Fireside chat with the veterans

[Brother Lutheriel]

Okay, I want to hear from you guys with 5, 10, 15+ years in the hobby. What’s the best and worst you’ve seen over the years? 
 

I found the hobby from Space Marine II. So I’ve only known this era. But what was it like before? What was it like when the HH novels were coming out? What about before there were primarchs in 40k? Tell me how it was!

 

Every time I open a kit that hasn’t changed since 9th edition all I think is, “wow, this set is awesome. No wonder people are complaining about the new stuff.”

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

I liked the hobby much more before corpo greed and the tournament scene made it miserable.

 

i liked it when every codex had a hobby section.

i liked it when they printed rules for building your own vehicles.

i liked it when people were creative with their table set ups.

i liked it when terrain did so much more than “u no c me now”

 

i don’t think I’ve seen a river on a table that wasn’t some YouTuber’s project of the week video in 20 years.

 

also, something that I don’t think was possible back in the day with force organization charts was skew lists.

 

i don’t like exchanging army lists with people before the game I don’t want to worry about someone getting my list and spec’ing theirs out to counter me before they send theirs and I don’t want them to worry about it in reverse, but I’m tired of pulling up to games with a generalist TAC style list just to find out my opponent has 3 demon princes, 6 greater demons, and named greater demon characters or a bunch of the big knights.

 

In fact feth knights and chaos knights in general. Feth lists of any super heavy/lord of war.

 

 

Edited 11 hours ago by Inquisitor_Lensoven

[Bouargh]

I have started my journey with 1st Ed and with time I walked away slowly but surely from gaming while keeping being focussed on the hobbying part. For the latter, I really enjoy the increased quality in sculpts and the improvements associated to modern miniature design, even if some drawbacks of the computer assisted sculpting may lead to a kind of uniformization sometimes (faces...). But it is not that of an issue. Painting, kit bashing, .... is a real source of joy and satisfaction.

 

As far as the former is concerned though, I guess it went to worse with time passing on. Reeditions did not IMHO generaly speaking improved the game. They sometimes introduced some mechanisms that made it too complex then the momentum was reversed; but in general the sense of game desig as been lost, and nowadays we have what we have. No need to say more, I do not like the direction taken by the game for the past 3 editions and the multilayer cake that has became the game with core rules/Detachment rules/datasheet rules/stratagems. It is in my view unecessary and my gaming experiences were as good or even better before all that jazz.

 

I hate bloat too. I hate spending too much money on rulebooks and codexes and supplements. It was not an issue for me initially but with time passing I have just started being disgussed by the mechanism behind (when the game was rebooted with primaris, I srtupidely bought the rules, the Index, al of taht for a big money, and then the codex SM has been released one month after or so... Organized larceny). And as far as bloat is concerned, just have a look at the SM codex size:

 

 

And I hate having all my SM models of old being phased out because of the reboot of the space marine design. 

 

But I still like the set up and the spirit of the 40k universe, even if I do rather sticking to old editions rule set now for gaming...

[The Praetorian of Inwit]

There is still a great deal to love about this hobby. However the corporate greed, while always a thing, has as in almost every aspect of modern life become so much more overt that it casts a long shadow over things. 

 

I remember Templates. I never encountered any issues with them and the thrill of seeing a Demolisher Cannon hit a squad of aspect warriors dead on was great. Heck even missing with a template was fun because with scatter dice you didn't know where it might end up. It was an element of unpredictability that made it feel fun - at least for me and my opponents. 

 

There was a great feeling of it being a 'beer and pretzels' game back then. 

 

I feel in general that Warhammer was just less serious then. It was more about good times with people than list optimisation. Yes the balancing could be...uneven...but the flavour was so much more. 

 

Personally I also miss the Force Organisation Chart. I liked having a structure and limitations to build around. I've never found the Detachment system to recreate that buzz for me. 

 

I do remember how infuriating and miserable it could be having to wait years and years for a codex. That was brutal for several factions. I don't find GW's constantly barrage of faq's, errata, point changes, balance slates an improvement though. More just jumping from one extreme to another and bypassing a reasonable middle ground entirely. 

 

I also remember the absolute chaos of 7th and Formations where things went bat s**t insane. 

 

It was a crazy time but honestly I miss it. It was less sanitised, more mysterious, more for hobbyists. It was less of a commercial product, less mainstream. 

 

 

 

[Arikel]

I really, really disliked the lore around the introduction of Primaris, Cawl, and Roboute into the storyline. It was, at best, poorly thought out and implemented, and soured me on the hobby so much that I didn't touch 40k for almost 5 years. Now, I'm not so much concerned about the history of the universe moving forward which does have some interesting stuff in it, but as to the near myopic focus on single characters that are not just participants but on whom the story and fate of the universe depends.

 

I guess originally for me, 40K felt more like a future history, more documentary like in style and substance. It felt like it had a wide view of the universe, and while there were important characters, generals, warlords and such, they seemed remote and mysterious, and while their actions, cumulatively, felt important and could impact the future of the universe, it felt like the universe might be teeming with millions of other champions, villains, and heroes whose stories were as yet unwritten.

 

Currently, while the 40 K settting is still there and there actually have been quite a few lore bits that seem quite interesting and cool, the tone of the lore and the writing has changed from the faux-historical documentary style to a narrative that feels dominated by Chosen One heroes, upon which the universe depends and their actions are the only ones that can define the future. Gulliman, who is supposedly running the empire after purging the council of high lords, but also leading the empire's crusades personally from every battle front. Cawl also seems to be everywhere, pulling various technological doodads from "the dark ages" from various orifices as needed by the plot to save the day. Every faction has important named characters, without which they seem to be unable to function effectively.

 

If it was just the lore it would still trouble me, but increasingly it's passed over into the game as well. Named characters have always been present in the codexes, but seem to be growing more powerful and in some cases almost necessary to include in your lists if you are playing certain factions. There is nothing wrong in including stats to represent named characters for those who want to play them in the game, but they should not be so much better than a generic choice that not using named characters in your army puts you at a disadvantage.

 

Other than that, I actually find the rules changes in 10th/11th an improvement for sure over 9th edition in almost every way. I do think that unit equipment options might need a few points tweaks, but the few games I've played with 10th flow better and are more fun than the few games my group and I played of 9th. I miss the 4th to 7th period somewhat, but that's more because the rules were essentially the same between those 4 eras. There were a few tweaks here and there, but it took very little to get back up to speed and start playing again. 8th blew that up, as well as introducing primaris. 9th was increasingly complicated that we never really got into it, though that's when I started to get back in the game. 10th on the other hand was pretty nice, 11th we haven't tried much yet.

[Iron Father Ferrum]

I will die on the hill that 3rd-5th was the best era of 40K, and it's not just because I'm nostalgic for my beginner era.  Lensoven and Arikel hit most of the high points about the rules & feel of the game back then, and Arikel in particular hit the nail on the head of the Primaris lore for me -- for a long time after 8th dropped, I was a "never-Primaris" doomer and it's only been comparatively recently that I've given in, and even that is due to the writing on the wall and not an acceptance that the lore is good.  In fact, I busted out a bunch of half-painted Tactical Marines last week that were the beginning of a Badab War Marines Errant force that I started on just before we got that first "workbench" leaked picture of an Intercessor.

 

In any case, there were tournaments back then and there was meta-listing and rules exploits that were not patched near as quickly as they get patched today, and as a result of the balance between codices did have a tendency to skew a bit.  Sometimes, quite a bit.  The lore sections of the codices also suffered because Mat Ward wrote a bunch of them, so we ended up with garbage like the "Guilliman is every Chapter's spiritual liege" line, but overall everything felt solid.  I found that good listbuilding and solid tactical play could counter the overpowered stuff, and I regularly beat meta-lists with themed forces.

 

[Karhedron]

I started with 1st edition and I have played every one since. I would have to say that they all had their strengths and weaknesses but for me, the worst was 7th edition with the introduction of Formations or "Decurions". The principle sounded good on paper. If you built your army according to what GW deemed was fluffy for that faction, you got some bonuses. The first 2 armies in the new paradigm were Necrons and Eldar and it seemed to work well. If Necrons were built to a Decurion, they got a bonus to their reanimation rolls. If Eldar built a Battlehost, they got movement bonuses IIRC. So far so good.

 

Then Marines came along and spoiled the concept for everyone. If Marines built a battle company (6 tactical squads, 2 Dev squads, 2 Assault squads and a Captain) everyone got FREE transports. Now this was back when Razorbacks were basically mini tanks and twin-linked assault cannons were great. In a 2000 points game, Marines got over 500 points of free stuff! It wasn't even remotely fair or balanced and it certainly wasn't fun to play against an opponent whose army was 25% bigger than yours.

 

To make it even worse, psychics were incredibly powerful and the key spell was Invisibility which meant opponents could only hit your unit on a 6! Now if you think, that is bad, this was back when you could join unlimited characters to units to create massive "deathstars". The game basically devolved into conkers. The only playable armies were the ones with access to Invisibility. Then it was a case of building the biggest, baddest deathstar you could make and smashing it into your opponent's in the middle of the board. The player with the strongest deathstar won!

 

It is the only time in nearly 40 years that I completely quit 40K. I switched to playing X-wing for a couple of years until the arrival of 8th edition lured me back.

[Brother Lutheriel]

6 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

I liked it when every codex had a hobby section.

i liked it when they printed rules for building your own vehicles.

i liked it when people were creative with their table set ups.

i liked it when terrain did so much more than “u no c me now”

 

i don’t think I’ve seen a river on a table that wasn’t some YouTuber’s project of the week video in 20 years.

 

also, something that I don’t think was possible back in the day with force organization charts was skew lists.

A few questions:

 

1. What did terrain used to do?

2. I’ve never seen a table with a river. Other than looking awesome, was there a reason to do that? Or is that your point? It has no reason but it looks awesome. 
3. What’s a skew list?

 

What about 30k still resembles old 40k? I’ve been told it’s basically just 7th edition 40k. Y’all are making me want to look into force organization charts. 

[The Yncarne]

The best times were always when I was excited to look forward to games and new models. Things have felt very samey for the past 5-6 editions. There are new models and a new faction, but even the squats are new wine in an old bottle. 
 

I don’t see myself getting back into the game side and my hobby output has dropped significantly since the 90s heydays. Frankly I neither need nor want 2-3 copies of every unit in the codex. 
 

mostly I miss the imagination that games and preparing for games used to provide. 

[Brother Lutheriel]

23 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

Then Marines came along and spoiled the concept for everyone. If Marines built a battle company (6 tactical squads, 2 Dev squads, 2 Assault squads and a Captain) everyone got FREE transports. 

Free transports and death stars is wild. Sounds like a crazy time. 
 

I want my games to feel as much like the lore as possible. That’s why I’m not into the competitive scene.  

[Doghouse]

I'm another 1st editoner.

 

For me it has been a rollercoaster that started to run out of track around 8th edition.

 

For me 1987-2008 was my favorite time in the hobby, with my favourite editions being 3-5 like a lot of us old timers. It is easy to look at things through rise tinted glasses, like regardless of how many of us remember it the monetisation seriously started kicking in around 2nd edition with the introduction of boxed sets and the emphasis on making money ever so slightly beginning to shadow GW being hobbyists.

 

It was a much more creative time which really took off about twenty five years ago with the creation of forums like the good old B&C here. There are many things if I could go back in time in my life and change I would but I would never change what became my online experience. It went from small groups of friends sheepishly talking about their model soldiers in darkened rooms for fear of persecution from their peers to exploding into entire communities of like minded individuals. For me personally I went from some guy sat in his room coming up with new ways to make his models more interesting to becoming known all over the world, working with thousands of people and it was completely and utterly amazing! 

 

It wasn't all sunshine and buttercups but it was a time of sharing ideas and teaching each other. I know technically there are painters and sculptors that are far superior to what we were doing now but we were the original OG hobbyists and it was such an amazing time.  These days with the death of forums from my perspective it feels like it's all Youtube sponsorships, Patreons, rumours and leaks. In my mind it has gone from a massively creative outlet and sharing of ideas to a money driven treadmill where the focus is not on creating stuff with what we have but news of the latest product to consume before discarding in favour of the next new product. 

 

It's a shame but it is what it is I guess and time moves on and I like so many others slipped back into obscurity. Lots of what were considered the big names have left over the years and new ones emerged, a few I see from time to time pop up and it always makes me smile.

 

But having said all that, at risk of sounding like a broken record, older editions still exist and there is still potential for creativity for newer hobbyists to explore those editions for the first time and adapting modern kits to fit that niche.

 

I could genuinely go on for hours and hours with stories but will leave it there. 

 

 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

1 hour ago, Brother Lutheriel said:

A few questions:

 

1. What did terrain used to do?

2. I’ve never seen a table with a river. Other than looking awesome, was there a reason to do that? Or is that your point? It has no reason but it looks awesome. 
3. What’s a skew list?

 

What about 30k still resembles old 40k? I’ve been told it’s basically just 7th edition 40k. Y’all are making me want to look into force organization charts. 

There used to be different ‘tiers’ of terrain

difficult, dangerous, and impassable.

 

so a crater would typically be difficult subtract from movement

dangerous Terrain would be something like barbed wire, and could potentially hurt a model trying to cross it.

impassable terrain was generally impassable to ground units.

 

as for rivers, they were generally impassable, but some vehicles like the guard chimera used to have an amphibious special rule that allowed them to be able to cross rivers.

 

i left the hobby in like 5th or 6th and came back end of 8th so I might not have it 100% accurate, but that’s the idea it.

 

a skew list is a list that’s something like 2000 points of baneblades or 2000 points of hundreds of small squishy infantry. This means unless you built your list to counter that particular brand of skew, you’re going to struggle because you won’t have the tools to effectively deal with it. If you don’t spec into heavy AT you’ll be very unlikely to deal with a bunch of the big knights, or 4 baneblades.

if you don’t spec into countering it, you’re going to struggle against 300 guardsmen. Etc.

so knights are almost inherently an entire faction of skew.

Edited 1 hour ago by Inquisitor_Lensoven

[Halandaar]

8 hours ago, Brother Lutheriel said:

Every time I open a kit that hasn’t changed since 9th edition all I think is, “wow, this set is awesome. No wonder people are complaining about the new stuff.”

 

This made me laugh. Not in a negative way, just - "9th edition was like 6 years ago, of course it hasn't been updated since then!" Everything since 8th Edition is "new" 40K to me. The idea that some of the kits from that era are already up for replacement is wild.

 

I'm wary of being "new=bad", because I don't normally go along with that. But in terms of 40K specifically, it feels like it is getting progressively further away from being the game I fell in love with, without being bold enough to become something new/better. It's like they wanted to really update the system, but were afraid of backlash, so it's stuck with all this baggage from previous editions with bits and pieces of AoS cobbled onto it. And this isn't me bagging on AoS either; I think that's a very enjoyable system (and a much better-run game as well), it's just that 40K has become this mishmash of classic 40K (essentially the ruleset Heresy runs on) and Age of Sigmar, without the clarity of vision of either.

 

Then you've got the fact it is built around competitive/tournament gameplay despite having one of it's key balancing features (granular point values) removed, and despite the fact that certain factions can go over 2 years without an edition-specific update while still having to compete against completely overhauled Codexes. The system itself is treated like a video game, with seasonal updates and balance patches and paid DLC. There is absolutely no gameplay reason to space out Codex releases over a 3 year period, it's purely about sales. It's not even like this practice goes back all the way; up until 8th Edition it was very common for armies to go 2 editions between updates; the fact that in post-8th 40K you can wait 2.5 years for your Codex to level the playing field, only for the game to change so much that it breaks that Codex 6 months later, is unbelievably obnoxious.

[Knightsword]

I forgot about free transports. I had so many Twin Assault Cannon Razorbacks back in the day.

 

I miss the templates, but I do not miss the scatter dice. The amount of danger close Basilisk shots that went horribly wrong seemed disproportionately high for my poor Catachans.

 

I miss the glancing and pentrating hit tables. Making my friend's Land Raider have no working Lascannons for a large proportion of the game was always a fun endeavour. 

 

I miss superheavies being rare Forgeworld kits. Seeing a Baneblade or Marauder Bomber on the tabletop was a treat. 

 

I miss being able to order bitz directly from Games Workshop.

 

1 hour ago, Brother Lutheriel said:

A few questions:

 

1. What did terrain used to do?

2. I’ve never seen a table with a river. Other than looking awesome, was there a reason to do that? Or is that your point? It has no reason but it looks awesome. 

 

I hope my memory does me justice on this, but certain terrain was classed as Difficult Terrain like woods, craters, tank traps or ruins. To move through it you had to make a difficult terrain test. For infantry it would be 2d6, pick the highest of the dice and that was how far each model could move. Vehicles with tracks or wheels would risk being immobilised all game if you rolled a 1 on the test. My friend used to have a board with a canal running through the middle and a few bridges. We homebrewed the canal as difficult terrain for walkers and infantry, but tracked and wheeled vehicles could not cross it had to use the bridges.

[Brother Lutheriel]

9 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

i liked it when they printed rules for building your own vehicles.

I meant to ask about this… What?? Building your own vehicles??

 

29 minutes ago, Doghouse said:

I could genuinely go on for hours and hours with stories but will leave it there. 

Don’t stop! This is why I created this thread! I want to hear from you guys! I think you’re right that it’s easy to have rose colored glasses about the past, but I’ll be honest, on just a rules side alone, I hear a lot about the old editions I wish was still around!

 

18 minutes ago, Halandaar said:

This made me laugh. Not in a negative way, just - "9th edition was like 6 years ago, of course it hasn't been updated since then!" Everything since 8th Edition is "new" 40K to me. The idea that some of the kits from that era are already up for replacement is wild.

Haha, it’s probably crazy for all you guys who have been doing it for so long. I have no reference before 9th, and I barely have any reference for that. I bought several Ork sets that came out somewhere in vicinity of 9th (maybe even 8th) and they have SO MUCH in them it blows me away. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

Just in general I think tables now full of mass produced L shaped ruins just look so boring compared to the often much lower quality home made terrain that used to be everywhere.

 

here’s some examples from a thread I started like 20 years ago lol

 

 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

1 minute ago, Brother Lutheriel said:

I meant to ask about this… What?? Building your own vehicles??

 

Don’t stop! This is why I created this thread! I want to hear from you guys! I think you’re right that it’s easy to have rose colored glasses about the past, but I’ll be honest, on just a rules side alone, I hear a lot about the old editions I wish was still around!

 

Haha, it’s probably crazy for all you guys who have been doing it for so long. I have no reference before 9th, and I barely have any reference for that. I bought several Ork sets that came out somewhere in vicinity of 9th (maybe even 8th) and they have SO MUCH in them it blows me away. 

https://www.thefluffenhammer.com/articles/DEEPcustomcars

 

vehicle design rules from 3rd edition

[Scribe]

4 hours ago, Iron Father Ferrum said:

I will die on the hill that 3rd-5th was the best era of 40K, and it's not just because I'm nostalgic for my beginner era.

 

+ HH1 with the Black Books and HH Novels?

 

Absolute peak of the Hobby.

[Bouargh]

2 hours ago, Brother Lutheriel said:

What about 30k still resembles old 40k? I’ve been told it’s basically just 7th edition 40k. Y’all are making me want to look into force organization charts. 

 

Rule sets of HH first Ed was indeed old 40k mechanics maintained.

How is it now? I just do not know as I have disconnected from it. But even when it was based on old rules, it stayed more balanced than the 40k games using the same corpus mainly because HH was a SM vs. SM game only: balance was intrinsic at the time, not by ruleset but because the 2 mainstream forces were basically taken from the same list... except a few signature unit for each legion.

[Brother Lutheriel]

9 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

+ HH1 with the Black Books and HH Novels?

 

Absolute peak of the Hobby.

Tell me more… Ever only ever heard of the Black Books in whispers. Like they are mythical tomes filled with secrets. 
 

Also, why would GW not produce more of something so coveted? I feel like so many people would buy them if they released them again. 

[Grand Master Laertes]

Veteran from 1995 here, I started in 2nd edition when I was a kid.

 

One of the things I miss the most is the sensation of discovery. Nowadays, with the internet, you know exactly which products are available or have been available in the past, and oftenn even those that will be available in the future. At the time, instead, you probably didn't even know the full extent of what existed, and going through the pages of a White Dwarf issue or a catalog was a real discovery process  - also because there wasn't a lot of material, and the developers were actually creating the galaxy in that same timeframe. Just imagine opening a White Dwarf Issue and finding lore snippets about past events that had just been a name up until that time! That's why many of us remember the Index Astartes Articles so fondly.

 

When the internet became widespread, but the social networks as we know them today didn't yet exist, the great thing was the sense of community, of exploring an hobby with a lot of like-minded individuals (even though we have always disagreed on almost everything, like we alway do). I loved going through the blog posts and the topics on forums like this to see what other hobbyists were building and following them in their trial and-error processes. Many of us even produced step-by-step tutorials to spread the knowledge of something that we had discovered that worked nicely, be it a painting or a modeling/converting technique. Nowadays that has almost disappeared: most of us will post a picture of a completed model on their instagram and call it a day.

 

Rules in the past wre probably more janky, but they felt more narrative-driven, at least up to the 7th edition (which liked a lot, if you exclude all the unnecessary and broken detachments that were built upon it). Also, there was constant sperimentation from the developers' side, constantly throwing new gaming modes to the wall to see what would stick.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

10 minutes ago, Grand Master Laertes said:

Veteran from 1995 here, I started in 2nd edition when I was a kid.

 

One of the things I miss the most is the sensation of discovery. Nowadays, with the internet, you know exactly which products are available or have been available in the past, and oftenn even those that will be available in the future. At the time, instead, you probably didn't even know the full extent of what existed, and going through the pages of a White Dwarf issue or a catalog was a real discovery process  - also because there wasn't a lot of material, and the developers were actually creating the galaxy in that same timeframe. Just imagine opening a White Dwarf Issue and finding lore snippets about past events that had just been a name up until that time! That's why many of us remember the Index Astartes Articles so fondly.

 

When the internet became widespread, but the social networks as we know them today didn't yet exist, the great thing was the sense of community, of exploring an hobby with a lot of like-minded individuals (even though we have always disagreed on almost everything, like we alway do). I loved going through the blog posts and the topics on forums like this to see what other hobbyists were building and following them in their trial and-error processes. Many of us even produced step-by-step tutorials to spread the knowledge of something that we had discovered that worked nicely, be it a painting or a modeling/converting technique. Nowadays that has almost disappeared: most of us will post a picture of a completed model on their instagram and call it a day.

 

Rules in the past wre probably more janky, but they felt more narrative-driven, at least up to the 7th edition (which liked a lot, if you exclude all the unnecessary and broken detachments that were built upon it). Also, there was constant sperimentation from the developers' side, constantly throwing new gaming modes to the wall to see what would stick.

Loss of discovery and excitement due to the internet is one of the reasons my interest in Pokemon died.

 

the internet and greed is destroying every single hobby