From memory Tyranids were a pretty nasty force as well. Big, multiple would & high toughness monsters were very difficult to take down. And genestealers *shudder*. My memory of them is being tabled a couple of times
I think most armies had potential for power-gaming as the army books were a lot looser than they are today (everyone has one story of Wolf Guard terminators all kitted out with cyclone missile launchers and assault cannons) but there is a lot of room for narrative forces and play. I honestly think it was the ideal version of 40k, before it started getting too big in terms of miniature numbers and the rules more abstract, which has never sat well with me for 28mm scale.
If you want to, you can basically break each edition of 40k. The easiest solution to the problem at hand is to ask yourself the question:
Would I want to play against the list that I have just written?
I can tell you out of experience with 2nd that heavy weapons were very brutal. Even a humble heavy bolter could murder people in power armour with ease. Keep also in mind that CSM could have three heavy/spcl in one squad REGARDLESS of squad size. You already see that a couple of house rules should be applied to keep the battlefield a little bit less lethal. Here are some of my suggestions:
1. Terrain & Overwatch
Keep in mind that 2nd uses rules for overwatch though the models still have only a 90° LOS like in Necromunda. Place therefore a large segment of LOS blocking terrain in the middle of the battlefield to minimze the efficiency of firing lanes. This could even be a forest because in 2nd the rules forbid to simply shoot through big areas of terrain. Read also the rules for to hit modifiers because there are a lot of them (range, cover type, speed of target, etc.) which will have an impact on the performance of your overwatch shooting.
2. Restrict heavy weapons
I have to praise here the work of Jervis Johnson & Andy Hoare. What did they do? Well, they wrote the Dark Angels codex in 2006 and imo it was a decent book. Why? They prohibited a min/max play style by restricting the abundance of heavy weapons. How did they do that? Here is an example:
You want to field a Tac squad with plasma gun & lascannon for your gunline. Normally you would just take 5 marines and that was it. But with the codex, five marines gave you only access to ONE special weapon and not a single heavy weapon. If you wanted to have a lascannon, you had to take ten Tacticals. So in our case, the CSM in 2nd should also only have access to one special weapon, if he took only five marines. He wants a heavy weapon in his squad? Then he should hire ten marines for his squad first to take one heavy weapon.
3. Squad loadout change from 2nd to 8th & new units
This is a most annoying topic. The availability of special/heavy weapons for squads changed in various ways during the evolution of 40K. I can still remember SM command squads from 4th that consisted of ten marines which included TWO characters. That was very odd and fortunately a thing of the past. But people became fed up with the idea to change weapon loadouts on their models that are now illegal for a squad.
Now we are going back to our chaos list from 2nd. Somebody with a CSM collection from 3rd onwards wants to field a havoc squad with four heavy/special weapons. This will cause a problem because in 2nd there were no havoc squads. So to tackle this problem just create a new unit selection in the chaos codex which allows the player in question to take four spcl/heavy weapons.
The havoc squad incident is only the tip of the iceberg. The same problem will arise for CSM veterans, raptors, terminators and whatnot because they did either not exist at the time or the weapon loadouts were different. Just add/change the rules and do not rip your models apart.
4. Psychic warfare
Both players should restrict their psykers to level 2 or less for most of their battles. Psykers of level 4 are VERY powerful. Keep your psychic monsters for those big battles and don´t foolishly waste the likes of a chief librarian in a minor skirmish battle.
5. Ban/change time consuming stuff
You don´t want to roll what happens to plasma/smoke grenade templates which litter the battlefield? Fine. Just change the rules.
6. Virus Grenade (Wargear card) & Virus Outbreak (Strategy card)
These two cards could cripple an opponent´s army with ease. Both players should read the rules for them thoroughly and decide, if they want to use them or not. Bear also in mind that some armies are also less susceptible against effects of these cards than others because of special rules/equipment/faction specific wargear cards.
7. Alternate activations
I have been playing 40K for a long time with alternate activations. It keeps both players equally occupied and negates the alpha strike advantage of the player who goes first.
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