What major problems exist in each edition?

[ScooterinAB]

Disclaimer: I'm not looking for crapping on any edition. I'm also not looking for rants.

I mentioned that I've been contemplating trying to make a sort of Frankenstein version of 40k. There are elements of 2nd edition that I just can't let go, and some of these have shown back up in recent editions (grenades as weapons, combi-weapons not being useless, save modifiers). But my group is hardlining about staying at 6th edition, which was apparently just a hot mess and emblematic of everything that was wrong with GW and 40k at the time in terms of release practices and rules bloat.

This has me thinking... if we step through each edition of the game, what do you think are the biggest problems that lead the game to fail? If one were to try and address rules changes for a given edition of the game, what is the biggest problem that you think needs to be addressed because of the way it holds the game down?

2nd Edition:
My main squeeze is 2nd edition, so I'll start there. I think the two biggest problems are hand-to-hand combat and the psychic phase. Don't get me wrong. I love both of these. But as the game grows from a small, few-unit affair, these simply break the game. 2nd edition's hand to hand rules work great in a game like Necromunda or Gorkamorka, where you are only going to have a few models in combat at a time, but it simply cannot work on a squad or army level. It would take a good hour to resolve that one phase in any game played at the modern scale.

The problems with the psychic phase are similar but go beyond that. Aside from basically stopping the game dead for a while, these rules grossly overpower psykers and make the game all about having the most psykers. I've never entirely understood the "Herohammer" criticism of this edition, since special characters in later truned into ridiculous snowflakes of special rules. But I can definitely see that criticism making sense if you're talking about psykers.

Ultimately, what both of these sets of rules do is make them game disproportionately about those phases. Hand-to-hand needs to be mechanically on par with shooting, and psychic powers need to be on the same level as other mechanics. These rules overpower other elements though, and that's a design problem.

1st Edition:
I've never played Rogue Trader, so this is purely speculation. The biggest problem of this edition is that it's not a wargame. This is addressed late into the edition, but it still seems to leave a game that is still more about the GM/roleplay experience. Similar with 2nd edition, this can work really well on a few squads scale of game, but doesn't work in large scale.

3rd Edition:
This is the other main edition I played and the one I'm most critical of, due to how it changed things. But looking back at this edition and what came after, I think there's one clear problem and that's special rules. I think it got worse as editions came out, but I really stopped playing around 5th edition, so I'm not sure. Anyways, what 3rd edition started was this race to the finish line for the model that can have the most special rules. Everything was about special rules. Catachans had special rules. No name Space Marine chapters had special rules. Special characters were a big deal because of all their special rules. I know that by 6th edition (having watched friends play), this hits a breaking point because these rules were getting fragmented across multiple books and had multiple other special rules affect them. But from a metadesign standpoint, this never sat well with me back during this edition. Armies, in my opinion, show be differentiated by the unit choices you have and the strategies you use, not by who has the most special rules attached. This also causes a huge legacy problem when a new edition comes out and a special rule is missing, causing the rules of the game and thus the entire experience to be totally different for you.

That being said, I understand why would would take this approach, as it makes it easier to reference specific rules and to ensure that those rules have consistent wording. But what seemed to happen by 6th and 7th edition was that it was a contest to see how many special rules you could add to something, and all of that started in 3rd. All that did was hide the bloat elsewhere rather than deal with it. Just because no one can see the fat doesn't mean it's not still there.

If I had to pick a runner up, it's how Assault can be used to move further. There seem to be a whole bunch of free moves you get when and after Assaulting that ultimately favour hand-to-hand combat above over sections of the rules. Kind of like with 2nd Edition, it seems like hand-to-hand is still the thing to do, and shooting is just kind of just there in the background for when you're not Assaulting.

9th Edition:
Again, this is pure speculation, as by group largely refuses to even think about 9th edition. The issue that seems to be encapsulating this edition of the game more than any other is power creep. As Syndrome from the Incredibles said, "If everyone's super, no one is." Following updates on YouTube, it seems that every release is getting a power boost to deal with Primaris Marines being just better. Everything gets more wounds. Everything does more damage. In the short term, what that does is mean every other army is wildly underpowered. In the long term, this turns into a neverending arms race of models constantly getting better so they are more competitive, leading to making every other model better so they can deal with that threat.

There's a Starship Troopers (I think) roleplaying game that shows off the rules bloat side of this. The weapons and armour the troopers had where awesome. The weapons did a ton of damage and the armour was very protective. The characters looked great on paper. But then you introduce the rules for all of their opponents. All of the bugs had incredibly dense armour that ignored the weapon effects, and their attacks were so strong they ignored all the special rules the troopers' armour gave them. If everything is just going to ignore other rules, why even have those rules to begin with? Going back to the Ork release, if Orks need to get Strength and damage boosts to deal with the Toughness boosts models have been getting, why are those models getting Toughness boost? This only makes the problem worse and just bloats the rules with things that are just getting ignored.

What do you think? What sections of the rules do you think prioritizes certain play-types a little too much? What parts of the rules bring the game to a dead crawl? What objective problems exist within an edition of the game that really are for the worse (regardless of how fun they are)? If we were to make a Community Edition(s) of 40k (to steal that term), what clear problems exist that need to be addressed?

 

[Ben_S]

I don't know enough about 40k to say much here. (I played a fair bit of 2nd edition, but only in a casual manner, and then had a brief return around 5th/6th editions but never managed a full size game.)

However, one thing I notice is that your comments sometimes focus on the core mechanics (e.g. melee in 2nd edition) and sometimes on army lists and power creep. That's fair enough if you're looking for the biggest problm in each edition - it might be in a different place. But it's worth noting that a given edition could have solid core rules only to be let down by codexes (too much power creep, whatever) and that has implications for the necessary fix.

 

[ScooterinAB]

I don't know enough about 40k to say much here. (I played a fair bit of 2nd edition, but only in a casual manner, and then had a brief return around 5th/6th editions but never managed a full size game.)

However, one thing I notice is that your comments sometimes focus on the core mechanics (e.g. melee in 2nd edition) and sometimes on army lists and power creep. That's fair enough if you're looking for the biggest problm in each edition - it might be in a different place. But it's worth noting that a given edition could have solid core rules only to be let down by codexes (too much power creep, whatever) and that has implications for the necessary fix.

That's a good point. That seems to be the issue with 9th edition; the problems seem to be coming from the regular errata and power creep within each codex release.

 

[The_steve]

That's a good point. That seems to be the issue with 9th edition; the problems seem to be coming from the regular errata and power creep within each codex release.

is that a game problem or a meta problem? I find warhams to toxic as heck. I played in a teaching meta for warmahordes(hear me out) the game has a crazy stringent player base like I have a physical disability my hands are difficult to work with. on tournament the tournament runner chastised me infront of 20 others throwing my game in the last round of a tournament and stripping me of the joy I had for making it to the top 2 with a player I respected.

my issue is not the game persay it is the culture. WAAC is toxic stuff.
Now, 40k, first tournament I had the nerve to go to was a "beginners" tournament. I studied all the lists, we were required to presubmit all lists, so I was a wreck for weeks building the meanest army I could think up. Submitted fairly early. Then spent the build up studying what each list does then my first opponent CHANGED his list day oF. I felt it unsporting but I was greatful and he was nice. I wasn't able to do a thing. next match My experience was being rushed by the host of the tournament and being told to hurry up. I played like I was playing wmh. Playing with the player with a lot of BOIS who was actually nice but he had so many dudes to run, he ate most of the time. Now look, I didn't point figures I was there to get a feel for the warhammer tournament life, hopefully learn something from the players but I left feeling like a piece of human garbage, despite trying to tell the to I was having cognitive issues. I knew I was gonna be lost as a goose, but despite being a bad day, I showed up, KNOWINGLY to spend all of saturday getting dunked on. Glad I still went next tournament I tried to go to, I was fresh out of the hospital and skipped out. Then COV. so I have the chance to play 1 tournament all of 8th. Point is despite many bad experience in wmh tournaments. They didn't make me feel bad for being new(I mean FFS it was a beginners tournaments, the experienced players didn't give many tips or advice, it was hey, hit up this creature, it drops easy loot. That is probablem with 40k, Experience players are jerks to new people. When I played back in my old meta, I organized a group of new guys who met up on saturdays and bumble around with the rules. Warhammer players in my experience have no chill or patience. It is like they don't understand the new blood is what keeps the meta alive. I like a good few people in my local metal but honestly, I hate making all the effort to blow through 100s of models spend weeks going through the rules and being treated poorly buy a bunch of WAAC jerks

the issue I have with the game is coming from wmh, I think the rules went from streamlined to convoluted as all get out going from 8th to 9th. I only ever tinker with 40k in 2nd-3rd but honestly don't remember there being a brazillion movement types like there was in 7th. but that also goes to community problems I think. People have been playing 40k since like 20 years ago(when it stopped being rt) and they act like something is wrong if new players find the learning curve difficult to surmount. Now here is where my years of wmh comes in. Look I get it. for much of mk3 I have barely got to play but when I do, it is like riding a bike, 1 or 2 games and I back up to speed. SO I understand that your home rule set is like breathing. The 40k community seems to think that is a bad thing to help people get the rules straight and the game DOES poorly at small scale so you have to amp it up to around 1000-1500 pts to get started so it drowns a player. gw need to back off the rules creep. ex: I played ironwarriors, at the end of 8th, I played out of 5 books and 1 was the core book.

so give a little patience to us, we are learning uphill the company just keeps adding patch work rules and retiring models(legends)

It might be a bit long winded and I am sure many of you will attack me out of hand with adhoms to say 40k has a single problem. but I am hoping my experience may be value. I don't really have a single simple answer, I just see a lot of issues. but IMO gw makes a good game, imperfect and not a good competitive game. With my one friend in the meta, we sometimes would spend all saturday farting around and throwing bolts but people who don't know another player and that player tells you they are new. PUMP THE BREAKS ffs or you will find yourself bored with the same few faces that you have stared at for the last 10-20 years

 

[ScooterinAB]

is that a game problem or a meta problem? I find warhams to toxic as heck. I played in a teaching meta for warmahordes(hear me out) the game has a crazy stringent player base like I have a physical disability my hands are difficult to work with. on tournament the tournament runner chastised me infront of 20 others throwing my game in the last round of a tournament and stripping me of the joy I had for making it to the top 2 with a player I respected.

my issue is not the game persay it is the culture. WAAC is toxic stuff.
Now, 40k, first tournament I had the nerve to go to was a "beginners" tournament. I studied all the lists, we were required to presubmit all lists, so I was a wreck for weeks building the meanest army I could think up. Submitted fairly early. Then spent the build up studying what each list does then my first opponent CHANGED his list day oF. I felt it unsporting but I was greatful and he was nice. I wasn't able to do a thing. next match My experience was being rushed by the host of the tournament and being told to hurry up. I played like I was playing wmh. Playing with the player with a lot of BOIS who was actually nice but he had so many dudes to run, he ate most of the time. Now look, I didn't point figures I was there to get a feel for the warhammer tournament life, hopefully learn something from the players but I left feeling like a piece of human garbage, despite trying to tell the to I was having cognitive issues. I knew I was gonna be lost as a goose, but despite being a bad day, I showed up, KNOWINGLY to spend all of saturday getting dunked on. Glad I still went next tournament I tried to go to, I was fresh out of the hospital and skipped out. Then COV. so I have the chance to play 1 tournament all of 8th. Point is despite many bad experience in wmh tournaments. They didn't make me feel bad for being new(I mean FFS it was a beginners tournaments, the experienced players didn't give many tips or advice, it was hey, hit up this creature, it drops easy loot. That is probablem with 40k, Experience players are jerks to new people. When I played back in my old meta, I organized a group of new guys who met up on saturdays and bumble around with the rules. Warhammer players in my experience have no chill or patience. It is like they don't understand the new blood is what keeps the meta alive. I like a good few people in my local metal but honestly, I hate making all the effort to blow through 100s of models spend weeks going through the rules and being treated poorly buy a bunch of WAAC jerks

the issue I have with the game is coming from wmh, I think the rules went from streamlined to convoluted as all get out going from 8th to 9th. I only ever tinker with 40k in 2nd-3rd but honestly don't remember there being a brazillion movement types like there was in 7th. but that also goes to community problems I think. People have been playing 40k since like 20 years ago(when it stopped being rt) and they act like something is wrong if new players find the learning curve difficult to surmount. Now here is where my years of wmh comes in. Look I get it. for much of mk3 I have barely got to play but when I do, it is like riding a bike, 1 or 2 games and I back up to speed. SO I understand that your home rule set is like breathing. The 40k community seems to think that is a bad thing to help people get the rules straight and the game DOES poorly at small scale so you have to amp it up to around 1000-1500 pts to get started so it drowns a player. gw need to back off the rules creep. ex: I played ironwarriors, at the end of 8th, I played out of 5 books and 1 was the core book.

so give a little patience to us, we are learning uphill the company just keeps adding patch work rules and retiring models(legends)

It might be a bit long winded and I am sure many of you will attack me out of hand with adhoms to say 40k has a single problem. but I am hoping my experience may be value. I don't really have a single simple answer, I just see a lot of issues. but IMO gw makes a good game, imperfect and not a good competitive game. With my one friend in the meta, we sometimes would spend all saturday farting around and throwing bolts but people who don't know another player and that player tells you they are new. PUMP THE BREAKS ffs or you will find yourself bored with the same few faces that you have stared at for the last 10-20 years

I think what I was talking about (and a lot of what you do too) is in fact a rules issue. Making every subsequent release better than the last so it can win more is a rules problem. Regular "errata" (which is nothing more than hasty rule changes) is a rule problem.

The other part of what you're saying is very true though. Competitive miniature gaming is toxic as hell, and I've seen this behaviour in a lot of fan groups. We're nerds. We got picked on when we were younger, either outright or in more social ways. The toxic competitive players are all trying to be the alpha nerd so they can at least be the top at something. Worse, since a lot of nerds didn't grow up with healthy social modeling, they both don't know how to handle that perceived position and don't know how to navigate that social community as a while. I think that's why you got shit on for being disabled (which is amazingly shitty); the people at the tournament lacked the social skills to deal with that encounter. It's like the whole root of the word "otaku," an awkwardly ultrapolite work because the people using it didn't understand how to navigate the social scene.

 

[The_steve]

the power creep is hard to keep pace with. In my experience if you com with a new or half cooked list in any tt game, you get slammed by grognards first chance they get. hell one of them did it to my nephew's tau. that had me livid! It sucks, half the time you are sitting there going, well, I don't even know what is going on.

I spend near 3 years building the bulk and all the specially pieces of my list then show up and got rolled in such a way. Hell, no one in all the matches leading up to the tournament told I didn't have to stay to the assign spells, which in such a force power heavy meta(10k, nurgle etc) it seriously hamstrung me. I study what my armies do, I don't rememember the stats as at the time I was still making sense of what was IMPORTANT on the sheet and honestly, I suck bad a memorization. I am not sure it is my fault, my army does look like I know what I am doing I spend a lot of time lurking and spaming tons of forums. So maybe the problem is they are giving me too much credit. Of course there is also as you said most of us are not high on the social iq scale, some abysmally low. In our meta, we have 2 players I have a lot of respect for a players, one is super chill and always nice but HARD competitive, the other is laid back and also super nice. Honestly, this is ON ME! but I would hesistate to ask a game with either for fear of wasting their time. I have done that before, crushed a newish player and FELT TERRIBLE. If anything I dogedly stubborn, I'll keep trying.

As far as the power creep, I suspect it is a part of the sales model gw uses. Privateer had an article about similar issues with making new releases enticing while trying to not blow the power curve.

 

[ScooterinAB]

It's funny you mention the issue of people trashing new players. I was up late with my dog last night and was taking notes on issues I have with 40k in general. Maybe it's because I'm a dirty hippy, but one of the thing I was writing about was aggressive competitiveness. I was thinking about missions where the goal isn't to run towards each other like the X-men cartoon opening and if there could be any game mechanics than can be used as kind of a handicap for players who are getting walked all over. I also like the idea of having standing club rules that say "don't be a dick." No one wants to sit there for hours being destroyed and humiliated while their opponent drinks it all in.

 

[The_steve]

that op was epic tho

 

[The_steve]

I also like the idea of having standing club rules that say "don't be a dick." No one wants to sit there for hours being destroyed and humiliated while their opponent drinks it all in.

Some people seem to get off on the idea of giving thier opponents NO chance to play. To me, that is the most boring game. I am know to do stupid stuff if it is funny. ever slap someone with an autocannon? I have several times

 

[Jacob Dryearth]

I don't know enough about 40k to say much here. (I played a fair bit of 2nd edition, but only in a casual manner, and then had a brief return around 5th/6th editions but never managed a full size game.)

However, one thing I notice is that your comments sometimes focus on the core mechanics (e.g. melee in 2nd edition) and sometimes on army lists and power creep. That's fair enough if you're looking for the biggest problm in each edition - it might be in a different place. But it's worth noting that a given edition could have solid core rules only to be let down by codexes (too much power creep, whatever) and that has implications for the necessary fix.

Such as 9th, that's exactly what is happening to 9th! I can take my 3rd edition Eldar force running a mid 8th edition Codex, and turn it into something that can handle Admech and Drukhari (ok maybe not Admech), but why would I want to buy all the WAAC units needed to do that and ruin the flavor of my Alaitoc Outcasts and Corsairs?

 

[The_steve]

Such as 9th, that's exactly what is happening to 9th! I can take my 3rd edition Eldar force running a mid 8th edition Codex, and turn it into something that can handle Admech and Drukhari (ok maybe not Admech), but why would I want to buy all the WAAC units needed to do that and ruin the flavor of my Alaitoc Outcasts and Corsairs?

I feel you, my iw army I try to run a less slaverying beast list as I am ironwarriors and not word bearers. but GW has other plans.

I was excited when I saw you guys getting the new banshees dispite them having wierd abdomens. Where the FING striking scorpions!??!

 

[ScooterinAB]

I feel you, my iw army I try to run a less slaverying beast list as I am ironwarriors and not word bearers. but GW has other plans.

I was excited when I saw you guys getting the new banshees dispite them having wierd abdomens. Where the FING striking scorpions!??!

I get that with my chaos army too. I'm playing the old Corsairs fluff (traitor marines rather than full on Cenobine-level Chaos), but GW reeeeaaaaaally wants me to have giant gaudy Khorne daemon vehicles and be Black Legion.

 

[The_steve]

I get that with my chaos army too. I'm playing the old Corsairs fluff (traitor marines rather than full on Cenobine-level Chaos), but GW reeeeaaaaaally wants me to have giant gaudy Khorne daemon vehicles and be Black Legion.

I was going to make my renegades crimson slaughter but since gw made corsairs the only decent renegades I stripped em. bad enough I play not-magic and non stupid disease chaos

 

[ChapterAquila92]

Looking back over my time playing 40k, which spanned 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 8th (I'm not including Horus Heresy here), I think I probably escaped the worst parts of the rules bloat, including the notorious Formations addition that should have stayed in Apocalypse (It's thankfully absent altogether in Horus Heresy). Adding to this, as the editions progressed, the road up to 7th Edition also looked to be more and more like a parking lot instead, with 7th Edition culminating in the inclusion of the super-heavy stuff outside of Apocalypse games.

And then came 8th.

Even though I'm not one for the parking lot, I love vehicles in tabletop wargames. Apart from their familiarity to me when it comes to building and painting (I started the hobby via historical models), vehicles up to 7th Edition and Horus Heresy added a dynamic to the game that I found to be a pretty satisfying minigame. Unfortunately, with how bad things had gotten with the aforementioned bloat and parking lots, the impression I got from 8th was that GW, in its infinite wisdom while working on simplifying the abstract, was compelled to crater the effectiveness of vehicles in favour of an infantry-scale tactics game. It's likely that this wasn't intentional, but this was the result of several factors, that I and several others have already mentioned, that taken together produced the current state of affairs: the new wounding system (which I nonetheless consider to be a welcome change), the changes to how AP worked, and the shift to a universal datasheet system. Simply put, gone are the days of needing dedicated anti-tank weapons to deal with the more heavily armoured vehicles, or being rewarded for flanking one. Instead, the current design philosophy is geared more towards nickel & diming to death by a thousand papercuts in the hope of overwhelming armour saves, or spamming general-purpose mid-strength AP-1 D2 weapons like the heavy bolter.

This much hasn't changed in 9th either.

I also haven't even gotten to the silliness of hiding almost an entire tank behind LoS-blocking terrain, somehow having unimpeded LoS of an enemy unit via an exposed track piece, and shooting every weapon it has into that unit via that same track piece.

 

[spafe]

I played a lot of 40k from 4th to 6th, maybe 7th...

I have played a couple of games of 8th.

Generally I found there was a trend between 4th, 5th and 6th which was a janky rules set when it came to vehicles, either not being able to move and fire effectively, able to charge out of vehicles (rhino rush), light vehicles being far too fragile (esp compared to monstrous creatures), or other. They never seemed to get the vehicle balance right. This was a constant theme. I think 7th might have suffered from this but I played it less and much much more casual so dont have strong impressions from then.

Otherwise I really liked the game and the abstract terrain (base of terrain is the extent of the area etc), and liked the game before knigts, flyers and superheavies became common sights on the battlefield

8th.... man, that really changed the game up and basically led to me dropping it as a game I played due to the direction gw took it. I love some of the elements, but the aura stack, massively different system, rules being scattered across too many books etc, was just too much for me to really get it. So I gave up on it and play very occasionally with @DarkNwss when he wants a game and is willing to play very slowly with me lol. I cant really comment on it as to how good the system is as the lore with primaris has turned me off so much I havent got enough knowledge to judge it.

 

[almic85]

It’s been a while since I played 40k but I managed a few games of 8th Ed before they started releasing all the extra campaign books and to be honest it felt like a good game for what I want out of 40k (which is a largely infantry based game).

I bought 9th and the new space marine codex but haven’t played any games with it yet but it really just seems to 8th edition with extra abstract rules for cover.

The “big improvements” that 9th has really made are to increase the cost of all units so you get less on the board and to rewrite the scenarios so that each game plays with asymmetrical objectives that each army chooses for themselves.

Those two changes basically make it harder to get everything you want into a list but also means you can focus on what your army does best instead of trying to react to what the opponent needs to do.

I started playing in 2nd edition and have fond memories of playing it as a kid, but I also remember that it wasn’t a particularly balanced game that took way too long to play and you could basically lose it before you even started if you didn’t take the right stuff to counter what your opponent took (which for me was always land raiders).

3rd Ed thankfully streamlined a lot of things to make the game play a lot faster than 2nd Ed by standardising movement up to 6” (where it was previously 4”) and making combat resolve on a unit by unit basis instead of model by model. 3rd Ed also brought in the weapon classification system (assault, rapid fire, heavy) that is still in use in 9th Ed.

I don’t think I really played 4th Ed much at all but I remember that it really just made 3rd Ed more complicated rather than resetting the bar much.

I think the big thing to keep in mind if you are going to start mixing and matching rule sets is that each ruleset has its own strengths and weaknesses.

Personally for me I like the current infantry focussed 8th/9th edition rules but wish that they would take the force organisation back to something like 2nd or 3rd Ed where every army needed to take a certain amount of HQ and Troops choices plus a mix of Elite, Fast Attack and Heavy Support.

I’d probably also appreciate significantly less magic bubble rules and the removal of all named special characters and super heavy vehicles from casual and tournament play but sometimes you have to accept some of the bad with more of the good.

 

[The_steve]

if they cohesion was sphere based it would at least be consistent. but cohesion is so fidgety I am like hell nah

 

[Heart of Storm]

I think power creep combined with competitive play and a meta obsessed community are the key challenges, back when I was a young 'un you played units because they were cool, or because you liked how they look, whereas now it seems to be about how to exploit a complex myriad of rules, made more complex by Codexes full of historical bloat with only a few units in each roster being considered "viable" or "meta".

Power creep comes in here because a focus on super powerful units with lots of rules has led to "alpha strike" lists which can shoot suboptimal lists off the table in a turn or two, therefore there doesn't seem to be room in the game for fluffy, or non-competetive play because the power discrepancy between the best and worst units in a given codex are so large.

For example if I wanted to run a fluffy Ulthwe list full of Storm Guardians I'd get annihilated, every time. But its perfectly in keeping with the lore of the Craft world, its just not viable because Storm Guardians are a legacy unit, lurking in the codex because they've always been there but who haven't kept up with the power creep, the only way they CAN be useful in the game is if they got a load of special rules and strategems which just adds to the problem


40k needs a fundamental reset, rewritten from the ground up with a dice system that allows space for nuance amongst the literally hundreds of unit types available.

 

[The_steve]

The game was beat years ago,imo now if you don't bring your most savage list you are gonna have a bad time

 

[Hawkins44]

@spafe already mentioned it, and as I started playing during the 6th edition, for me, as an Imperial Guard player (who always relied on massed small arms fire to keep safe the big guns who did the bulk of the work), the problem was very apparent.

I remember struggling against Tau and Tyranid players, whose large units had multiple wounds I had to chew through one by one, while they needed a couple of lucky hits to kill my tanks in a single phase. And if they didn't, my tank was stuck or crippled, while suits and beasts were 100% combat effective to the last failed armor save.

It was the time I had to get really creative with the rules and played Armored Battlegroup army from Forge World, which had access to Beast Hunter shells for Vanquisher tanks, with the sweet sweet Instant Death rules. Even that was a challenge to get it through over the 4+ BS.

A big problem of the 8th was CP batteries. It gave no sense in tactical standpoint or even lore standpoint. it was just a cheap exploit and cheesemongering. I even made a meme mocking these people.

Spoiler: MEME

And the problem of 8th and 9th ed? Slow, but constant rule bloat and power creep. As usual. I refused to pay for books ever again, since they stay relevant for a year or two, and the need to buy more and more supplements... Call me Captain Blackbeard.