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Love the review. When I was a kid, I thought that these books were the most evil thing I had ever read! (In a good way)

God! Chaos had SUCH CHARACTER! It's like the chaos we have now is a boring, limpid, uninspired version of the shear dripping, pulsing, writhing, uninhibited evil that was the chaos of yesteryear....... Even the models look like something, I don't know, CHAOTIC, happened to them, instead of the current "Geez, we dislike the emperor, and we've got spikes" of the current line.

GW's definitely gone corporate, and sold their souls a LONG time ago.

At least the game's a lot more fun to play! The old 40K was a lot more fun to talk about, 5th edition is definitely a better game, game.

Dice Monkey wrote:
You should read Free Booterz and Ere we Go!! compared to the lobotomized garbage they call Orks now.

I've got a copy of Waaaggh! Da Orks from way back, and I remember the old Ork lists. Really with the latest 'dex I feel like the orks have gotten a lot of their own back. They were never an incredibly chaotic race, and you can still model them up anyway you want (and a lot of people do), and the rest was fluff. Sure some of the fluff is missing from that latest 'dex, and you're nolonger rolling for your custom combi-weapons, but it's good other than that. The rest has always been sort of up to you anyway.

With chaos on the other hand, I've seen a LOT of people do some incredible conversions, but never anything to the level of the original chaos marines. Most modern chaos still retains a great deal of it's humanity, and still has the basic 2 arms, 2 legs, nose, mouth look. Old skool chaos completely set a LOT of that on it's ear.

BTW, I believe that the first appearance of the mutation's chart was in the original RT. IIRC, the chart was only a D100, so they REALLY expanded upon the idea, but it had been there from the first.

I'm sort of sad, but mostly happy to see the charts go. With the marine army list it was possible to pay X points and roll on a chart that could give you something incredible, or something really lame. Same thing with most of the lists. In fact that was one of THE sources of cheating under the old system, since most people didn't want to watch their opponent make several dozen die rolls to see what his boyz were armed with. So usually people just fudged that a bit. And it was impossible to say that the rolls were even close to correctly costed, since it was SO random. I'd much rather just pay the points, and buy what I want, you know? Much fairer all around.

Paul Atreides wrote:Just wondering, and please don't scream sacrilege, Is Is awailable to download, you know, somewhere?

Yes

Gotta second the thinking about WSYIWYG. That load of bull was something that was introduced with 3rd edition, in an attempt to increase revenues, and streamline the game. Doing proxies is not hard with a few dozen models, when it starts getting above 4 or so squads it starts getting a bit silly, but then everything was small in RT.

I also hear you about the randomness of everything. FWIW, ALL of the army lists were very random, sometimes resulting in games that were won in rolls that were not necessarily witnessed by your opponent, if you rolled up the right gear.

Really RT needed either a very co-operative opponent, or a GM. Either way, you needed something to get around the sticky bits.

The REAL joy of the game was the strangeness, the alien approach, all the really interesting little bitz here and there. It's also pretty clear that this is a very much a work of passion, by gamers, for gamers. For better or worse, GW has become very corporate over the years. The games a LOT more polished, balanced, and playable, but it's sadly missing some of passion, fun, and zaniness.

OTOH, ANYBODY who whines about game balance with the current system has NO IDEA WTF they're talking about compared to the old rules. There were holes you could pilot a ring world through.

But it was a ton of fun, which is the important thing.

(One other thing, the quotes bit is in the RT rule book, so it was there from the first.)

Thanks again for a lovely trip down memory lane. I'm awaiting your Retro Review of the Realm of Chaos. One of the books is clearly superior to the other, though I can't remember which.

Vladsimpaler wrote:
If I could get this book for $60 or less nowadays, I would buy it faster than you could say "heretic". Maybe a swap meet or something. And without my mom seeing. (I'd be crucified if she ever got sight of this book.)

Yeah, that's the biggie. When these came out we were all in high school, and my buddy who had them was VERY careful about hiding them from his parents. Even now I think they'd raise some eyebrows.

I also wonder about the hooded figures. I'd really like to think that they don't mean the same thing in the UK, and it's all an innocent mistake. IIRC, the Klan all claim to be wizards or something goofy, so maybe that's what it's trying to evoke, and they're both drawn from some much older inspiration.....

Regardless, I AM glad to see the KKK stuff has since quietly dropped out of sight.

JohnHwangDD wrote:40k3 and WFB6 pushed WYSIWYG because there were too many players who'd put down a pile of nearly identical-looking Skeletons and claim they were a Space Marine army. Or they would use ordinary SM as Commanders and Characters. And wargear and roles would move around willy-nilly.

With that as a background, WYSIWYG makes a lot of sense and is a great help to the opponent, rather than remembering which skeleton is supposed to be which special model.

Sure I understand, but really WYSIWYG was a pretty silly idea with the old RT rules being in the shape they were in. Sort of like washing the dishes after the hurricane had torn the roof off the house. Having somebody "slide around" stuff on your was like to low down on the list of evil, cheating, beardy sh!t they could do it wasn't worth worrying about, so the rules in the Chaos books weren't that big a deal.