't really have army lists and codexes telling you exactly what you're 'allowed' to be fielding.
I have no intention of playing in friggin' tournaments and tend to dislike games that focus on that sort of thing.

Yes, it's kind of a clusterpoo of rules compared to newer versions… and that's part of the appeal I think… and maybe there is a bit of nostalgia involved, which ain't a bad thing.

I do like the RT fluff better… it's more open-ended… less 'gothic' and more 'industrial'.

It isn't like we play it every week… but it's there to scratch a certain itch which the newer version can't.
If I want to play a 'clean' set of rules I'll go with 5150 over any version of 40k's nonsense.

Now, back to building my new terrain for Battle At The Farm…

Venus: fair enough. I see the appeal of that, though it's not my own cuppa tea.

I like that it doesn't really have army lists and codexes telling you exactly what you're 'allowed' to be fielding.
I have no intention of playing in friggin' tournaments and tend to dislike games that focus on that sort of thing.

What always surpsies me though is that people seem to think that because the newer editions are used for tournaments and the lists are set up a certain way, that they have to play that way. The codex tells you what you are allowed according to what they think should be done, but nothing is actually binding players to that. I just see them as a more organized guideline to what a particular force would look like rather than a rigid template.

I know I certainly didn't follow the codexes all the time when I played 3rd.

But that was just my experience back when I played.
I do see that as a common argument these days though. Same thing applies to FOW too.

Interesting topic. I kind of like talking about the old days and it is interesting to see how many people still play RT!

Good point about not having to 'obey' the codexes and army lists… I guess it just feels like the newer versions are increasingly focused on supporting that type of play.
Even though I don't have to do it it keeps poking me, whispering in my ear… with Rogue Trader there is no such poking/whispering to ignore.

I have played all of the versions but the one I enjoy is the current 5th edition. I enjoy the nuances, the subtle ways to win and the loosening of restrictions such as allowing all units to run now.

My one gripe on 5th? Vehicles and glancing hits. That minus 2 is just too much, making it almost not worth tracking. Had glancing hits just been modeled automatically as crew shaken or stunned, I would have lived with it as that seems to be the result anyway most of the time. A minus one would give you the odd chance of finding the vision slot or turret ring and brewing it up

Don't get me wrong, loved the single model feel to RT and absoultely loved 2nd edition, especially the random event cards. BUT, I don't miss gaming all day to finish a single battle. More than once I remember leaving games set up in my basement because we could not finish them in a day. Great fun, but I guess I was a little more tolerant or patient then.

3rd Ed was OK, and 4th was too watered down with no tactical consequences. Every army – to me – felt like they operated the same and melee was the only way to win. Now I agree that the last person with boots on the objective owns it, but that set seemed to carry it too far.
Larry

Yes, the newer versions really are geared towards tournaments. Apocalypse shows that doesn't have to be the case. The nice thing for me about the current edition is with the Apocalypse mods, as CorpCommander pointed out, I can play the huge battles I always wanted to play with R.T. With Apoc, it also brings back that invite to tinkering.

The funny thing is, for a lot of players it took the Apoc rules 'to give them permission' to not obey the codexes.

3rd ed killed the game for me, and the group that used to play at my shop stopped playing 40k or buying GW stuff.

Oooh, wow! 6th edition, you're asking us if we like a version that hasn't even been released yet. I played 3rd edition the most, and a little of 4th edition. I'd have to say what I liked the most would probably been some where between 3rd and 4th edition. Maybe 5th edition if I played it. There were changes to 4th edition that I thought were really needed but some things were like, "What the hell were they thinking?!"

I don't like that Close Combat is really where the game is at. I wish they made it more a shooting game, but then that's "boring", so it will never get back to that. Close combat is fun, according to the masses. I had to gear my tactics towards the enevitable CC in order to win, but I never really enjoyed it. I think it's why I haven't played it in about three or four years now.

Rogue Trader for me too. Vehicle rules were a bit twisted but most games back then vehicles did not really get used much (shock horror to IG players)On the other hand the vehicles were characters in their own way back then ,not just an armoured ram souped up to get slow heavy troops or specialist melee across the board.

You really had to get involved in the game set-up too as the buildings ,bunkers and alien terrain were more interactive back then.Imagine running for cover and the plant you're behind sudenly eats your main gun dude or a small building contains the switch for a force field.

The army lists set up was loose but great as lots of random things would get generated in your squads and cool weapon set ups can mould a hard unit.Real mash up armies too with Imperial guard ,squats,ordo malleus?(just remembering now)and space marines together.Had a fantastic two day battle against some genestealer type creatures once.By the way Slann v Squats anyone?

Okay had a couple of mishaps which were dethroned by the Ref / GM I use to be Space orc raiders and if you met a crafty player with a toxic grenade bye bye half your force . Witnessed someone use a warp time psychic power to manipulate a game too much aswell.

I do believe this was a seed for many games also.Okay there were ones before but this definately got a few brains whirling ,probably with the slight RPG element added to a wargame and not the other way round that did it.

I just wanted to put Rogue trader on it's own in the thread but some people requested feedback and this is from our angle.

Oh yea and you could use any blinkin miniature you wanted too.it was in the book some where honest.

RT was great for me because it was my first experience in SF gaming and once learned, the rules were fairly simple. Great setting + great artwork and armies = good fun. Not perfect, but fun.

RT was hard to play but a very cool book and it was my introduction to minis gaming (unless you count action figures) so it will always have a special place in my heart.

2nd was very cartoony. We had a lot of fun with it, but the vortex grenade and uber-characters were too much.

3rd was okay. They toned down the character-hammer thing.

I found 4th very easy and fun, particularly as it encouraged different types of games. I really enjoyed playing a White Dwarf campaign in 4th that integrated "Kill-Team" skirmish scenarios into the broader battles. I think it was called "On the Trail of a Tyrant" and was a branching tree campaign. I also enjoyed the "Escalation" league idea. I had no problems with the rules in 4th, but I was not a real tourney player either.

I haven't played 5th enough to know what I think about it, however…

I started playing in 2nd edition, Recently bought RT on a whim, and haven't played 5th edition yet. That said…

Rules wise: I like 4th edition, and I'll probably like 5th even better. I like easy, streamlined rules, and they seem to be getting moreso with every edition. Even though there are still some unbalanced units, each newer edition seems to get further away from the uber-charachter, super unit thing.

Fluffwise: I liked 2nd edition. I bit less wierd than RT, and it seems to me that they did a good job of making the 40k universe coherent. As was said, it also gave us Necromunda which is a great game. However, it also got bogged down with larger games, Psyonics, etc.. Later editions' rulebooks were pretty good, but the codex's seemed to give you alot less fluff and in many cases just recycled artwork. Compare 2nd edition Codex "Angels of Death" with the 3rd edition BA and DA codexes and you'll see what I mean.

If I were a RPG'er: I'd go for RT. RT is the most entertaining read, and the most open ended. However, the actual rules are pretty RPG'ish. Still, it'd be nice to play a (very) small game someday.

What CorpCommander said….

That or 2nd. I loved those zany Ork weapons (hop-splat gun, etc…) and the clear overlays for the vehicles!

Early Orky armies were great! Remember "Mad Boyz"? They were just as likely to shoot members of their own team as they were to attack the enemy.