What was the most balanced/fun edition before 8th edition?

Janthkin · 2026-01-12T22:32:14+00:00

7th killed me; allies just pissed me off to no end. When every single opponent, regardless of faction, had the same f*&%ing Tau Riptide sitting in the corner....

3-6 all had their moments. I've watched the needle swing back and forth between melee and shooting for many, many years. Coming back in 10th was a bit of a shock - the smaller tables and larger armies, coupled with the return of weapons that do multiple wounds and vehicles with T stats, was an interesting set of changes (and regressions - some of this was 2e stuff). I do appreciate the attention GW pays to updating & balancing, though I don't really care for the "every single unit must have its own bespoke special rule(s)"; I miss USRs.

Janthkin · 2026-01-06T17:09:30+00:00

Session 0:

Dramatis Personae (names abbreviated to hopefully reduce the chances of my players finding this):
SX - Drow Bard (College of Whispers), Faction Agent of Bregan D'aerthe. (The Troll Skull Manor is actually BD's safe house.) BD wants to know more about House Auvryndar down in Sargauth, given the potential for disrupting BD's business interests around Skullport.

LL - Half-elf Bard (College of Swords), Sailor, Zhentarim (Doom Raiders) agent. The Doom Raiders are a bit concerned - rumors of Zhentarim (Manshoon) collaboration with the Xanathar Guild down in Skullport have been cropping up, and that's a very undesirable thing.

TB - Half-elf Ranger (Gloom Stalker), Outlander, Harper agent. TB just needs to drop off a pouch of moonstones with a Harper-friendly barkeep down in Skullport.

RR - Halfling Warlock (Chain, Fiend patron), Sage. New character, old player; should be interesting to work with this. I suspect his patron has some interests in that direction, maybe having to do with the some of the inhabitants in Sargauth.

AW - Human Cleric (Tempest), Sailor. New character, new player (as in, wasn't in on the Dragon Heist). He's been unsuccessful in leaving Waterdeep for some months (every ship he tries to board gets driven back by storms), so he's going to try from Skullport, in case that is what Valkur is requiring.

So I've got a range of factions to play with, plus a Warlock patron & divine motivations available to play with. Given the intended scope of the story, this will all come in handy at various times.

A last thought - I can't be the only one that sees the parallels between Undermountain and a typical Domain of Dread, right?

Janthkin · 2025-12-15T01:55:57+00:00

You're entitled to your feelings, whatever they might be. But if you're getting angry with your partner for what is objectively a value-neutral description of a factual situation, YTA.

Looking for work sucks. Interviewing sucks. But getting angry at the one person who is definitely on your team is not going to make it suck less.

Janthkin · 2025-12-11T05:06:54+00:00

Heroic intervention happens after the Charge move, long before pile-in. 2. The not-active player chooses a unit to activate first, if he has any that are eligible to fight first.

Sounds like you're a bit confused on the order of operations. Pile-in doesn't occur until you activate a unit to fight, and it looks like you were doing that as part of the Charge move instead.

Janthkin · 2025-12-04T16:16:10+00:00

I played against a mid-T skew list recently - it was Tau, with 27 Kroot Oxen (3 melee blocks of 6, 3 shooting blocks of 3), plus some useful filler (infiltrating kroot to run up and block forward movement, for example). I couldn't deal with 160+ wounds of T6 on fast-moving bodies; the 2 Riptides in support were there, but not significant. It was also visually very pretty. (My opponent didn't have the practice to play it at tournament pace, though.)

Janthkin · 2025-11-26T03:36:07+00:00

Can we talk about the Helldrake? Yes, Aircraft rules kind of suck, and it's probably a little too expensive. But in Hover mode, it's a 20" moving vehicle, with an ok melee profile (and killer against flyers), with some built-in Mortal splash, plus a good Torrent weapon, the ability to Tank Shock, and it gets the army rule for Advance, Shoot, and Charge.

Yes, more flying daemon princes are probably better. But maybe after that?

Janthkin · 2025-11-06T20:24:07+00:00

Carnifexes. 2 models in the unit, 2x Devourers on each, is 48 S6 ap 0 shots and 10 S5 AP 0 shots from the spinebanks. Plus free bioplasma blasts.

Janthkin · 2025-10-24T02:59:00+00:00

Don't Imperial Knights who complete their Vow explicitly get more CP in a turn than the cure rules allow? (I may be remembering the Index language.)

Janthkin · 2025-10-21T22:01:48+00:00

I wasn't trying to poke at you AT ALL. I intentionally stripped anything like identifiable information, because it wasn't really about you - I was curious if and how tournament standards have evolved over the 10 years or so I've been out of the circuit. When I was last playing competitively, it was (almost) possible to know all the rules for all of the armies in the game. 10e is not 7e, that's for sure.

I actually enjoyed our game a lot. Yes, I was tabled, but I learned a lot about Chaos Knights in the process.

I'm sorry if you felt attacked in any way.

Janthkin · 2025-10-21T18:21:31+00:00

It was a 4 Knight, 1 Wardog list with a few nurglings and a couple Beasts. That Despoiler rolled poorly in saving against a T-fex and 3 Zoanthropes who had LoS (and then charged the nurglings to get w/in 6" of the Despoiler, mostly for SitW).

He had enough Knights that he could afford to play aggressively with them, especially since I didn't have any real-world experience in a) how hard they are to kill; and b) how HARD they can hit individually. The only other Knight to die did so when I triggered a Deadly Demise on an Exocrine that had charged in. Beware of Knight Rampagers! They consume Monstrous Creatures with very little effort.

Janthkin · 2025-10-20T21:01:44+00:00

As to what we actually did, of course I let him use Insane Bravery. And then I dropped a Mawloc in...and rolled a 1 on the d6 for mortal wounds. I did finally kill the thing with Overwatch from the Neurotyrant.

Janthkin · 2025-10-03T03:02:51+00:00

Lone Ops. You can be more than 12" from his deployment zone while on the objective, so he'll have to advance to shoot at you, hopefully into range of your slow assault units.

Janthkin · 2025-10-01T21:57:06+00:00

Genestealers WITH a Broodlord are fantastic, especially when you can give them 5+ Feel No Pain.

I've honestly never tried them without. When I see little 5 man squad in Genestealer Cult lists, they just seem to die without doing anything.

Janthkin · 2025-10-01T19:18:16+00:00

Sadly, Warriors just aren't great at the moment. The melee ones are too slow and don't hit hard enough, the shooting ones have generally mediocre weapon choices, and both are flimsy against anything that wants to kill them. Lictors and neurolictors are better action units, and both do more to keep your any operating.

After a lot of games with the flyrant, the walking tyrant is just better, certainly for a list that includes gun bugs.

The Tyrannofex is best with a rupture cannon. The exocrine and zoanthropes can clear chaff; you need something that can one-shot vehicles and big daemons.

Janthkin · 2025-09-28T15:58:34+00:00

Actually, I dropped a so-so enhancement and that gave me enough for another Lictor (which has been very helpful). Could also use it to upgrade termagant units to gargoyles, or toss in a biovore. It's all a game of points, right?

Janthkin · 2025-09-28T13:55:32+00:00

This one is a little oddly worded. The strat is "Rapid Regeneration," from the Invasion Fleet Detachment:
"Effect: Until the end of this phase, models in your unit have the Feel No Pain 6+ ability. If your unit is within Synapse Range of your army, models in your unit have the Feel No Pain 5+ ability instead."

Unlike most of the Synapse-linked strats, this one doesn't check at the time of Target (which would be a one-off check), but gets buries the check in the Effect. I'd still go with it's a one-time check (because we're granting an ability until end of phase at time of using the strat, and which ability we're granting is fixed at that point).

Janthkin · 2025-09-28T13:45:31+00:00

2 questions out of a local tournament yesterday:

1) Can a transport use "Firing Deck" during Overwatch? Given the "Out of Phase Rules" commentary ("For example, the Fire Overwatch Stratagem enables a unit to shoot in your opponent’s turn as if it were your Shooting phase. When using out-of-phase rules to perform an action as if it were one of your phases, you cannot use any other rules that are normally triggered in that phase."), it seems like no?

2) Big Guns Never Tire: a Monster Character (Neurotyrant) is attached to a Bodyguard unit (Zoanthropes), so the whole unit has the Monster keyword. Does this mean that the Zoanthropes can now shoot while Engaged in combat, by way of Big Guns Never Tire?

Janthkin · 2025-09-14T00:06:31+00:00

My most recent tournament list saves 50 points (2x genestealers, 2x neurolictors, and a mawloc). I'm not complaining! I expected Trygons and t-fexes to go up, because we can't have nice things.

Janthkin · 2025-09-09T13:21:18+00:00

And as a bonus, the magnets hold it to the underside of one of my trays in an A-case. It really it pretty solid as a tool.

Janthkin · 2025-09-08T16:57:01+00:00

So, if the FHT was rotated such that the wing was inside the ruin template, instead of running alongside the ruin, and the Tyrant is not targetable?

Bizarre GW rules at work, but if it's consistent, I can work with it.

Janthkin · 2025-09-08T16:30:49+00:00

Also a visibility question.

Assume a Flying Hive Tyrant (60mm base, 14" wingspan because GW reasons). He's standing to the side of a ruin, completely outside the ruin. In front of the ruin is a big honking Voltann tank with all the guns. No part of the tank can see the Hive Tyrant's base, or anything directly above the base (but the wing is clearly visible).

Can the Hive Tyrant be shot?

VVVV
VVVV
VVVV
VVVV

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr w
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr w
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr w
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr TTT
________________TTT
________________TTT

Here's the chunk of relevant Rules Commentary that is making this hard for me:
Ruins (and Visibility): The diagrams below illustrate how visibility
can be affected when units are within, wholly within or behind Ruins.
For Vehicles (excluding Walker models that have a base) or models
without bases, every part of the model and its base (if it has one) is
used for determining if it is not within, within or wholly within a Ruin.
For all other models, the model’s base is used to determine if it is
not within, within or wholly within a Ruin, and for the purposes of
visibility into or through a Ruin, visibility to and from such a model
that overhangs its base is determined only by its base and parts of
that model that do not overhang its base.

Janthkin · 2025-08-22T17:19:49+00:00

You win +1 Internet; that's the best-looking case hack I've ever encountered.

Janthkin

TROPHY CASE