I dunno about early editions, but Dan Abnett is definitely a good author. It's just that the tone he (and Sandy Mitchell, who is also pretty good IMO) have is much lighter than the codex series.
This is largely due to the big attempts at re-writing and darkening the fluff around 3rd and 4th edition. You kind of have three "Eras" of 40k fluff and they overlap. 1st and 2nd edition were jokesy british humor and 2000AD themes, so you have the whole "Space marines are space cops and the arbites look like judge dredd" thing here. Shitty hive planets like necromunda exist, but are not the norm. 3rd to early 4th was darker, but still light. Marines are warrior monks, the imperium is dark but no worse than standard cyberpunk setting for most people. Heroes exist and have non-pyrric victories, but the status quo is really no fun for most people.This is when a lot of Abnett's books were set. Late 4th to current 40k is the second period, but darker and with a more realistic sense of scale. The imperium is huge, legitimate nice places don't really exist, and all the bad guys are winning to some degree.
Basically it's like 1. Judge Dredd but in space and the leaders are all russian imperials. 2. Dune but with aliens and super soldiers 3. 2 but with all the bad stuff played up and the light stuff downplayed.
So, in actual gameplay related news, GW recently released a new minigame sorta thing, called Shadow War: Armageddon, based on the old Necromunda rules, except with more of the main 40k races instead of different gangs. There's a campaign system, allowing you to keep a single group of dudes and gradually improve (or lose!) them over time. How it works is that every mission you complete, you earn up to a hundred points, which you can spend on new units or upgrades for existing units. You can expend a Promethum Cache, which is the currency you need to complete a campaign, to get an extra 100 points. You cannot bank points - that is, they don't carry over from game to game, you either spend them as you get them, or lose 'em. Probably to prevent people from spending all their points on an instantaneous superunit. Except, point costs are apparently fairly high, not the 6-20 points for a single unit typical of basic 40k, but more like ~50 points or more for a single guy. Okay, so you're not getting a whole bunch of dudes each time. Fair enough. Except, again, they're using the main 40k factions. Including things like, say, Space Marines. Which generally cost over 100 points. And oh yes, Grey Knights are available. A basic Grey Knight costs 170 points. A bolter costs 30 points. One of the factions's cheapest unit costs 'all of the points you can possibly have', and they literally cannot purchase specialists. A+ balance work, gee-dubs.
Color me unsurprised, Shadow War seemed to be like trying to nail necromunda rules to kill team rules without really considering what makes either one fun. Part of what I liked about Mordheim/Necromunda is that wargear was hyper-standardized and factions were mostly defined by their stats and skill advances than what wargear they pulled from. It felt balanced that I had access to maces and two-handed weapons just like the orc gang across the table, but I got more guys and his guys were stronger with worse leadership. What's funny is that you could probably port campaign rules to the current kill team ruleset and have it come out way more balanced. My lfgs looked over the rules, shrugged with resignation, and instead worked on our Hinterlands (AoS skirmish games) gangs.
I wish I had the time to start fielding an army :U I'm trash at any and all games of strategy but it's a good time anyway
So there's a new edition coming out pretty soon, and from the preview bits we've been getting of the rules at https://www.warhammer-community.com/ I'm reasonably hopeful for it. GW seems to have been getting a lot less terrible over the past year or so.
Yeah, 8th edition looks pretty good. A lot of the sensible stuff from Age of Sigmar. Changing vehicles to use wounds is a change that has been floating around for quite a while, and it's about time they actually implemented it - plus, making monstrous creatures more vulnerable to successive/critical wounds. Dunno how psychic powers are gonna balance out - I've also been an advocate of combining a bunch of the different special abilities that various non-psychic races have into a 'power phase': So like, Necrons could use technosorcery, Tau their ethereal invocations/etc, SoBs their acts of faith, and all that sort of stuff, all in one phase. The idea of fluff bonuses/command points reminds me of Warmachine in a good way - Warmahordes has a thing where each commander has a list of various 'canon' units, and the closer to that list you take, the more misc. bonuses you get. Hopefully we can get something like that where building a fluff-adhering list gets you not just command points but special bonuses, to help distinguish different units. Like, Chapters/Regiments/Septs/Hive Fleets/etc could easily be characterized and distinguished this way. Not a big fan of the way AoS/8th does morale, though. I think the system was probably better as it was, though sweeping advance needed adjustment. I'd have gone with a continuum of suppressed/broken/shattered. Also, make broken units flee to cover instead of out into the open. And just... having a successful sweeping advance lead to reengaging with a free round of attacks.
official announcement: plastic sisters! "Emperor willing, in 2019". Apart from that, I've just been fidgety in the general direction of wardollies again lately, wanting to assemble and paint and play even though I haven't had the energy for it in a long time. Guess we'll see if anything comes of it.
