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Regarding RT era Tyranids: There's a short story by Ian Watson from late 1st ed about Scouts infiltrating a hive ship that has some disturbing imagery in it. (And we all know Ian Watson can't describe a chair without making you want to take a shower.) Victims who have been impregnated with larvae in Aliens 'kill meee' style, and so on.

But I generally agree with HBMC:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Tyranids were a half-realised idea that took a bunch of models from a different range (Genestealer Cults) and then added in even more minis from other ranges (the "Mind Slaves") to bulk up their numbers.

From what I gather, it was none other than Epic Hive War that finally kicked the Tyranids into high gear, detailing all the bio-tanks and now-classic infantry like Hormagaunts and generally making them a cohesive galactic force. Well, that's what Andy Chambers said at the time anyway. 2nd ed Codex Tyranids for 40K followed shortly afterward.

The model designs themselves stayed wonderfully varied and creepy for years afterward, even into 3rd. I never really liked it when Jes Goodwin unified the look of the whole range in 4th edition. The older models were much more diverse, like an entire space-going ecology. Looking back at the 2nd ed 40K and Epic ranges, the little toothy wormy Rippers looked totally different to the infantry, which looked totally different to the slug-like 'tanks', which looked nothing like the spidery Bio-Titans, and so on... but they did all look as if they'd evolved on the same planet and had all decided to come across space to eat you. Very War against the Chtorr.

Post-4th, the Tyranids look more like one hundred different breeds of alien dog. As if there's just one ancestral species that has engineered itself into every other form. Which is fine as an aesthetic and background choice, but I prefer the older 'entire predatory biosphere that invades and eats other biospheres' feel.

But getting back on topic while sticking with Tyranids: The old-school item I've been chasing for a while now is the Doom of the Eldar boardgame. The third in the cardboard-counter 'Wargame Series' (the first two being Battle for Armageddon and Horus Heresy).

DotE was about Iyanden Craftworld getting nibbled on by the Nids, and it features lots of 1st edition gribblies, including possibly the best forgotten Tyranid creature ever: the Protoid! Like the Blob, but Tyranidified!

For some reason Doom of the Eldar is a lot more pricey on the secondhand market than the first two. But having played a friend's copy, I don't really think the game itself is good enough to justify the asking prices. What do the knowledgeable folks here reckon--how does DotE compare to the other two in the series?

Anyway, anyone interested in the old-school stuff could do worse than to check out the Wargame Series games. Be warned they had their share of typos and errors (including the combat table in BfA).

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
You're right there there was a bigger emphasis on worm-like (and slug-like) things that dominated the Tyranid 'tanks', but thanks to Jes bringing everything back to a singular core concept, we now have a number of those Epic creatures reimagined into forms that fit the Tyranid aesthetic (Trygons, Haruspex and, my personal fav from the Epic days, the Exocrine).

Well, as noted, I see that reimagining as unnecessarily constraining. I liked the older variety and felt it fit the Tyranid aesthetic just fine. It felt like an entire planet's worth of species was attacking. The Earth equivalent would be not only humans but lizards, spiders, hagfish, cassowaries, blue whales, viruses and slime moulds all united by a single consciousness, out to conquer the galaxy together.

(Again, I don't know if David Gerrold's War against the Chtorr series was among the inspirations for Andy C's take on the Tyranids, but those books feel very much like a depiction of a slow-motion Tyranid invasion. Especially book 4.)

Jes's visual revamp feels more like the equivalent of humans engineering themselves into flying people, mole people, crab people, etc. and filling the roster that way. One species diversifying into a hundred niches. It makes the Nids more like a single 'race', which to me is less alien or interesting.



The integrated weapons were a much better idea than the living swords / guns they used to carry around, though. And we can definitely agree that the Exocrine was the coolest of the old slug-tanks.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And I love my 2nd Ed Tyranid Codex. Fantastic book.

My first Codex! Read it so often the cover's almost come off.

"If only we could befriend these creatures, think what we could learn from them--" [REDACTED BY IMPERIAL ORDER]

Pacific wrote:I remember that 2nd ed Nid codex being so nasty! Think I got flattened by them every time I played a game against them..

I only got in a few games of 2nd ed before 3rd arrived, so my main memory of 2nd ed Tyranids is the amazing talent of my Hive Tyrant at landing venom cannon scatter shots on the Warrior brood to his left instead of the Marines he was aiming at.

To this day I still think of the Thudd Gun template as an essential part of basic 2nd ed kit, as important as dice, range rulers and the cardboard Ork Dreadnaught that can't be hit if you turn it sideways.

Great fluff in that book though. The whole opening section especially--it starts quietly, with odd reports of lifeless worlds out on the fringe that nobody bothers to worry about, until the slow realisation of a curious Inquisitor that the galaxy is in Big Trouble.

Pacific wrote:

Zenithfleet wrote:
Regarding RT era Tyranids: There's a short story by Ian Watson from late 1st ed about Scouts infiltrating a hive ship that has some disturbing imagery in it. (And we all know Ian Watson can't describe a chair without making you want to take a shower.) Victims who have been impregnated with larvae in Aliens 'kill meee' style, and so on.

Ah I think you mean the section in the Space Marine novel. Where the three main protagonists (I think they have been advanced to full marines by this point) are amongst a vanguard that have landed on the Alien ship.

Quite cool in the way that the ship is asleep and not really aware of their presence, and there are remains of unknown (non-Tyranid) species inside. Then poor Biff, who thunks too much, realises that the Zoat 'ambassador'(!)they have encountered (and they are speaking to) is actually trying to play for time so the rest of the ship can wake up!

Quite interesting how much of that has been subsequently ret-conned back into the background (the Zoat for example)

That's probably it. I read an excerpt in White Dwarf around the 160s or so.

The Zoat business reminds me of the 1982 Bruce Sterling story 'Swarm', in which the mindless alien bugs instinctively grow an intelligent, self-aware variant just to deal with the pesky humans who are meddling with their hive, and then presumably reabsorb it once its job is done.

There's some RT-era Tyranid fluff I've never managed to track down, about the attack on the Galactic Luxor and so on. I first saw it in BFG Magazine in 3rd ed, but it left me scratching my head wondering where and when it was first published--it had that 'old recycled fluff' style to it rather than newly written material.

H.B.M.C. wrote:There's a statute of limitations on spoilers.

If he finds out spoilers from a 28 year old book, then that's kinda on him.

His sled sinks at the end when he finds out they were all in it together and the river to paradise is a lie, but at least he didn't kill his kids because she was a clay pot all along.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Ian Watson's a better writer than that - the book's still great the second time round. Also, that sequence (which begins with Biff exulting that "We're going in through its anus!"; Ian Watson loves his bodily functions imagery, and who doesn't like the idea of an Imperial Fists suppository) is basically what happens in a game of Advanced Space Crusade.

Despite the fluff not always fitting with later editions, some of those early GW stories hold up much better as stories than later Black Library efforts... probably because in those days the fiction was contracted out to established sf/fantasy writers who had already made a name elsewhere. They didn't always 'get' the 40K universe (although Watson generally did), but they knew how to tell a good yarn.

(Did you know they almost had Tanith Lee writing Warhammer fiction? Imagine the Slaanesh we could have had!)

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
I was going to argue that it was 2nd edition Codex Tyranids that introduced all the other subspecies (Termagants, Hormagaunts, Gargoyles, Lictors), but that came out five months after the Epic Hive War supplement. Obviously the development would have been in parallel, so worrying which one came first is a bit pointless.

Yes, IIRC Andy Chambers was the head honcho for both Epic Hive War and the 2nd ed Codex. It was effectively all one big project to give the Nids a kick in the nads and properly flesh them out. (Something the Squats never got.)

Interesting tidbit from that release period: The Studio's painted Epic and 40K Tyranids were painted in a red colour scheme--a revised version of the RT era scheme (without the funky blue and yellow head crests on the Warriors). At least one 'Eavy Metal page showing off the painted models claimed that the red skin tones of the creatures indicated that Tyranids may have originated on a planet with a dimmer, redder sun than Earth's.

Of course, that bit of background soon fell by the wayside once other colour schemes were introduced. But it's another interesting hint of influence from Gerrold's Chtorr series that I hadn't noticed until now. In those books the invading alien fauna and flora has a pinkish-red hue. Earth scientists speculate that they come from a planet orbiting a red dwarf star. Because such stars last much longer than Sun-type yellow dwarfs, the scientists propose that the invading ecosystem is hundreds of millions of years older than Earth's, giving it an evolutionary advantage. (Whether that last bit makes any sense I'll leave to the actual evolutionary biologists.)

 Horla wrote:

Zenithfleet wrote:
(Did you know they almost had Tanith Lee writing Warhammer fiction? Imagine the Slaanesh we could have had!)

That would have been amazing, and you’d wonder what it would have done for spreading interest in Warhammer in the early days.

I had a 'citation needed' moment after my earlier post, and had to go find the article by Stephen Baxter talking about the various writers contacted for early GW fiction. (Terry Pratchett was another near-miss.) It's preserved here:
https://pariedolia.weebly.com/nimh/oldhammer-lit-101

Ironically, given what I said before about established writers, some authors (e.g. Nicola Griffith) said the work-for-hire experience helped them develop their skills.

Now I want to see Nicola Griffith write an Adeptus Titanicus novel about Legio Solaria.

 Horla wrote:
I remember that fact about the red star/skin but the changes in skin colour were always easily explained by the fact that Tyranids were meant to be hyper-fast (and directed!) in how they mutated. If they needed venom sacs, they evolved venom sacs. If blue skin was more advantageous, they turned blue. And I think some of the colour schemes in the Eavy Metal section in 2nd Ed showed some alternative colour schemes?

Yep, I think it was a good thing they dropped the 'officially red' idea quick smart, for the reasons you give. It's just an interesting hint about where some of GW's inspiration for the Tyranids came from. Everyone talks about Aliens and The Thing and so on, but the poor old Chtorrans always get ignored. (Most likely because those books have been out of print for decades AFAIK.)

 Horla wrote:
And I think some of the colour schemes in the Eavy Metal section in 2nd Ed showed some alternative colour schemes?

I just had a look through the 2nd ed Codex and couldn't find any suggested alternative paint schemes. I'm pretty sure Tyranids were presented as red throughout 2nd edition, apart from the purple Hormagaunts and Genestealers and some multicoloured experimentation on a few things like the Hive Tyrant. To be more accurate, the Studio army was about half red--creatures derived from the older RT-era ones like Termagants and Carnifexes--and half purple ('stealers, Hormagaunts, Lictor, Biovore). The two schemes were combined on the Tyrant.

In those days the armies showcased in Codexes and in White Dwarf were usually the Studio ones, barring the occasional 'my tournament army' or 'GW staffer interview' article. I don't remember much about the Nids in the 'how to paint Warhammer armies' book either, apart from a suggestion that you use lots of bright colours.

The Studio did a new purple-and-black army for early 3rd ed. Then their army for the 3rd ed Codex had a tan-with-red-plates scheme (but plenty of alternative suggestions in the Codex). 4th ed had them pale purple/white with dark purple plates. But by then it was very much a case of "paint 'em however you like--all the hive fleets are different".

Oddly, the skin colour thing went in the opposite direction to the WFB Lizardmen, who had no particular scheme in 5th ed, but were later officially made 'the blue guys'.

I liked how later fluff preserved the various older Studio colour schemes as linked to specific hive fleets. So Behemoth was later established as the red ones, and so on. In the same way, they canonised older model sculpts (clumsily wielding bio-swords and whatnot) as earlier stages in the Tyranids' evolution that were being refined as the fleets got to grips with the local galaxy. It was a nice touch.

Someone in the Studio during the Epic 40,000 launch--Warwick Kinrade?--came up with the idea of painting an occasional albino gaunt among the swarms of reddish 6mm critters, which looked pretty cool.

I painted my own 2nd ed Nids red. Then I over-painted them purple but gave up halfway. (I was 14 and knew nothing of strippi... er... removing paint). Then I decided I didn't like either of those schemes and tried to redo them dark brown with bone plates, but ran out of Chestnut Ink wash and couldn't get more (not knowing Coat d'Arms existed). By that point the Genestealers had so many layers of paint on them they looked cocooned. And so on in that fashion until I made such a mess of my beloved first army that I've never managed to go back and sort it out properly.

 Pacific wrote:

Zenithfleet - some great little titbits there.

Yes with the colouring was looking through some old WDs (around the release of Adv Space Crusade, when the Tyranid Warrior plastic kit was released) and there were some really weird colour schemes; yellows, whites, greens. Also what definitely looked to be Tyranid squigs, I'm not sure if there was ever cross-over with Orks there or they just looked similar? (Basically a monster base covered in small gribblies)

Ah, that explains it. Rogue Trader era Tyranid colour schemes are a bit of a mystery to me. In fact a lot of RT-era stuff is a mystery to me. Shrouded in mist and legend like the Horus Heresy. Or at least how the HH used to be...

OTOH I did get my first intro to the Tyranids via whatever that White Dwarf issue was with Heroquest and Space Crusade in it. (Someone at school lent it to me after I found out that the Genestealers in Space Crusade, which I thought were the absolute coolest aliens ever, had a whole alien army to go with them.) That was published in 1st ed, so I do still sometimes think of Carnifexes as Screamer-Killers with the weird little chevrons painted on their heads and love the original plastic Warrior kit, buck teeth and all.

The Tyranids did have Squig Swarms back then. I think they were actually supposed to be the origin of the Orks' Squigs--derived from boyz who were captured by Tyranids and evolvified. (The first I ever heard of Squigs was from that army list entry!) However, the idea obviously didn't make much sense if the Tyranids had only recently arrived in the galaxy, so I don't think it lasted too long.

 Pacific wrote:
I had read that the...

MDG look away now!

.. buttock tattoo scene apparently got filtered by the editors who asked that Watson remove it, but then apparently ignored it at a subsequent pass so it ended up being printed in the final version. I can't remember that being particularly inappropriate so not sure why it would have been removed!

From what I've read of Ian Watson's stories, if you edited out everything that was inappropriate you'd be left with about nine words. I still can't get some of the imagery from Warped Stars out of my head, however hard I try.

EDIT:

 Pacific wrote:
Yes it was just a bit of fun but is hard to pick up tone on a forum

MDG - just need a small mind-scrub/few pints of something to remove the spoiler on the last page

Is this a good time to mention that almost two decades ago I stumbled onto a massive spoiler for the unfinished Chtorr series, and have had to keep quiet about it ever since because the fifth book is over a quarter of a century overdue? (And you think George RR Martin fans have it bad.)

... no, didn't think anyone cared. (And it would go off-topic anyway.)

 AndrewGPaul wrote:

The red colouring indicating evolving on a planet round a red sun ... well, if it's a very bright sun, which it might be if the sun is a red giant, then the red colouring might help to reflect red light. Plants wouldn't be red, as then they wouldn't absorb much light. But then, plants on earth are green because the clorophyll absorbs blue and green light. They'd be more efficient if they were actually purple and absorbed yellow and green light, but then the first plants to photosynthesise came up with clorophyll, which is horribly inefficient, but they're all stuck with it now. so perhaps plants under a red sun will be red and just suck.

Hang on a sec, aren't Earth plants green because they reflect green light, rather than absorb it?

I'm also pretty sure that the first photosynthesising organisms were pink or purple, and that green chlorophyll was a later improvement.

(I also read somewhere that reflecting green light, while it may seem counterproductive, is actually a good protective measure because the Sun puts out too much energy, and if leaves absorbed all of it they'd probably a) crinkle up, b) dry out and c) catch fire. I have no idea where I read that, though.)

Regardless, I think 'red plants and animals because red sun' probably makes no real sense, and is one of those attempts by history majors to sound sciencey that GW was and remains famous for.

In some actual SETI speculation on planets orbiting red dwarf stars, I once saw an interesting idea: Apparently infrared light can penetrate a few millimetres into a solid surface (? - going from memory here). Therefore, plants using infrared light could keep their 'leaves', i.e. photosynthesising cells, inside their branches beneath a thin protective covering where herbivores would have trouble getting to them. So you could have a lot of creepy, leafless forests...

Don't forget Warhammer 40,000 Battles (the compilation book of WD articles and battle reports, which was the only place you could get the Razorback rules if you missed that issue).

There's also the Storm of Vengeance campaign pack, but that was scenarios and a card/bulkhead power plant. Still good for fluff though (Nazdreg's Piscina IV shenanigans ... which are historically important behind the scenes since they led to Battlefleet Gothic becoming an actual game)!

I presume you've got the Dark Millennium supplement with all the vehicle cards, psychic powers, excessively blinged-up templates, etc?

A.T. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Others have mentioned Codex Assassins, but I don’t think that was 2nd Ed? Certainly the Temples come from 2nd Ed era, but I think their first Codex was 3rd, and introduced the Culexus?

Assassins was 2nd edition, June 1997.

The thing about Codex Assassins is that there was a 2nd ed version you had to buy, and a 3rd ed version free with White Dwarf ... with the same cover art of an Eversor. Look for the 'golden wings' style of the 2nd ed Codex titles.

MDG, you may be thinking of the fact that the Culexus wasn't featured in its own White Dwarf article in 2nd ed, like the other three Assassin types. They saved him up for the 2nd ed Codex.

You're not the only person I've heard from who didn't believe the 2nd ed codex existed. Just goes to show how sneaky those Assassins are...

A.T. wrote:
Necrons also had a white dwarf only codex (that was absurdly powerful, particularly against any faction unable to injure T8 2+ save models with their unaugmented bare hand attacks).

IIRC Rick Priestley (?) said during 3rd edition that the Necrons were actually designed with 3rd edition in mind and he had a 'devil of a job retro-designing them' for their late 2nd ed appearance. I don't know if that squares with what I've heard elsewhere (i.e. down the metaphorical online pub) about 3rd's ruleset being a last-minute replacement for something else, though.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Very cool. Possibly nostalgia, but I always thought the battle reps of that era were the best. Having several hundred words of text on a page explaining why they had chosen particular units and their battle plans was just awesome, I used to devour that stuff as a kid (actually still do if I look through an old mag!) I understand it probably doesn't have the same presentation appeal as modern equivalents, but I much preferred it.

I can't remember what issue number it was - 217 perhaps? - but there was a dark day towards the end of 2nd Ed (after the Sisters book had come out) where there was a Battle Report that consisted of two isometric photos of a table, and then a page with the two players explaining what went wrong/right with the battle.

I was so shocked that I went back to check if I'd somehow missed the "report" part of the battle report. Up until that point I used to get WD every month. I've bought maybe 15 issues in the 26 years since.

Ack. You ran into the dreaded White Dwarf pothole.

There was a run of about 6 White Dwarf issues--coinciding with the 2nd ed Sisters, Gorkamorka, Eldar Falcon and 5th ed WFB Realm of Chaos releases--where the magazine briefly dipped in quality. Well, I say 'briefly', but that's only because I collected those issues in retrospect. At the time it would have lasted half a year, and probably seemed like the death of the mag. Issues 212-217, I think it was. At the point when Jake Thornton was replaced with Paul Sawyer as editor, and the red/blue sidebar on the cover disappeared.

There seems to have been a period of confusion or rushed production, or maybe just experimentation, during the changeover that lasted several issues. Articles had less content and more marketing word salad, the layout got really 'extreme' and 'hey kids!!!' with jumbled boxouts and painfully coloured fonts, and the proofreading was even worse than usual. Especially 216, sheesh. If you read the editorial boxout at the start of each mag it seems to indicate that WD was in a 'caretaker' period for at least one issue, with neither Jake nor Paul at the helm.

Fortunately, by issue 218 (Digganob release), Paul Sawyer had apparently settled in properly and the quality rose again. The proper maps for the battle reports came back, the layout settled down, the content became more worthwhile again, and we saw the original Tale of Four Gamers series appear, amongst other things. White Dwarf had a great run from there all the way to the early 300s before it started to decline during 4th ed 40K. Though it bounced back and forth between the maps and the isometric photography. Quite a few battle reports in 3rd used the maps.

My subscription started with 218 (which has no fewer than three proper battle reports). When I went back to collect the earlier mags, I was shocked at how much worse the run immediately before it had been.

I remember when Kid Kyoto did retro reviews of 217 and 214, and said something like "See, White Dwarf was always a bit meh." I was like, "Aargh, no fair, you're in the pothole!"

 Nevelon wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
On Tale of Four Gamers? What really sold me on that, over other versions and revisits, were photos of Fat Bloke physically shopping for models with his kiddo.

The format otherwise remained pretty much the same. But those photos just made it that little bit more real - even though let’s face it, being staff Fat Bloke almost certainly would’ve bought via the hefty. “By Weight” staff discount of the time.

But appearances matter!

Those tale of 4 gamers felt human. Like the guys participating were just normal folks like you and the guys at the FLGS. Not company shills flogging the latest releases. Made it very enjoyable to follow their progress.

My favourite bit was Roy Barber (who had never played WFB before) basing and painting his first Skaven Clanrats regiment ... and then realising he hadn't tried ranking them up first, and they were all stabbing each other in the back because he'd used the wrong slots on the bases. And he'd used Araldite glue.

"Only 5lbs of plastic explosive would move them babies!"

A while later, when we Aussies started getting more locally written articles in our version of White Dwarf, we had our own 'Tale of 40K Gamers' collecting early 3rd ed armies: Imperial Fists (so much yellow ...), Sisters of Battle (plus shrine terrain), Eldar (very nicely painted) and Dark Eldar (with an ongoing storyline and a revolving door of leaders who kept getting bumped off by replacements). That one was also a big influence on me--started an Eldar army because of it.

 Just Tony wrote:
I'm simply trying to find the best way that I can accumulate a trucks that are smaller than the current truck model, which I feel is absolutely massive. I have one truck I got in a package deal that is the modern truck, and I intend to use it as a battle wagon. So my job now is to find smaller trucks that I can use for the rest of my speed freak boys

I did the same thing with the modern Ork Trukk--counted it as a battlewagon, in my case for 2nd ed 40K. I glued the rear passenger tray in backward to make more room (or at least give the feeling of more room). Was fairly simple to do. Yours might have already been glued, of course.

I found the modern Trukk fiddly and delicate to build. Not very Orky.

Cap'n Facebeard wrote:So I got the last 4th ed whfb army book I needed, the Chaos Dwarf one. Not as lore heavy as the others, probably because it is a collection of white dwarf articles.

And no I didn't spend the ridiculous ebay prices, I snapped it up from an Australian seller as well as a small army of chaos dwarfs and hobgoblins

Years ago I grabbed most of the old 4th/5th WFB army books when they were in the price trough of "nobody wants these old books for an obsolete edition of the game" but before the price peak of "wait we're old enough now to be nostalgic for the old stuff". But I turned down an offer of the Chaos Dwarf one, for about $5, because I don't much like Chaos Dwarfs and I already had the old White Dwarfs with those articles in it.

That was a decision of considerable short-sightedness, let me tell you. Clearly I don't think like a Dwarf when it comes to future opportunities to accrue gold.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Has to be at least knocking 60.

Let’s think. 40K came out 1987, which is 37 years ago now. Even if he was a mere 20 back then? That’s 57 now. But of course, he was with GW well before then.

So easily into his 60’s I’d reckon?

Heresy! Jes Goodwin is timeless, just like his sculpts! He'll still be there in five hundred years. Possibly as a liche or something.

Recently I managed to snag this large 1998 coffee-table book / guide / encyclopedia thing describing the fluff of 5th edition WFB:



The World of Warhammer

Until a short while ago I never knew it existed. It seems to have come out after the 5th ed Bretonnian, Lizardmen and Realm of Chaos army books were released, but before the Vampire Counts book (it still has classic Undead). Pretty much the definitive version of the WFB background as far as I'm concerned. Everything after this was fanfiction! (Heh, fighting words? )

As a coffee-table sort of book, the main draw is the illustrations. It's full of the bombastic art of 4th and 5th edition all gathered together in one place, plus a few older pieces.

The fluff text isn't copy-pasted from WFB rulebooks but is entirely written from scratch by someone called Richard Wolfrik Galland. It's pretty basic intro-level stuff but it's interesting to see the classic background written in a different style to the usual Rick Priestley / Jervis Johnson / Bill King et al text that used to get copied and recopied across editions and into White Dwarf. It's like a fan telling you about the background in a mostly-accurate-but-not-officially-worded way.

Galland is a bit overfond of the word 'prosaic' and some of the fluff seems a little wonky in places but it's not a bad effort. There are a lot of typos, though, which sadly seems common for books of this kind. I guess the publishers see the illustrations as the main draw and the text is just there as decoration, instead of the other way around. They're meant to be leafed through and oohed and aahed over, not read cover to cover. One map is pretty much unreadable due to some sort of printing error. (And he keeps misspelling Waaagh as Waaargh, but that's how I always thought it ought to be spelled in the first place...)

In a couple of places he gets all scholarly and muses on inconsistencies like whether the Dwarf holds were destroyed by a malfunctioning Skaven device or by the Slann across the sea shifting the continents (both conflicting explanations being present in the respective army books). He notes that no one seems to know how Orcs reproduce or whether they even have genders. (This was at a time when the whole subject of where little Orcs come from was basically ignored.)

Also I'm amused that in the Chaos section there are pictures of Khorne, Nurgle and Tzeentch daemons, but not Slaaneshi ones. And the header on the page misspells it as Slannesh. I don't know what they were worried about... it's not like 4th/5th ed Slaanesh artwork had a reputation for raciness. More like the opposite. Meanwhile the 4th ed Witch Elf art is present and correct.

There may or may not be a scan of the book on the Internet Archive (not done by me, lawyers!) if anyone wants to have a squiz.

Overall it wasn't really worth the slightly silly price I paid for it, but I know some people out there have a lot of nostalgia for this book as it was their first introduction to the WFB world.

Found a few Dark Elf minis in the cupboard (6th ed vintage) and am idly considering making a small 4th/5th ed army out of them. My attempts at WFB armies never get very far, but I do now have a lot of fantasy minis that I collected for Warhammer Quest, so it's probably inevitable that they'll end up in ranks on a battlefield someday.

Reading through the 5th ed WFB Battle Book again (the background book from the Brets/Lizzies starter set), I was surprised to find that the Dark Elves are described quite differently to their 4th ed army book. The Battle Book makes them sound almost like Chaos Elves. Daemons all over the place, plus Witch Elves worshipping Khorne, whom they just happen to call Khaine.

I think it's because the 5th ed Battle Book text for the various races was mostly copy-pasted from the previous 4th ed starter set, which was written before the first army books came out, at a time when the DE were imagined to be more closely Chaos-aligned. It's odd that they didn't update the DE text in the 5th ed starter to fit the army book version, which gave them more of their own culture--Khaine being a distinctively Elven god of murder rather than just Khorne by another name, and so on.

Though the 4th ed army book fluff has its own problems. It's a bit thin on details, aside from "let's repeat some High Elf history" and "we like killing and torture a lot." Even by Warhammer standards they're so over the top it's hard to take them seriously.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Books arrived! Time for a shower and some Sosig rolls, then will get my reading eyes in.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Annnnnd right in the nostalgia.

Have you got the cards for Chaos Rewards and so on that came in the original box for Realm of Chaos?

(I have both the 4th ed and 5th ed Chaos books, but only the cards for the 5th ed version.)

Sounds great, Mad Doc, but why bother with all those copies when you could just buy the real thing?

(boom tish )

Anyway ...

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Inquisitor

So much novel background in that rulebook. And I’d argue to the point it’s the origin of modern 40K Background Detail.

Probably not what you mean, but in terms of Studio tabletop visuals, I often think of Inquisitor as ground zero for the over-gothification of 40K. Before then the official terrain and models had more of a frontier-planet feeling. The gothic elements were present but fairly low-key and mixed in with other science fiction imagery. After Inquisitor, though, there seemed to be more focus on urban settings for 40K battles too, and the skulls, scrolls, candles and grime started to get a bit out of control (as seen in the 4th ed purity-seal-plastered Marines and Cities of Death building kits).


Dogs of War is a brilliant book just for browsing. Almost Discwordlian in its flavour. Though it's a shame some of the most interesting and quirky regiments only came out as White Dwarf articles later rather than being included in the book itself.


And now for something completely different ... Can anyone help with a little mystery?

Years ago when searching for the 4th ed WFB Undead army book, someone online offered to sell me an extra-special cool edition that included the new Undead special characters from the Circle of Blood campaign pack: the Red Duke and friends. He then changed his mind and decided to keep it before we got as far as requesting photos. (It took several other false leads and dead ends before I managed to track down an Undead book, making me feel like a proper necromancer searching for an elusive forbidden tome.)

Was he pulling my leg, or was there actually an updated revision to the original Undead book with the CoB characters included? If it ever existed it would have come out in early to mid 5th ed WFB, after CoB but before Vampire Counts.

They did make various minor updates to the army books from time to time--correcting a few points values in reprints (or at least they said they would), or changing the advertisement pages in the back--but I don't know if anything that extreme ever happened.

 Nevelon wrote:


If it did, I have no recollection of it existing. And as someone who was playing Undead in 5th, it’s something that would have come to my attention. Not to say it didn’t happen, but I don’t think so.

I do have parts on the CoB rules tucked in the covers of my Undead book, so that kinda counts?

It might be worth scanning WDs from the time, it may have been a limited release thing that never made it to the states?

Edit:
Quick check has the CoB pages copyright 1997, and the 5th VC army book is ’99. So if there was a re-issue, it would be in that timeframe. Probably closer to the start, as if they knew a new book was coming out, they would not update the old.

Edit2:
As it happens, I have the Aug 97 WD (211) on the shelf, where the CoB characters are introduced and showcased. In the articles covering the new undead stuff there is no mention of a new army book. Again, this is not proof that it doesn’t exist. I just can’t find any signs.

Thanks for the info. I have all the old (UK/Aus) White Dwarfs from that period but don't remember ever seeing anything about a reissue of the Undead book with revisions.

It's possible that when the seller said his Undead book had the CoB characters in it, he meant something similar to what you're describing, with the physical pages from the separate campaign pack folded up or tucked into the back cover. As I recall, his communication style was of the 'hastily texting from phone' sort, so it would have been easy for me to misconstrue what he meant. But I distinctly remember him calling his Undead book a 'cool one' as if it were a special edition.

In other old-edition news, for the first and probably last time, I have assembled two of the card Battle Bunkers from early 2nd ed 40K. The one in a White Dwarf article with the fourth starter scenario, and the back of the Battles book compilation.

Can't say I like them much. They're awfully flimsy and fiddly. Not a patch on the later card buildings in White Dwarf.

I own two resin Conflix bunkers that were clearly 'inspired by' that design, but what surprised me was that the original Battle Bunkers have a sloped front wall but nearly vertical side and back walls. From photos, I'd always thought they were evenly sloped on all sides and apparently the Conflix designer thought so too.

Also got to play the first two scenarios from the starter box, which pit a few Gretchin and Orks against a few Tactical Marines, in an attempt to relearn the 2nd ed rules after a gap of [insert scary number of years]. To my surprise my opponent happened to have a half-complete set of the original cardboard ruined corners, in un-folded mint condition no less.

Amusingly I obsessively tried the hiding rules in the first scenario with the Gretchin mobs and managed to score a tie ... and then completely forgot about the rules in the second, leading to my Ork mobs getting thoroughly shot up for zero victory points. One mob shrugged off two frag missile hits with no more than a few laughs at the lone Ork ejected into the stratosphere by each explosion, but the moment they took bolter fire they rolled a 12 for their break test and ran to the other side of the planet.

We then retried the second scenario with a lone Dreadnaught in place of the Ork mobs just so I could get a handle on the vehicle rules. First time using a datafax in donkey's. The Dread charged at the Marines' position, copped two krak missiles that bounced off harmlessly, lost its power klaw to a third missile, missed with all its guns and then slammed headlong into the building. With a metallic roar it fumbled twice and got lightly bopped on the head by a Tactical Marine, failing to achieve anything. I was just happy it didn't blow up on the first turn.

One thing the scenarios hammered home was the extreme importance of cover in 2nd ed 40K, also known as the art of How Not to be Seen. It amuses me no end that being harder to hit makes a missile launcher more likely to explode but a heavy bolter less likely to jam.

Now to try the bigger third and fourth scenarios ...

 insaniak wrote:

Zenithfleet wrote:
In other old-edition news, for the first and probably last time, I have assembled two of the card Battle Bunkers from early 2nd ed 40K. The one in a White Dwarf article with the fourth starter scenario, and the back of the Battles book compilation.

Can't say I like them much. They're awfully flimsy and fiddly. Not a patch on the later card buildings in White Dwarf.

Yeah, back in the day I looked at those and decided they were too much work for too little return, and used them as a template to make my own out of foamcore instead.

I didn't find them too much of a hassle in terms of time. It was fairly quick to score and cut everything out. The two issues I had were a) the 'card' in the Battles book is more like thick paper, all floppy, and b) the platform on top has almost no glue contact point with the walls. It just sits on top of the wall edges, with no foldable tabs to hold it in place. Even with superglue the top keeps popping off if you sneeze in its general direction. Very strange design.

I haven't used them in a game yet, but we did get to try starter scenario 3 from the 2nd ed box (the one where you use all the Orks, Gretchin and Marines, plus a Dreadnought). Basic stuff but it's helping us to unlearn all the later-edition assumptions we're used to. I didn't have enough Grots but my opponent dug up ten of the old monopose Gretchin on sprue and assembled them just before the battle. They'd been waiting for this their whole lives ...

The Orks won, just barely, 3 victory points to 2. It was mainly thanks to the Marine player having abysmal luck with his dice rolls. I've never seen so many frag and krak missiles roll 1s to hit. One of the few times a missile launcher did hit something was when it fired into a combat between the Ork Dreadnaught and a doomed Tactical Marine. Of course, it hit the Marine instead of the Dread and deleted him.

The Dread itself chopped up most of a combat squad, then tried to make it into the Marines' deployment zone for a big fat victory point bonus. At the last minute the Marine player remembered he could throw krak grenades in 2nd ed and pelted it with three. Two bounced off the armour but the third destroyed the lascannon arm. Then the very last krak missile of the game penetrated the body and electrocuted the Gretchin pilot. It didn't kill him, but it did send him on a frothing rampage ... in the wrong direction. He wasted his last vital movement phase picking a fight with a piece of cardboard ruin. Now that's the 2nd ed silliness I'm here for.

Oh, and a single Gretchin caught fire and ran around panicking for a while. Ah, the good old days.

My one shining moment of actually effective tactics was to get three mobs all aiming at one battered Marine combat squad, to concentrate firepower. It proved to be just enough to kill them all. The reasonably effective shooting skills of Orks and Grots in 2nd ed continue to surprise me. The Gretchin are like cowardly Guardsmen!

Three points of confusion with the 2nd ed rules held us up. Some of it had to do with the emphasis on individual models in 2nd ed, whereas later editions tend to treat squads as blobs/units.

1. When a squad fires, do its own models block the line of fire of models behind them? We think so, but we're so used to 3rd ed and onwards (where you ignore your own squads' models) that we kept placing our minis in carelessly bunched-up formations, only to find hardly anyone could shoot.

2. If only some members of a squad are engaged in close combat, what happens to the other models on their next turn? (We had the aforementioned Dread fighting one or two members of a combat squad at a time, while the other Marines just stood around nearby watching the show.) We presumed they can just do whatever. Everyone can declare a charge and join in the close combat, or they can shoot at some other target because models in HtH can be ignored, or even move away ignoring coherency (on the assumption that guy fighting the Dread is going to die...)

3. This one really stumped us: Close combat weapons get a bonus armour penetration die depending on their Strength, or the Strength of the attacker. Usually this is taken into account on the summary charts. For instance, the power fist has an extra D20 armour penetration because it's strength 8, and this is included in the summary chart. But what about krak grenades? They're strength 6, so the bonus die should be D12. But on the summary charts it's 6+2D6. Is that a typo for D12, or is the bonus die missing from the summary and it's supposed to be 6+2D6+D12?

Thanks insaniak for the rules replies.

That's a good point about the krak grenades possibly having a different armour penetration value when thrown vs when used in hand-to-hand. We didn't think of that. Ironically it was the thrown grenades that successfully damaged the Dreadnought, not the ones placed in combat.

Cebalrai wrote:

Zenithfleet wrote:

And now for something completely different ... Can anyone help with a little mystery?

The Undead book did indeed get a reprint in 98 which included the Circle of Blood special characters. It also changed many of the colour pages to show the repainted studio army, the same as was shown in WD211, and the list of army books at the end was obviously updated with all the 5th edition offerings.

Gasp! Stop press!

Undead generals, arise from your graves and heed this revelation!

Of course I have to say: pics or it didn't happen ...

Cebalrai wrote:

Zenithfleet wrote:

Of course I have to say: pics or it didn't happen ...

If you've access to Facebook I can direct you to posts that highlight all the changed pages but for some simple proof here's the first page of the 98 edition book. Note the fine print in the box.

I don't think I've ever seen the 97 reprint though, now that I think about it...

Anyway, I had a look through it again and the 98 edition do actually make some functional changes from the first. Namely, the spell commentaries in the later no longer talks about the possibility of using the raise dead spells to create cavalry, chariots or catapults. Hence I still go with the original book.

Edit: Throwing in the Circle of Blood characters as well for good measure. Aside from the spell commentary the rest of the changes are cosmetical.

Bah! Obvious trickery produced by the unholy magic of Photoshop! I won't be convinced until you send me a free copy!

Seriously though, I don't know whether to thank you for posting, or curse you for making me aware of a gap in a WFB army book collection I thought was complete. It really is like trying to track down varying versions of an eldritch grimoire ...

It does help to explain why they went to the effort of repainting the whole Studio Undead army in late 4th / early 5th, if they had a plan to update the colour photo pages in the army book.

Now I can't help wondering if they did anything similar for the other campaign packs. Was there a revised Dwarf army book with the Grudge of Drong characters? I doubt it since there were so many campaign packs, but then why did only the Undead book get special treatment? Maybe it was all about the photos, and the special characters were just a case of "throw it in since we're redoing the book anyway".

(Mine is the 1994 version, not the mysterious 1997 with corrections, so I can't help with that.)


All this Undead talk brings me to the next (possible) mystery, which is:

Why was the Vampire Counts army book in 5th ed so slim and poorly proofread, and why did most of the background material for the Bloodlines end up in White Dwarf magazine instead of being published in the army book where it belonged? (It ended up in the 6th ed book but for some reason wasn't in the original.) And what on earth was all that Ushoran / Wsoran confusion about?

Of course the GW answer may be something along the lines of "no time, busy getting 6th edition ready, had two hours' sleep last night, leave me alone" ...

Cebalrai wrote:
It feels like the 98 edition of the book is more rare but I've seen it pop up in ebay listings and other places. If there isn't already a picture you can usually just ask for a clear view of the backside cover of the book where it'll say either 1994 or 1998 (or 1997, I suppose) in the bottom box. That's how I found mine.

Good tip. Thanks.

I would guess the 1998 version is rarer simply because it wasn't available for very long, whereas the 1994 original had been around since, er, 1994.

Cebalrai wrote:
The only other books I know that got reprints with changes were Dark Elves and Empire. I don't know the dates but the elves got their repeater bolt throwers raised from 50 to 100 points (to match the high elves, presumably) and the empire changed Volkmar's 6'' leadership immunity bubble to only effect himself, for the generous compromise of great cannons going from 100 to 95 points. There could definitely be other reprints floating around out there, waiting to ruin any complete collection.

Huh, that's interesting. Turns out I've got the revised Empire book. It has the 95-point great cannons, and Volkmar's psychology/leadership rule only refers to the Grand Theogonist himself. The inside front cover says 1996 (but the back cover still says 1992).

I knew it was sold at a later date because the advertisements pages in the back (pages 82-3) show the 5th edition WFB box set, plus all the army books released up to that point such as Wood Elves, but none of the 5th ed books. I hadn't realised that some rules had been tweaked, though.

There's also a 'Collecting the Empire Army' section after the ads (page 85 onward), which shows you how to build up a 1000 pt sample army, with black and white photos of metal and plastic models ranked up. It's similar to the one in the back of the Lizardmen, revamped High Elves and Realm of Chaos books, which were all 5th ed. The page with the sample army list has a 1996 copyright disclaimer at the bottom. This section also has an article at the end by Jake Thornton called 'The Empire Army' (a page and a half long). This whole section isn't listed on the contents page. Was it absent from the older version of the book? I'd assume so, since it seems to be an early 5th ed trend.

My Dark Elf book has the 50 point bolt throwers, but I do recall reading in White Dwarf that they intended to update them to 100 points with a reprint at some point.

More reports from the ancient and confusing world of 2nd edition 40K!

Since the heady days of page 28 of this thread, my regular opponent and I have somehow managed four (yes four!) more games of 2nd ed. Still keeping it simple, but gradually adding on more bling as we go.

First we played the bonus fourth Armageddon scenario from the Mission book--the one with the flimsy card bunkers. That was good fun. Figuring out the various permutations of attacking bunkers took a little thought but we got there in the end. Favourite moment was assaulting a Marine-filled bunker with 10 Orks and stuffing frag grenades through the vision slits (extra nasty in the confined space). The lone survivor climbed onto the roof and tossed his own frag grenade down onto the tightly packed mass ... Meanwhile the Dreadnought tried to rip the door off but only succeeded in mangling it, sealing it shut. Oh well.

Next up were three 'proper' games using the army lists from the Codexes. Game 1 was 500 points a side, while games 2 and 3 were 750 pts. We allowed any character to count as the commander (it always seemed silly to me that you had to take a high-ranking officer like a Captain even in small games) but otherwise obeyed the usual restrictions, like needing to take a Mek in order to include Ork vehicles.

Neither of us are particularly into power builds or list abuse (too much of that and you go blind) and anyway we don't yet have a good enough sense of what works and what doesn't to come up with any sneaky tricks. My own method for choosing equipment and Wargear cards is a variant on WYSIWYG that I think of as WYSIWYT: what you see is what you take. My Mek model, converted from a Gorkamorka Spanner Boy many years ago, has a rocket-launcher type thing and is holding some tools while peering through the electronic sights of his bazooka ... so clearly he has a Kustom Blasta, a set of Mekboy's Tools and a Targeter, and that's that.

I could squeeze in quite a few Orks and options in these small games, whereas my opponent took Space Marines (Blood Angels) and had trouble getting much flexibility out of the points allowed. I mostly went with:
- Big mob of Goffs with a Nob leader
- Big mob of Gretchin, sometimes with a Runtherd leader
- Mek
- Bigboss leading a small squad of Bad Moons in a Battlewagon
- Something random (e.g. a Splatta Kannon or a tiny unit of Madboyz) just to try their respective rules

The Marines tended to have a Tactical squad, an Assault battle squad (from the White Dwarf entry), a Scout squad, and a Chaplain for the leader.

We drew random missions from the ones in the starter box. No Dark Millennium stuff, and no psykers (yet) but we did use our Codex books. Annoyingly in two out of three games we both drew 'Engage and Destroy', which I find to be a pretty dull mission. In the other game we both drew 'Take and Hold' and had ourselves a nice proper story-driven fight over a crashed Aquila lander ... that happened to be sitting exactly at the point where our objectives were, despite having been randomly placed and scattered on the board during terrain setup earlier. Spooky.

My Orks lost two out of three games, but we did salvage da loot from da lander! In that game the Marine player was so intimidated by the oncoming green tide that he didn't even try to contest the objective, just took potshots from the sidelines.

Things we've learned:

- Space Marines using Rapid Fire are a force to be reckoned with. More than once I said to myself, "What could happen? It's just a handful of Marines," only to get pummelled by twice the shots I was expecting.

- My Mek, Bazza, has no idea how to make a functioning gun. In two out of three games he blew himself up with his own kustom blasta, whereas the shots he did get off proved to be mere fizzling fireworks that looked pretty but fail to do more than delight young and old. Meanwhile, my Bigboss's kustom shoota (also made by Bazza) reliably fired at a measly Strength 2 for the entirety of the second game. Presumably it got stuck on the 'nailgun' setting. In the third game the Boss took aim at some Marines, growled "Dat zoggin' Mek better 'ave fixed dis!", pulled the trigger and experienced the supreme dissatisfaction of the shoota blowing up in his face. He was in the middle of bellowing a threat about what he intended to do to Bazza after the battle when a boom from far behind him and a rising mushroom cloud over the Orks' deployment zone informed him that there wouldn't be any need ... yep, Bazza's blasta had misfired in the same shooting phase, this time with a Strength 10 2" blast radius.

- The Ork Battlewagon is surprisingly robust. Must be why the Boss keeps Bazza around. After years of hearing about how 2nd ed transports are deathtraps, we both watched in surprise as it hooned around the battlefield shrugging off krak missiles for three games. The worst that happened was a bent axle, apart from the occasional unlucky passenger who took a krak missile in the chest. My Bigboss and his Bad Moons with special weapons proved pretty effective when fighting from it. Much drive-by flamer toasting ensued. They barbecued a Scout squad in their first game and in the third they managed to set the Chaplain on fire, to general hilarity. The hit location table functioned more or less like a permanent 3+ armour save against incoming fire. The one time they disembarked, they were immediately shot full of holes. (I suspect the real reason the wagon survived so well is that the Marines only had a single heavy weapon and nobody had thought to bring krak grenades.)

I used a modern Trukk model with the tray reversed to represent the old Battlewagon entry. It can fit five minis, more if you stack 'em on top, which seems about the same as the original long-lost kit. But it's a bit rickety-looking considering the high armour value (same as a Rhino), especially since I've put the passenger compartment's shield at the back rather than the front, so I reckon I'll have to bolt some more armour plates onto the model.

- In fact, the vehicle rules are much more fun than I was expecting. I didn't use the Battlewagon to full tactical effect because, like an Ork, I couldn't resist going as fast as possible all over the place. Bodes well for eventually trying Gorkamorka.

- The Splatta Kannon field artillery is entertaining but not particularly long-ranged. And when I explained the bouncing shell mechanics, my opponent immediately groaned, "We'll be here all day!" I had to reassure him that it was only going to bounce an average of six times. In the event it took out two Assault Marines and one startled Gretchin.

- It's very much a shooting game rather than a close combat game. In seven games (the Armageddon scenarios plus these three proper battles) we've had a grand total of two close combats, one featuring a Dreadnought versus a few Marines, and the other involving three Madboyz against four Scouts. The latter did not go well for the Madboyz. I charged just so I could see what the hand-to-hand rules were like. It was ... educational. My opponent had the advantage of having played Necromunda to death as a teenager, so not only did he know who was likely to beat who (hint: not the Madboyz), he could rattle through the melee dice-off at top speed. I had to ask him to slow down so I could learn what the rules were.

- I've been inspired to write on a blank die to keep track of my Madboyz' current madness. (Conveniently there are six.) Plus a second custom die to track which stat they've increased when they roll the 'Crazy' result.

- Although I wouldn't call it a tactical or strategic game on the level of, say, Epic 40,000 or Battlefleet Gothic, it definitely feels like I have more choices and decisions to make in the core system than I would in 3rd edition onward. Do I move and shoot? Move and hide? Run? Charge? Throw grenades? Go on overwatch? Turn some models so they'll be able to fire at different targets come the shooting phase? Quite a bit to think about.

- It's also very much an individual model game rather than a 'blob of wound counters' squad game. An awkward hybrid in some respects. Sometimes things are treated as 'squad vs squad' and other things are 'model versus model' and it takes a bit of careful rulebook reading to sort it out. Likewise, the terrain interactions are fairly concrete (similar to Lord of the Rings / Middle-Earth SBG). I often catch myself moving boyz blithely across obstacles or up building levels in an abstract handwavey 3rd ed sort of way, when I should be checking to see how high things are and so on.

- The 2nd ed rulebooks are hopeless for looking stuff up in the middle of a game. We nearly went crazy trying to find the support weapon and crew rules. Then again, it's hardly unique to 2nd ed 40K. GW traditionally writes rules as if you're going to read the book from start to finish like a novel.

- Randomising hits between a character and the squad he's a part of caused us some mental difficulty and mild irritation (since the rules basically say "figure it out for yourself").

- Rules question: Where do you place the blast marker for a frag missile and similar weapons? This one doesn't seem to have ever been answered even on the extensive mailing list FAQs. Do you have to put the hole in the centre over the nearest target model? Or can it go anywhere in the target squad? We compromised by saying you can place it over any visible model in the target squad, so you can get it fairly deep into the front half of a unit but probably not the back half. Will continue to revise this as we go--it might make targeting characters too easy. It does seem from the FAQs that when shooting vehicles you can choose the location of the blast marker's centre, but a common house rule is to randomise the location. (And also to halve armour penetration for the locations hit that aren't the centre. That last one is a suggestion from the Tankfest article in the Citadel Journal.)

- The Journal's issue #10 also included an option, by Jervis Johnson and co, to blaze away with sustained fire weapons on 'full auto' (which was later officially used for Gorkamorka): you roll the sustained dice first, then roll to hit with each shot. It's more intuitive but there's more chance of a jam, so the rule lets you choose full auto or the 'short controlled bursts' of the main rules.

- The victory point tables really really annoy me and are currently my number one complaint about the edition. Everything is divided into tiers (e.g. a 0-100 pt squad is worth different points to a 101+ point squad), which makes it tempting to game the system by ensuring your character or squad's points value comes in just below the next threshold. I was alarmed and embarrassed to find that my unit of 20 Gretchin, which happened to be the number of painted models I had, did not yield a victory point for getting it below half strength because it was exactly one point shy of the next tier. On the other hand, my Mek is a few points over 50, so if I shaved off his cheap wargear cards--his targeter and tools--he'd drop down a tier ... but the model clearly has tools and a targeter, dammit! He actually lost me the first game by exploding himself--otherwise it would have been a draw. Later on I found an old Orks tactics article in the Citadel Journal and at least half of it was about making sure your army gave up the fewest possible victory points. I much prefer the scoring system of 3rd ed, even though it meant whipping out the calculator after a game.

All in all (as they used to say at the end of White Dwarf articles) it's been good fun and pretty much the first 40K gaming I've had in, oh, twenty years. The Orks continue to entertain (mostly by blowing themselves up) while the Space Marines are a tough nut to crack, as they should be.

We'll bump the next game up to 1000 points and may be able to fit in a psyker on each side, albeit just using the basic rules in the rulebook rather than the full rules in Dark Millennium.

I need some longer-ranged supporting fire for my Boyz, though. In the Armageddon scenarios my Gretchin were armed with autoguns per the scenario, which gave the Goffs covering fire as they advanced, but I went with the actual weapons on the models for our proper games--they're the more recent sculpts with pistols (and blunderbusses). I suppose I could take the 2nd ed monopose plastic Gretchin but they're in my top ten most despised models of all time, if not my top five ...

And since I have a spare Gorkamorka Spanner Boy, I think I'll make a second Bazza model to represent him without his trademark temperamental blasta on the off-chance he survives the next inevitable misfire. Possibly painted in a scorched, soot-blackened and startled manner, like Wile E Coyote after a mishap with an ACME rocket.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Glad you’re enjoying your foray into the past.

2nd Ed can definitely get horribly bonkers, so my hat is tipped for both you and your opponent showing restraint, at least to begin with. But I do encourage some embrace of the nonsense on offer.

I was idly trying to figure out how to do an all-Gretchin army the other day (sadly not as interesting as an all-Goblin force for WFB, since Gretchin are something of an afterthought in 40K). It occurred to me that since you can have a Gretchin character--the standard bearer--he could have a power fist. Probably a waste of points, but the image of a Grot lugging around an 'uge klaw bigger than himself makes me laugh.

The prospect of more 2nd ed close combat is worrying me because my first and most-loved army is Tyranids ...

Another thought about game sizes: I know armies were small skirmish forces in the 2nd ed days, but you can fit a surprisingly satisfying number of Orks into a small points value. My 750pt force has about 45-50 models in it. But Marines can barely field any models due to their high points costs. At least some of the rationale for 3rd edition was (allegedly) that players wanted to use larger armies / everything in their collection at once, but I can't help wondering if much of the pressure came from Marine players in particular.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Also, 2nd Ed Orks could be plenty shooty. Bad Moons in particular can have a sickening amount of heavy weapons, so even a modestly sized squad can really throw out the pain.

Ahem, ACKSHUALLY it's Deathskulls who can take heavy weapons out the wazoo. Including those funky kustom combi-weapons that ignore cover.

Bad Moons only get two heavy weapons per mob. They do get as many special weapons as they want though, so you can fill the mob full of flamers, plasma guns and meltaguns. My little Bad Moon battlewagon hit squad has two flamers, a plasma and a melta. Of course I had to go and make the plasma and melta out of parts from the Mekboy Workshop scenery piece (the meltagun is based on the drill), which means they're probably the only plasma and melta I'll ever have ...

Many of my Ork models are from 3rd to 5th edition, which makes things like Deathskulls (Lootas) easy to get to the table. The core of the army is a load of Goffs made from the trusty Black Reach boyz. My Bigboss is the 2nd ed Nazdreg special character with metal Nob arms from 3rd edition and a change of banner pole.