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Miniatures Adventure => Future Wars => Topic started by: Pictors Studio on 10 December 2015, 08:02:50 PM
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"Alos it is worthless resisting me, give him over now," yelled Captain Hrong of the World Eaters. His voice echoed through the helmets of all the Astartes in the maze of streets and ruined buildings.
There was no answer but the rattle of bolter fire.
Hrong's men had moved through the rubble in the building they were in and emerged in a plaza.
(http://i.imgur.com/O4MAkNB.jpg)
Chaplain Alos was well out of range with his plasma pistol but kept firing shots off in the hopes that the discharges would give confuse the sensors in the World Eater's helmets or give them a target to fire at.
He said over the com system to his own men, "Pull him back. Get him out of here. It doesn't matter how many of us die, we need to get a message to any other Legion, the World Eaters have rebelled against the Emperor."
(http://i.imgur.com/tPxhzq9.jpg)
Armoured hands closed around the robes of the Enginseer and dragged him back through the ragged crater and smashed parts of a launch that had crashed there.
Alos stood, making himself a target of the enemy fire.
(http://i.imgur.com/Q9umJZR.jpg)
His men fell back as directed.
"Tyler, keep your team up with me. Cover the retreat of the rest of them," Alos said.
The marine with the missile launcher nodded even though he knew the Chaplain couldn't see him.
The four marines fired at the oncoming rebels while the rest of the group moved away, if they could make it to the entrance to the subway system only two blocks away it seemed likely that they would be able to elude Hrong.
(http://i.imgur.com/Q3i7p3q.jpg)
Their fire pinned down the first group of marines to emerge but a second fire team moved up and splitting their fire between the two reduced the volume enough that the enemy could start making pretty accurate shots even at the range they engaged at.
Soon Alos was wounded in the thigh and had his right hand blown off by the explosive bolter rounds. He was on one knee but still firing. His pistol was getting hot in his hand but he kept firing until a bolter round hit him in the side of the head blasting his helmet apart and dropping the Chaplain.
The enemy used the opportunity to surge forward.
(http://i.imgur.com/svwyGgF.jpg)
The dreadnought moved quickly ahead of the men who moved up using it as cover. Bolter rounds were bouncing off of it, the man inside, nearly insane with rage felt something that must have come from a rocket launcher ricochet off of his hull.
(http://i.imgur.com/2NnGMSK.jpg)
Despite being tough he was not invulnerable. One of the marines he was pursuing left off pulling the Enginseer back and ran forward with his melta gun. The heat weapon fired and a section of armour was instantly reduced to slag on the metallic monstrosity.
The dreadnought returned the fire with contempt and the man was melted to slag.
Hrong's men pressed up and started to get behind their targets who, leaderless, continued to fall back.
(http://i.imgur.com/dycjTuS.jpg)
Tyler was doing his duty, the rocket launcher was barely pausing in its fire, explosions ripped through the ranks of the World Eaters pursuing him. A shot ripped off another big pieces of the dreadnought's armour.
Enough of the armour had been damaged now and a flurry of bolter fire concentrated on the machine was enough to down it, some essential circuitry being damaged the massive mechanical beast stumbled and them fell heavily to the ground. The inarticulate scream from inside could be heard even through the armour and over the rattling of bolter fire.
The marines behind the behemoth had now pressed up and fired on Tyler's team as well as the last marine escorting the Enginseer away.
Tyler kept up a steady fire with his rocket launcher. Explosions in the midst of the men were causing havoc all over the rubble strewn streets.
(http://i.imgur.com/QamCXtq.jpg)
Eventually it was just Tyler and the Enginseer who was running alone now.
(http://i.imgur.com/PxCOLSr.jpg)
Hrong turned the corner of the building. His first shot smashed into Tyler's face plate, exploding and stunning the space marine. He fell dropping his missile launcher.
Hrong's second shot hit the Enginseer just before he went around the corner and to relative safety. The shot hit him right in the lower back sending him to his knees.
(http://i.imgur.com/Bj8Vr2Z.jpg)
Soon three space marines were surrounding Tyler. As he recovered himself he looked into the barrels of their bolters and they each pulled the trigger, the explosive rounds all detonating on his chest, shattering the armour and the man inside.
http://i.imgur.com/p2L04Vh.jpg
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Very cool, what rules are you using? Actual 40K?
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We used a modified Infinity for this. I'll post the stats for the various types of troops and such in a little bit.
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Cool, I was going to say...it doesn't read like a 40K game.
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God damn, this is how 40k should play.
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Yeah, especially one with World Eaters in it. There was no close combat.
We used the following for stats for everyone:
Space Marine
MOV 4-2 CC 15 BS 14 PH 15 WIP 12 ARM 4 BTS -3 W 2
Terminator
MOV 4-2 CC 15 BS 14 PH 15 WIP 12 ARM 6 BTS -5 W 2
Contemptor Dread
MOV 6-4 CC 16 BS 15 PH 17 WIP 12 ARM 10 BTS -9 STR 3
Captain
MOV 4-2 CC 18 BS 15 PH 15 WIP 13 ARM 6 BTS -5 W 3
Chaplain
MOV 4-2 CC 17 BS 15 PH 15 WIP 14 ARM 4 BTS -3 W 3
And for the weapons:
Bolter
S 0-8 +3 M 9-16 +3 L 17-24 -3 Max 25-48 -6 DAM 13 B 2 Ammo EXP
Heavy Bolter
S 0-8 0 M 9-32 +3 L 33-48 -3 Max 49-96 -6 DAM 15 B 4 Ammo EXP
twin-bolter
S 0-8 +3 M 9-16 +3 L 17-24 -3 Max 25-48 -6 DAM 13 B 3 Ammo EXP
Bolt Pistol
S 0-4 +3 M 4-8 0 L 8-12 -3 Max 12-16 -6 DAM 13 B 2 Ammo EXP
Missile Launcher (or hitile launcher as that guy was red hot this game, he didn't miss anything)
S 0-8 0 M 9-32 +3 L 33-48 -3 Max 49-96 -6 DAM 13 or 15 B 1 Ammo EXP or AP Template circular or none
Plasma gun
S 0-8 +3 M 9-16 +3 L 17-24 -3 Max 25-48 -6 DAM 14 B 3 Ammo Plasma
Plasma pistol
S 0-4 +3 M 4-8 0 L 8-12 -3 Max 12-16 -6 DAM 14 B 3 Ammo Plasma
Melta gun
S 0-4 +3 M 4-16 0 L 16-24 -6 Max 24-48 -9 DAM 15 B 3 Ammo AP
Multi melta
S 0-8 +3 M 8-16 0 L 16-24 -3 Max 24-48 -6 DAM 15 B 3 Ammo AP
Flamer and heavy flamer used the standard 40K template for those and had a DAM of 13 and 14 respectively and had AMMO type FIRE
Everyone, except the terminators and dreadnought, had frag grenades that they could throw up to 12 inches and had a circular template with a DAM rating of 13.
I modified the rules slightly to count up to four models as a single model for Infinity game purposes. Sort of like the Fireteam rules except this was the rule:
You could use any model as your shooter for both action and reaction fire. For each model beyond the first with the same weapon or a stronger* weapon you can add 1 to the Burst value of the shooter.
For each model beyond the first in the group with a weaker* weapon you can add 1 to the BS of the shooter.
So if a group of 3 marines is firing as a team all with bolters you pick which one you want to shoot with and then would add 2 to the Burst value of the bolter (normally 2) to get 4 shots.
If the unit contains 4 marines and one is armed with a Heavy Bolter and you choose to shoot with the Heavy bolter he would get 4 shots at a base BS of 17 (B value of weapon is 4, each marine past the first adds one to the BS of the guy shooting as they have weaker weapons.)
The reasoning behind this was that they are firing as a weapons team, if they are all shooting roughly the same thing then their shots are being combined to be more effective so more shots. If they are shooting to support a model shooting a better weapon then the shooting keeps the heads down or distracts the enemy allowing a more accurate shot.
Not exactly scientific but it seemed to work pretty well.
* Weaker vs. Stronger weapons. You can define this as you will of course, we used DAM as the defining characteristic. We never had a situation where an HMG and a multi melta were in the same shooting group or anything like that. We basically broke the marines up into units of 3-4 typically and included one heavy or special weapon in each. I'd recommend this as it keeps it easy. The characters were separate. The dread was separate. Both of these had to be. For the termies we had a group of 3 and a group of 2.
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I've not played Infinity, but this looks like a brilliant idea!
How long did this scenario take to play?
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Maybe about an hour or so.
The infinity rules are free online. www.infinitythegame.com
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Nice, I love the atmosphere of these pics.
I do love the 40k setting, it's just the rules are soo bad. :'(
This might be worth a go. Finally a use again for those models I love and using rules I love.
Though I would be bottered by having to balance the game....
Love the scenery, by the way. I have an imperial sector lying around in the box and I start to feel like doing some building..
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Lovely battle report! :D
Also, intrigued by the use of the Infinity rules... Thank you for sharing.
I wonder if the Bolt action / Antares rules would work for 30k?
@ The Vovoid:
You could just use existing model profiles from the game, as these are balanced and costed for you already.
Most factions have various Heavy Infantry profiles for the troops, and I suppose TAGs would work for the Dreadnought. All the Infinity unit stats and points are freely available via the official army builder here (http://www.infinitythegame.com/army/).
Alternatively, I wonder if Warlord's Bolt action / Antares rules would work for 30k?
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Great looking game, and sounded like it was exciting to play too. I've not played Infinity, but it sounds like it produces good things.
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Infinity does produce good things. I've played it a lot over the years and it almost always produces an exciting game.
"Though I would be bottered by having to balance the game...."
Then don't worry about it. Just come up with a neat storyline and play through what you think are reasonable forces for each side.
I used ORC troops from the Pan O list for the base stats for Astartes with a 1 increase in PH. They count as armed with Multi rifles with EXP ammo. So they are about 40 points each.
The contemptor I counted as a Jotum more or less. Only I gave it the Multi melta instead of the assault cannon. With the Assault cannon you could use it just about as it is and it is 110 pts.
I based the termies and characters on regular Astartes with a few extra stat points here and there. So termies have a better save.
Their save is nearly the same as the Swiss guard but they don't have the TO camo, which is worth a lot. The swiss guard are 70 points so I'd imagine something like 55 each for the termies would be reasonable.
Honestly I don't play with points anymore so it really isn't an issue.
The scenario you pick is going to throw most points balanced armies out the window anyway and unless you are doing kill each other and seize objectives on a fairly equal table figuring out whether you should do 1500 pts. vs. 2000 pts for a given scenario to balance it is just as difficult as having armies designed for their appointed task and figuring it out.
Besides, both sides win if it is a fun game with a neat story line.
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you could just use existing model profiles from the game, as these are balanced and costed for you already.
Yeah, I already considered that. Problem is AVA is always limted on the more special troops, like ORC troopers. Maybe lifting these is an idea, but I don't know how much this would unbalance the game
The other options is offcourse:
Then don't worry about it. Just come up with a neat storyline and play through what you think are reasonable forces for each side.
But that's a bit of a hurdle for me to overcome. I know plenty of people have loads of fun this way, but I'm a bit of a weird breed.
I guess you could call me a casual competative player. While I prefer to play in a laidback atmosphere ( reminding opponents of moves they forget, play rules as intended and such), I really want to have a head to head game. I don't mind losing because I let my opponent roll that extra dice he forgot, I don't like winning or losing when I feel the sides did not have an equel chance to begin with.
Maybe I just need to get used to the idea...
Maybe I just need to sit down a few nights and type up some rules. I've done that before and I could balance and tweek as I play.
I must say I do like your 'fire-team'-rule. This allows for more boots on the table and speeds up gameplay.
It might also be tweeked to include stuff like guardsmen ( or gretchin) and make bigger mobs of them equal to small units of marines.
Pretty sure I'm gonna give it a go at least.
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Yeah, I already considered that. Problem is AVA is always limted on the more special troops, like ORC troopers. Maybe lifting these is an idea, but I don't know how much this would unbalance the game
Well, remember that in the official game the AVA is balanced against the whole faction's selection of choices and profiles.
However, if you're just pitting HI against HI (i.e., Marines vs Marines), then they should be pretty evenly matched if you both get the same points' worth.
Also, both players can use the same faction stats if you want; both choosing PanO or Nomads for example, which again makes it pretty much a balanced match-up as long as the points level.
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I was glancing at the force builder that the Major posted. Looks like there's such a wide range of stats that it'd be easy to represent most any GW unit.
I like to have points as well (though I'm not too strict about it) and I think it'd be easy to approximate some relatively equal forces even if you made a few tweaks to the gear to better represent their loadout. I'm not sure the rules are going to be quite to my rules-lite taste, but I'll look over the rules and may give it a try sometime. It's certainly a well developed and well respected ruleset.
I'm looking at the upcoming Warpath rules (both the platoon and company level versions) as ways to get my 40k figs on the table for a fast-moving pulp-sci-fi game that isn't weighed down with needless amounts of rules.
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I think for some of the bigger games I'm going to try to go back to 2nd edition and scrap the close combat rules in favour of 3rd edtion style close combat. There were several huge problems with 2nd edition but just having units of marines on the table, rather than devastators and tons of characters, should balance that out to a degree.
2 squads with a character vs. 1 squad, 1 termie squad, a character and a dread on the other side would make for a nice match up in 2nd edition.
Plus not as many special rules.
Ultimately I'll have to get another Calth boxed set, probably after Christmas, and use that to make armies big enough to play 3rd edition and onward. I'll also get one of the Astartes books as I think I've built my units as all veteran units.
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I think for some of the bigger games I'm going to try to go back to 2nd edition and scrap the close combat rules in favour of 3rd edtion style close combat. There were several huge problems with 2nd edition but just having units of marines on the table, rather than devastators and tons of characters, should balance that out to a degree.
The best way to balance out 2E was to put lots of varied terrain on the table. Most people didn't play with enough, and that made units like Devastators too good.
2 squads with a character vs. 1 squad, 1 termie squad, a character and a dread on the other side would make for a nice match up in 2nd edition.
Plus not as many special rules.
Terminators were insanely good in 2E! They get to make their 3+ save on 2D6, so even a being hit with a lascannon means they still save on 9+ on two dice! I don't remember their points being all that cheap either...
I would suggest a better split is:
> 2 tactical squads, dreadnought, terminator character
> 1 tactical squad, terminators, power armour character
This makes one side elite but survivable; the other side is much softer but still has numbers and some heavy weapon advantages against the terminator armour.
Also, 2E had a lot of special rules (including a rule for ignoring the first jam rolled on a sustained fire dice for Dreadnought weapons, and a dual-mode of firing the Dread's multimelta too). Nothing wrong with that, but keep in mind it took a while to play games of 2E for a reason! ;)
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I think you could have fun with 2E if you banned the use of crazy characters and heaps of wargear (ie. no blessed Chaos champions on steeds of slaanesh with plasma pistols, vortex grenades, and power fields...) lol
While 2E was more fun and silly...and probably more close to the fluff (ie. if you made crazy marine characters they could plow through entire squads) but balance was not its strong suit (IG Leman Russ supporting 30-man Terminator Wolf Guard squads w/ autocannons and powerfists anyone?)
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(IG Leman Russ supporting 30-man Terminator Wolf Guard squads w/ autocannons and powerfists anyone?)
That was 3E I think...?
However, I still remember a WD game in which a squad of Wolf Guard terminators went several rounds of close combat with a big unit of Genestealers! :o So yeeeeah, 2E had some balance issues. Then again, it did generate some great stories! ;)
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My favourite winning ploy in 2E was the Chaos Lord with Daemon weapon, Powerfield, jump pack and any other piece of wargear that could help, like virus grenades. He could take out anything. He would even beat a Bloodthirster in close combat.
As mentioned we don't play with points any more so balance is accomplished with the scenario rather than with the forces involved. You put any number of guys on one side vs. half that or less on the other and with a very difficult to achieve objective it can still be a close game.
We had a 2E game where the last terminator got jumped by a squad of 10+ Orks, killed most of them, the Ork dread came up and shot its heavy flamer into the close combat, killing some more Orks and setting the Terminator on fire, the terminator then ran down and punched the leg off of the dreadnought. The one Ork that was left decided to leg it and as the Terminator was about to crest a hill and get a clean shot at the Ork the fire got through his armour and he died. It left one fleeing Ork as the only living model on the table.
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Orks were a riot in 2E...but you couldn't play them seriously if you wanted to win. That was part of the charm. I had a five man Stormboy squad make a jump...near a table edge. Two scattered off the table, one scattered into terrain and died and two were killed upon landing by overwatch fire. Go orks! lol
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My favourite winning ploy in 2E was the Chaos Lord with Daemon weapon, Powerfield, jump pack and any other piece of wargear that could help, like virus grenades. He could take out anything. He would even beat a Bloodthirster in close combat.
I had a friend who liked to use Arhiman's free equipment slot to give him a Disc of Tzeentch... Ahriman ruined a lot of faces apparently! lol
I had a five man Stormboy squad make a jump...near a table edge. Two scattered off the table, one scattered into terrain and died and two were killed upon landing by overwatch fire. Go orks! lol
Yep, that's how I remember them! lol
They did get some good units though - the Nobz in mega armour were great, and thier Dreads packed a lot of punch. Shame they didn't really get any tanks until 4th or so though.
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This thread has tempted me to find a PDF of 2E rules and take a second look at the 30K marines from BoC... lol
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Yeah, Orks were a riot. Sometimes quite literally. It was more or less put your boys on the table wherever. Then carefully position your hop-splat gun and hope you don't wipe out more of your guys with it than the enemy.
We will probably play 2E a little differently. I'm thinking about either giving the marines a 2+ save on d6 and leave the terminators as they are or dropping the armour modifier of the weapons down one so 4 is no modifier, 5 is -1, 6 is -2 and so on. This would make the marines a little more resilient and bring the terminators in line with the other stuff more.
That way a marine gets hit by a bolt gun and can shrug it off 5 times out of 6. I might do the 2+ save so the terminators aren't only hurt by bolt guns on snake eyes though.
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That'll be fun to see what you come up with.
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Maybe I'll try it tonight. I got a fantasy game in earlier so I guess it is time for either Infinity or 40K.
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@ Pictors Studio:
Why not increase the power armoured Marines' save to something like 6 or 7, and roll all saves on 2D6? It still gives them that boxcars save against a lascannon or such (so, opportunity for those rare heroic moments), but it also means that they're saving on something like average rolls against boltguns. For bigger games it might be a bit of a drag, but for 30 models a side, I think it could work?
Biggest change I would make to 2E though is vehicles - the individual charts and such basically tests my patience to the point that more than one tank per side is unplayable for me! :(
@ Elbows:
It was a good edition in a lot of ways, and it actually worked pretty well Marines vs Marines. ;)
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This thread has tempted me to find a PDF of 2E rules and take a second look at the 30K marines from BoC... lol
I'm not normally one to publicly suggest "pirated" pdf's but I think that is the best way to go. However my reasons aren't as upbeat.
I started in 2nd edition and didn't play many games, but I had alot of nostalgia for it. So, I acquired the rules, and every codex written for 2nd edition. Then I played a game with my friends.
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/2011/11/vintage-warhammer-40k-2nd-edition.html
Even without wargear, vehicles, and psychic extranea, I really found it to be a pretty cumbersome system.
I think Necromunda works really well with nearly the exact same rules and playing 2nd edition and my feelings were that 2nd edition would probably play well as a similar sized skirmish game with a few tweaks. I've still got the books, but it's mostly for nostalgia and fluff as I probably won't be playing 2nd edition again soon.
I much prefer Warengine 2.1 for small 40k'ish battles and am really looking forward to the release of Warpath for the same.
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Yeah, I doubt I'd really end up playing 40K 2E but I'd probably read the rules for nostalgia. If I'm honest I probably remember most of those rules since it's what I cut my gaming teeth on and we played heaps and heaps of it during high school. In reality I'd end up using another system or (as always) make up my own.
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I just played with the 2nd edition rules. Now I remember why I was so glad 3rd edition came out. What an overly complicated, frustrating mess that game was. There were so many different places to reference stuff, no tables with the weapon stats all listed.
What a freaking disaster. Anyway I'll post a battle report shortly.
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I just played with the 2nd edition rules. Now I remember why I was so glad 3rd edition came out. What an overly complicated, frustrating mess that game was. There were so many different places to reference stuff, no tables with the weapon stats all listed.
What a freaking disaster. Anyway I'll post a battle report shortly.
For troops, 2E was fine and had some great ideas and rules. But bigger games and vehicles were horrible to play with - that's partly why Necromunda worked better I think. As I said, I'd probably lose the 2E vehicle rules and go with something like the later editions used.
I personally think that 3.5E was my favourite version - it incorporated all the Chapter Approved amendments and updates into 3E, and was still fast enough to get done with in a reasonable time. It also got rid of all the random dice you needed for the various weapons and the thirty different templates, which meant a lot less equipment was needed. I felt that psychic powers were rather bland though, and would have benefited from a WHFB style magic phase with power dice.
I think most of my friends liked 4E a lot, not least because all the armies got a bit more detail but the game still retained most of its streamlined play from 3E. I found the extra detail was uneeded, but the armies were better balanced oveall (Codex Space Marines and Codex Chaos Space Marines 3.5 notwithstanding). I think this was the edition that made assault cannons rather OP too (they were better at penetrating armour than lascannons and still great at smearing troops too!), and I remember seeing SM lists with something silly like 20 assault cannons in them!
Going back through the different editions is interesting though, because each one had a different emphasis and different balance. It also highlights a level of frustration I remember experiencing in that every version would fix one thing and break something else that used to work fine.
I reckon the main reason I liked 2E and 3E most is because the style of games I liked best were something like 40 models a side.
Anyway, enough waffle! I look forward to reading your report. B)
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I just played with the 2nd edition rules. Now I remember why I was so glad 3rd edition came out. What an overly complicated, frustrating mess that game was. There were so many different places to reference stuff, no tables with the weapon stats all listed.
What a freaking disaster. Anyway I'll post a battle report shortly.
I'll be interested in reading about your experience and more of your observations. If I had to pick an edition of 40k, I'd probably go with 3rd also. It wasn't without flaws, but everything you needed was there in the rulebook and it was the closest 40k has ever been to streamlined. IIRC, even when the codicies imbalanced it a bit it wasn't as complicated as the other editions.
I've still got the rulebook, Maybe I should try 3rd edition some time....
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Here is the report. Not as flowery as this one, I'm afraid, but it was late and my computer crashed and I have stuff to do today.
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=85369.0
Necromunda is a good game using the 2E rules. Because you have less than 10 models a side, you want a skirmish game and you don't mind the fiddly bits. Infinity has a lot of fiddly rules too and has different weapons ranges and stuff for that, but again, less than 10 models a side.
I actually only had 5 maneuver elements a side in this game but there was so much crap. I ended up with four books that I kept looking through trying to figure out how much damage this thing caused and how much armour penetration this thing did.
And half the time you go through that stuff for no result. Oh, okay, it didn't do anything.
I did like 3E, too. I thought the codexes were mostly crap with it, especially after the lovely 2E codexes, but they were cheap, $15 each I think and $9 for some of the subordinate ones. The Chaos one was especially bad eliminating a lot of the flavour from the different Chaos powers.
3.5 wasn't bad either.
I'll probably go back to using that when I get enough guys together to play some proper Horus Heresy games. Until then I'll be using Infinity.