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An interesting POV on how to draw the line.

Mechanics? Philosophy? Corporate? Chronological?

I could see arguments for different breaks for all of those.

I think you have to take them all into account.

The earliest days, basically up to 2nd Ed were from a largely anarchic Ideas Machine, married to Bryan Ansell’s considerable skill as a businessman.

But, GW as we know it now didn’t fully manifest until during 3rd Ed.

Kirby provided the right stewardship at the right time to cement it as Proper Company With Shareholders And Everything.

Much as people not unjustly scorn his later years at the helm, I argue he was a victim of his own success, as GW outgrew him.

Kevin Rowntree is the main architect of modern GW, including leveraging its now evidently valuable IP and the Essentially Free Money it brings to GW’s coffers, and putting out almost certainly lower profit margin games to prevent other companies filling those niches, and just as almost certainly making the universe accessible to those who can’t, or won’t, cough up for a 40K or AoS army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Actually…gonna be bold.

The end of Oldhammer was….Inquisitor

That was when the Imperium’s background got a sudden and thorough fleshing out. It’s most shadowy aspect exposed as being far more than just Ordos of varying size. We saw Radical and Puritan, and denominations like Horusian, Mono-Dominants etc.

And….it was the last of GW’s truly bold game offerings. Sure, its rules kinda of trace back to Confrontation, being incredibly detailed and intended more for roleplaying than Wargaming, but its scale was entirely new. It was also seemingly a Passion Project, like 40K originally was.

I'll stick with RT-2nd as said before, but I'd offer the additional evidence that those are the editions that most closely map (rules and years) along with what "Oldhammer" is in the WHFB fandom.

Similar art styles, rules similarities, charts galore, controlled chaos, etc....

3rd edition was a clear departure from all of that which was probably evident to anyone (such as myself) who had the 2nd edition box set and then bought the 3rd. Sure the statlines and core rules were very similar, but everything else and the overall art and presentation style changed dramatically.

We have missed something crucial in determining what Oldhammer is.

It's not about editions, art, community perception or rules frameworks.




It's when you have converted 1983 Zoids kits for your vehicles.

Rosebuddy wrote:
We have missed something crucial in determining what Oldhammer is.

It's not about editions, art, community perception or rules frameworks.




It's when you have converted 1983 Zoids kits for your vehicles.

I used a super cool Zoids scorpion bot as late as 4th edition, fielded as a Brass Scorpion using the Vehicle Design Rules.

Come to think of it, the Chapterhouse case happened some time around 4th or 5th edition, right? That clearly had an impact on the game moving forward.

The chapthouse case?

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
The chapthouse case?

Chapterhouse was a 3rd party company what made bits, and also some full minis. Instead of just folding when GW sent them a cease amd desist order, they fought it in court. And CH won a large number of the claims. It’s probably why we have no model, no rules, and all the copyrightable names now.

But GW was claiming all sorts of things they really shouldn’t have been. And made outlandish claims like there was no outside influences on 40k.

CH stagged on for a while post-lawsuit, but the whole ordeal was draining on them and I think they shuttered their doors a few years after.

Edit:
I think it was late 5th? Edition.

Staggered on, accepting orders and payment and not fulfilling.

Boggles my mind folks still think he was a good guy.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Staggered on, accepting orders and payment and not fulfilling.

Boggles my mind folks still think he was a good guy.

He was the little guy standing up against the bully. Because let’s face it, GW was throwing their weight around in a way that was not right, and nobody was calling them on it. Chapterhouse did. And while they “won” most of their cases, it was a pyric victory.

I’m glad someone made a stand. It was the right thing to do morally.
The ramifications and fallout screwed up a LOT of our hobby. Not a fan of that.
I’ll forgive a lot for a small business going through what they did. But not to the point of cheating customers.

In theory I’m glad he made the stand, in practice less so. It’s not a black and white issue with clear lines. And a very hot topic of debate at the time.

They can be both a poor businessman and still be in the legal right to trade in the manner they did. They aren't mutually exclusive.

As Nevelon says, GW was throwing its weight around egregiously, sending cease and desists for frivolous things and acting like everything they produced was entirely unique and untouchable.


Everyone in the creative space is supposed to play by the same rules around copyright, but GW acted like trademark was the same thing, or acted like their IP was protected by patent...

And far too many fans of the setting believed them. Copyright is not conceptright, GW never owned, nor currently owns, concepts that appear in 40k. Nor does it own combinations of those concepts.

GW would have set precedent for its own destruction at the hands of the Heinlein and Herbert Estates, not to mention Disney and Star Wars.

The most GW could ever have claimed is that Chapterhouse couldn't sell products under the trademarked names of their product lines, but they were absolutely in their right to sell 'compatible with' products, just as anyone else does for literally any other existing IP in the world.

GW can't claim armoured space men as a protected design, regardless of the concepts that went into them. No one can, or we have no creative space at all. No one can own breastplates with eagles on them. No one can own green barbarian orcs.

The years following where GW started creating trade marked names for everything was definitely a response to this, but if they'd been smarter they would have done that from the beginning of the business, not decades later when they were forced to confront how derivative their products really are.

The consequences to gamers of this event are entirely on GW, they spent decades coasting on non enforceable legal assumptions rather than doing it the right way. No other IP dependent companies hold any delusions about what aspects of their products are protectable, it's not a clandestine secret of the creative IP industries.

GW simply used its monopoly in the sector to be incredibly lazy about its business and when it was finally challenged, it reacted to correct that attitude, but it did so in a very pouty way.

And how does any of that justify him taking orders and payment, not fulfilling those, and continuing to do so whilst in the process of winding up the business?

Because that’s what I was criticising. His specifically and demonstrably fraudulent activity.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
And how does any of that justify him taking orders and payment, not fulfilling those, and continuing to do so whilst in the process of winding up the business?

Because that’s what I was criticising. His specifically and demonstrably fraudulent activity.

you equated that behaviour with him not being the good guy in the context of fighting a large company on sound IP grounds.

Boggles my mind folks still think he was a good guy.

I said they are separate things. He was entirely in the right to fight that fight and he can still be a bad businessman for his actions around his business and 'not a good guy'.

But the two are not related. Things can be two things.

Just weird to see a thieving scumbag praised is all.

 Da Boss wrote:
I personally split it from Oldhammer (1e and 2e), Middlehammer (3e to 7e) and Newhammer (8e onwards).

Same here.

Someone says OldHammer & I think of either RT/2e or 3rd-7th.
Personally I don't consider RT/2e "The Good Old Days". I enjoyed 3-5 much more than those editions.

 Da Boss wrote:
I personally split it from Oldhammer (1e and 2e), Middlehammer (3e to 7e) and Newhammer (8e onwards). I started at the end of 2e and 3e to 5e were my heyday in the hobby. I tailed off hard for 6e and 7e due to disliking the shifting scale of the game already clear in late 5e. So when I think of the 'good old days' it's that time I am thinking of.

Yep, that split makes the most sense. I feel like people split of 6th and 7th from 3-5th due to how bad they were, but in the end they were still more or less versions of the same game, while 8th-10th is something completely new.

It's also about the size of the community. The number of players playing rogue trader and 2nd is very low, while during "middlehammer" things like the Dawn Of War games and THQ putting a life sized space marine into every electronics store drew vast amounts of people to the hobby, plus the internet made it more accessible (and pirateable) than ever before. New hammer brought a ton of people back to the hobby and made it more appealing to people with adjacent hobbies, while GW returning to the internet an leveraging social media made all the fun parts of 40k more visible than ever. Players who have started with newhammer easily outnumber anyone who played middlehamer 10:1, if not more.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
I personally split it from Oldhammer (1e and 2e), Middlehammer (3e to 7e) and Newhammer (8e onwards). I started at the end of 2e and 3e to 5e were my heyday in the hobby. I tailed off hard for 6e and 7e due to disliking the shifting scale of the game already clear in late 5e. So when I think of the 'good old days' it's that time I am thinking of.

Yep, that split makes the most sense. I feel like people split of 6th and 7th from 3-5th due to how bad they were, but in the end they were still more or less versions of the same game, while 8th-10th is something completely new.

It's also about the size of the community. The number of players playing rogue trader and 2nd is very low, while during "middlehammer" things like the Dawn Of War games and THQ putting a life sized space marine into every electronics store drew vast amounts of people to the hobby, plus the internet made it more accessible (and pirateable) than ever before. New hammer brought a ton of people back to the hobby and made it more appealing to people with adjacent hobbies, while GW returning to the internet an leveraging social media made all the fun parts of 40k more visible than ever. Players who have started with newhammer easily outnumber anyone who played middlehamer 10:1, if not more.

While i agree that the period of 4th to 7th heralded in a mass influx thanks to video games, im not sure middlehammer as a 'concept' has percolated into common parlance. Yet.

I don't think there are that many people playing newhammer who know enough about rogue trader and 2nd edition to actually give it any thought. I have people in my gaming club whose parents are younger than those editions.

I doubt we'll reach a consensus.

For me, Oldhammer is up to and including 2nd, for no better reason than I started playing in 3rd.

Charax and Da Boss make good points, and I can see the argument for 3-5 being "middlehammer" but I'm not old enough to emotionally agree (only 64)

I feel this is kind of a question of when you consider yourself to be operating from.

I mean it is 2010. You are playing at the height of 5th. Obviously oldhammer must mean 2nd (or I guess RT, but no one played or plays that). After all 5th is just the evolved version of 4th and 3rd. 2nd edition was 12+ years ago - Empires have risen, bloomed and died in this time.

Unfortunately the curse of years hangs heavily upon humanity and it is now 2025. 2nd is ancient history - and 5th is now as far back as 2nd edition once was. It seems bizarre not to call this "old" - even if you want to group up the editions into "2nd" vs "3rd-7th".

Interesting to see that so many point to RT and 2nd as the Oldhammer set. I would say 3rd through 7th just because the impression I have is that most of the organized Oldhammer efforts I see are based on those editions.

While RT and 2nd are oldhammer, 2nd is interesting in and of itself it because there is a separate with early and late rogue trader onwards where 40k is pretty much the same ever since (though 3rd edition was a more 'drimdark' depiction of the same. I think since primaris there may be a new kind of direction that's distinct to the 2nd-3rd until maybe the WHFB End Times (caused by Chapterhouse?)

The visual style change between 2nd and 3rd makes the eras pretty distinct, so I would still put the cut off between 2nd and 3rd ed.

I tend to refer to Rogue Trader and 2nd ed as distinct editions of the game use 'oldhammer' as a blanket term for 3rd to 5th edition (3rd-7th to a lesser extent).

 Daba wrote:

maybe the WHFB End Times (caused by Chapterhouse?)

Are you suggesting that WHFB was dumped because the lawsuit exposed GW's IP vulnerabilities for their fantasy setting? So Sigmar was really just a more thoroughly copyrighted re-skin of the same material like when GW renamed the paint line? I suppose that's possible, but I thought WHFB died because it's sales were in the toilet. Towards the end, probably during 8th edition WHFB, we were told that the SM tactical squad box alone outsold the entire fantasy range.

Funnily enough I remember thinking of RT as old and exotic in the mid 90s, because there was so limited access to older material, if you didn't have a copy of a book you had no idea what information was there. So the only knowledge of it was through esoteric hints dropped by WD, or in rulebooks, or people telling you about when they once read the realms of chaos books - I literally borrowed realms of chaos from a GW staffer at my local to photocopy the story of the emperor and starchild because it was so esoteric and obscure and my friends never believed me when I told them about it...

As editions have progressed alongside the internet, the mystique of older editions is somewhat lessened, they are easily searchable, and in many cases readible without trawling second hand bookshops or finding a friend of a friend.



I think that 3-7 was the weakest in terms of intra editional definitions because they were all refinements and while launched as new editions, they didn't have the weight of a real one IMO.

2, 3 8 and 10 are imo the strongest distinct editional identities for launch (not including RT because it had nothing to distinguish itself from, but being first holds a unique place).

 Arschbombe wrote:


Are youl suggesting that WHFB was dumped because the lawsuit exposed GW's IP vulnerabilities for their fantasy setting? So Sigmar was really just a more thoroughly copyrighted re-skin of the same material like when GW renamed the paint line? I suppose that's possible, but I thought WHFB died because it's sales were in the toilet. Towards the end, probably during 8th edition WHFB, we were told that the SM tactical squad box alone outsold the entire fantasy range.

All those things can be true:
Ditching WHFB and creating AoS could have been because of WHFB not selling well (It's pretty undeniable that AoS sells better than WHFB did)

Renaming all the factions to be less generic can be because of the Chapterhouse suit (the timing certainly matches up, as does the renaming of 40k factions and the shift away from providing rules for anything without current models)

Space Marine tactical squads can still have outsold everything else (but that has been true pretty much from their release up to the mid 2010s IIRC, and in itself does not justify killing off a whole game system - space marines have carried the financials for a long time)

Things can happen for more than one reason, and when GW deign to give us a reason it's worth remembering that it might not be the only reason. I certainly can't see them coming out and saying "well we sued a guy and got embarrassed in court when it was pointed out that we didn't have all the trademarks we thought we did and forgot to get the rights to some of the artwork we sued over so that's why the factions whose names have been consistent for decades need to be changed"

Alright. Its been nearly a week. That means it's weekly analysis time.

In first place at 28%. 2nd Edition. Very predictable and expected.

In second place at 22%. 1st Edition. Very predictable and expected.

In third place at 19%. 3rd Edition. Very predictable and expected.

Special mention to 4th + 5th edition, netting a combined total of 23%

And odd mention to the 8% who voted for 6th+7th.

Excellent Analysis.

And to crib a line from the Dark Knight which to me sums up the whole Chapterhouse ordeal...

BATMAN: "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Maybe we can group 40K into eras by edition?

I don’t think anyone can dispute 1st and 2nd would be Early Era. But I can and will make an argument that 3rd Ed belongs there.

All three were pretty experimental, and each is a refinement of the last. Not just rules, but background and model range.

3rd Ed, much as I loathe its bland uninteresting rules, was when GW, rather than the game, really hit its stride. Lots more plastic tanks and kits for everyone, the scale of battles increased. The company itself went from nutters in Nottingham, to a pretty slick, professional operation. Whatever you might think of the end of the Kirby Era, he still transformed GW, and with massive success for a decent number of years.

Middle Era is a period of refinement without drastic changes. I’d say 4th-7th, where the underlying rules remained pretty stable, with only minor changes.

8th-10th is Current Era. Significant overhauls, greater unit diversity etc, and very, very few non-plastic kits, and getting fewer every year. Not to mention the setting being right on the verge of going genuinely mainstream thanks to licensing and visibility.

Another issue that many will marvel at today is availability of product. Games Workshop products were not readily available in the late 1980's in the US. I had a friend that would have killed for a full chaos heavy weapon unit during that period. Around 3rd edition, GW had truly established themselves as a product. I agree that modern 40K, started with 3rd edition. 1st edition was the wild west where gw was trying a lot of different things. 2nd edition was more focused and trying different things to see what would work. Some worked and others didn't, but it was interesting and getting to see the evolution first hand was really cool. Playing Ork in late 1st edition/early 2nd edition was really cool. Orks were probably the faction that got the most attention during that time and it was gloriously chaotic. Imagine a unit getting 6 different charts of random ways they would act in a battle that could change every turn today? That was orks back in the day. Maboyz were insane, literally.

Willaim