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The older models might not be as high quality as the new models and they were monopose but they had character. I think because we needed less models each model had more of a unique feeling. Now we paint up squads of guys that all look basically the same and we need dozens of them. We scoop them off the table so fast due to casualties that Space Marine 1 is no different than Marine 27. But when your whole army was 30 some guys, losing that one monopose guy meant something. You remember painting him, you remember when that one guy did something heroic or died an agonizing death. Now the guys are characterless mobs that while they may be high in detail they have no soul.

I disagree with that and I play the Death Korps. I remember very well when 5-6-93-2 and 5-6-93-3 blew a Stompa with their meltas or when 5-6-76-1 took 7 ID wounds and died so hard everyone forgot he existed or when 1st platoon took on a mob of hard boys squad by squad to prevent them from reaching my batteries of Earthshakers, allowing aid batteries to destroy most of the Ork mob.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
You still can't ignore the fact that in 1994, those plastics were cutting edge. Some of you guys have to look at the fact that you are getting off on scoffing at stuff that was at the very beginning of more than 25 years of development.

See, I just want the models of today (at least in situations where I don't like the old ones better) with the gaming atmosphere of the late 90's- especially that of GW.

My god, the fun of the days of Citadel Journal, but with the new Genestealer Cult models from Deathwatch? That'd be heaven.

Time to start searching for Oldhammer players around you. There is a small, but seemingly growing community who are all about the atmosphere of the earlier days.

We wrote:
The older models might not be as high quality as the new models and they were monopose but they had character. I think because we needed less models each model had more of a unique feeling. Now we paint up squads of guys that all look basically the same and we need dozens of them. We scoop them off the table so fast due to casualties that Space Marine 1 is no different than Marine 27. But when your whole army was 30 some guys, losing that one monopose guy meant something. You remember painting him, you remember when that one guy did something heroic or died an agonizing death. Now the guys are characterless mobs that while they may be high in detail they have no soul.

I think it's the exact opposite. With the old monopose stuff you were stuck with what GW offered, and many of those poses were really limited by the casting technology available. And god help you if you had any kind of horde army, where you'd have multiple copies of the same model because there's only 2-3 different poses available. Now with all the wonderful plastic/resin kits we have you can customize your own models and give them whatever character you want. I look at my models and think "yeah, this guy with the twin-linked chainswords I made is really awesome" instead of "yep, that's the 10th copy of the same exact model I've painted".

I'd actually argue the mono-poses forced people to be more creative with their models, which means it actually resulted in more personalized models rather than a horde of clones.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
I'd actually argue the mono-poses forced people to be more creative with their models, which means it actually resulted in more personalized models rather than a horde of clones.

How is that? If you can't re-pose the model or convert it easily then how does that result in personalized models instead of a horde of identical stuff?

I think we're a little spoiled by plastic and resin nowadays, cuz cutting and converting metal minis was the norm back then.

Not to mention the far less options actually got people to be a little more creative. Remember the infamous Deodorant Grav Tank?

 Peregrine wrote:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
I'd actually argue the mono-poses forced people to be more creative with their models, which means it actually resulted in more personalized models rather than a horde of clones.

How is that? If you can't re-pose the model or convert it easily then how does that result in personalized models instead of a horde of identical stuff?

People converted back then. Not just glue premade pieces to variable position.

Cutting, gluing, greenstuffing. Stuff people did back then. Much like custom made terrain rather than n+1 boards that look same with premade terrain.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Maréchal is definitely right. If it was just the models the itch would be pretty thoroughly scratched by now.

I think what i really miss was the hobby, the creativity and such promoted by GW, which is certainly something they're lacking recently.

In anycase, I was wondering if anyone else had these feelings of nostalgia? I'd like to talk to some like-minded people.

I do all the time. I started at the tail end of the RT era and played until almost the end of second edition.

I miss from GW the creativity it use to encourage in its players. It just seems soulless the last 10 years or so. Now FW on the other hand, they have the old school vibe and general love for the product that I use to feel the 'Old GW' crew use to have. To bad the FW prices with the 'Screw Canada Tax' is just insane.

I don't play 40k anymore. I am getting into 30k tho with a good friend of mine. I still like space marines but I need 'something else' to do also. Infinity looks cool, the crusades and ancients looks kinda cool....

tneva82 wrote:
People converted back then. Not just glue premade pieces to variable position.

Cutting, gluing, greenstuffing. Stuff people did back then. Much like custom made terrain rather than n+1 boards that look same with premade terrain.

Sure, some people did. But the people who were willing to deal with converting limited-pose metal models into something unique are still converting stuff in 2016. Meanwhile there are a lot of people who are making their own unique stuff in 2016 that wouldn't even have considered the much more difficult work involved in converting those old models. Conversions and unique models get a lot more support now, and any belief otherwise is just your nostalgia talking.

 Peregrine wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
People converted back then. Not just glue premade pieces to variable position.

Cutting, gluing, greenstuffing. Stuff people did back then. Much like custom made terrain rather than n+1 boards that look same with premade terrain.

Sure, some people did. But the people who were willing to deal with converting limited-pose metal models into something unique are still converting stuff in 2016. Meanwhile there are a lot of people who are making their own unique stuff in 2016 that wouldn't even have considered the much more difficult work involved in converting those old models. Conversions and unique models get a lot more support now, and any belief otherwise is just your nostalgia talking.

Ditto to Peregrine's sentiment.

It's a lot easier to convert plastic things than metal things.

What shocked me when I started assembling/painting a 2nd edition Eldar army was that I've gone full circle back to really loving single piece metal models. I remember being hugely excited for multi-part plastics...and embracing them. Now, with several gaming projects underway I've found myself a much bigger fan of single piece metal casts.

This includes my older Eldar models, my Old West figures and Dungeon Crawl minis as well. I think I realized that I don't really want 10-12 pieces per miniature, regardless of posing options it opens up for me. This is, of course, a hugely personal opinion.

 Elbows wrote:
What shocked me when I started assembling/painting a 2nd edition Eldar army was that I've gone full circle back to really loving single piece metal models. I remember being hugely excited for multi-part plastics...and embracing them. Now, with several gaming projects underway I've found myself a much bigger fan of single piece metal casts.

This includes my older Eldar models, my Old West figures and Dungeon Crawl minis as well. I think I realized that I don't really want 10-12 pieces per miniature, regardless of posing options it opens up for me. This is, of course, a hugely personal opinion.

There are pros and cons to both. With mono-pose (metal or plastic) you can have the limbs interact in ways that you just can’t get in pieces. Which is why a lot of the old stuff has character. It was also hampered with the technology of the day, hence the mostly flat poses, etc.

In an ideal world, we’d get a mix of both. Too many mono-poses, and horde armies (or even squads) gets very same-y. But scatter a few thought a multi piece built army, and it adds a lot of flavor.

One of the things we forget now is that there used to be a ton of variety of poses in a lot of ranges. Aspect warriors had four poses each in 2nd edition, while the IG regiments had 10 different lasgun poses.

All things considered, obviously I'd take the modern model ranges. But some of the old stuff was pretty cool.

 Elbows wrote:
What shocked me when I started assembling/painting a 2nd edition Eldar army was that I've gone full circle back to really loving single piece metal models. I remember being hugely excited for multi-part plastics...and embracing them. Now, with several gaming projects underway I've found myself a much bigger fan of single piece metal casts.

This includes my older Eldar models, my Old West figures and Dungeon Crawl minis as well. I think I realized that I don't really want 10-12 pieces per miniature, regardless of posing options it opens up for me. This is, of course, a hugely personal opinion.

Also, with many of the newer kits, there's a lot of excessive ornamentation that makes painting a big pain in the ass.

Stuff like the plastic Chaos Raptors or Dark Vengeance Chosen are great examples. They're extremely "busy" looking models with gobs of ornamentation that add tons of painting time and effort, but it just ends up making the model look overly-ornamented up close while being really nearly impossible to notice such detail from a tabletop distance of a couple of feet. Comparing the Chaos Raptors especially

Old Raptors

New Raptors

Additionally, they somehow manage to take the unique look of the old Raptors and make the new ones just look like extra fancy CSM's with a HH jumppack stuck on instead of the uniquely evolved cult they supposedly are.

Edit:fixed links

The game was more enjoyable to me in 2nd ed, there was great diversity and detail (admittedly too much of it) some of the units felt truly special, now damn near every troop is a statline of 3s and 4s, and many rules aned game mechanics are nonsensical.

I don't miss the models though. Quite happy to work with plastic and resin over metal, & very happy with the diversity of parts and poses in plastic squad kits. The one thing I dislike about the evolution of the models isI the OTT aesthetic of some of them (Khorne characters + excessive amouts of skulls being a prime example).

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
What shocked me when I started assembling/painting a 2nd edition Eldar army was that I've gone full circle back to really loving single piece metal models. I remember being hugely excited for multi-part plastics...and embracing them. Now, with several gaming projects underway I've found myself a much bigger fan of single piece metal casts.

This includes my older Eldar models, my Old West figures and Dungeon Crawl minis as well. I think I realized that I don't really want 10-12 pieces per miniature, regardless of posing options it opens up for me. This is, of course, a hugely personal opinion.

Also, with many of the newer kits, there's a lot of excessive ornamentation that makes painting a big pain in the ass.

Stuff like the plastic Chaos Raptors or Dark Vengeance Chosen are great examples. They're extremely "busy" looking models with gobs of ornamentation that add tons of painting time and effort, but it just ends up making the model look overly-ornamented up close while being really nearly impossible to notice such detail from a tabletop distance of a couple of feet. Comparing the Chaos Raptors especially

Old Raptors

New Raptors

Additionally, they somehow manage to take the unique look of the old Raptors and make the new ones just look like extra fancy CSM's with a HH jumppack stuck on instead of the uniquely evolved cult they supposedly are.

I agree with the huge amount of over-ornamentation. I think GW sculptors (and I use that phrase lightly some of the time) feel the need to fill any open space with heaps of additional detail/spikes/skulls/scrolls/bits/bobs/jewels/daggers/books/bibles/etc. For this reason I've been mostly happy with the modern Eldar stuff (despite not owning a ton of it) where the sculpting style for the newst Aspects went back to the 2nd edition-esque aesthetic --- with relatively minimal bloat. I have no issue with the wonderful options plastic allows for people. I use it myself frequently when making up random Dungeon Crawl figures out a huge box of sprues. But for something which I like quite well I'm absolutely fine with the metals. Sadly, collecting 2nd edition metals means I'm a bit stuck for choice. Some of my current Aspect squads are all of one/two poses instead of the original 4-5.

My guardians for example....40 of them and the majority are two poses for the Shuriken Catapult wielding guys. No big deal. It's the only unit I struggled with (painting forty of anything gets on my nerves).

Definitely prefer the old models (early to mid-90's) over the new ones. New ones have lots of lovely detail, but no personality.

And the detail sometimes really doesn't need to be there...like those dangly bits on the hilt of the Archon's sword.

I prefer my models packed with gear and whatnot, I usually buy a lot of bits to add more kit to my units

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
What shocked me when I started assembling/painting a 2nd edition Eldar army was that I've gone full circle back to really loving single piece metal models. I remember being hugely excited for multi-part plastics...and embracing them. Now, with several gaming projects underway I've found myself a much bigger fan of single piece metal casts.

This includes my older Eldar models, my Old West figures and Dungeon Crawl minis as well. I think I realized that I don't really want 10-12 pieces per miniature, regardless of posing options it opens up for me. This is, of course, a hugely personal opinion.

Also, with many of the newer kits, there's a lot of excessive ornamentation that makes painting a big pain in the ass.

Stuff like the plastic Chaos Raptors or Dark Vengeance Chosen are great examples. They're extremely "busy" looking models with gobs of ornamentation that add tons of painting time and effort, but it just ends up making the model look overly-ornamented up close while being really nearly impossible to notice such detail from a tabletop distance of a couple of feet. Comparing the Chaos Raptors especially

Old Raptors

New Raptors

Additionally, they somehow manage to take the unique look of the old Raptors and make the new ones just look like extra fancy CSM's with a HH jumppack stuck on instead of the uniquely evolved cult they supposedly are.

Edit:fixed links

Ah the ever venerable metal Raptors I have 12 of those. They were the perfect blend of detail and minimalism.

Honestly I would pay the current ridiculous 60-bucks-for-5-figures if they'd give me those exact raptors in plastic mode. Granted, the new Raptors actually look pretty cool. It's just a case of overshadowed by the awesomeness that was the 3.5th edition Raptors.

T two things I miss are the old terrain styles and manuals, my first exposure the hobby was that red book about making citadel terrain, and the 80's hair metal Eldar. Absolutely love their poses and aesthetics. I guess I also miss the old metal Cadians, but that's about it.

Point creep is probably the most aggravating factor in my opinion currently. It takes too many models to play the game within the point sizes it's designed for.

 Ratbarf wrote:
T two things I miss are the old terrain styles and manuals, my first exposure the hobby was that red book about making citadel terrain, and the 80's hair metal Eldar. Absolutely love their poses and aesthetics. I guess I also miss the old metal Cadians, but that's about it.

Point creep is probably the most aggravating factor in my opinion currently. It takes too many models to play the game within the point sizes it's designed for.

Points have def gone up. My current 2nd ed eldars + what I'm planning to buy mounts up to 66 models(2 which can't really be fielded together. Though one could be downgraded to warlock I guess). Point wise? Easily over 3000 pts army.

Wouldn't be much of a 7th ed army in points. Maybe about 2000? And power wise would be pretty crappy. With only few vechiles and no spamming of anything that's good would get slaughtered off board by 1500 pts 7th ed army!

But very affordable army. I'm pleasantly surprised by how huge army I can get relatively cheaply even with current GW nutty prices.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
What shocked me when I started assembling/painting a 2nd edition Eldar army was that I've gone full circle back to really loving single piece metal models. I remember being hugely excited for multi-part plastics...and embracing them. Now, with several gaming projects underway I've found myself a much bigger fan of single piece metal casts.

This includes my older Eldar models, my Old West figures and Dungeon Crawl minis as well. I think I realized that I don't really want 10-12 pieces per miniature, regardless of posing options it opens up for me. This is, of course, a hugely personal opinion.

Also, with many of the newer kits, there's a lot of excessive ornamentation that makes painting a big pain in the ass.

Stuff like the plastic Chaos Raptors or Dark Vengeance Chosen are great examples. They're extremely "busy" looking models with gobs of ornamentation that add tons of painting time and effort, but it just ends up making the model look overly-ornamented up close while being really nearly impossible to notice such detail from a tabletop distance of a couple of feet. Comparing the Chaos Raptors especially

Old Raptors

New Raptors

Additionally, they somehow manage to take the unique look of the old Raptors and make the new ones just look like extra fancy CSM's with a HH jumppack stuck on instead of the uniquely evolved cult they supposedly are.

Edit:fixed links

Ah the ever venerable metal Raptors I have 12 of those. They were the perfect blend of detail and minimalism.

Honestly I would pay the current ridiculous 60-bucks-for-5-figures if they'd give me those exact raptors in plastic mode. Granted, the new Raptors actually look pretty cool. It's just a case of overshadowed by the awesomeness that was the 3.5th edition Raptors.

To each his own, but I think those old models look hideous. To me they look very wonky with awkward proportions and weird poses. The new Raptors are beautiful, I'd much rather have them. I will admit the additional detail makes painting more tedious though.

"Getting Old" coming from starting at 4th ed hurts my feel . I came in right on the heels of 3rd Ed, and most people were still playing 2nd.

Honestly, I don't miss the old minis that much. They were great for the simplistic nature making them easy to paint quickly and get right into playing, but if you're someone like myself that enjoys painting an army more than playing, the old minis left a lot to be desired. And don't get me started about pewter minis and chipping.

I wouldn't mind seeing them back, maybe as a special "Anniversary boxed set" or something where you get a squad of each of the more common armies - Orks, Eldar, SM, CSM would be fine - as sort of a nod, but at the same time I'm not missing them if it never happens

*To clarify, I'm referring to 2nd ed, as those are what I would consider the "old minis"

I think that "capturing that old feeling" has more to do with your brain and nostalgia than it does the models themselves. As an analogy, I look to my own experience with MMO's. I played Ultima Online and Everquest when they first came out, and the feeling was incredible. As the first "big" games to feature constant servers running a 24/7 alternate world they were mind blowing. Later in life I tried other MMO's and none of them gave me the same feeling that those two older ones did. What I came to realize was that newer games like World of Warcraft aren't bad, it's just that the genre isn't new and exciting anymore. There's nothing that can change that. If you were around when something was new and exciting (omg, Space Marines! Giant battles with minatures!) the things that bring up those old memories are linked with that excitement and happiness.

Other than time travel, the only thing that can bring that feeling back is to get into new hobbies where things are still exciting and new to you.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
What shocked me when I started assembling/painting a 2nd edition Eldar army was that I've gone full circle back to really loving single piece metal models. I remember being hugely excited for multi-part plastics...and embracing them. Now, with several gaming projects underway I've found myself a much bigger fan of single piece metal casts.

This includes my older Eldar models, my Old West figures and Dungeon Crawl minis as well. I think I realized that I don't really want 10-12 pieces per miniature, regardless of posing options it opens up for me. This is, of course, a hugely personal opinion.

Also, with many of the newer kits, there's a lot of excessive ornamentation that makes painting a big pain in the ass.

Stuff like the plastic Chaos Raptors or Dark Vengeance Chosen are great examples. They're extremely "busy" looking models with gobs of ornamentation that add tons of painting time and effort, but it just ends up making the model look overly-ornamented up close while being really nearly impossible to notice such detail from a tabletop distance of a couple of feet. Comparing the Chaos Raptors especially

Old Raptors

New Raptors

Additionally, they somehow manage to take the unique look of the old Raptors and make the new ones just look like extra fancy CSM's with a HH jumppack stuck on instead of the uniquely evolved cult they supposedly are.

Edit:fixed links

Ah the ever venerable metal Raptors I have 12 of those. They were the perfect blend of detail and minimalism.

Honestly I would pay the current ridiculous 60-bucks-for-5-figures if they'd give me those exact raptors in plastic mode. Granted, the new Raptors actually look pretty cool. It's just a case of overshadowed by the awesomeness that was the 3.5th edition Raptors.

To each his own, but I think those old models look hideous. To me they look very wonky with awkward proportions and weird poses. The new Raptors are beautiful, I'd much rather have them. I will admit the additional detail makes painting more tedious though.

Actually, young 'uns, those are the 2.0 and 3.0 Raptors. These are the first Raptors, in metal from about 3rd edition. I have a squad of them from the release.

I was going to mention that...the old "bat wing" fellas.

Still my favorites!