3.0: failed or not?

[Doghouse]

Possible Lost Legions Podcast, they've not posted in four months now.

 

Guess it doesn't mean they're not still playing but maybe don't have time or anything new to post?

[ThaneOfTas]

Really interesting and wide ranging overview on this topic

SNBattleReports have basically reached out to a bunch of big names in the Heresy fan space and asked them how the feel about 3rd edition one year in.

[Mr Farson]

On 7/12/2026 at 2:47 AM, ThaneOfTas said:

Really interesting and wide ranging overview on this topic

SNBattleReports have basically reached out to a bunch of big names in the Heresy fan space and asked them how the feel about 3rd edition one year in.

 

I watched that, I think it's quite interesting how a large majority had similar complaints in terms of flavour. For people who state they like the new edition they seem a bit lacking on what they actually like about it 

[TheTrans]

Yeah I got strong vibes of:

"Oh yes the game we make content for is fantastic, really good. There isn't a heap of events going on. Its kind of like, really bland from the flavour front and list writing sucks. But yeah, its great. Love it..... yup **gun clicks from behind camera** ahuh..yup best ever. Ok Bye!" 

[MARK0SIAN]

Yeah, I think if you did a word cloud of that video it would be ‘Flavour’ in massive letters right in the middle. As in, there isn’t any. It really feels like the edition of playing Blue Legion or Red Legion or Yellow Legion rather than playing Ultramarines, Blood Angels or Imperial Fists etc. 

 

Plus lists writing is the worst! 

[Gorgoff]

It is this tonal shift which makes all the difference. 

Rules are rules and as usual some are good and some are bad. That's not the important but that Corporate GW took over the game changed the vibe of the game quite significantly. It is not the exciting land of opportunities any more where hobbyists come together and explore the horus heresy, enjoying the narrative and generally needy together. It is now one of the core games and they sell it like they sell the other stuff too. Fast food. Buy your new army, don't get distracted by customisation, buy just our parts and then the next thing drops and now buy this.

 

That is the main problem for most players who went away from it. I see that on the discord chat every day. The veteran players all but vanished and now it is to a huge majority people who started in 2ed or even 3ed and who don't care about the fluff and narrative as much as we did. 

[Brother Sutek]

5 hours ago, Gorgoff said:

It is this tonal shift which makes all the difference. 

Rules are rules and as usual some are good and some are bad. That's not the important but that Corporate GW took over the game changed the vibe of the game quite significantly. It is not the exciting land of opportunities any more where hobbyists come together and explore the horus heresy, enjoying the narrative and generally needy together. It is now one of the core games and they sell it like they sell the other stuff too. Fast food. Buy your new army, don't get distracted by customisation, buy just our parts and then the next thing drops and now buy this.

 

That is the main problem for most players who went away from it. I see that on the discord chat every day. The veteran players all but vanished and now it is to a huge majority people who started in 2ed or even 3ed and who don't care about the fluff and narrative as much as we did. 

Well we can't have those hobbyist making miniatures that we don't sell. It will just confuse people and upset them when they can't buy that model. Also have to keep those 3rd party part sellers away.

[sarabando]

6 hours ago, Brother Sutek said:

Well we can't have those hobbyist making miniatures that we don't sell. It will just confuse people and upset them when they can't buy that model. Also have to keep those 3rd party part sellers away.

service issue GW could dominate the parts sellers and recasters could be made utterly irrelevant they just dont want to

[ThaneOfTas]

On 7/13/2026 at 8:42 PM, Mr Farson said:

I watched that, I think it's quite interesting how a large majority had similar complaints in terms of flavour. For people who state they like the new edition they seem a bit lacking on what they actually like about it 

I'm not sure that is an entirely fair read on the subject, It seemed to me that most of them quite enjoyed the actual core rules and things like statuses, but that they miss the list building and Rites of War from second edition.

[Razorblade]

So, I went to my first big event over the weekend for 3E a week ago. I let it simmer a bit to clear my thoughts and here are my takeaways: 

1. Line needs to go, like yesterday. Of the six games I played over the weekend 3 were essentially draws that ended up being decided by a couple points entirely generated through line scoring. This event capped total points from line etc. at 3 a turn and its still completely game warping. 

2. Flavor is dead. There were 16 or so legion armies of which a grand total of 2 ran fewer than 3 tactical squads. And before anyone comes along with "oh but that's great, tacticals should be great so people take them". A: No. The most basic unit being too good us catastrophic for game health because it removes incentive to take anything else. B: Tacticals were fine and everywhere in 1 and 2E. You just weren't forced to take them. 

3. Tank battles suck. My last game had to be stopped at turn 2 because it turns out that no Squadron rules are a real issue if someone brings over a dozen small tanks. Other than that, Tank fights are an exercise in frustration tolerance because someone decided that AT Guns are not allowed to be reliable. 

4. The status mechanic is terrible in practice. Even CL10 units are routinely statused from number of tests and lack of stubborn. Meanwhile, lasrifle sections, tacticals etc. are practically immune because they just nuncio-vox them and also test to remove regularly *before* scoring. Which brings me to:

5. Welcome to MSU land. Through a litany of nerfs to large units (no multi-charges, no hotl/Apo, no line on anything that is actually tough and scary) just spamming small units so you can keep on feeding line into the grinder for longer than the opponent is absolutely a winning strategy.

I really tried to engage with this in good faith. I've painted about a 1000 points of new Minis, wrote fluff, played around with lists, built a custom objective, traveled 8 hours on each drive. In the end I have to say I should have just gone hiking with my dog or stayed at home and played wingspan with my spouse.

I used to love this game, I love traveling to events (I attended events in three different countries in the first half of 2025 alone) but currently there just isn't any joy in it for me.

Edited July 15 by Razorblade

[Pacific81]

I think the rules themselves are so subjective. As much as I dislike rules crunch for example lots of people like the detail. 

 

But I think what is not subjective and has burst the Heresy bubble, and impacted the community most (and this is what a lot of the YT videos, Winters SEO, Mordian Glory etc are saying) is that previously HH was a port in the storm of GWs rapid edition cycle. It was quite obviously created by someone with a deep passion for their work (Bligh) and the long 10yr edition life span allowed that community to bed in with those sumptuous, beautiful books (even if some of the rules were not exactly tournament tight).

I think while most accepted a renewal was perhaps needed for 2.0 I think the 3yr life of that edition has completely pulled the rug out from a lot of the veterans who wanted to play with space marines but had long since tapped out trying to keep up with 40k.

 

My own thoughts are that 2.0 sold so well that it caught more attention from GW central sales who decided there was coin to be made. As has happened with other GW games going many years back it then became sales dictating what went into the rules & releases. The writers of 3.0 made an attempt within those constraints, but it ended up with a sterile ruleset and books, devoid of any of the obvious passion and life work that went into the black books - if you are lucky enough to own one, open it and take a look, next to the current offering.

 

Its a shame as the community is now split, but at least shareholder premiums will be satisfied - such is life unfortunately.

Edited July 15 by Pacific81

[Razorblade]

26 minutes ago, Pacific81 said:

The writers of 3.0 made an attempt within those constraints, but it ended up with a sterile ruleset and books, devoid of any of the obvious passion and life work that went into the black books - if you are lucky enough to own one, open it and take a look, next to the current offering.

I think we really need to stop making excuses for these people. I hate 3 year edition Churn, but 3E could have been a soft fix like 11th 40k and corporate wouldn't have cared if it sold big expensive boxes. 

The current mess is entirely the result of ridiculous hybris on the part of writers who decided that everyone had to play in a way they deemed correct. They could have implemented the new status rules without cutting stubborn and Fearless so people would have retained control over how much they want to engage with it. They didn't need the new line rules to make tacticals good, hotl already existed, but they had to "outdo" the previous rules. They didn't have to create a bubbling mess of a FoC, the old one + RoWs was perfectly fine and beloved among the player base, but they considered themselves smarter than everyone else. This is entirely on them and we should demand transparency and accountability for that.

[Pacific81]

I think the rules writers have to follow directives from sales about how to do things - we have interviews going back as far as Rick Priestley and Andy Chambers saying sales were directing what was done and how, and that was 20 years ago; it will only have become more extreme since then.

Edited July 15 by Pacific81

[MARK0SIAN]

I do think the sales team can dictate certain things but I find it hard to believe the sales team dictated that list writing had to be this kind of mess, or that the legions had to be stripped of flavour. They were definitely choices made by the design team. 

[Razorblade]

3 hours ago, Pacific81 said:

I think the rules writers have to follow directives from sales about how to do things - we have interviews going back as far as Rick Priestley and Andy Chambers saying sales were directing what was done and how, and that was 20 years ago; it will only have become more extreme since then.

I think thats a half truth there: The Rules exist to sell plastic for sure. So yes, demands like a 3 year edition cycle, new units that don't necessarily have a purpose rules wise for sure. I can also certainly see a push towards streamlining to make the game more accessible to modern 40k players, and a demand to limit options to what can be built from GW kits. So a lot of the stuff that drives general exhaustion with GW in general for many heresy players. 

The things that make 3E uniquely and specifically terrible though are completely on tge rules people though I believe. There's just no conceivable reason why corporate would demand any of these terrible mechanics and I strongly doubt that they are invested enough in the rules to even bother. 

The fact that we have edition churn is down to profit margins. The fact that this particular edition is the worst incarnation of warhammer barring launch day aos however is down to the egos of people who thought themselves a lot smarter than they actually are.

[Pacific81]

Poor quality rules can be a direct result of poor investment though. If those rules authors, whoever they might be, are constrained in terms of resources available to them; playtesting, time to write the rules, time to write the background and text of the books themselves. There is a very good reason that there were rumours of the new HH being partly AI-authored, and its not just the absence of writer credits; the quality of the writing is utterly constipated and has been likened to insurance T&Cs. Contrast with the 1.0 Black Books, the FW Imperial Armour books, which are well written and a joy to read. 

I think we can tell how much GW values their rules authoring by the fact that we have seen job advertisements (entry level salary), contrast with the 'old guard' who were very experienced in their trade and absolutely central to the process. Making games is not easy and its a learned trade; the irony being that I think a number of people in the industry are learning it at GW, only to go on to other companies and make better games which are then are only played by a tiny fraction of their GW games. Even at the time of 1st edition Heresy obvious Bligh and those working with him were obviously given a lot of latitude, they had lots of wonderful artists and type-setters, resulting in books that massively contrast with the sorry 3rd (and actually, 2nd) editions. 

It is evident as well with the obvious lack of playtesting - no human being ever played those terrain rules and thought they were an improvement, the jarring contradictions of abstraction and elements to speed up play with excessive granular detail. Evidence to me of a project lacking an editor or project head who could tie it together. 

 

I just don't think GW values quality of rules as part of their core product. I wouldn't let the rules writers off the hook at all for the final product quality, but I think a lot probably comes down to this lack of support. Can you imagine if there was a project lead, someone like Alessio Cavatore for example, and those terrain rules being allowed to make it into the final product? This is generally the whole reason you have teams of people, or at least strong partnerships, designing them. The contrast in quality is notable with a lot of other games on the market at the moment, or even games made by GW themselves in the past. 

Edited Wednesday at 09:46 PM by Pacific81

[Razorblade]

23 hours ago, Pacific81 said:

I just don't think GW values quality of rules as part of their core product. I wouldn't let the rules writers off the hook at all for the final product quality, but I think a lot probably comes down to this lack of support. Can you imagine if there was a project lead, someone like Alessio Cavatore for example, and those terrain rules being allowed to make it into the final product? This is generally the whole reason you have teams of people, or at least strong partnerships, designing them. The contrast in quality is notable with a lot of other games on the market at the moment, or even games made by GW themselves in the past. 

I think it is very obvious from the immense effort that goes into 40k that they recognize the value of good rules, or at least they do for their 2 main systems.

I totally agree however that corporate are at the very least culpable for a mind-boggling lack of oversight on 3E. I also absolutely see the writers being in a massive time crunch too, and 30k obviously lacks the massive data-collections that inform many of the 40k teams decisions.

That said that makes the approach they took even worse. A handful of small fixes and changes to the core missions that would have addressed common complaints and changed just enough to qualify as a new edition could have been done over a long weekend. But they wanted to make *their* game instead of engaging with the existing material in good faith and that's why I think they deserve most of the blame. 

[TheTrans]

I think given we've seen that a ToW update could appear in book form with some of the FAQs and updates rolled into it, that maybe shows the HH3.0 writers opted to make it their own instead of updating 2.0 and tidying up its issues. So to me, its wholly on them and their hubris. 

But it certainly seems like HH has become the red-headed step child of the 'second line' ranges (journals to me don't count as they still feel like they where rules withheld at release specifically to peddle more books as opposed to actually new, amazing things that have never existed.. they feel a lot like the free PDFs we used to get), while we are getting plastics in a reasonable release cycle, the lack of FAQs. Erratas (:cuss: that isn't directly gaining GW coin) is almost non-existent. 

[Antarius]

On 7/15/2026 at 9:34 PM, MARK0SIAN said:

I do think the sales team can dictate certain things but I find it hard to believe the sales team dictated that list writing had to be this kind of mess, or that the legions had to be stripped of flavour. They were definitely choices made by the design team. 

I think this is true and also touches on another point that has been brought up; if things were pointing in the same direction, you might dislike the direction, but there would at least be a direction to (dis)like. As it is, many of the new things point in completely different directions. Like your example of more detailed/intricate, harder to parse list-building supposedly bound up on Legion structure/fluff, but at the same time there's the much more streamlined, less flavourful Legions rules . Those things just seem directly at odds with each other.

If I had to guess it's a not-very unified team and/or a project without a clear scope, leading to concept-drift and rules that fitted the earlier vision being left in even as the vision changed. Because no one with a clear vision of the wargame they designed would have said "Noone wants to spend time on their Legion being different, so let's streamline that and let's make the list-building super difficult and involved - that's what people want to spend their time and energy on!", but either move might reasonably be taken in order to fit in with a "more granularity!" or "more streamlining!" vision. I simply can't see a world where a well-functioning rules design team with reasonable working conditions would make those two choices simultaneously if they had to justify their decisions in the context of "what are we trying to do with this game".

I've never jumped on the "GW makes bad rules" bandwagon, but this edition is just mindboggling and, yes, bad. Very bad.