"Anyone doing RT or 2nd edition?" Topic

Been getting the 40K itch again, both in 15mm and a small, custom 28mm army. Since I am generally the "rules guy" in the group I play in, I get the luxury of picking editions and am considering a mix of 2nd edition and Rogue Trader.

Anyone out there rocking the old school 40K games? Got some stories to tell?

As I have stated here a number of times, my group played 2nd with elements of RT, LONG after 3rd "officially" displaced it. After many years, the group eventually disintegrated as everyone moved off…life & jobs & such. We were eventually playing with only occasionally cracking a book or consulting an army list. We had a huge amount of house rules and customized weapons, stats, and army lists, many never even committed to writing. We just agreed on them, and that was that. I'll never see the like of it again!

And as for my current position, being The Rules Guy is a blessing and a burden!

No stories, sorry – other than still having my entire collection of rules and codices from every edition lurking somewhere in the garage! So in theory I can pick up and play whatever edition at whatever point in time I want to lol.

Tales from the Maelstrom is an enjoyable blog to read. I don't know if it is owned by a TMPer.

link

We still play Rogue Trader – often mixed in with 5th edition vehicle rules. Old school 40k is great!

link

We use 2nd ed sometimes for skirmish games. The close combat rules are a bit cumbersome for large battles.

We like how the hit modifiers etc. used to make more sense. For example, a marine still benefited from being in cover because the roll to hit him is at minus 1. As things stand now, he may as well be stood in the open against poor AP weapons as his armour save is better than cover.

Different movement values is pretty cool, too.

Second edition will always be my favourite.It was designed to play with a decent degree of forethought to combat,target cover,speed,damage allocation….literally had one game where killing a Leman Russ meant shooting the sponsons off,the turret….like cracking a safe or peeling an onion.

I got nostalgic for 2nd edition 40k a while back, so I put together a game with some friends. What I found was an excellent ruleset for small warbands of miniatures (the scope that RT was initially designed for) that had been unfortunately scaled up to platoon level and bigger.

You can see the result of our experiment with revisiting 2nd edition here:
link

If you really like the crutch that RT and 2nd ed had, and you're willing to stick to very small battles, then you might enjoy it. However…
-if you want big battles (2000 points or larger) that move quickly, but still feel like the 40k universe, I recommend hunting down a copy of Warpath 1.0. Not hard to find on the inter webs, and it's free.
-If you want a Platoon size game that has a 40k feel in terms of zaniness and balance of CC and ranged combat, get the free WarEngine 2.1 rules from the Warengine yahoo group.
-If you want a fast playing warband skirmish game consider In The Emperor's Name (stick with 2nd edition, 3rd is very much incomplete) or the Empire of Ghosts "Inquisimunda" mod for Necromunda.
-Lastly, for medium large games, don't entirely rule out more recent editions of 40k. 6th edition had a lot going for it and can be found quite cheaply now that 7th is out.

I still use the scenario generator for sci-fi games.
The unit rolls for troops and equipment are still good for any 40k troops entering necromunda settings too.
Not forgetting the marvellous alien creatures and fauna to randomly add to games.

Rick P has said that 2nd Ed is the best 40K rules out there.

If you dislike the close combat, you can lift the CC rules from 3rd edition but keep the rest of the 2E crunchiness. That will speed up the game I would think?

RT plays a lot like an ancients game, which RP was heavily into at the time. Kinda neat feel. Much more an RPG.

Downside it RT can be expensive to buy on ebay, but is available as PDF if one knows where to look or simply google. Plus, the RT rulebook is notorious for falling apart. Sigh. OTOH 2E is cheap. I like 2E.

There is the option of going with 1st Edition Warzone. The book and supplements can be had reasonably priced on eBay.
Pretty wacky, with flexible, customizable lists with many options to fine tune your forces. Also includes a variety of vehicle rules, too.
-Edgar

Big fan of Warzone 1. Always feels like a cheesy scifi movie when we play :)

Just make sure to play without jerks.

CPBelt – Do you happen to have a link for that? :)

RT with a fair GM is hard to beat, although a bit clunky at times (turn radius ratio? 1/2" movement cost for additional 90 degrees with infantry? blast deviation by template size? yeah…) 2ND ED. cleaned some of this up but added the silly close combat rules, nerfed vehicles, and introduced enough specialty cards, dice, and cardboard to make it feel more like card game than a miniatures game sometimes…
When 3rd came out, I dumped everything, and have no regrets. However, RT AND 2nd ed. both provided some very fun games and memorable moments, as well as some great friends. So go write that RT/Necromunda game you speak of, sir! Cheers!

@Weasel- my sentiments exactly. I'm working on getting some of my locals to embrace it.
And I'm sad to say that my local store had a cherry copy of RT for $10.00 USD a few years back and I didn't grab it because the second book was not available. I don't even know if there was a second book and I still occasionally kick myself in the rear for this mistake…

True about the 2nd Edition Close Combat rules but they are better than what they have today.

Just drop the ability to parry or limit to just one parry and it gets cleaner.

I liked the gang up ability.

With that you could bring down even the big guys.

As for the Vehicles I could do without vehicles since the game was far better when it focused on the foot pounders.

Today all GW is trying to do is throw more and more large size models into the game because they make a far greater profit off of them.

Spend around $10 USD making it and then sell it for $150. USD

Capt Flash,

There was never a 2nd book for Rogue Trader.

I still got my copy that I picked up in 1989 along with a copy of Space Hulk.

Oh and I still got that as well.

It was a far better game to play back then.

Vehicles can be kinda clunky though turrets exploding and landing in a squad, or burning tanks going out of control can be a lot of hilarity :)

On the topic of close combat:

Back in the day, we dropped parries for a while and while we went back to using them, we did like playing without them.

I highly encourage using the 2nd edition close combat rules over the later ones. The problem is that in 2nd edition you can only kill in base contact, while in later editions, kills "carry over".

This, combined with the fact that 2nd edition has no rule forcing players to "pile in" to a melee, helps keep big characters from dominating the game like they do now.

@Mittmee, well that's something I wish I knew. I'd heard that there was a second book. Talk about a lost opportunity! Oh well. Thanks!

Capt Flash, there was in fact a 2nd book for Rogue Trader – it was called the Battle Manual and updated the rules to version 1.5. There were some significant changes, particularly the close combat system. It also included revised weapon rules.

The Space Wolf army list that came out in WD used the new 1.5 rules. I remember reading those rules at the time and being puzzled because they referred to mechanics not in the core Rogue Trader rulebook, as I was still unaware of the Battle Manual's existence.

There was also the Vehicle Manual which had the updated vehicle rules from WD and the clear plastic targeting grid and vehicle hit tables.

Of course both of these were made obsolete when the 2nd edition box came out a year later.

The 'book of the astronomicon' was the second RT publication. I never owned it and it is very hard to find these days… The 'Compendium' and the 'Compilation' both introduced new rules. also, 'Ere we go' and the Chaos books predate the awful 'v1.5' rules of the 'battle manual' and 'vehicle manual'… Frankly, I still think that the original RT book is best as a stand-alone publication/game… but you really need a GM.
2nd edition was way too much cardboard for my taste, but taken just as the box set (and maybe the 'dark millenium' box) still provides a fun game.
3rd edition v1,2,3,4,and 5 (aka 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th edition) are very similar to each other and completley different from the previous two incarnations of '40K'… the only continuity is the title (even the universe and general feel have changed remarkably, and I won't even mention buisness practices… cough cough…)

I like 2nd edition a lot but tracking down all the cards can be a big barrier to entry.

My ideal Old-space-hammer is pretty much a mix of RT and 2nd ed. Use the "black codex" that came with the 2nd edition box for army lists for competitive games and just make up for the pseudo RPG games.

I always wanted to play a game with the targeting templates but that stuff is impossible to find nowadays.

The templates REALLY slowed down the game. And yes, 2nd edition without the 'psychic deck' was just 2nd edition with more cards… all of which are very hadr to aquire nowadays. Sadly, so is a copy of the RT…. I wish I had kept mine, clunky as it was. Solution: we write our own rules based on what we like: perfect game, just needs miniatures (which is the crux nowadays, given GW prices, the 'botique' trend, and the anime fad in sculpting…)
Cheers.

Luckily I hung onto my copies of both 2nd Edition and Dark Millenium which I got when I was a wee boy. Now I own every 2nd Edition Codex, the White Dwarf Battles Compendium, and (I think) nearly every White Dwarf that was published during 2nd Edition too.

So guess what I'm playing instead of 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th or 7th Edition…?

Hmm, I think you are playing a far better Edition..

2nd Edition

During 2nd I was playing Warzone. Got into 2nd just before 3rd came out. I bought 2nd then the Dark Millenium about two weeks before the release of 3rd. So I guess my earliest experience with GW was getting burned . The store gave me 20% off discount after that on all of my purchases so I made out all right. We also had a very large pool of players jump into 3rd so it was a good time. We had upwards of thirty local, weekly regulars. And I'm still good buddies with most.

Well I played until near the end of 3rd and then they nerf'd the Eldar Guardians and started to change the rules for 4th Edition.

I stopped playing along with quite a few others in my area.

40K just up and died.

Probably because GW screwed over the rules so much that it was no longer fun to play.