Tank Edition was also the one where more tanks could move and shoot more weapons more reliably. We're still not talking "put all the guns on your Rush Limbaugh tank unless the main gun is only a Heavy like the Vanquisher". Also I may be butchering the Leman Russ name a bit too much now. So moderately-armed vehicles were becoming more reliable at their jobs (while still leaving a sore spot for things that are "basically a Leman Russ"). Note that they still had the targeting problem where it's quite rare for you to be able to fire both of your sponsons on the same turn, because you are using True Line of Sight with sponson arcs, you can't aim a gun through your own body (for obvious reasons) and all guns have to be fired at the same target. So while you could probably position your tank to put the turret Twin Lascannon and one side Heavy Bolter into an enemy, the other side was taking a nap.
Furthermore, vehicles were a big deal for objectives. My memory is kind of hazy here but if I recall correctly, the deal was:
A) Anything
contested an objective, so you could just get a Land Speeder that had its weapons blown off and zoom it up and go "Actually you don't have that objective." Or sit a particularly resilient one on your backfield objective, where it will take ages for the enemy to get dedicated anti-tank firepower to you.
B) If a Troops squad is sitting inside a vehicle, they still capture objectives. So it's like being a Troops choice that is immune to Flamers and basic hand to hand.
C) If a vehicle is taken as a Dedicated Transport for a Troops choice, it counts as a Troops choice and can hold objectives? I think? (I do seem to recall people saying it was worthwhile to swap units so the Troops and Elite pile out of their cars and take each others' cars, and if point C is correct, that would explain that one - you have a Scoring armoured Troops and a Scoring armoured Elite.)
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You may have noticed the first half of maglag's list having a theme. That theme is what I call "Fuck it, let's just randomly roll shit instead of having decisions play a part in this". Hence 6Ed being d6 Ed.
maglag wrote:Fliers becoming standard to further crap in melee, and now every army had to pack anti-air of some sort.
Bonus points: not every army has anti-air. Some straight-up have to take an Aegis defence line (a universal-except-fuck-Tyranids choice from the core book, which cannot move) in their only Fortification slot and try to position it for maximum coverage at the start, and if that gets destroyed quickly by an air-craft heavy unit, then fuck you. And then because GW can't mathhammer their way out of a paper bag (also known as Imperial Guard armour), in some cases the anti-air stuff is strictly inferior at its job to plain old weight of fire (ie the best Ork anti-air was the Loota Boy squad, which lost all of 1 BS).
7 felt very much like 6.5, because it absolutely was. 6 introduced a lot of weird shit, and 7 stapled that into the core rules. It also went through and found anything that people particularly liked doing and scribbled that out - Necrons lost a Lord of War choice that was too good, and another LoW choice was extremely weakened (and one Elite choice that could be customised was replaced with two special characters returning from 3Ed). They also lost the magic of anti-aircraft Tesla spam, even though Flying Type pokemon are weak against Lightning moves.
8 is a pile of wet shit in almost every aspect, although I will say it gives Chaos HUNGRY TANKS that get better at eating the enemy the more Wounds they lose (well they get worse at reaching them but better at hand to hand fighting when it happens) and have "Infernal Hunger" as their actual rule so they are literally eating foes to regain Wounds. That alone amuses me greatly. A Land Raider assault ramp/hatch even basically looks like a big mouth.