The Massacre of the Chaplains

[Pictors Studio]

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. 

[Major_Gilbear]

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!

[Elbows]

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...) 

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?)

[Major_Gilbear]

(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!  So yeeeeah, 2E had some balance issues. Then again, it did generate some great stories!

[Pictors Studio]

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. 

[Elbows]

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! 

[Major_Gilbear]

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! 

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! 

Yep, that's how I remember them! 

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.

[Elbows]

This thread has tempted me to find a PDF of 2E rules and take a second look at the 30K marines from BoC...

[Pictors Studio]

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. 

[Elbows]

That'll be fun to see what you come up with.

[Pictors Studio]

Maybe I'll try it tonight.  I got a fantasy game in earlier so I guess it is time for either Infinity or 40K. 

[Major_Gilbear]

@ 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.

[eilif]

This thread has tempted me to find a PDF of 2E rules and take a second look at the 30K marines from BoC...

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.

[Elbows]

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. 

[Pictors Studio]

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.