It's been... awhile, since I've played 40k; I think the last basic set that came out was Black Templars as the Space Marine army vs. Dark Eldar when I picked up pieces. This was years after I had traded away my entire Blood Angel army (2nd Edition woooo hey Mephiston brokeness) and Eldar armies for... shit it was the late 90s, I don't even remember. I think video games, because the shops around me all closed and all the other players drifted away.
I could probably still recall half the weapons' dice rolls, along with how OP certain combos were (warp spiders mercing light armor; having at least one plasma cannon in most tactical squads and always in every devastator, just to get rid of those asshole tanks) and how certain pieces of wargear were just nonsense when used properly (hi, vortex grenade.)
Did the game ever get more.. balanced? Like, could a melee army do well against a heavy ranged or was it still very "Everyone dies unless they have invuln saves, or are Mephiston" for the most part?
I want to say I stopped actively playing -right- when the Chaos book was released, and Abbadon was the new OP wtf character. Nobody we knew played Chaos actively, but there were tons of people rushing out to buy armies -just- because Space Marines had some broken ass heroes at that time. Eldar were... more manageable, minus the Avatar of Khane. I still think the Dark Reaper Exarch hero was the most broke thing ever, simply because he was a very heavy weapon that could move and fire. Literally just kite armies to death if they couldn't hit him, and all you needed was a conversion field to nip most of that in the bud minus bad luck.
I sound like an old person. Are Tau any good these days? I bought a 3k point army in the early 2ks to play with friends.... who then never spent any money and I couldn't find any players locally to save my life. Newerish area may have some better groups, so wondering if I should dust off and paint (still in original packaging, because everyone bitched out literally the day after I got my shit delivered) or if it's devolved into "whomever spends the most on current stuff, wins"
