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I've recently been actively searching up and buying a huge array of old models (RT LR, Dreads, Preds, and Rhino. As well as a SC Dreadnought). I was just wondering if playing them all seems dickish, I know some people who are more serious almost take fieding old models as cheating, but I'm always clear that they're technically GW models and I offer to switch them out for modern models for LOS checks and stuff.

For reference, I play them because my guys are basically marines from the beginning of the crusade sent forward in time.

They are GW models. There are no grounds for calling them Illegal or MFA.

Grey Templar wrote:They are GW models. There are no grounds for calling them Illegal or MFA.

Exactly, I run two SM Vindicators that are on the old school rhino chassis, a lot of the veterans at my FLGS like seeing the old models in use.

The only time it annoys me is when a person runs old Ghazzy..........due to the stumpy size he can literally hide behind cover while Modern Ghazz is so big he is cover for the cover.

Old models are totally legal.
Dont let the whining bother you none.

The Mad Tanker wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:They are GW models. There are no grounds for calling them Illegal or MFA.

Exactly, I run two SM Vindicators that are on the old school rhino chassis, a lot of the veterans at my FLGS like seeing the old models in use.

This, in my club, "vintage" models are cool, not scoffed at. The only concern, would be if we thought someone went out to get the old models to play LOS shenanigans with them.

This has been discussed before, but whatever...

I personally love the old models. The harder to find, the better I think. I have been told my 2nd edition hive tyrant and carnifex may get me thrown out of a tournament, but that is not going to happen, they are official models I purchased because they were cool, old, and I got a good deal on them.

Anyone giving you grief can go pound sand...

IceRapture wrote:I know some people who are more serious almost take fieding old models as cheating

Wait, who calls fielding old models cheating?

Oh, right, people whose opinions don't matter. I swear, we need to have a separate dakka board just for threads about people handling local TFGs

If you field a tiny old model for the purpose of abusing the LOS advantage, than you're TFG. If you don't do that, then the complainer is TFG. Simple as that.

There are really only a few models where the size advantage is really drastic and can be abused. The old Ork skateboard Trukk is the most common one; the original 28mm tall Avatar is the extremely rare one. If you're fielding these and don't deliberately hide them behind stuff the current model couldn't hide behind, you shouldn't get any complaints.

Ailaros wrote:
Wait, who calls fielding old models cheating?

Oh, right, people whose opinions don't matter.

Post of the century right here. If someone's giving me trouble for fielding cool old models, they're nobody I want to play with anyway, and can go screw.

Grey Templar wrote:They are GW models. There are no grounds for calling them Illegal or MFA.

Really? Cause I got a rhino and some terminators from GW that are not the same size as the current versions. Now would be a good time to break them out especially with 6th edition, I can hide them pretty easily.

No, they still aren't illegal. If you just want to use them for that cover advantage though...

I use loads of older models for my Orks and Tyranid forces, and no one cares around here. Hell, I even try to bulk up some of the bigger models to push them closer to current 'body mass' models. My old SK Carni's now have tails, spines and a new head added to them and they're now pretty size appropriate. Most of my 'smaller's old models are left as is.

I'd have no problemo seeing my opponent with a bunch of older models. I really don't even care if you would do it just for 'advantage'. If someone wouldn't play you because of your older sculpts, you probably wouldn't have any fun playing with him anyway.

The only time i'd raise an eyebrow is if there's an obvious size difference from newer to older but that can work both ways particularly with things like bases, distances etc so i'm so fussed... There might be some grumbling about weight of metal & balancing on terrain and sharpness of sculpt though.

Edited to tweak wording

Ravanar wrote:The only time i'd raise an eyebrow is if there's an obvious size difference from newer to older but that can work both ways particularly with things like bases, distances etc so i'm so fussed... There might be some grumbling about weight of metal & balancing on terrain and sharpness of sculpt though.

Edited to tweak wording

No, see, the sharp bits are the best part of old models!

Because when the robot-dinosaur-furry-cyborg-ninjas bust in to ruin your game, you have a weapon on hand to fight them with! It's an improvised weapon, though, so you get a fairly major penalty to your to-hit rolls. But if you dual-wield them, you're gonna need 6s anyways!

Or did you mean that old models aren't as crisply detailed? I have no idea; all my models are the ones that were available in 3rd edition and later.

Pouncey wrote:

No, see, the sharp bits are the best part of old models!

Because when the robot-dinosaur-furry-cyborg-ninjas bust in to ruin your game, you have a weapon on hand to fight them with! It's an improvised weapon, though, so you get a fairly major penalty to your to-hit rolls. But if you dual-wield them, you're gonna need 6s anyways!

Or did you mean that old models aren't as crisply detailed? I have no idea; all my models are the ones that were available in 3rd edition and later.

*Unholsters a kai gun, aims at Pouncey and promptly rolls a "1" for the number of shots fired wounding himself in the process*

I was thinking more from the crispness of the sculpt. If you're going to use them as weapons I'd suggest throwing them or firing them from some sort of cannon... far more effective.

Thinking about it though the same arguement could be applied to using forgeworld models in a count as context, contemptor dreadnaughts as normal dreadnaught for instance. Not so much an obvious isse as FW models are larger but same principal.

i exclusivly use the old rhinos, i love the sleek look a lot more than the boxy one.. it looks fast and thats cool and it fits the fluff of DA having alot of the old Kit still available to them, as soon as i get some pennies together i will be getting some mk1 land raiders (but i do love the modern ones too) and land speeders for an all retro army

I've got on old-school rhino, a load of metal Deathwing, the old-style vindicator, an old metal Dark Angels dread and even a metal land speeder (Ravenwing). They are all still perfectly fine to use in 40k and most people that see them love them (especially the old speeder).

So the general consensus seems to be don't be a dick, anyone who complains is a dick.
Sounds good

Give it a couple of weeks and I'll have 6 different types of dreadnoughts walking into battle.

You can use and GW model for the model that was made to model the model provided the model is on the models original base and isn't modeled for advantage.

So just to be straight, everyone is cool with me using my smaller terminators, unless I take advantage of the fact they're smaller than currently terminators in my games, then its wrong, unless I'm not, then its all good.

They should have to be based on the current bases if the newer models have changed in that regard, that just seems fair. However, there are very few models that are so drastically different in size that they exploit LOS.

What 28mm Avatar are you referring to? The one from Epic? Yeah, that's definitely cheating, haha. Otherwise be prepared for me to bust out a squadron of tiny Baneblades and Shadowswords and my seven or eight Thunderhawks.

As long as they're WYSIWYG and GW models, they're fine. Hell, I use one of the old-style Predators.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:They should have to be based on the current bases if the newer models have changed in that regard, that just seems fair.

The new 6th ed rules on this are on page 3. It says that the rules assume you're using the bases provided, but if you've got models on unusual bases or missing bases, "feel free to mount the model on a base of appropriate size if you wish, using models of a similar type as guidance." So basically just saying be reasonable, folks.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:What 28mm Avatar are you referring to?

Yeah, the Epic one. Though there are also a couple of Harlequin HQs called "Avatars" from back in the day, which could have confused folks.

Old models do wonders to the feel of the army, personally I have an old razorback, a tac squad, 2 whirlwinds, 10 termies, a dreadnought and 3 RT chaplains, and they look awesome on the table!

If your opponent doesn't mind, you can always use any old models you have, but it helps to have them on up-to-date bases.

I've been playing 40k since the fall of 1989. I currently have nine armies on my shelf*. These consist at least 90% of figures who's design predates 4th edition. (with most being RT and 2nd edition models) There are several reasons for this:
-over the years, I obvously accumulated alot of older stuff
-I'm a nostalgia junky
-older models are a better "fit" for my current armies when I expand them with a new unit
-In the vast majority of cases I simply prefer the older models as I like clean lines over over-cluttered sculpts. (this is especially the case when we are talking about the horrible over-done and overly cluttered character models of today.)
-Although much RT material has gotten alot more more expensive in recent years, finding older models to refurbish on the secondhand market is far cheaper than buying current product. (it also has the side effect of harming GW a little as you are not giving them any money...which is a good thing)

I can literally count on one hand (with some fingers left over mind you) the number of times that someone has actually said something negative about my armies in person. For example I had some clueless kid a few years back literally ask why I didn't "throw away that old trash and get with the program" and I've had a couple of idiots makes nasty comments about my Squats. But for the most part the comments I get are of the "look at those cool old models" sort. The feedback I get on the various forums has been a bit more negative of course. But write this off as that well known tedency of many people to behave in all sorts of rude ways that they would never dream of doing in person.

My thoughts on the question in the original post? Unless it's extremely obvious that you are (mis)using an old model just to gain some sort of tabletop advantage (as a hypothetical example say you had an Eldar army that consisted entirely of current figures, but just happened to have an old infantry sized Avatar that you were hiding behind vehicles as it advanced) there is absolutely nothing wrong with using older figures. To be honest, I have never actually seen such an example. I suspect that those who raise such concerns have not either and by in larges it's much ado about nothing. In fact I smile every time I see someone else still using classic stuff. In one of their few examples of good sense, GW even regonizes this in the existance of their "counts as" rule. As someone above put it, if someone has a problem with that they can "go pound sand!".

TR
*- In case anyone cares they are Space Wolves/Marines, Nugle CSM,Slaanesh CSM, Imperial Guard, Eldar, Space Orks, Chaos Daemons, Squats, and Space Slann.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Yeah, the Epic one. Though there are also a couple of Harlequin HQs called "Avatars" from back in the day, which could have confused folks.

Actually, that's incorrect. The original Avatar model was infantry sized and mounted on a normal 25mm round base.

This is the one, people get concerned about the use of...although by the letter of the rules it's 100% legal. But with the exception of one other old model collector like myself, I have not seen one on the table in years. Hell, I on't even use that thing.

Thanks! I thought I remembered there being an actual 25mm Avatar for 40k, but couldn't find it when I searched.

You could use him as a sweet Autarch.

Or, if you're really worried about the old avatar being undersized, model a scenic base for him to correct the height difference.

The only time I ever complained about old models being used was the d-bag that pulled out his old rhinos when he was playing GK. He only used them when playing GK, just so his dreads could shoot over them. That is some MFA BS.

SoloFalcon1138 wrote:Or, if you're really worried about the old avatar being undersized, model a scenic base for him to correct the height difference.

Actually, now that I think about it, the last time I saw this discussion come up it turned out that the current MC sized avatar figure (which is a very old sculpt...2nd edition old) is not that much taller than the older infantry sized one. We are talking just an inch or so. It is of course a much less "bulky" figure, which makes it easier to hide though...

I don't have an early Avatar, so I can't go measure them side by side. But i still content that no one actually DOES that, and concern about abusing the size difference is mostly internet hand wringing and worst case scenario speculation.

TR