Wow, I guess I haven't been in here in a long while. Wow I actually have someone whose decided to "Follow". That's exciting! This past week I've been reading a lot of blogs, and it's made me realize that as a crazy opinionated person with a degree in English and a lot to say, that I really should work on that more often. So I'm gonna try, and I'll hope you uniteallaction, are just the first in a string of future readers. But now onto the meat and potatoes...
So I was reading a blog post this morning (I don't remember which one otherwise I'd cite it), but this bit I remember quite well as it's stuck out in my mind all day;
"3rd and 4th Edition were struggling to find footing, and as a result were really lackluster"I'm paraphrasing, the language was certainly saltier, and both 3rd and 4th Editions were being put down considerably.
Now I'll admit, my opinion may be considerably skewed by the fact that I started with 3rd, heck my very first 40k purchase was the 3rd Edition box set (Marines v. Dark Eldar). That starter set was truly amazing, a nice thick rulebook with lots of fluff AND let us not forget that it had a section with a mini ruleset for SM, Eldar, Orks, Dark Eldar, Tyranids, CSM, and Imperial Guard and every one except the Dark Eldar and CSM had a few variants that altered composition.
That section was a level of GOLD that no BRB released by GW has contained since. Did all the special rules, wargear, and other unique goodies that make each army independent exist in those lists? No. But you could play the WHOLE game from that one book, and the gaming circle I pretty much put together used that book for at least 6 months before we started each grabbing the real Codexs.
(Actually it was all because Petroff was the first to get the SM codex and was annihilating the rest of us in no small part due to the extra rules and such, but that's another story entirely.)
Was that section perfect? Not by a long shot, but it really got me and my fledgling gaming group really excited, and we all constantly flipped thru that book making our own decisions on models to extend our early armies.
Now I admit, my little gaming group experience early on is not typical of gamers, especially today. I didn't have anywhere near the resources a new player has today, with little to no internet access on a weekly basis, no LGS or LGW within 50 miles of my small home town, and none of us had any prior experience playing a tabletop miniatures game. Heck I think we didn't even have any terrain on the table until each of us had at least a dozen games under our belts (which really hurt my fledgling Eldar force).
Writing this already has me sidetracked considerably in Nostalgia zone of my first year or so in 40k, so I'm gonna try and stop that and move on.
3rd Edition had many greats, that I think showed GW moving more towards balance on the table while retaining many of the great Fluff elements that really showcased the massive Science Fiction backdrop unto which the game is placed. Besides cheap Codex's (I believe my Eldar codex was 15 including Shipping!), there were also many great add-on books such as the Craftworld Codex (granting rules for specific Craftworld armies such as my favorite Alaitioc), the 3rd War for Armaggeddon Codex (which introduced a list for the Ork Kult of Speed, Black Templars, Salamanders, and IG Steel Legions), AND the Eye of Terror Codex (which brought Cadian Shock Troopers, the lost 13th company of Space Wolves, the Ulthwe Strike Forces, AND the legendary coolness of the Chaos Lost and the Damned).
Those books, while considered by many to be mearly supplimental, were incredibly huge for my gaming development. Still all these years later fondly remember my Alaitioc Ranger force, the quickly (and poorly constructed) Buggy filled Kult of Speed, and my Lost and the Damned horde of Muties. I'm DAMN proud of each of those armies. They were AMAZINGLY fun to play, and 2 of the 3 were my first real forrays into scratchbuilding and kitbashing for 40k.
Were these perfect books? No, heck I can only really point to one Codex in the entirety of my knowledge of 40k I would say was the closest to perfection GW as ever gotten with a Codes, and that'd be the 3rd Edition Chaos Space Marine Codex (which in itself I later learned was the SECOND CSM book of 3rd Edition!). That Codex had all the rules you'd want for an army, a huge amount of customization for your army, and independant rules for ALL 9 of the Traitor Legions.
THAT is the closest to a perfect Codex I've ever seen, and it is likely that my opinion will never change on that topic. What edition was it? 3rd! And true it was technically a revision to the original 3rd edition book, but who cares, so Chaos and IG got 2 codex treatments in 3rd, big whoop.
That's one of the other things that I think people forget about 3rd Edition. Every army got a codex. EVERY ARMY! Marines (along with varient Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Space Wolves), Eldar, Orks, Tyranids, Dark Eldar (Which I might add were NEW), Imperial Guard, Sisters of Battle (which became Witch Hunters), Heck they even added entirely new armies relatively late in 3rd Edition specifically, the Tau, Demonhunters and Necrons!
ON TOP OF THAT, there were supplemental stuff from "Chapter Approved" (an old section of White Dwarf Magazine) that gave us ADDITIONAL armies such as the Kroot Mercenaries and Feral Orks. And to just add on a heafty helping of Awesome Sauce, GW put up PDFs of Chapter Approved army lists for FREE Download!
Now, I can only hope and pray that the Dark Gods in charge of Games Workshop get it in their head to bring out this kind of supplemental stuff now that we're in 6th. I mean it! I can't tell you how much I'd be going nuts if they do! And it looks like all the years of my hard praying as paid off, since I keep hearing rumors flying about a supplemental Iyanden book that's going to drop (I've even seen screenshots of it that look pretty legit, even if it is written by Matt Ward, whose background fluff makes me cringe).
I won't hold my breath though. I've heard rumors of things like this before, like a 4th Edition (and 5th Edition for that matter) Chaos Legions book, and a 40k Mercenaries book. If GW does bring out an Iyanden book, I'll buy it with gusto in the hopes they'll bring out additional books! How unbelievably amazing would that be?!
Do I want extra or themed army variants for free download ala Chapter Approved... ehh truthfully I'm willing to go up to any Games Workshop employ and tell them to "TAKE MY MONEY!" for additional army books. Why? Well for starters it helps support the company, and as a company if they see that they can make money off of it, they're much more inclined to make more. Beyond that if GW is making money off of them, they will be of a significantly higher quality.
So now that I've gone through writing all that, I will admit that I can see a very clear fault with 3rd Edition, and not just gaming aggravations that existed in 3rd and a level of cheese which truthfully exists at all levels of the game. That would be the fluff.
Second Edition ran rampant with fluff, expanding if not creating the vast majority of the 40k universe that we know today. But 2nd Edition had a lot of faults, and a lot of stuff that really just didn't work. Lots of overcomplicated tables, a metric ton of book keeping, and more than any other Edition's worth of unbelievably broken stuff. Heck even some units were so unwieldy that they HAD to be put down (2nd Edition Madboys anyone?)
But I must admit, I've really lost myself more times than I can count reading the amazing background material contained in those 2nd Edition Tomes. I'm still hoping that one day I'll get a chance to read the 2nd Edition Ork Freebootas book. And with 3rd Edition, especially the early 3rd Edition books such as the Eldar and Orks were severely lacking in fluff to the point that still to this day is disappointing.
So I'm hoping that 6th Edition will be the one that brings 'balance to the force' so to speak. At the near breakneck pace they're pumping out codexs (almost a year into 6th and they've released 5 including the Eldar book that dropped TODAY), I think I can hope that they'll also bring out amazing supplements, who knows maybe even a redux of some bygone classic forces like Genestealer Cults, Kroot Mercenaries and the Lost and Damned. Maybe even Ork Freebootas that can ally with every army! (Ok, I know that last one will never happen, but I can hope).
So I'll end this now by saying, I'm gonna be back, writing more and konverting more minis.
Peace
~OD
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