Playing WH40k Second Edition

[Helbrechts_Sword_Servitor]

Recently my brother gifted me a commemorative edition of the Second Edition book, and after reading a good chunk of it, I wanna know if I can play it without the Codices.

I have many firstborn units, and some friends with old Eldar, Orks and Imperial Guard units.

 

Also, I'd greatly appreciate any tips or videos where I can learn more about this edition.

 

Thanks!

[Stitch5000]

There was a supplementary book in the core box called the Codex Imperialis that had "index" lists for the armies of the time. You want that... And probably the Wargear book. 

Edit: It might actually be a smaller pamphlet called the "Army List Index" that you want... It's been a while... :) 

Edited February 12 by Stitch5000

[Leonaides]

Tbh, it's probably not too hard to locate copies of the army books either hard copy or digital.

[apologist]

Yes, you absolutely can – @Bob Hunk and I have picked this edition back up recently, and had a fun game using the Army Lists that came in the basic box, which are sometimes called the 'Black Codex'.

 

 

In terms of tips, I know there's a Facebook group dedicated to Second Edition. Enthusiasts for this edition also maintain the 'Battle Bible', which can be found on the group. This is a fan-made compilation of the original rulebook along with all additional material and FAQs for it. It's well worth seeking out, as it gives a simple, clean and cross-linked reference for what can be a complex-seeming game.

 

 

Edited February 12 by apologist

[Brother Tyler]

At a minimum, to play WH40K 2e without codices would require that you have a couple of other books that came with that edition's start set:

• Warhammer 40,000 Wargear (weapons and wargear rules)
• Warhammer 40,000 Codex lmperialis (background for game factions plus rules for different units/characters)

Warhammer 40,000 Second Edition Starter Set (at the Board Game Geek)

 

And if you want to include psykers, I highly recommend getting a copy of Dark Millennium, too.

 

For videos, Guerrilla Miniature Games has a playlist of WH40K 2e videos.

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

You may want to download the Battle Bible pdf from the Interwebz. This tome is a compilation of rules, army lists and all wargear cards. I had this printed out and bound. It also includes the psychic rules published in the Dark Millennium supplement.

 

In regards to the gameplay:

- Expect smaller armies.

- Neglect the use of various weapon effects which stay on the table for your first games.

- Troops have the option of hiding and going into proper Overwatch (use of full BS).

- Vehicles have dedicated datacards with corresponding damage tables.

- Use your brains when using transport vehicles as driving them straight towards an opponent´s gunline, like it´s done in modern 40K, will end in total disaster.

- The psychic phase is a mini-game using cards. Restrict the psychic level of your psykers to Lvl2 for your first games.

- Some weapons use "Sustained Fire Dice" which can come up with jams. So you will need gaming tokens of some sort.

- Heavy weapons are brutal. Use them sparingly so that the game does not suffer.

 

Tip:

Use alternate activation as a house rule.

[Evil Eye]

In my experience of looking for old 40K (and WHFB but that's off topic) rules books, actual Codices are generally fairly affordable. Supplements tend to be more pricey. That said, the demand for old GW books has spawned quite a few resources for scanned PDFs of otherwise hard-to-find tomes. I won't link to them for obvious reasons but given the likelihood of GW reproducing these books is precisely zero I wouldn't feel too guilty about hoisting the Jolly Roger for books you can't find physical copies of for sane prices. Not quite the same as an actual treeware volume of course (unless you print them off of course!).

[templargdt]

I wish GW would actually support old editions as PDFs of some sort on their site.  Cost is nothing and it's for the fans.

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

41 minutes ago, templargdt said:

I wish GW would actually support old editions as PDFs of some sort on their site.  Cost is nothing and it's for the fans.

People would then learn that they don´t need to own a boatload of models to have a fun game. That´s why Gee-Dubbs loathes 2nd 40K.

[TheArtilleryman]

You can use a third party app like BattleScribe to build 2nd edition army lists for free, with all the rules printed in the list. So you could just use that with the Rulebook.

[DemonGSides]

Might be easier anywhere else than Battle scribe, the owner of that has gone AWOL again and is a bit of a loser.

 

New Recruit has a 2nd ed branch tho, and I find New Recruit to be a lot more usable than Battlescribe, though they do look and work similarly. Also saves lists across devices so you can noodle on the PC and then also noodle on the toilet on your phone. The future is here!

[TheArtilleryman]

21 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

Might be easier anywhere else than Battle scribe, the owner of that has gone AWOL again and is a bit of a loser.

 

New Recruit has a 2nd ed branch tho, and I find New Recruit to be a lot more usable than Battlescribe, though they do look and work similarly. Also saves lists across devices so you can noodle on the PC and then also noodle on the toilet on your phone. The future is here!

It’s ok for the older repositories since they don’t get new books anymore, but they aren’t keeping new 40K up to date.

Edited February 12 by TheArtilleryman

[Domhnall]

If it's any help, I've got a pdf copy of the following 2nd Edition books:

 

Rulebook

Wargear 

Dark Millenium

Codex - Imperial Guard

Codex - Ultramarines

Codex - Tyranids

Codex - Orks

[LameBeard]

Check out @Pacific81’s thread on Squats and Second Edition. He also tipped me off to the Facebook group and some fan codices. You could go a long way with that 2-page per faction black and white army list, but some of the cool stuff will be hidden in cards.
 

2nd edition was cool and got undeserved criticism for its model-by-model melee phase. It was a great game it just wasn’t Apocalypse in scale. 

[crimsondave]

I have the Chaos codex, Ultramarines (no idea why), and the Angels of Death (Blood Angels and Dark Angels.)  I don’t have pdfs but I can send pics if you need certain things.  There’s probably somewhere that has all this stuff on PDF for free.  Unfortunately, the 2nd edition codexes are the exception and are NOT cheap.  I lost my guard codex and found out nostalgia wasn’t worth the price.

[FormelyKnownAsSmashyPants]

As others have mentioned, if you find ‘The Battle Bible’ you’ll have all the rules you will need to play 2nd edition. A quick google search should set you in the right direction. The other things you will need are some sustained fire dice, as multi shot weapons worked differently back then, you roll a specialist die that had the number 1,2,3 and a ‘jam’ symbol on its faces. You’ll also need an artillery die and a scatter die, the latter of which you’ll likely still own if you played any edition up to and including 7th edition, provided you kept possession of them and didn’t throw them out. You’ll need some role-playing dice, ie d4,d8, d10 etc to facilitate weapons penetratingb vehicle  armour as it worked differently back then. You should be able to find all that stuff on eBay. You’ll also need these templates, https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ftq60g17a7j6i5ljyukpp/40k2eTemplates.pdf?rlkey=1opm03wipcojwfr8cl3fgyfq0&e=1&dl=0 , which you can print out, as these are different to those used in 3rd through 7th edition.

 

Im really liking the idea of playing 2nd edition myself. The constant rules churn with constant ever changing  updates of the current  edition gives me a headache. I am fIne with the three year edition cycle, but with all these current updates your codex is often invalidated as soon as you buy it. 2nd edition doesn’t have that problem. Another option I’m considering is the ‘Pro-hammer’ rule set, which basically an amalgamation of the better parts of 3rd through 7th edition and you can also use any of the Codices from these editions, though the latter codexes my be more powerful than their earlier counterparts, but if you and your opponent use common sense and some restraint you should be able to play a fair and relatively balanced game together. And let’s face it, if you’re playing ‘Oldhammer’ you’re already negotiating with your opponent to have agreed to play an old edition anyway.

 

I plan on collecting a lot of the original gaming content from 2nd edition and I feel that collecting all the original material will be a hobby in and of itself, for me at least. But as I said earlier if you download the Battle Bible and buy a few extra specialist dice and print out the templates you’ll have all you need to play.

 

The only thing I don’t like about 2nd is that some really cool units from the armies I like didn’t exist, as well as some entire armies like Tau, Dark Eldar and Deathwatch didn’t exist back then either.

 

Edit: the templates I provided a link for are courtesy of Project Anvil, a site dedicated to 2nd edition 40k, and a great resource available to anyone looking at playing that edition of 40k.

Edited February 13 by FormelyKnownAsSmashyPants

[Antarius]

I started out in 2nd and while I personally tend to think of 4th as the pinnacle of 40k, I probably had more games in 2nd, simply because me and my friends had a lot more spare time and lived close to each other back then. I remember the dreaded horde melee situations that could seem to go on forever, but if I’m honest I’m not sure modern 40k is actually faster (there’s a lot of attacks in recent editions and rerolls are much more prevalent than in 2nd).

Overall, I’d say that if you like an army to be 3-4 units and a couple of vehicles, it’s a perfectly manageable game, but for the kind of armies you see today, it’s probably going to be a lot more time consuming and fiddly (at least once you get into melee, shooting is probably more or less the same).

 

 I am probably biased due to nostalgia but when I reread the rules about a year ago, I actually found them quite good and not as clunky as I thought they’d be. Another thing I like about 2nd, is that think it’s perfectly possible to have a good sense of what any give  army “does” without a lot of surprises or having to quit your job in order to keep up (especially if you stick to the basic army lists).

 

Balance-wise, there are problems, but not worse than later editions.

[Kenzaburo]

I would argue that current 40k will in fact take as long as 2nd would. And current 40k is definitely taking longer than 4th or 5th edition. The amount of rules interactions and stuff going on nowadays rivals the veeery long melee sequences and vehicle rules of 2nd, although in my memory I had more fun with those than with current bookkeeping nonsense.

 

Ah, 4th/5th - where different marine squads only differentiated by the weapon loadout they carried and it was actually possible to remember whole units and ALL their rules and those of your opponents without studying for it as if it were a master thesis... :D

[TheArtilleryman]

17 minutes ago, Kenzaburo said:

Ah, 4th/5th - where different marine squads only differentiated by the weapon loadout they carried and it was actually possible to remember whole units and ALL their rules and those of your opponents without studying for it as if it were a master thesis... :D

This. I had so many games during this period where I never even looked in a book during the game. These days it feels like I spend more time reading the book than actually playing.

[Antarius]

It’s probably not new information but I think there’s a couple of youtube channels out there with predominantly 2nd ed content (painting the starter set, building terrain that matches the terrain in the box, battle reports etc.). Those might be a nice place to look for inspiration, as well as getting an idea of how the game actually plays.

[Valkyrion]

2nd wasn't without its time issues. A 10v10 melee took ages to resolve, loads of one off weapons had funky rules, mainly the Ork ones, and the psychic phase could be either irrelevant or game changing.

But a 10v10 melee only took ages once, not least because things died, but also because your model count was only 35 to begin with if you were space marines, or less than 50 by the time most of your tyranids or orks could reach combat by turn 3. 

But it was utterly fun, fun like I don't think GW have achieved since. 

[Firedrake Cordova]

It's probably worth having a look at Project Anvil, as they did modernised vehicle cards for the various vehicles (including "modern" weapons options).

 

3 hours ago, FormelyKnownAsSmashyPants said:

The other things you will need are some sustained fire dice, as multi shot weapons worked differently back then, you roll a specialist die that had the number 1,2,3 and a ‘jam’ symbol on its faces. You’ll also need an artillery die and a scatter die, the latter of which you’ll likely still own if you played any edition up to and including 7th edition, provided you kept possession of them and didn’t throw them out.

With regards to sustained fire dice, if you can't find them, could you look at patching in how the "living rulebook" version of Necromunda handled them? GW still sells scatter dice for the surprisingly reasonable price of £1 each.  Unfortunately, the only way to get the artillery die (new) is via an Old World dice pack, which is horribly expensive.  

 

[FormelyKnownAsSmashyPants]

9 minutes ago, Firedrake Cordova said:

It's probably worth having a look at Project Anvil, as they did modernised vehicle cards for the various vehicles (including "modern" weapons options).

 

Yeah Project Anvil is a pretty cool resource. The templates I add a link from are from Project Anvil. I thought I gave credit to Project Anvil in my first post but must have accidentally forgot to. I’ll go back and edit my original post in the morning, about to climb into bed. There’s Wargear Cards, Psychic Power Cards and Vehicle Datafaxes on the site along with a lot of other cool stuff. Worth checking it out, Project Anvil.

[TheArtilleryman]

Scatter dice are readily available on eBay. So are artillery dice, although less so. It’s easy to replicate an artillery dice with a D6  though. Just do D6 x 2 but with the 6 as a misfire.

 

Similar with sustained fire dice. Just roll a D3 but if you get a 6 it’s a jam.

Edited February 13 by TheArtilleryman

[Jolemai]

For discussion of previous editions on the B&C, I'd recommend the Oldhammer Club