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Back in the olden days (back in the day is too modern), your necrons were a mysterious raiding force, small and elite. It was like a bunch of Boy Scouts fighting the predator and that’s a big part of their original draw. They didn’t need a skagillion pages of background to make them interesting.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Spoiled kids and their instant gratification.

In my day, computer games took ages to load. And were quite often not worth the bother.

They think Elden Ring is hard? At least you can complete that. Try Jet Set Willy. Where you literally couldn’t complete the game, due to programming bugs. You think a Horse ascending into the upper atmosphere is a bug? You don’t know you’re born.

Luxury! In my day, you didn't buy disks or downloads, you bought the code. That is, you got to program the game yourself. "Here, type in 2,000 lines of code without typos (and hope our editors were sharp) in order to play your feeble computer game."

No wonder Avalon Hill games were more popular. Third Reich was breeze compared to this torment.*

*Did anyone ever really figure out the naval rules?

 Nevelon wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
ASCII? ASCII?

What’s wrong with doodling crude images on a school textbook, eh?

Do you know how long it would take to send that doodle over the internet with a 300 baud acoustic modem?

You fancy kids with your internet games. In my day we had play by mail. You wrote your moves on paper, stuck it in an envelope with a stamp, sent it in to be processed, and had to wait a month for the results!

I think you’ll find that entirely depends on just how unfeasibly prehensile the [REDACTED] was, no?

Give me AD&D 2nd or gimme nothin'!

 Nevelon wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
ASCII? ASCII?

What’s wrong with doodling crude images on a school textbook, eh?

Do you know how long it would take to send that doodle over the internet with a 300 baud acoustic modem?

You fancy kids with your internet games. In my day we had play by mail. You wrote your moves on paper, stuck it in an envelope with a stamp, sent it in to be processed, and had to wait a month for the results!

I remember those days. I don't think any of those games ever reached a conclusion. Most never got past the second turn.

Ah... good times


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 Nevelon wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
I'll keep it short and simple: I miss Avalon Hill.

That’s a Hill to die on.

They made a great range of games, from beer and pretzels, to boxes full of maps and chits.

Yes and no.

I loved Starship Troopers in principle, except the Bugs never won, and the Skinnies were so laughable there was not point in making them ever take the field. We did try a homegrown scenario, once, where a squad of cap troopers was sent into a Skinny world in a cloaked ship to take out the local ruler, where essentially infinite Skinny reinforcements kept coming onto the field. That was fun, but otherwise, forget it.

The Bugs could win in the scenario (was it Planet P?) where the cap troopers were badly damaged, but that was it. They could win the scenarios that included nukes, but those were kind of pointless anyway.

Long and the short though, I hate chits and love miniatures. Thus, AH was always kind of an anathema for me.

kids today don't know they have been born, games you can set up, play and pack away in under two hours, less sometimes

they simply couldn't cope with the full campaign for Federation & Empire, 1,500+ counters, the enjoyment of four hours setting it all up

and only those who were not true gamers used the fleet markers, the full counter stack or nothing is where its at

Fully sculpted hard plastic terrain? Obscene Opulence!

We had to make our own. Books for hills, isn’t, marvellous.

And even when we did get pre-made terrain, it was more lethal to your models than any Lascannon as the cardboard would fall off.

Kids these days think they’re slumming it with MDF terrain. I mean, that’s not just lazy, but being a lazy cheapskate. Typical Millennial Behaviour!.

Hypocrites going on about Greta Thunberg and saving the planet and they’re not even making terrain from whatever crap they’ve got lying around - they’re buying it, and it’s made from oil! And it comes in perfectly good terrain fodder packaging.

Pharisastic Poppinjays and Work Shy Fops the lot of them!

Yes the Thesaurus is getting a work out. Yes it’s a print version. Yes I’m asking my Dad what a word means rather than check the Dictionary.

so...

you had books?

From the library.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
From the library.

oh well played

Using a card found in t’gutter.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Using a card found in t’gutter.

we can't afford gutters round here, we have to make do we potholes, and we had to steal them, and toy tell kids today and do they believe a word of it?

I have incidentally pointed this thread to my youngest and he loved it

leopard wrote:
guy I gamed against, a proper gamer, sneaky swine, suggested a multi-way game, using "any officially published stuff"..

spider sense tingled..

got there, he had X-Ships, very proud of how good they were, especially how good they were against fighters at close range

that was, purely coincidentally, the first time he saw Hydrans..

I had a CVA...

I presume you managed to get three Stingers into suicide range and blow his doors off?

If you're going to cheese a duel, take the B-10A and introduce your opponent to the 32-consecurtive-impulse Alpha Strike.


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Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Spoiled kids and their instant gratification.

In my day, computer games took ages to load. And were quite often not worth the bother.

They think Elden Ring is hard? At least you can complete that. Try Jet Set Willy. Where you literally couldn’t complete the game, due to programming bugs. You think a Horse ascending into the upper atmosphere is a bug? You don’t know you’re born.

Luxury! In my day, you didn't buy disks or downloads, you bought the code. That is, you got to program the game yourself. "Here, type in 2,000 lines of code without typos (and hope our editors were sharp) in order to play your feeble computer game."

No wonder Avalon Hill games were more popular. Third Reich was breeze compared to this torment.*

*Did anyone ever really figure out the naval rules?

I had Third Reich but I never found anyone willing to play it.

What was up with the naval rules? I'd read through the rules way back in the day, but I don't remember them all that well.

i had transportable chalkboards still.

wasn't so much three Stinger-2 into point blank, not three as such.. more like the surviving dozen or so from the 24.. in groups, on his fleet except the one ship to the rear

called it a game at that point, he has X-Plasma which was impressive but the fighters got to him before it got to me as he launched quite late

the Stinger-H played with that rear ship and the escort fighters pretty much took down the plasma

had he fired earlier or considered fighters to be dangerous, I mean the sheets were on the table, I made a point of not having a look at his (because I knew what an X-Ship was), he just assumed any non-X ship was dead meat

I nearly felt sorry for him

nearly

 Vulcan wrote:
I had Third Reich but I never found anyone willing to play it.

What was up with the naval rules? I'd read through the rules way back in the day, but I don't remember them all that well.

Well, yes, that was part of being a gamer - you never could find an opponent.

Or, happy day! You found someone! You then get together and spend hours studying the rules, setting everything but at most get through one turn.

Third Reich had highly abstract naval rules which read fine in the book, but when it came to using them, there was a lot of guesswork.

Asking people if they understood the Third Reich naval rules is also sort of a secret handshake for Avalon Hill gamers.

thought about Third Reich, but I didn't want one of these modern games so still looking for the first one...

leopard wrote:
thought about Third Reich, but I didn't want one of these modern games so still looking for the first one...

Oh, I understand. I was nervous about buying it, since it didn't use the traditional Avalon Hill color palette of pink and blue. Still, it preserved the ugly white hex-conforming aesthetic that old-time gamers find so familiar.

Any game that doesn't have an "A Elim" or "D Elim" combat result is made for whiny brats who can't handle the doomstack going bye-bye.

Kids today have no sense of the crushing disappointment and futility that real wargames bring. That truly is the best training for life.

Damn kids and their Andy Chambers rock-star worship! Man roont 40K with his abstract 3rd edition nonsense. 2nd edition was a gods-damned trainwreck at its end, but it was OUR gods-damned trainwreck!

Yes, I'm still bitter.

And just to set off the modern terrain-hating grognards, I've been printing heaps of terrain lately. I have very mixed emotions about it.

 Gitkikka wrote:
Damn kids and their Andy Chambers rock-star worship! Man roont 40K with his abstract 3rd edition nonsense. 2nd edition was a gods-damned trainwreck at its end, but it was OUR gods-damned trainwreck!

Yes, I'm still bitter.

Amen, brother. Preach it!

And just to set off the modern terrain-hating grognards, I've been printing heaps of terrain lately. I have very mixed emotions about it.

NO.

Terrain should be made of packing foam. Or sprues. I have a "pumping station" that actually uses fixtures pulled out of a toilet tank. Looks great, btw.

This business of buying terrain is the devil's work, and I won't stand for it.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Terrain should be made of packing foam. Or sprues. I have a "pumping station" that actually uses fixtures pulled out of a toilet tank. Looks great, btw.

This business of buying terrain is the devil's work, and I won't stand for it.

Heartily agreed . Buying terrain wasn't remotely an option that I knew of, and everyone had to get creative with it. One of the best parts of the hobby, back in the day!!

Darn Kids and all this constant change and new releases.

I have a job, and kids and an annoying spouse that wants to spend time with me. The once every other month I get to meet up with friends and play a game I want to play something that we know how to play, not have to read all the new rules added to a game since we last meet up. I want something that will still be the same in 20 years time when I fancy playing it again.

And whats this starship battles nonsense, star trek starship tactical combat simulator played with micro machines is the only space game that will ever bring you joy.

Also bring back ratskins, and spyers and scavvies and all original lore from necromunda. To hell if it offends people nowadays.

 Tamereth wrote:
Darn Kids and all this constant change and new releases.

I have a job, and kids and an annoying spouse that wants to spend time with me. The once every other month I get to meet up with friends and play a game I want to play something that we know how to play, not have to read all the new rules added to a game since we last meet up. I want something that will still be the same in 20 years time when I fancy playing it again.

And whats this starship battles nonsense, star trek starship tactical combat simulator played with micro machines is the only space game that will ever bring you joy.

Also bring back ratskins, and spyers and scavvies and all original lore from necromunda. To hell if it offends people nowadays.

if it offends people so much the better, kids today wouldn't go and read the background to understand it

give them Slaves to Darkness and make them read the mutation tables

CvT wrote:

Toilet?

Inner Workings?

I have to go in a hole in the ground. That I have to dig myself. Using my bare hands. In the winter.

Working up from the bottom.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Toilet?

Inner Workings?

I have to go in a hole in the ground. That I have to dig myself. Using my bare hands. In the winter.

Working up from the bottom.

That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of British plumbing.




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leopard wrote:
if it offends people so much the better, kids today wouldn't go and read the background to understand it

give them Slaves to Darkness and make them read the mutation tables

In the 1980s, there was a game called "Tomorrow the World" and it was the final showdown between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan for world hegemony.

With nuclear weapons.

The cover art alone would probably cause kids today to wet their pants.

CvT wrote:That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of British plumbing.

It’s worse than our teeth.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

CvT wrote:That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of British plumbing.

It’s worse than our teeth.

^^^^ this

leopard wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

CvT wrote:That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of British plumbing.

It’s worse than our teeth.

^^^^ this

Britain did all it's plumbing like 150 years ago, then stopped bothering after that

 Baragash wrote:

leopard wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

CvT wrote:That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of British plumbing.

It’s worse than our teeth.

^^^^ this

Britain did all it's plumbing like 150 years ago, then stopped bothering after that

you simply cannot improve upon perfection

To be fair, I do live in an Edwardian building, so the root plumbing probably is knocking on for about that old!

New Builds are crap. Paper thin walls. Tiny rooms. Too many units in too little space. Pah!

Gimme my old buildings. Made proper. Like they used to be.