Why I think 7th is the best yet; and what it gives (a positive view of 7th ed 40k)

[Marshal_Loss]

I don't think you need to put 'a positive view' in the title when you say just before it that you think it is the best yet, lol...

6th was the big step forward and a true innovation of the ruleset, 7th is just 6th with this stupid unbound garbage and some other minor changes. I avoid most Unbound by playing 30k so I enjoy 7th, as I did 6th.

[Path Walker]

I had a lot of fun with 6th and 7th is even better, i love the return of the psychic phase, its fun and lots of cool things can happen, I love the focus on narrative campaigns and new ways of playing, with fresh missions and play styles all the time, its great.

[WeWantTheFunk]

I stopped mid-5th because I hated the game as just two guys trading punches. The Maelstrom missions make the game about ongoing achievements. The randomness of objectives and psychic powers levels the playing field.

I'm definitely a convert to 7th. And I play DE and BA, so when I called my buddy from the old days back in October to start playing again, I picked the perfect time to do so

[Erik Setzer]

Um... no.

1. You could already do a lot of that stuff in prior editions. These used to be this thing called "house rules." People even made up rules in their groups, or shared fun ideas on the Internet. Maybe 10-20 years ago gamers were just more creative, but it's embarrassing to say that just because the rulebook is a little more flexible you can suddenly do all these things you couldn't before. The only reason you "couldn't" is because you didn't think to do them. The rulebook also says your opponent has to agree to anything you want to do... which they'd have to with any of those prior house rules and such.

2. The psychic phase just helps tidy up that part of the game... and had to go back five editions to get that back. Yes, that's right, kids: 40K had a psychic phase a long time ago, but that one actually had a better chance for people to shut down powers. Seeing invisible Knights, or vortexes spinning all over, those aren't things that feel awesome to face. Heck, Invisibility on a normal unit can be game-breaking... I ended up with a unit of MegaNobz in combat with a unit of Grey Hunters who had some AP2 weapons, I couldn't hit them, but they did a few wounds, and boom, my expensive unit evaporates. Oh yeah, that's an enjoyable game.

3. You could play without restrictions in the past, if you asked your opponent. Which, you should note, is exactly as it is now: You still have to ask permission. So nothing changed in 7th edition except that they noted an idea in the rulebook. Okay, yeah, I have to admit, the unimaginative gamers of today (you people are making me feel old) need to have it spelled out for them that they can try to play the game in some way other than the most basic. But that doesn't mean the game got better, or even changed.

4. Maelstrom missions, as much as I've enjoyed them at times, need house rules to make them work right. I don't play them any more without some kind of agreed-upon rules for things like how to handle cards that are 100% impossible (i.e. cast a power when you didn't bring a psyker, or destroy a building when the opponent doesn't have one). It also led to one game I'm not keen on, where the only chance for victory due to my opponent getting a lucky draw was for me to table him, which I did, but felt bad about (I don't like wiping a person's army out). You also need to have the cards, or it's going to be rough to keep track of things, and that's not really feasible for every army that's come out after the 7th edition rulebook, as they all have their own modified decks, which are only sold a limited time (because either GW really doesn't care about the customers, or they feel they can't sell that many, which suggest Maelstrom isn't that popular... and, given how rarely I see them played now that the new shine has wore off, I'd believe). As for the number of missions, we had something similar back in 2nd edition, we've had several missions and ways of playing printed over the years, and you're using Altar of War and very specific stuff to get to that over 100 mark (it's important to note AoW applies to specific armies, and sometimes isn't so easy to adapt to a different army). Also, to get that much variety, you're talking main rulebook ($85), two campaign books for Planetstrike ($100), two campaign books for Cities of Death ($100), the Altar of War book ($50), plus whatever dataslates or whatever you want, so yeah, $335 better darn well buy you some variation of missions.

5. You're making this claim based on Orks, Space Wolves, Grey Knights, Dark Eldar, and Blood Angels. While BA were toned down, and GK mainly just had some stuff ripped out of the book, they're still potent armies (heck, there's a kid who barely knows the rules but can win consistently with Grey Knights). DE are about where they were. SW got some nice help, and a TWC deathstar can be obnoxious, as can things like Murderface McMurderpants being a character (meaning he can challenge your squad leader and kill or negate the only model in a unit that can hurt him) or their Dreadnoughts with like 3-4 S10 AP2 attacks with a 3+ inv. save even in close combat (had one of those things take down a Knight that just couldn't get through the shield). Tack on the flyer... yeah, Space Wolves got better, and I've faced enough people who know how to make them a powergaming force that I'm not about to call them balanced (which is a shame as I want to finish modeling my SW force). And Orks... well, Orks are Orks. Tom Kirby hates green people.


I don't hate 7th edition, but I'm not going to claim it's the best yet, especially as I still see horribly unbalanced games and units, and it leads to games where you just know you're wasting 2-3 hours on something that isn't enjoyable because it's not even close. And that's not playing against tournament-level players. The only actual powergamer mentality person I played was where I wanted to test something.

And it's ridiculous to even try to suggest that low-level 40K can replicate Necromunda. It can't. The rules are so streamlined and simplified, even Kill Team doesn't produce the same feel, and low-level 40K is meant to be super-quick, whereas Necromunda was meant to take a bit more time (think the difference in 30 minutes and an hour). When you make such a claim, it suggests that you've never played Necromunda and/or you're really, really pushing it to promote 40K7.

Even with Unbound in the rulebook, it's still hard to get people to accept playing against it, which is going to make my own Unbound force a bit of a hard sell. I plan on utilizing several Imperial army books to make a Rogue Trader force, with a captain requisitioning Space Marines, mercenaries, maybe an assassin or two, and other goodness (mainly as an excuse to go wild on modeling and painting).

I can enjoy 7th edition, but it doesn't feel different from prior editions, other than adding in ever more stuff that adds more confusion and makes the games longer. Though the main problem there is that, with the rush to get 7th edition on store shelves, they didn't really playtest a lot and work to make sure there was clarity to the rules. Heck, in some cases, it's obvious they forgot their own rules, which leads to the necessity to errata things later (i.e. Murderface McMurderpants needed an errata to make Furious Charge useful for him, because originally it didn't work as intended). Or they just leave out something extremely important, like how super-heavy walkers move through terrain (if you've ever played a game with a pair of them in the middle of a ton of trees, you know how key that fix is).

And 7th edition still hasn't fixed assault being a flaming pile of turds unless you bring an uber-unit, which led to my having to build a completely new Ork army. Maybe 8th edition will fix that in 2016 (and then we'll get threads calling it the BEST EVER).

Also, I feel it's necessary to point out Cityfight came out in 3rd or 4th edition, and Planetstrike also had a release around 4th or 5th edition, the new rules being split between two books (because you aren't giving them enough money when it's a single $25-$30 book) is just updating something that existed before. Ditto for Death From the Skies, and Apocalypse (which actually got its second edition in 40K6, not 40K7). So you're basically saying that 40K7 is good because it's doing a lot of things the game used to do in the past (while not doing a lot of other stuff it used to do). Well. Okay, then. I think we can file that further under "Either Completely New Player, Or Just Pushing 40K7 Way Too Hard."


(Admittedly, when someone starts off with such an extreme position as "THE BEST," it annoys me, because at that point you know they're not looking for an objective discussion, especially when they only want the positives mentioned, to try to back their claim.)

[Venomlust]

I'm with you 100%, friend. Thanks for this post.

A lot of older players are unhappy as editions progress, but perhaps that's just the inevitable hate against change that occurs with humans in just about any context.

As you can imagine, I'm a newer player. Just over a year now, and I'm loving 7th as well.

That's not to say there isn't plenty about the game that I don't like or couldn't be improved, but there we have it.


Also, "veteran" players: You're not veterans of a war, here, guys. Please get over yourselves.

[Erik Setzer]

I'm with you 100%, friend. Thanks for this post.

A lot of older players are unhappy as editions progress, but perhaps that's just the inevitable hate against change that occurs with humans in just about any context.

As you can imagine, I'm a newer player. Just over a year now, and I'm loving 7th as well.

That's not to say there isn't plenty about the game that I don't like or couldn't be improved, but there we have it.


Also, "veteran" players: You're not veterans of a war, here, guys. Please get over yourselves.

I don't mind new editions so much, except when they do things like take the core idea of my army, murder it with extreme prejudice, burn the corpse, and then toss it into a ditch full of horse manure.

You don't understand because you're a new player. You don't have the experiences to draw on. That also means it's impossible for you to declare how good this edition is compared to others.

In 3rd edition, Orks were pretty solid with their ability to assault. It was a notable change from 2nd edition, where Orks had the same statline as WFB Orcs (WS3, BS3, A1) and had access to plenty of shooting and assault. But hey, we Ork players rolled with it. We went along with a completely new line that was so different our old models looked wrong alongside them. We eagerly built new armies full of assault units. In 4th edition, the rules tweaked a bit, but assault was still pretty viable, albeit the Orks lost some anti-armor punch in combat with the loss of the choppa rule and burnas being very limited. Then assault just started going downhill, and now it's at the point where you need a super-unit (or at least Space Marines of some sort) to be viable. Oh, but shooting's a lot more viable. So all those Ork players who built assault armies need to go make shooty armies. Similarly, Tyranid players experienced the same situation. That's a lot of money, a lot of effort, and it's not fun having to completely change how you play without any good reason.

It's also been sad watching the mentality change as new players came in, who no longer were interested in making the game their own and making up stuff for campaigns, missions, new rules for units, etc. (heck, GW even gave us official vehicle creation rules at one point). No, new players think that the only reason you can do any of that is because GW now says you can and prints rules for it (which they then say you have to agree with your opponent to use... so yeah, same situation as before, basically). The game didn't get better in that regard, the community got worse. It got lazy, unimaginative. The top 40K sites in the past used to include new ideas for how to play the game, new rules for people to try, all kinds of fun stuff like that. Now, the top 40K sites talk about news, breathlessly reposting forum posts with rumors of what might be coming in a few days, or how to win games.

Also, try not to be an arrogant snob looking down on veteran gamers. Without them supporting the game and building GW up to be so strong it mistakenly thought it could start abusing customers, you wouldn't have a 7th (or any) edition of 40K.

[40kGamer]

It's also been sad watching the mentality change as new players came in, who no longer were interested in making the game their own and making up stuff for campaigns, missions, new rules for units, etc. (heck, GW even gave us official vehicle creation rules at one point). No, new players think that the only reason you can do any of that is because GW now says you can and prints rules for it (which they then say you have to agree with your opponent to use... so yeah, same situation as before, basically). The game didn't get better in that regard, the community got worse. It got lazy, unimaginative. The top 40K sites in the past used to include new ideas for how to play the game, new rules for people to try, all kinds of fun stuff like that. Now, the top 40K sites talk about news, breathlessly reposting forum posts with rumors of what might be coming in a few days, or how to win games.

In this way the game is a victim of GW targeting the younger demographic with little thought of the grognards.

[Jimmynurgle]

Honestly... 7th is one of the worst editions I've seen, and I have been playing since 2nd Ed. It's not the Unbound, it's not the Psychic phase which can be OP (and I'm a Demon player, that's saying something.)... it's the absolute blatant money grab that drives everything regardless of sense. Yes they are a miniature company and they need to sell minis, but that's it- they see themselves as a mini company, NOT a game company. 7th Ed showed up under 2 years AFTER 6th with virtually no warning, that angered a LOT of the vets I play with, me included since our nice new $60+ rulebooks that we barely broke in were useless. Then there is the stupid trend of bigger and bigger kits as a way to make up falling cashflow- box sales are dropping, so we'll just make HUGE models that are the equivalent of 4+ sets price-wise to keep our number steady.

Next? Lets make the Codices bland and weak as possible... and charge MORE for them! Then add in all the GOOD stuff as "dataslates" and charge even MORE for these... this was probably the last straw for a few folks. Most of the group I play with have been dead set against illegal downloads for as long as I've known and played games against them- and all of them now have the attitude of "oh screw this, not getting my wallet raped" and are using those illegal downloads.. why? Because they refuse spend $70-90+ dollars just to get a playable list.. 'Nids being the worst so far... though if the rumors are true... Blood angels might as well be renamed "cash grab whore army"- you cannot tell me that the removal of Assault Marines as troops and the "New" Tac box aren't related- GW knows a ton of BA armies don't even use tacs... and we need to SELL ... so screw the vets, make em buy all new stuff!!

To sum up- 7th is actually really good rules-wise yes, it may be one of the best. BUT... it is the accompanied obvious fleecing of the player that has a lot of people angry at it as they should be. There are lots of games out there that treat their players with a lot more respect and are doing great for it, Privateer, Mantic, Infinity, hell even Spartan games... all of them are able to sell new models in droves and put out rulesd without charging for every letter.

[JMichael]

I agree and love 7th edition!
We pretty much only play the Maelstrom missions in our group, the kind of randomness of the tactical cards forces us to have more fun and not take any one objective to seriously.
I've been playing since 1989 and 2nd edition was one of my favorites. Waaaaay over the top characters and psykers. I feel that 7th has the things I really liked about 2nd (including the psychic phase) but is far more thought out and cleaner.
I also really like Unbound and Battle-Forged (Please everyone, stop calling it 'Bound'). We don't have any issues with cheesy Unbound lists, it is mostly someone's ally brings a super heavy. Not a big deal.

I do feel the codices are getting a bit bland. They don't have to add more units, just more upgrade/weapon options. Even more Relics and vehicle equipment would be cool.
Some armies have a large number of unique characters to choose from while others get 3ish.

Anyway, I love it and earlier this year was considering selling most of my 40k stuff. 7th got me back into it in a big way!

[daboarder]

Also, "veteran" players: You're not veterans of a war, here, guys. Please get over yourselves.

Man, the one guy that doesn't get the link between "veterans" of a wargame and actual "veterans" of a war.
Its tongue in cheek reference dude, lighten up