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Perusing through a second hand bookstore, i came across some very old gw magazines and pamphlets. 93 and 94 vintage. Very interesting to see how much the game has changed since then...

the 40k box set came with 20 marines, 20 "Space Orks" and 20 gretchin. The Marines are 4 part plastic... base (a slottabase), gun, body and backpack. The orks and gretchin models are mostly identical. The gretchin have lasguns, orks have bolt pistols and an axe, and their armour looks like a mix between ancient greek and viking. it looks weird.

the "how to play 40k" is a bit interesting too. movement of 4", charging in move phase, modifiers on armour saves, close combat is completely different - example from book - you roll a d6, add it to your ws, and the difference between the two combatants scores is how many attacks the winner gets - the space marine rolls a 3, adds it to ws 4 for 7. the gretchin rolls a 3, adds it to ws 2 for 5. sm wins by 2, and gets 2 attacks, then roll to wound.

other game systems and races that feature in this that have since dropped off the radar (in Australia anyway) - Epic Titan Legions, Epic Space Marine, Talisman.... Squat make a few appearances, too.

Painting... goshdarn painting! Everything is so bright and clean! None of this battle damage stuff! No making things look dirty! The painting guide for Blood Angels is "undercoat white, paint it red, paint the gun, knee pads, shoulder pad edges, and eyes black, base green, and its ready for battle!" I think you'd get laughed off if you tried fielding an army of blood angels painted like that these days.

The only models I saw that resembled the current miniatures were the dreadnaughts and the Avatar.... and even they were on square bases. SQUARE BASES!!!

anyway... /end nostalgia rant. i started playing fantasy back in 97, 40k when the box set was SM and DE ('98?, '99?), and seeing all this justmakesmerealise how much it's all evolved over the last few years.

Welcome to the early 90's! The majority of my Crimson Fist army is from that era and earlier, and I've gotta say I love it. All that stuff you found is from the halcyon days of 2nd edition, where a 1500 point game would take 4 hours and have half as many minis as a modern game does. I actually have that same starter set sitting here in my room, next to my also-unbuilt Necromunda starter set. I'm hoping that someday I can paint the two.

Speaking of painting, I have an 'Eavy Metal painting guide from the time. So much Day-Glo looking paint, it's unreal. I'm a huge fan of that era of painting and modeling. There's also a lot of scratch built terrain, which can be a treat.

I started the same as you, with the 3rd edition starter set, but I still have a deep appreciation for the old stuff.

Brother SRM wrote:Welcome to the early 90's! The majority of my Crimson Fist army is from that era and earlier, and I've gotta say I love it. All that stuff you found is from the halcyon days of 2nd edition, where a 1500 point game would take 4 hours and have half as many minis as a modern game does. I actually have that same starter set sitting here in my room, next to my also-unbuilt Necromunda starter set. I'm hoping that someday I can paint the two.

Speaking of painting, I have an 'Eavy Metal painting guide from the time. So much Day-Glo looking paint, it's unreal. I'm a huge fan of that era of painting and modeling. There's also a lot of scratch built terrain, which can be a treat.

I started the same as you, with the 3rd edition starter set, but I still have a deep appreciation for the old stuff.

Back when White Dwarf was for Gamers, not for Shareholders.

When 2nd Ed released and Capt Tycho was the name they gave the model, but it wasnt an official Codex IC.

When they showcased 2nd Ed and 5/6 games the Orks won and the Space Marines were almsot wiped from the board... ut GW didnt care cos the Space Marines werent the deliberate poster boys that they push now.

I just did not like having to Roll for everything 3 times... its was like playing DND 2.5

Welcome to what for many people was the finest version of 40k ever made, back before they started trying to simplify more in order to squeeze more miniatures onto the tabletop. Some people still play it in fact, and if you play Necromunda you are essentially playing 2nd edition with nobs on.

If you started playing in 97 you must have just missed it, right about the time when I actually left the hobby because 3rd edition did nothing for me

Thats where a lot of my Marines and orks came from too. It had a cardboard dread in that boxed set too, and card buildings. I still see that as the golden age of 40k, back when GW didn't assume the players were too dumb to understand save-mods instead of AP, or overwatch rules instead of 12" teleporting cavalry.

yeah... I'm trolling through Ebay trying to find a 2nd ed rulebook. and by "trolling through ebay" i mean thats what i'll be doing in about ten minutes if something shiny doesnt come along to distract me (like the new LR demolisher i just bought)......

I did play a little bit of 2nd ed with my older cousin back then, and enjoyed it (duh). And a bit of space hulk... and a bit of DnD...

I spent many days and evenings playing Space Marine and 2nd 40K. Those were the days when it was a gamers game and vehicles weren't thirty or more pieces.

I have still have an entire 2nd ed set and a dark millenium set in my garage, with an unopened force deck! Ah, the memories...one day I'll crack it out and have a bash. I also have codex IG, orks, Chaos, Nids, Sisters, Space Wolves and Ultramarines.

Back then the psychic phase was a mini card game. There were 2d6 force cards dealt at the end of each turn, and each player got half of them with the person whose turn it was getting the extra if it was an odd number. You had to use the force cards to charge up your powers, and there 'nullify' was a special card you played to cancel a power. There were also special cards like 'ultimate force' and 'daemoic attack', and strategy cards that got dealt to each player at the start of the game...virus outbreak, malfunction, outflank, etc.

I'm kind of between the two games in terms of preference. While I miss overwatch and the more random wound allocation, I don't miss the lack of modifiers and the old close combat system at all - they really really slowed the game down. The old close combat system had some pretty big flaws, such as high-attack characters getting multiple fumbles every turn (every one you rolled was a fumble, so things like avatars and bloodthristers were fumbling every phase...huh?). Also initiative was pretty much a dead stat. Transports and bikes were absolute deathtraps and were very rarely seen. if the thing blew up, the guys in/on it were dead, period. You could lose a Space marine captain on a bike to a single bolter shot that way :/

One thing I definately miss is the 'it's gonna blow!' special rule that let you move d6" away from a vehicle after blowing it up in CC. I really have no idea why they canned that one.

The old armour penetration system was complex too - having to resolve where the shot hit, then figure out the pen based on the how amny wounds the weapon dealth: 3d6+9 for a lascannon, d6+d20+8 for a multimelta etc. It's better to have everything on a d6, and the sustained fire dice were a pain too. Your assault cannon was virtually guaranteed to jam every game (it was still a killer weapon, with the potential for 9 shots in a turn and the same armour penetration as a krak missile).

Who remembers getting a tactical squad to throw 10 krak grenades at a carnifex? or 10 frags into a guard squad? or getting your assault marines to throw a wall of blind smoke in front of themselves for portable LOS blocking? Vortex greandes, or a tech-priest with a graviton gun, warp jump generator and displacer field? That guy owned. I'm getting all nostalgic now :p

I'm not cycnical that the move to the new system was about dumbing-down the game, although I am sure that they were hoping to sell a few more minis with the larger battles. It really did take ages to work through a 2k point battle, and there was demand for larger games at the time. A lot of the changes were fresh at the time and differentiated 40k from fantasy. It's just a shame that they didn't keep a couple of the concepts that added that extra detail and flavour to the game.

Oh god will people stop acting like second edition is ancient it makes me feel very old =(

5th is better no two ways about it but 2nd edition had so much more narative to the battles the rule set was clunky and slow but you knew excactly had happened when you fired a shot thanks to the metric gakload of tables etc

And to be honest some of the rules made sense like cover just putting a modifer on your roll to hit or being able to throw your grenades as a weapon /gasp

Yeah... Found out a mate has a copy of Rogue Trader and 2nd ed. Might go through that and add a few rules to our house campaign (if it ever gets started... we've been planning this campaign since November '09).

I still play 2E, I love it, but then I have nothing to compare it too. Sure there were some clunky rules and it was time consuming but I think it's a grand game. And I love the psychic phase mini-game, lots of fun.

2nd Ed 40K was a very silly game that didn't work properly half the time... but damn was it fun. No version of 40K before or since has managed to make vehicles as fun as they were in 2nd Ed. I miss that game, even the stupid parts (except Overwatch... Overwatch can die in a fire).

And it was 40 Gretchin, and they had Autoguns not Lasguns.

Jubear wrote:Oh god will people stop acting like second edition is ancient it makes me feel very old =(

Heh. Me too.

While i dont mind the old models and rules, its the painting i care for
Still paint base edges a nice bright green.

Old habbit that is only getting worse i guess.

Great game. I really enjoyed many, many games of 2nd edition. The one thing I don't miss are the 20 or more smoke templates we would have to roll for each turn.

I was also one of those folks who quit when 3rd edition rolled out. I didn't come back to the game until 2001.

Oh I remember our games of 2ed at school.

When nobody owned anything but the BARE MINIMUM of Troops and most of my army was Terminators and Characters.

I love 2nd edition, it was tops. Sure it wasn't perfect and sometimes it took a while to resolve certain things like the various weapon templates and treating every bike on the table as an individual vehicle made a Ravenwing force unusable. But it was just so much fun. The psychic stuff was mad and you had a heap of wargear cards to customise your characters.

3rd ed ruined 40K IMO. I tried it but GW succeeded in gutting the game for me, the psychic powers were non-existant, psychology was almost all gone, terminators were wimps, bikes just granted extra movement and toughness, vehicles had a single generic damage table and their movement was dumbed down in the extreme, etc... They ruined the Orks, no proper Ork Clans, no madboyz, no Shokk Attack Gun. Sigh.

2nd edition gives me a warm feeling inside, it was lots of goofy fun and had a mature level of complication in the rules. It didn't treat you like a fool; it wasn't hard to play by any means, but it wasn't for little kids or those with short attention spans. Armies were smaller and had greater flexibility rather the army lists and points values now which appear to be a thinly disguised attempt to make you buy more and more figures just to field a 2000 point army.

Jubear wrote:5th is better no two ways about it

Wrong! and 98% of the comments in this thread attest to that.

Jubear wrote:...but 2nd edition had so much more narative to the battles the rule set was clunky and slow but you knew excactly had happened when you fired a shot thanks to the metric gakload of tables etc
And to be honest some of the rules made sense like cover just putting a modifer on your roll to hit or being able to throw your grenades as a weapon /gasp

This is the problem with Editions 3-5. Yeh I know 2nd Ed took ages to play, and appreciation of the complexity was a bit subjective (for the record - I loved the complexity - and there was always Epic 40K for when you wanted a large but simple battle), but they just hacked and slashed at the game system TOO MUCH and now it's a tattered scrap of what the game once was. If you think 5th Ed is so much better, why is every internet army list the same? Surely a game where there's only one right way to win is inferior?

Howard A Treesong wrote:2nd edition gives me a warm feeling inside, it was lots of goofy fun and had a mature level of complication in the rules. It didn't treat you like a fool; it wasn't hard to play by any means, but it wasn't for little kids or those with short attention spans. Armies were smaller and had greater flexibility rather the army lists and points values now which appear to be a thinly disguised attempt to make you buy more and more figures just to field a 2000 point army

That's right - i started playing when I was about 13. I'm the oldest of 4 boys and my younger brothers also soon got into the hobby. 2nd Edition wasn't too hard, but 5th ed is dumb
No wonder the mods call it 'Toy Soldiers' now instead of a hobby.

I think most of the nostalgia for me stems from those times (being young and having no commitments). Back then me and my best friends were in our mid to late teens and used to save up all of our money just to buy a couple of blister packs here and there. I still have all of my 2nd edition rule books and about half the codexes and even pull them out every now and then and read through them. Come to think about it, about a year ago I dug out my Space Marines from that box and decided to add modern backpacks and bolters to one of the squads in order to give them a more updated look. After painting them up they're pretty indistinguishable from the rest of my more modern force. I think I'm going to paint up the second squad as well though I'll keep them as original as possible.

Man, I need to find a copy of Dark Millenium(really just the books and templates).

I want to show my group(who constantly complains about how many things work in 5th) the "glory" of 2nd ed.

It's pretty fun seeing the old models from before. I started right in the early 90's with WHFB. I remember the old orcs with the coconut heads.

check out these old gems.