So while I definitely feel that 2nd edition was easily the most fun and immersive version of the game, it was cumbersome, took a long time, and required you to remember a lot of rules, not only about your own army, but your opponents' as well.ģrd edition, which IMO, is by far the worst iteration of the game tried to streamline the gameplay and make it easier and more comprehensive. Thus, a 3,000 point game would usually take us 8-12 hours to play. If you had to look something up, and didn't know exactly where the informationwas, you were stuck thumbing through several sources trying to find it. There was the rulebook and Codex like we have now but, also the Dark Millennium book which handled most, but not all of the psychic powers, and the wargear cards which explained how all the unique weapons you outfitted your heroes with, worked. Also, the rules were spread out over several different sources. (for instance, my 2nd edition 10 man assault squad has a mixture of bolt pistols, plasma pistols, chainswords, power swords, power fists and power axes) If this sounds like a cool concept to you, it was! But, it really slowed combat down, and often hand to hand fighting was resolved model by model.

Plus, each model in a squad could be outfitted with a large variety of different weapons. So, there was a lot more to keep track of. Added to that, each character could take individual pieces of equipment in the form of Wargear cards. Second edition was complicated, because every army was completely unique in terms of how they ran on the table (even moreso than now) and often had vastly different rules for individual characters. It became a completely different game after 2nd.

We still have to check 3 different books, but at least not through tables anymore.Īll in all, I am happy where the game has progressed to, and I am confident that future editions will further improve it. Rolling a d100 and then check through a huge table, possibly in up to 3 different books was exhausting. A lot of stuff that was just random stuff that happened is now strategems, which is an improvement. It was not very practical often, but in other aspects it had a bit more tactical feel to it. On paper it sounds cool, but in practice: Check if your weapon is in short or long range, check which part of the vehicle you see, check what armor value that part has, roll dice, roll more dice, roll a lot of dice 'Oh, it can't move next turn. In a way it was more micro management but not very rewarding. Edition was a lot clunkier, a dozen different templates, vehicles had different hit areas (like turret, sides, front and back and top in some cases), it wasn't a straight d6 system either, but also used d3, d4, d8, d12 and d20, especially when rolling damage.

40k 2nd edition wargear cards