40K: Evolving Weapon Stats
Everyone wants to see the 8th Ed. weapon Stats. Let’s start back when GW had weapons with similar stats – Rogue Trader and move forward.
We’ve all seen some of the new weapon stats from GW:
That has a lot of folks wondering what the other weapons will look like in 8th.
Weapon stats have been fairly static for a decade, but back in the day, GW played aorund a bit with the weapons and the early editions of 40K had save modifiers, and damage as well. Let’s go back 30 years and see what can learn from how GW initially designed the grimdark’s weapons and modified them over time.
Rogue Trader 1987
The original weapon chart. Short and sweet – this is GW first pass at what weapons should do.
In very late Rogue Trader the Warhammer 40,000 Battle Manual (1992) collated together all the weapons that had been added to the game.
Note the crushing chainfist, and exotics like the web pistol.
The bread and butter basic weapons gives you a good baseline for how GW sees things.
The Assault Cannon was a monster, the Missile launcher a lot of ammo choices and tanks lived in terror of the Multi-melta.
Look at all those grenades! Good times.
2nd Edition 1993
2nd Edition cleaned things up a bit from the very complex and fiddly rogue Trader and gave GW a chance to fine-tune the weapons. Note the continued use of short and long range to-hit modifiers, and the addition of Armour Penetration for the new vehicle rules.
3rd Edition 1998
This marked the beginning of the “modern era” for 40K. It grew up into the modern company level game we still play and the weapons got the major overhaul to make then look familiar to to modern players.
Range was simplified, save modifers we replaced by the AP system and damage went away altogether. It’s pretty much this for 20 years.
~What do you think GW will take from their own weapons heritage as they return many of the old weapon stats to the game.
