Everything Old is New to Someone | Third Edition game planning

[Jonathan E]

Those of you who've stuck by my blog during my recent turn to the contemporary (thank you, by the way) will know that myself and regular flesh and blood local opponent Paul have been throwing down in the Grim Darkness of the Far Future. Those of you who are also keeping up with contemporary GW will know that we're currently entering the interregnum - the tailing off period at the end of an edition where there's not much point in adding or learning new stuff as it's all going to change within three months anyway.

As such, and moved by Paul's struggle to parse things like saving throw modifiers/my complete inability to manage my Command Points with any restraint/the four gol'dang'd hours it takes us to wade through a 1000 point game, I've made the man an offer. Come with me now, on a journey through time and space... the year is 1998... all the rules are in one book... no apps are involved in playing or tracking the game... and crucially, I know what I'm doing.

Now, this is an easy enough step for me. The core of my Chaos Space Marine army, after all, is about 1500 points of 2002/2007 era figures, and my Necrons have been engineered with backwards compatibility in mind - gauss flayer Warriors never go out of style even if my new models don't have the translucent green rods of yesteryear. Paul's Space Marines initially presented a minor challenge, until I bothered to look at the Blood Angels callout in the core rulebook: oh, they can take Assault Squads as Troops, and those Assault Squads can leave their jump packs at home? That looks suspiciously like a Primaris Aggressor to me...

Running the directly convertible elements of Paul's army through the Third Edition Time Tunnel, we come out with a bijou 400 points.

Librarian - 70 points
Chaplain - 70 points

Assault Squad - 5 models - 75 points
Assault Squad - 5 models - 75 points

Bike Squadron - 3 models - 105 points

(I'm not sure if he has the spare bodies to bulk his Eradicators up with a couple of bolter billies: that would give him another 180 points to play with, assuming three multi-meltas.)

Suitable opposition from my own collection...

Daemon Prince - 60 points
Chaos Sorcerer - 70 points

5 Chaos Space Marines - 75 points
5 Chaos Space Marines - 75 points
10 Lesser Daemons - 120 points

That's... blimey, not a lot of stuff at all. The Daemon Prince might be a little overclocked for this scale of engagement as well. In the event that further Eradicators are deployed, I think I'll match them with a Dreadnought (and leave myself a little underpointed, sky won't fall in).

[Just Tony]

I'd have an aneurysm trying to make an army that small...

[Kakapo42]

It's quite an experience when you finally see just how crazy points inflation gets in other editions. I remember being very happy with my first 500 points or so of 6th edition Tau, until I learnt that it actually came up to about 380 or so points in the 8th edition everyone was begging me to go with.

I haven't gotten that many more models added since then, but in 3rd edition and 2004hammer I'm at least now sitting on a cool 1100 points. Having taken a quick look, 400 would be just enough to get me... 2 full Fire Warrior teams and an Ethereal with an Honour Blade. With a couple of points left over for getting everyone an ice cream cone on the way, or a feed of fish and chips with some squid rings thrown in. I could fit a Commander with some assault weapons that could actually physically hurt vehicles bigger than a landspeeder or buggy, if I went with a couple of skeleton 6-Tau teams instead, but I just love my solid units of 12 figures so.

Anyway, if your friend is willing to bend the army rules a little, you could divvy those Eradicators up as Meltagunners for the 'Tactical' squads. A quick bit of napkin-math indicates that if he can manage that, and hand out frag and krak grenades for everyone, and bump up the troop Sergeants to Veteran Sergants and give one a power sword to play with, that would open up another 150 points for him to play with.

If I remember right from the reports he also had some veteran type guys with power swords as a unit, quiaff? Could those be repurposed into a Veteran Squad?

Some food for thought when thinking about escalating games at least. Personally if it were me I'd just go with the good old 'forget points just take a squad of troops or two and duke it out with those' approach myself, so adding characters and bikes on that is already a lot of spice by my intro game standards.

[Jonathan E]

... you could divvy those Eradicators up as Meltagunners for the 'Tactical' squads. A quick bit of napkin-math indicates that if he can manage that, and hand out frag and krak grenades for everyone, and bump up the troop Sergeants to Veteran Sergants and give one a power sword to play with, that would open up another 150 points for him to play with.

If I remember right from the reports he also had some veteran type guys with power swords as a unit, quiaff? Could those be repurposed into a Veteran Squad?

Good point: I forgot he had Bladeguard. Sadly, even the Veteran Squad in the core book is pretty tame by the standards of later editions, but still, those models give us a Veteran Sergeant for both of his Assault Squads. And maybe he'll get his Primaris Non-Assault Intercessors built at some point...

Personally if it were me I'd just go with the good old 'forget points just take a squad of troops or two and duke it out with those' approach myself, so adding characters and bikes on that is already a lot of spice by my intro game standards.

I mean: same. For much the same reason that in my bones I think Open is the best way to roll with modern 40K, just ballpark the army sizes with Power Levels and then draw a sudden death rule so the outnumbered player has a secret win button. But I'm working to the taste of my counterpart here, and he's a "rules are rules" kind of bloke. Besides, he's confident enough with 40K that a couple of HQ models won't kill him.