Scoring 40k 3rd edition

I'm within 12 inches of the game and armed with a virtual keyboard so I can rapid fire this review.

It is going to be written  entirely from memory but I played a lot with many factions against many players over a few years thanks to GW fostering a great community by way of veteran's evenings (every Tuesday and Thursday for the over 16s if memory serves). 

Perhaps one day I'll get my copy out and reconsider what I'm about to write. Or not. I'm easy either way and just writing to amuse myself.

Presentation  7

I'll go with a 7. It's got some good to great art in there and the layout doesn't make the rules hard to learn.

Playability  5

It's... fine. It has a few clunky parts but it works.

Mechanics  4

The core rules are fine, that's why playability scores a 5. It's possibly the game to popularise standards like 6 inch moves, the "roll to hit, roll to wound, roll saves" sequence (I really like the AP mechanic too, it'd be nice to see that come up in more games) and it has some good ideas across all the different races, species and faction special rules buuuut... the staggered release of each army book leads to the origin of the term "codex creep" and so many games are just never balanced despite being a system that was made for tournaments. At least it was used as one that was... 

Scenario victory conditions are arbitrary and/or nonsense. I mentioned this about Bolt action but here is a root cause and it's possibly even worse due to the variety of unit types. Almost everyone I knew and played with just used scenario 1 and play until one side is destroyed. That's definitely missing out on a few things but nothing a "turn 1 charge" melee army couldn't just bludgeon out of existence as if it was a slaughter scenario anyway.

Flavour  4

40k has a huge and varied universe that has been well documented in codex fluff, the main rules, Black library books and in other game books. While a lot of it has been rewritten several times over or at least revised one way or another something that 40k has consistently done is to fail to transfer the feel of the many troops, aliens and deamons to the table.

A short time playing Inquisitor really helped drive home how poorly 40k managed that. Even Epic Armageddon was more representative at a grander scale.

Support  6

There were quite a few books released as well as the annuals however I can't give it a high score for that as a lot of it was responsible for breaking things that subsequent releases had to try and patch. White dwarf magazine was a good accompaniment that did include some inspiring articles but not enough to really elevate the score.

TOTAL  48

It's a long since replaced game and getting hold of the old material now will probably just make someone on Ebay rich but as an introduction to wargaming for the young and/or new player it's decent. Fairly simple and just about every other game system you play afterwards will be a better one.