I've been wondering to myself lately about the things I like about Warhammer 40,000 8th edition and what I liked about prior editions. Specifically I'd like to play with my Horus Heresy-era stuff, but I can't seem to bring myself to go back to how 7th Edition WH40k played. I'm not sure if it is because I felt like 7e was work to play, the players I played made it feel onerous, or if I'm genuinely dissatisfied with how it worked.
There are certainly parts of 8th edition that make the game easier to play. The keyword system, a page taken from Age of Sigmar, particularly makes things easier to comprehend with regard to list-building and what is affected by which rules. There is also the fact that units have their own movement distances, which makes each unit feel more different from one another. Giving vehicles toughness, wounds, and damage tables also makes them feel viable and interesting compared to 7th edition made vehicles hard to play with. There's also the subtle but interesting change in how model stats work; without a hard cap of 10, units feel more varied because they can cover a wider range. There's also the return of AP as an armor save penalty, which makes getting shot or hit less of a binary element (either I can make a save or I can't). Coupled with the weapon damage stat, the weapons feel less samey and more varied. The way psychic powers work is now easy to understand and something I really like as a Thousand Sons fan. I think that 7th Edition/Age of Darkness rules (the latter being Forge World's name for their revision of 7th Edition rules) could greatly benefit from all of these changes, especially the removal of the stat cap given how Forge World has altered Destroyer weapons in their revision.
But at the same time, 8th edition changed some things that I do not think necessarily needed to be changed. Do not misunderstand me, I think 8th edition is a nice breath of fresh air and something the game really needed. But I happen to agree with a friend who said they preferred the comparative weapon skill rules of Warhammer Fantasy compared to the straight dice roll of Age of Sigmar (and by extension pre-8th edition 40k rules to 8th edition). I also like the idea of embedding characters into units so they can lead the charge, says the narrative game geek inside me. I also do miss the universal special rules being in one place, because it means that you really only worry about one book for corrections to many different special rules. Army, unit, and weapon specific special rules are always going to exist in either Warhammer game, but collecting together the most common ones in the core rules is always going to seem simpler to me (see the various 'Deep Strike' type rules in 8th edition for an example of something that could be consolidated into one thing).
This is not to say that 7th edition was without it's problems. Vehicles are either too easy to kill or too hard to kill. Allies were easily abused (and remain easily abused even under 8th edition's keyword system in all fairness) ever since they were introduced. You often need three and even sometimes four books to play an army with any level of popularity; the main rulebook, the Space Marine codex, and Angels of Death if you're an Astartes fan. That particular problem gets worse once you add in the rules expansions such as the flyer or fortification books. And then the rules were modified by various expansion or added a whole new game phase to worry about. In essence, 7th edition got to be a bloated mess of rules that really needed to be consolidated and cleaned up. I'm not even going to get into the hideousness of death star units and Super Friend character units that the win-at-any-cost crowd liked to do.
So in the end, what do I really want? I'd like a ruleset that takes the elements I enjoy about 8th edition and rationalizes them with the 7th edition rules. I could do it, but it would be an enormous amount of work for just myself and a few friends. If you're reading this, please leave comments below on what your thoughts are.
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