Is 30k better than 40k?

[YorkNecromancer]

30K has a number of things 40K doesn't which weigh BIG in its favour:

1. Nostalgia factor - all those FW designs based on the original Rogue Trader models? They're the number 1 reason I care about HH.
2. Marines - I bloody love marines, and so do a lot of other people. Lest we forget, the reason people complain about marines is largely because they see them so often. The people who complain loudest about marines therefore aren't playing them, and therefore have to be in the minority, or else they wouldn't have anything to complain about, because marines would be Just Another Army. But HH is almost pure marines, and that's got a huge appeal to people like me.
3. The Special Snowflake Chapters get their day in the sun - No-one publicly likes Ultramarines; everyone's gotta be different, and HH offers not only an absurd number of new marine Legions, it gives them special rules, unique units, names characters. Iron Hands! Raven Guard! And then, it actually manages to make the Ultramarines cool, by playing up the stuff that makes them different, and putting them in a fight with the Word Bearers, a villain worthy of them. And because the Ultras are only a small part of the Heresy, they don't/can't dominate it.
4. Chaos models aren't stupid looking - I mean, this one's mostly me, but I f**king hate the 'Iron Maiden album cover' look that 90% of Chaos Marines have. HH-era Traitors are basically marines but genuinely evil-looking, especially those Word Bearers. They're genuinely horrifying. This is a Good Thing.
5. Big stuff - HH is optimised for 3000 point battles which include at least one Lord of War. And let's be fair, everyone loves the big stuff. From superheavies to Primarchs, everyone loves the idea of owning and fielding something world-endingly massive. HH encourages this in a way 40K doesn't, because 30K was designed for it.
6. Lack of a tournament scene - Tournament players tend to be the most vocal group about their likes/dislikes, because the issues of balance matter to them more than friendly pick-up players. HH isn't really played in tournaments, because of the tournament phobia of FW, and so the game skews more towards friendly pick-up players who are more inclined to speak positively about their experiences, because they're generally less worried about the game.
7. Awesome stuff - the AdMech. Come on, HH is where they started. You telling me we'd ever have had the AdMech in 40K if the HH stuff hadn't sold massively? There's a huge amount of non-Astartes stuff in the HH books, from the varied Knight households to the Solar Auxilia, to three separate and quite distinct AdMech lists.

And what counts against HH?

1. Lack of Xenos - yeah, it'd be nice to have Heresy-era Xenos, but really, how different are they going to be to their 40k versions?
2. Absurd prices - but GW have cranked theirs up through the roof in recent years, and so FW have become roughly comparable.
3. Lack of a tournament scene - but this is a plus for some/many.

So why is HH sacrosant when 40K isn't?

It's basically a very different beast.

[Cactus]

30K has a number of things 40K doesn't which weigh BIG in its favour:

I think you've also forgotten the excellent support from the Black Novel series.

[Gamgee]

Ugh space marine wank 30k. No thanks. The price doesn't help it. It's funny me and my cousin IRL were just laughing about how over rated space marines are. He's an IG man till the end.

I'm one of the few players who doesn't like 40k because of the Imperium or Spezz Marines. I'm all about the Xeno's and bad guys. I'll even consider chaos over the Imperium.

[VarianceHammer]

One of the other factors is likely just the attitude of the people playing Horus Heresy. Between the cost, the difficulty of doing so, and the lack of an active tournament scene, there's much less incentive to try and snap balance like a twig.

[YorkNecromancer]

It's funny me and my cousin IRL were just laughing about how over rated space marines are.

Like, I get that statistically, there have to be people who think that way. And, you know, fair play to you - everyone's entitled to like what they like. But...

Man. That's like hearing someone buys a Cornetto to eat the cone and leave the ice-cream. I can kind of see why they might feel that way, but I can only manage to in the most abstract possible sense.

[Filthy Casual]

One of the other factors is likely just the attitude of the people playing Horus Heresy. Between the cost, the difficulty of doing so, and the lack of an active tournament scene, there's much less incentive to try and snap balance like a twig.

Which is why plastic HH worries me, you already see "That Guy" trying to uses current Mks to save cash and jump in with his broken list to crush all the fluff bunnies, making it accessible to more of those people that want to play a game only to beat other people is worrying, I've yet to see HH played with unpainted models and that's part of that I love about it.

[Chris*ta]

30K has a number of things 40K doesn't which weigh BIG in its favour:
3. The Special Snowflake Chapters get their day in the sun - No-one publicly likes Ultramarines; everyone's gotta be different, and HH offers not only an absurd number of new marine Legions, it gives them special rules, unique units, names characters. Iron Hands! Raven Guard! And then, it actually manages to make the Ultramarines cool, by playing up the stuff that makes them different, and putting them in a fight with the Word Bearers, a villain worthy of them. And because the Ultras are only a small part of the Heresy, they don't/can't dominate it.

Huh? It offers 18 Chapters (Legions, I know, shut up.) And they're all already available in 40K, in largely the same configurations. There are over a hundred chapters available in 40K, plus the opportunity to make up as many more as you want.

I think what was kind of revolutionary about GW was that they encouraged players to make up their own colour schemes and background. In 30K, you don't get that opportunity.

[Filthy Casual]

HH is more of a historical style war game, in that, like Napoleonics, you're reenacting battles that happened, the end result is known, Horus will die and the Emperor will become a barely alive sack of meat and a glorified psychic lighthouse. When played in that style, that you're picking forces to replay the battles you read about in the background or ones that weren't written about, its a really great game. Its really abusable though (like any wargame) and there are a few jerks playing it (look at how many people suddenly abandoned their "Totally fluffy and justifiable Twin Plasma Pistol Mortariat" as soon as it got nerfed from being a death machine) who don't care about the fluff or the setting.

[DaveTycho]

On the bottom line it is Space Marines vs Space Marines which is also balanced in 40k.[/QUOTE]

While that's true for the most part, it isn't entirely space marines vs space marines. There is also mechanicum and solar auxilia too. They are different forces with different playstyles compared to space marines. That would alter the game balance a bit.

[Filthy Casual]

Even Space Marine vs Space Marine isn't that simple when each legion as a lot of special rules and units that can totally change how they play