SkimaskMohawk

I remember adding purity seals or medals from the force commander plastic kit to models after they did something sick (like a seargent surviving two rounds against a daemon prince and getting his last wound with his chain sword in 5th). Or kill marks on a plasma cannon gunners backpack after each game. The old-old-old site had some really great articles on it back in the day. One of my favorites was a black templars progression and all the different free handed badges, script and icons at the end point of that progression.

But they definitely weren't balanced to be a takeable choice or with the rest of the printed stuff in mind lol. 2nds legacy units were very much token supported by having rules, but the rules being so bad the units had no impact on the game or design space.

Ehhhh.....they definitely weren't in 2nd lol

Very happy to be wrong. Very happy they're not binning people's collections 40k 10th style, and I'm hopeful that the usability of legacies is better than 2nds track record. I'm personally still not a fan of the army building structure and super not a fan of how they wrote the rules, but I'm interested in at least looking at the edition and glad for the people who don't share my particularities.

I read legislation daily, this definitely reminds me of EULAs.

But dawn breakers were an objectively better unit lol

Re terrain blocking LOS and leading to some odd situations where people can't charge and stuff. It's interesting to note that what I've heard about medium terrain (having not read the rules) is very, very similar to how area terrain worked in 4th. You couldn't see through it, and could only see into it a set distance. This also applied if both units were in the terrain. Sound familiar? The issue is that the set distance now is 3" when it was previously 6", and 6" was the maximum charge range to start with; 3" is less than the minimum charge range so it feels bad. But also, the main complainers about how bad it feels (goonhammer) also found being locked in combat to feel bad, or a tank getting one shot from a lascannon. So maybe it's a genius decision after all.

Listen, I've read the script. Its the same one from 2nds launch. I will be more than happy to go on an apology tour if the magic legacies PDF restores all the options and enables people's collections to be played. It certainly didn't 3 years ago though.

Well....2nd as a game system involving two players was really out of whack. You could create units in list building that did absolutely nothing but died to return fire; meanwhile you also had units that needed extremely specific answers or else they'd run rampant. It received cursory support to fix these imbalances, leaving it to players to heavily self police to come to an equitable experience. I would hope the next version of the game is a better two player game. But...simply being better isn't the end all be all, especially if the fixes come from a path a lot of people were actively avoiding. If people wanted units moving at full speed shooting all their guns, vehicles with a wound track instead of a damage chart, damage stat, uncustomizable units straight from the box, completely open and unstructured army building, removal of twinlinked, removal of extra attacks on the charge, removal of extra melee weapons adding more attacks, leaving combat with little downside, and all the rest....then they'd be playing modern 40k. It was a throwback to the 3rd edition style of 40k, game wise and how it encouraged building a collection, and that was a big draw. People wanted more reasons to make zany custom load outs and try them on the table; they wanted the balance issues in 2nd (and 1st) smoothed out so the dominant things maybe weren't so dominant (and the garbage in 2nd being able to do things). They absolutely did not want to be told "that thing you liked doing and we encouraged from 3rd all the way up to 2025 in heresy? Lol, too bad." The backlash all the reviewers are getting is because they're not really acknowledging that original appeal and loss, how fundamental it was, how the shift towards modern 40kisms feel like a betrayal, how the invalidation of units (often ones encouraged in the last 3 years) definitely is a betrayal, etc...Theres a "ya it sucks for us too, back to unrelenting positivity and how everything that changed was actually unfun to start with". So ya, 3rd is a better game system than 2nd. Who cares though; 10th 40k is a better game system than 2nd. The real question is if 3rd is a better system than 1st, and it really doesn't feel that way.

I like how goonhammer frames every change as a positive in their what changed article. Like, some are genuine positives; the wound allocation system of 2nd was the worst ever and I'm glad it's gone. Fewer reactions is great too. But everything is "this changed, and that's good because people were tired of measuring rapid fire" or "it's good that gamey-aspects like being locked to combat or being run down if you didn't manage to run away from combat are gone, meanwhile vehicles are damaged in a very game-ified way and that's good!".

Imagine if dow3 was simply good. Would have been a whole other story.

Edit: weird double post. I mean, in 2022, we'd seen almost everything via the leaks lol. They had slightly toned down horus' reaction once per game thing, and maybe kneecapped a few blasts that were still ap2, but that was it. The busted ass reaction economy was still fully on place, and it lead to terrible experiences like predicted. "Wait and see the full thing" did nothing but vindicate the people who read all the leaks

Tech Marines looking really anemic compared to 1sts glorious conversion beamer, thunder hammer, augury scanner dude with 4 servitors rocking missile launchers. The thing is...all will be forgiven if they re-rename the Spartan away from the "Land Raider Spartan". I'll fully forgive every sin they've made in the past two editions if they fix that dumb name.

I remember 2nd dropping and waiting for the legacy and exemplary battle pdfs, hoping they would help restore the missing parts of 1st and bring back that flavour. They didn't. There were some hidden gems to be sure, but the legacy stuff didn't restore what was missing from 1st. We're basically at the "the day 1 patch will fix it" point. Idk if that's ever panned out. Re tartaros being "lighter terminators". The original lore was that tartaros was the perfected Terminator armour. It didn't have the sheer defense of cataphractii, but could Run and even make sweeping advances. It was indomitus+. Not compromised "light Terminator armour" to contrast the saturnine super heavy or cataphractii heavy.

I wasn't the biggest fan of moving a some of the special rules into warlord traits in 2nd. It didn't really break the lore; these special characters had specific command styles and favoured configurations when they were in charge of the theatre, but it was still obvious that it was being used to push the warlord traits for reaction point angle. So seeing almost every special character have a special rule dedicated to their dueling style was extra annoying. There's very little in these characters in how they're masterful commanders and influences in their legion. It's maybe a small or first turn buff, and then some always-available challenge option. The challenge stuff just feels so artificial and grafted on.