Hey everyone! Adam, from TFG Radio, here to drop some old knowledge to you young’ins!
It has been a couple of exciting weeks. Between the supplemental codex releases, the dominance of an army that has never really had it’s own book before, let alone actually played as an army outside of 30K, and a double helping of FAQ to keeps the chattering home-fires burning. I’m glad all those people that “retired” from 40K until Games Workshop “fixed” the game are now coming back. They were sorely missed the the hours between the first real results of a weekend’s worth of tournaments and the FAQ. I don’t know how we could have continued without all the people that quit the game for a whole five minutes. Be that as it may, there have been times in the past when we had similar things happen. In our latest podcast episode we discussed a few of these instances and, because I am feeling a bit nostalgic, I will discuss a few of them here.
In the early days of 3rd edition Blood Angels were terrifying. Not because of their sparkly hair or nipple armor, but because they could reliably get a first turn charge, which was almost unheard of. With the overcharged engines of their rhinos, they could move twice, essentially, and then their guys could get out of the vehicle and charge your line. Heaven forbid if the unit is Death Company. There was even a mechanic to increase the size of your Death Company right before the battle began. There were many a time I preferred to face charging Khorne Berzerkers, that the fury of blood rages Death Company. If you played the army, or against it, you know the terror and I, for one, do not mourn its passing.
Although I consider this codex to be Games Workshop’s most balance and fair codex ever made, the 3.5 Chaos Codex will always be loved, and loathed. This is the standard by which all other Chaos Codexes are measured. This small 80 page book gave chaos players all they needed and wanted in having 9 unique legions and renegades. They gave us such gems as the Dread Axe that didn’t allow invulnerable saves. When combined with a Daemon Prince, this relic didn’t give you any saves at all. Who remembers minor psychic powers? With such gems as the Slaanesh power “Siren”, you were literally unstoppable, as this power cause that psyker to be immune from shooting or being assaulted. Makes Invisibility seem like a minor inconvenience. Even the summoning rules were good as the units being summoned landed in a random direction, using the directional die, and then could still charge. This was back when units normally couldn’t charge after they had arrived from deep strike. See? Nothing but balance. I really don’t see how anyone could think this codex was overpowered.
Remember when Eldar were good? Of course you do because they were never really bad. In 3rd edition the Eldar were strong but the Starcannon was king. Both cheap and able to be fielded on almost anything in the Eldar army, it was odd to find an Eldar army with fewer that 10-12 minimum. They were very anti-marine and could easily clear squads of marines at a time. If you were playing against Eldar you were in for a world of starcannon hurt. Don’t even get me started about Wraithlords. Thats right I said wraithlords. They used to actually be a thing. They used to strike the same fear and loathing that Wraithknights had in 7th edition. When you combined starcannons with the wraithlords, you had an uphill battle before the game even started.
These are just some of the examples of units and armies that were a little over the top, at the time. And in time they were overshadowed, either by other armies or simply by changes in their codex. The common theme among all this was the fact that Game Workshop did not take any measures to adjust these until , literally, years later. We were stuck with these types of lists for a while. Luckily today’s Games Workshop is a bit more responsive and willing to work with the community. Hopefully they can continue this for the far future as I don’t really want to go back to the days of yore. Unless I get something similar to the Chaos 3,5 Codex 😉
That’s all for this week, I hope you enjoyed the read. Let me know your thoughts, and what OP combos you remember from the past, in the comments section. Don’t forget to visit our Facebook, Twitch, and Patreon pages to stay up to date on what we’re up to and when episodes drop!
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