I've been through more edition changes for various games now than I care to remember!

Warhammer is a bit of a strange one because each previous edition has got pros and cons and I play different editions at different times now. I play 3rd for its detail and oldschool-fantasy feel, 5th edition for heroic characters and 6th/7th for rank and file and 'balance'. In that sense, they might as well be entirely different games for which I can use largely the same army with the bonus that, because they are not played competitively, I can do whatever I like to chop and change the rules or add new units as I see fit.

Warhammer 40,000 went from very detailed (in 1st and 2nd) to gradually less so as time wore on. Mostly I just drifted away from the game although still have a fair collection and the occasional pang of nostalgia. If I went back now then I'd be torn between playing 1st/2nd or whatever the current edition is.

Mostly though, Necromunda scratches the 40k itch for me - even for that I am mostly playing the fan-edit of the 1st edition rules instead of moving to the more recent versions.

I started Dungeons and Dragons with AD&D 2nd edition, before moving to the more user-friendly 3.5 and eventually Pathfinder which is a third-party overhaul for 3.5. We never moved to 4th or 5th, but now have the conundrum of whether to pick up Pathfinder 2nd edition!

In terms of other RPGs, we played lots of 'old' World of Darkness and never got into the newer stuff, but might now be buying into 5th edition which is revisiting its roots.

So, I guess what I am trying to say is that each edition change has its pros and cons, some will be remembered fondly, others not so much and it probably depends on what you grew up with to some extent. In many ways I'm glad that many different editions exist for some of these games as it allows me and the group I play with to pick and choose which we prefer to use and which best suits our view of how the games 'should be played'.

What will happen with X-wing 2.0? I'm not sure. I might end up partially staying with 1.0 with certain players and move to 2.0 with others but I'm happy to wait and see how the game develops.

I can imagine that this is a far more contentious issue for players who are inclined towards pick-up games or those who play competitively and therefore find it important that everyone is on the same page.

7 hours ago, Chucknuckle said:

Steadfast was like, the core of the whole problem. If you took 60+ infantry, put in a battlestandard bearer, a level 4 mage, a lord and as many heroes as you could get for the points, then you had a massive column of troops that was impossible to budge, that was chucking 6 dice at those game-ending spells every turn, and any unit you threw at it got blended by some lord level character stacked with magic items and his hero level characters backing him up. Since there was no way to defeat the unit in combat and it could absorb casualties all day erry day, the only way to deal with it was by trying to six-dice your own game ending spell to try and delete the whole unit in one go. Steadfast singlehandedly removed the need for tactical play. With no steadfast people needed to spread their eggs around, rather than putting them all in a single basket.

I used regular sized units of infantry in numbers around 25-30. When you faced a super big unit like you say, a small unit of Goblins in the flank negated Steadfast. Tactics could completely negate Steadfast. Just make sure you had a flexible army that had the tools. Steadfast wasn't that bad if you were smart.

The game in 6E was primarily ranked units. It was always that game to me. 7E totally screwed that game and ruined it. 8E had Steadfast and Step Up that made regular units relevant. It just got terrible when they were stacked with uber heroes. They were needed to defeat the super elite units and monsters.

7E was about having armies that had movement 5 or 6 that could out charge M4. They were tough with high Initiative that could kill your front rank before you got a chance to attack. Every army but OnG had a way to cause Fear. If you lost vs Fear you auto broke. So, I regularly faced units I couldn't charge, but they could charge me. I didn't get to roll any dice, but auto broke. 7E was ****. Worst version ever.

8E core rules supported Core troops like nothing before and made the game more interesting. It was the army books that brought out crazy powerful lord characters, Elites, and Monsters. OnG were utterly balanced and fine, but the power creep for army books was so crazy it killed 8e. The game that I used to play was about ranked units out maneuvering each other and playing as a smart, cohesive force. 8E turned into giant steadfast units vs Super Elites vs Monsters. If it was just super big units then numerous medium sized ones could negate them all the time. The many medium units strategy was killed by Elites and Monsters.

14 minutes ago, heychadwick said:

The game that I used to play was about ranked units out maneuvering each other and playing as a smart, cohesive force.

you would love Kings of War

2 minutes ago, Kodos said:

you would love Kings of War

I've looked at it. At this point I have moved on. Once I tried Xwing back in wave 1, I was hooked. Out guessing your opponent, picking the right dial, and understanding the spacing made Xwing the game that was better than fantasy army games.

If course, the past year or two has seen the tournament game move away from that in favor of post loving repositioning, combo-wing, and crazy unavoidable damage. I have been doing Casual, but even I was about to quit the game. V2 has utterly saved the day by (apperantly) bringing Xwing back to what made me love it in the first place.

I always love generic ships flown smartly being able to beat aces. Ok...maybe one ace mixed with generics. It's almost the same as playing Core fantasy units smarter to win.

For the same reason I see 2.0 a very positive change

1 hour ago, heychadwick said:

I've looked at it. At this point I have moved on. Once I tried Xwing back in wave 1, I was hooked. Out guessing your opponent, picking the right dial, and understanding the spacing made Xwing the game that was better than fantasy army games.

If course, the past year or two has seen the tournament game move away from that in favor of post loving repositioning, combo-wing, and crazy unavoidable damage. I have been doing Casual, but even I was about to quit the game. V2 has utterly saved the day by (apperantly) bringing Xwing back to what made me love it in the first place.

I always love generic ships flown smartly being able to beat aces. Ok...maybe one ace mixed with generics. It's almost the same as playing Core fantasy units smarter to win.

And this is the exact thing that is going to bring me back to competitive play. I was woefully ignorant of the meta last year when I went to worlds, and had my Fang Fighter aces shredded by turrets that didn't actually roll to do 2 damage every round.

One of my fondest memories of X-Wing was a three hour battle, where our supporting forces were destroyed in the first half-hour or so, and then we each had an ace flying and maneuvering for one of the most intense dog fights. Viewing the field, discerning the best maneuver both of us should make, then deciding which maneuver would best undermine his predicted maneuver - so much fun.

On 5/8/2018 at 6:25 PM, John Tenzer said:

I then went into Infinity Mk.II. Great system, everything was playable, as the game was very much dependent on the proper use of terrain and the units didn't have that a big stat spread to be overtly disbalanced against each other in hindsight of their pointscosts and abilities. Mk.III came and two books were needed to get both my armies converted completely (over the course of half a years waiting).

Costs were about 145 $ (Mk.III Core Book, Human Spheres, Ayyar Blister). I have 2 factions running: Haqqislam (54 models) and Nomads (10 models)

?

Now with X-Wing Mk.II and a solid collection of about 70 ships spread over 3 factions (Empire > Rebels > Scum) I'd be looking forward to pay more than 300 $ both in 2.0 Core Set and C-Kits (>340 $ most likely with the one for Epic) for a full conversion, with a lot of cardboard chaff being dragged in, too.

I collected mostly GCW-stuff (and in extension Lucasarts XWing/TieFighter/SotE-Ships), not the more exotic Legends vehicles, which I consider to be a pretty standard composition for an XWing TMG fan, who started around Wave 5.

So practically half of each C-Kit I'd have to buy (at least 5) would be paper ballast, thanks to the >coughing!< ... odd!... composition of the C-Kits.

As one can see, I have reason to find the effort and costs for this transition inappropriate in hindsight of the costs I am used to.

And I'm most likely not committing myself to that...!

And with Infinity, you didn't even have to buy the books unless you wanted the lore (which I did, the storyline is AMAZING). The rules were a free download, and Corvus maintains the army builder (Alex Davy plays JSA, or did pre-Uprising, so he may be borrowing a couple of ideas from that). If X-Wing wasn't using the card upgrade system, this would be much easier.

2 hours ago, heychadwick said:

I've looked at it. At this point I have moved on. Once I tried Xwing back in wave 1, I was hooked. Out guessing your opponent, picking the right dial, and understanding the spacing made Xwing the game that was better than fantasy army games.

If course, the past year or two has seen the tournament game move away from that in favor of post loving repositioning, combo-wing, and crazy unavoidable damage. I have been doing Casual, but even I was about to quit the game. V2 has utterly saved the day by (apperantly) bringing Xwing back to what made me love it in the first place.

I always love generic ships flown smartly being able to beat aces. Ok...maybe one ace mixed with generics. It's almost the same as playing Core fantasy units smarter to win.

I actually did quit playing for those reasons. I was done. I was out Unsubscribed from all my X-Wing podcasts (sorry), unfollowed all my X-Wing Facebook groups. I was in the process of getting ready to sell all my stuff, now I'm waiting until I see more of what 2.0 is going to be.

1 hour ago, Audio Weasel said:

I actually did quit playing for those reasons. I was done. I was out Unsubscribed from all my X-Wing podcasts (sorry), unfollowed all my X-Wing Facebook groups. I was in the process of getting ready to sell all my stuff, now I'm waiting until I see more of what 2.0 is going to be.

Good to see you again, weasel.

Personally, I'm quite excited about v2. From watching the dev talks it seems they fully understand our complaints and these were on their mind when working.

5 hours ago, heychadwick said:

I used regular sized units of infantry in numbers around 25-30. When you faced a super big unit like you say, a small unit of Goblins in the flank negated Steadfast. Tactics could completely negate Steadfast. Just make sure you had a flexible army that had the tools. Steadfast wasn't that bad if you were smart.

The game in 6E was primarily ranked units. It was always that game to me. 7E totally screwed that game and ruined it. 8E had Steadfast and Step Up that made regular units relevant. It just got terrible when they were stacked with uber heroes. They were needed to defeat the super elite units and monsters.

7E was about having armies that had movement 5 or 6 that could out charge M4. They were tough with high Initiative that could kill your front rank before you got a chance to attack. Every army but OnG had a way to cause Fear. If you lost vs Fear you auto broke. So, I regularly faced units I couldn't charge, but they could charge me. I didn't get to roll any dice, but auto broke. 7E was ****. Worst version ever.

8E core rules supported Core troops like nothing before and made the game more interesting. It was the army books that brought out crazy powerful lord characters, Elites, and Monsters. OnG were utterly balanced and fine, but the power creep for army books was so crazy it killed 8e. The game that I used to play was about ranked units out maneuvering each other and playing as a smart, cohesive force. 8E turned into giant steadfast units vs Super Elites vs Monsters. If it was just super big units then numerous medium sized ones could negate them all the time. The many medium units strategy was killed by Elites and Monsters.

7e Fear only auto-broke you if you were outnumbered. The issue here wasn’t the rules to Fear, because they were largely the same as 6e Fear, but the army books that could spam the crap out of such units. It’s why Vampire Counts has unit caps. But then along came Demons, and everything went to crap, with the difference depending on which demons you fought.

Horrors were a good example because they counted as a whole extra wizard of power level dependent upon their mode count (unit size divided by 10, rounded up iirc). And if they miscast, they just lost a couple of horrors and were good to go. Take 30 of them and you had what was effectively lvl 4 wizard, human-stat roadblock with a 4+ ward save that was fearless and caused fear. And that’s saying nothing of the giant demon chicken.

7e’s issue was with the army books, and the sudden prevalence of fear. The core rules started off alright. 8e removed all of the minutiae of wheeling and maneuvering. Steadfast was supposed to be there to boost infantry ranks, but it was poorly executed and ended up just being a way to get a unit of Stubborn heroes with Ld 9 or 10.

Ok, we here had a well accepted (means also 90% of casual games used it) tournament rules set that removed the extremes from each army so it was not that bad
while at the beginning of 8th this was gone and forgotten (so even some army book additions that were well accepted in 7th were not accepted any more in 8th for those armies that never got heir book) or used to kill off armies the TO did not like

58 minutes ago, It’s One Of Ours said:

7e Fear only auto-broke you if you were outnumbered.

It has been a while, but that's not how I recall it. All I remember is auto-breaking without rolling any dice on a regular basis.

11 minutes ago, heychadwick said:

It has been a while, but that's not how I recall it. All I remember is auto-breaking without rolling any dice on a regular basis.

The rule for Fear and Terror was that if a unit was charged by something that caused Fear/Terror, then it took a Ld check. If it failed, and the unit outnumbered them, then they fled immediately. If they failed and they outnumbered the Fear/Terror unit, they needed 6’s to hit the first turn.

If trying to charge a Fear/Terror unit, then they had to take a Ld check. If they failed, then the charge failed and they remained in place (iirc).

And if they lost combat against a Fear/Terror causing unit that outnumbered them, then they had to pass an insane-courage check to not flee from combat (rolling a pair of 1’s).

And lastly, Terror had a radius first-time-only Terror check that it caused, and also caused Fear in Fear-causing units.

Fear/Terror were still obnoxiously powerful rules, and having entire armies with them was ridiculous (Vampire Counts, Tomb Kings, Daemons, Ogres, etc). But it was by far worse with the daemon book... Ogres causing Fear were only an issue if the person was running a huge block of 12 of them.

The only real change I went through was DnD Minis 1.0 to 2.0, and it killed the game.

The changes they made were logical, but the way they went about doing it was what killed it. The switch happened when they were transitioning to DnD 4.0, so they made the combat rules the same (which of course changed pretty much everything). What they did wrong was that they didn't release changes to the older models even close to on time.

It was a total nightmare. New models you bought had only 2.0 cards, but 2.0 stats for older models were nowhere to be found. You either had to buy all new stuff to play 2.0, or you had to leave your new stuff on the shelf to play your older models.

I stopped playing before they fixed it, if they ever did.

I'll give FFG some credit, they are working to keep the game playable with the old stuff and the changes I think will dramatically improve the game.

16 hours ago, Audio Weasel said:

And with Infinity, you didn't even have to buy the books unless you wanted the lore (which I did, the storyline is AMAZING). The rules were a free download, and Corvus maintains the army builder.

[...]

If X-Wing wasn't using the card upgrade system, this would be much easier.

Exactly.

Don't forget the Wiki, with all rules, stats, tables and live updated FAQs attached to it. It makes INFINITY so much easier to play and access. And comes for free.

Which - as a whole - made me in turn give Corvus Belli happily and voluntarily my money for their service to the customer.

Relatively on topic,

Games Workshop just announced a new edition for Age of Sigmar. The game was first released about 3 years ago.

14 minutes ago, Forgottenlore said:

Relatively on topic,

Games Workshop just announced a new edition for Age of Sigmar. The game was first released about 3 years ago.

SUCKAZ!!!

36 minutes ago, Firebird TMK said:

SUCKAZ!!!

New rules will be free to download, updated Warscrolls will be done for free via their app, current Battletomes and armies will still all work.

11 minutes ago, NulEnvoid said:

New rules will be free to download, updated Warscrolls will be done for free via their app, current Battletomes and armies will still all work.

It'll be an interesting price comparison. $90 for the core rules and a conversion set for your faction?

No, I think it will be much, much less than that.

The only game I have experience with changing editions is Warhammer 40,000. With that game, I dreaded every time they came out with a new edition. My first thought was how much was this going to cost me to upgrade my three armies (IG, Space Wolves and Necrons). What I do know is it was a lot more than the $165 I'm paying to upgrade my collection with a new core set and 1 of each of the conversion kits.

18 minutes ago, T70 Driver said:

The only game I have experience with changing editions is Warhammer 40,000. With that game, I dreaded every time they came out with a new edition. My first thought was how much was this going to cost me to upgrade my three armies (IG, Space Wolves and Necrons). What I do know is it was a lot more than the $165 I'm paying to upgrade my collection with a new core set and 1 of each of the conversion kits.

Let's be fair though, most of those costs were in units to build a new powerful army after the edition change. The actual costs to upgrade were just a new codex and a new rulebook, and you could always (barring 7th to 8th) just use your old codex until the new one came out so sometimes those purchases were years apart.

Yeah, people often bought new units in new editions, but let's be honest, you're going to buy new ships in 2.0 as well.

10 hours ago, NulEnvoid said:

New rules will be free to download, updated Warscrolls will be done for free via their app, current Battletomes and armies will still all work.

Armybook still working has always been a thing, don't expect much from it (and as Stormcast get everything now, don't expect much from other factions without a new battledome)

And as we know from 40k, free rules means the core rules and units without points, to actually play the game you need the books.

15 hours ago, Kodos said:

Armybook still working has always been a thing, don't expect much from it (and as Stormcast get everything now, don't expect much from other factions without a new battledome)

And as we know from 40k, free rules means the core rules and units without points, to actually play the game you need the books.

You should have enough between the books you own and the rules downloads to not be locked out of playing. You can always get the core book which also contains over 200 pages of info if you wish. The Generals Handbook is always handy too, but let's not pretend everyone needs to have either to continue playing, you can still play with friends or groups and share the knowledge.

From what I understand you still have the warscroll builder online if you're struggling with points.

On 5/9/2018 at 11:03 AM, ficklegreendice said:

It really goes to show how little they understand the games they workshop

Like they were so flabbergasted why their horrible 8th Ed (the age of random bull) did so badly that they thought they had to axe fantasy as we knew it

Sigh

Yep, this is absolutely true.

They basically mos-diagnosed the problem. The game DID need a complete overhaul. However, they could have rolled it back to something like 6th and the game would have been perfectly healthy, and they’d still be selling boxes and boxes of rank and file.

It’s too bad. I was heavily into WHFB. I made trips to other states and even other countries (Canada twice, the UK twice) for tournaments. I was also one of their outside playtesters for a decade.

Those who have been reading my comments about GW edition changes and thinking I was complaining about their cost are quite wrong...I was totally focused on WHFB and took each edition change in stride. My point was simply that this X-Wing edition change isn’t the biggest I’ve ever seen. I don’t have a problem with it because it seems a major change is needed. It’s certainly less noisome than the SCHEDULED regular edition changes for WHFB. GW often made an edition change not because there were rules issues that required a major revamp, but because GW wanted the game to have a new edition every few years.

That’s not the case at all here. While some folks are fine with 1e (and I’m one of them, though the rest of my group isn’t, which has killed my ability to play), there are serious issues with game balance and what ships are at the height of the meta. Having ships that most folks don’t recognize as “Star Wars” as the most popular on most game tables is a major issue that hinders the growth of the player base. If the game can get back to T-65s versus Tie fighters being a balanced match of two builds that can compete with the rest of the field, we’ll be back in the sweet spot again.

I’m pretty stoked about 2e, and happy to pay for a new starter and 1 of each conversion kit to get home there. It’s very like an edition change in WHFB when I was heavily into it, with the added bonus that I expect this edition to “stick” much longer.

5 hours ago, NulEnvoid said:

You should have enough between the books you own and the rules downloads to not be locked out of playing. You can always get the core book which also contains over 200 pages of info if you wish. The Generals Handbook is always handy too, but let's not pretend everyone needs to have either to continue playing, you can still play with friends or groups and share the knowledge.

From what I understand you still have the warscroll builder online if you're struggling with points.

And I always can print my own cards for X-Wing

The warscroll builder is free without points, if you want points for playing you have to pay a monthly fee or buy the printed book

GW is misleading here, they werr also with 40k. You can have a game for free, as you can play SW Legion or 2.0 for free, but if you want the full game (points, scenarios, terrain rules) you have to buy the stuff.

It is not that this is a bad thing, but people get the wrong impression.

2 hours ago, Kodos said:

And I always can print my own cards for X-Wing

The warscroll builder is free without points, if you want points for playing you have to pay a monthly fee or buy the printed book

GW is misleading here, they werr also with 40k. You can have a game for free, as you can play SW Legion or 2.0 for free, but if you want the full game (points, scenarios, terrain rules) you have to buy the stuff.

It is not that this is a bad thing, but people get the wrong impression.

Try the AoS Warscroll Builder for points by GW online, you can choose the points system from the generals handbook or skirmish, the 40k one uses the power system rather than points I believe. Printing cards, bases and making dials is achievable I guess, but breaks copyright. Legitimately you only need one expanded rule book if you really want for competitive reference.

They also have a lot of terrain rules on their site, even a collated PDF. You can generally download Warscrolls and rules from the product page. There seems to be free scenarios for 40k but I'm not sure about AoS unless you get them from terrain specific rules.

I do get what you are saying, it's not as easy as they make out, but I'm not so sure it's as hard as is made out either.