I figure since 5th edition books are off the shelves and it is fairly obvious 6th edition is just around the corner, it would only be fair if we paid our respects to 5th edition. Please post your own thoughts as we remember everything 5th edition gave us (and in some cases, didn't give us).
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to remember warhammer 40k 5th edition who so generously entertained us for many years with its beautiful artwork and new minis. Fifth edition, like any edition, was one of change. We saw the rise of "healthy models" as our models lost considerable weight as they shed a few pounds of metal pewter to finecast, for better or for worse. Luckily gamesworkshop reminded us that inhaling resin shavings was very bad for our health.Only problem is 90% of the finecast models come already bent/damaged, making the transition for us a little bit more than difficult. Most of us have learned to stomach this.
The Fifth edition rules brought us rending sniper rifles, for once making those cool sniper models worth purchasing. Our friend also brought us cover saves for skimmers making land speeders worth while. Outflanking was a nice touch, enabling players to spring deadly traps on our enemies, making genestealers that much cooler and proving once and for all that Boss Snigrot is, and will always be, one BAMF. Our shooting from vehicles also changed, as once more we couldn't justify taking those big expensive tanks but instead take as many little vehicles as we could. The random mission rolling was always entertaining as we, perplexed, looked at each other with doubt as we tried to remember what mission we had just rolled.
But 5th Edition was not without its faults as Fearless units, no matter how brave, seemed to fall in droves as combat resolution randomly killed them off from cardiac arrest as we cried to the Dice Gods for mercy as our armour save failed in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Or how one model could somehow overrun a unit of 40 guardsmen.
The Ork, Guard, Necron, Space Wolf, and Dark Eldar codexes dazzled us with new weapons and brilliant models. Codex Space Marine wasn't too awful except for the ludicrous amount of ultra smurfs. 5th Edition captured our imagination with three new expansions (planet strike, battle missions, and of course, apocalypse). Let us take a moment to say our goodbyes to these friends.
Thank you.
Fifth edition also so the rise of orbital bombardments and special character hammer which had its ups and downs. Who didn't love being able to use marbo to blow stuff up that an opponent thought was safe only to watch his expensive unit explode in ash as marbo's handler cackles historically? And who can forget all the times we had to face a blood angels player with Mephiston chewing through half of our armies? Then of course, you have the thousand Dark Eldar characters who seem to appear in the codex but only 2-3 ever get used in real life. Course, the grey knights can now field an army of ALL characters basically (more on that later).
But 5th edition also hampered our ability to be unique as many special wargear and tactics that our armies became accustomed to in 4th edition were tragically lost. Individuality became a thing of the past for our tabletop heros as uniform wargear, armour, weapons, became the name of the game. The days of creating your own heroes gave way to the temptation to buy a shiny, much better character who was a fraction more and was a thousand times better then the generic HQ choice you could buy, regardless of how much wargear he or she had.
The HQ units were not the only ones to receive this treatment.
The days of tyranid biomorphs , space marine chapter traits and guard doctrines were lost to the simplified static feel of the new codexes. This, more than anything else, simplified the game but also made it less enjoyable as a whole as those awesome stories and wargear options you had for your units in 4th edition quickly became illegal or thrown out in 5th when your new codex came out. While I doubt this will change, I would really like to see more unique options in next edition.
Fifth edition also spammed the world of 40k with transports as people realized that having units in metal boxes with wheels actually helped their survivabilty. Imagine that.
Leaf blowers, parking lots, to name a few, became the cream of the crop as you couldn't face a space marine army without at least two rhinos. We hope that in the next edition we see less of this tactic as blowing up transports gets old after a while. Especially when their smoke launchers continue to fool your heavy weapons. Yet all this is but a minor irritation compared to the evil that arose in this edition as one Matt Ward asscended to demon princehood (sitting on the golden throne of cheese) after overpowering the grey knights and brutally destroying years of well documented fluff that made 40k, 40k. Ward, we hope, will be banished to the depths of mount doom along with his creations.
As we turn to the future I foresee great things for our beloved game. Fliers, new units, and more are all promised. Hopefully we will see significant changes to some of the game mechanics as I, for one, am tired of feeling like I am facing down traffic coming out of a busy city with the amount of transports I have had to face. All the rumored chances seem appealing (well except for that rumor that the space marines are somehow buddy buddy with the Tau because the tau are now the chosen people of the emperor or something like that) especially snap fire, heroic challenges, and of course, consolidation in combat.
One thing is for sure: change is coming. Ready or not.
I encourage you to post some of your own thoughts in this tread, perhaps write a eulogy of your own. If you enjoyed this post, please don't be afraid to say so.
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Originally Posted by DoctorTom
Lord Damocles
