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Returning member to the forum after many many years. I'm not sure if the old account was purged but none of my email addresses worked for recovery, so new year new me I guess. Started off in 40K way back in 3rd ed. and stopped playing around the end of 7th ed. But now I am retired and going to college and need something to do during my summer breaks and those old minis are whispering my name. Played a variety of imperial armies; Smurfs, Black Templar, Dark Angels, IG (I guess Astra Militarum now?), Daemonhunters/Grey Knights, and I had a growing Tyranid army when I hung my hat up. Still have all the figures, some are in better shape than others after a few moves across the country.

Also played that old Mechwarrior click base game once upon a time, and had a brief tryst with Warhammer Fantasy losing more than winning with Empire and High Elves.

Anyway, I had a few buddies that have kept up with the changes and gave me some cliffsnotes now and then when major stuff was changing. There is at least one game store in town that survived the pandemic, so I have a place to play and get new rules books and all that. So really the big question for the internet is, how is the state of the game? (40K specifically) Last I played range was king, melee was struggling, and fliers were still being tweaked. I know that vehicles use basically an entirely new system than what I knew. I know that marines got a slew of new units and gizmos and upgrades. My wallet is screeching as I type this

Another question, which army do you think would be easiest to bring back up to current casual(ish) meta. My initial thoughts are that I pick back up with the nids, I think I only had about 1500 points of them so plenty of room to grow. Plus, as my youngest army more of the units I do own might still be relevant? I only had one each of a Tyrant, Carny, Tyrannofex, and Trygon, rest were little guys.

But on the flip side, I have somewhere around two hundred space marines with assorted vehicles, adding a couple new units might be a cheaper alternative than fleshing out the nids. Basically, I built two companies, 1 Black Templar and 1 smurf with some DA units to flip back and forth between codexes.

The IG, I dunno, my army was already a bit of a mess when I started the nids. Probably need a deep dive into the new dex before figuring out how to restructure that army. Although I do have a bunch of them too, lots of tanks, I have a Baneblade in pieces somewhere... bunch of different heavy weapon crews, a couple flyers, enough to rebuild the backbone of an army, but for some reason that one seems more daunting than the others.

Thanks for reading my ramble, cheers!

Welcome back

Hi there, welcome back.

However dusty, we wanna see what you've been up to. How much of that 3rd ed stuff do you have left?

Good luck fitting your models into newer codexes. You'll manage it, but the lists may not be that nice :(
Still, keep us updated.

Sadly, most of the old 3rd ed vehicles are gone. A rhino or two might still be in a moving box in the garage. But most my Black Templar marines are from that time. Lots of metal bits or solid metal command/special characters. My dreadnought is solid pewter and didn't come with a base back then. Still some beaky helmets but on more modern marine bodies if that makes sense. I'll haunt the army list thread a little, see if anything even remotely makes sense ro me

GrumpyGrunt wrote:
Sadly, most of the old 3rd ed vehicles are gone. A rhino or two might still be in a moving box in the garage. But most my Black Templar marines are from that time. Lots of metal bits or solid metal command/special characters. My dreadnought is solid pewter and didn't come with a base back then. Still some beaky helmets but on more modern marine bodies if that makes sense. I'll haunt the army list thread a little, see if anything even remotely makes sense ro me

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Hello to all, I am also new here.

OliviaScott wrote:
Hello to all, I am also new here.

Welcome aboard. What do you like to play?

Welcome back to the hobby.

Most of the old units were given Legends datasheets, so while the are usually lower powered than whatever the current range is, they are at least playable in anything outside of competitive events. I run a lot of mine in causal games.

For use of old marines, depending on the attitude of your playgroup, it's not hard to proxy them as the newer models as you get a feel for things. Tactical Squads are pretty underwhelming at the moment, but you could drop the special weapons and proxy them as intercessors. The Assault Marines can be Jump Intercessors provided they aren't rocking flamers or plasma pistols. Devastators... are actually still pretty decent.

Your Tyranid models should all still be good, I think we've only lost The Red Terror and some of the Forge World stuff from general rules.

What helped get me back into the hobby was wahapedia its a legally dubious site that hosts all of warhammers rules and codices and it's a great way to go over everything and practice to help you decide what models you actually want to buy / army you want to play. I wouldn't be in the hobby today without it brining me back into it.

As for the state of the hobby in general, it's in a pretty good place balance wise. While you will always find some complainers on the internet, army balance is overall the best it's pretty much ever been. However, the heavy focus on tournaments and balance has lead to the homogenization of a lot of the fun quirks that armies used to have back in the day into more generic and samey versions, or just their removal all together. I'd recommend looking into the Crusade game mode as it comes closest to capturing the old 40k feel with the newer rules. (Also, they still haven't figured flyers out, they keep being either way too good, or completely not worth it.)

Welcome back and good luck! reckon you should just start hobbying whatever you're inspired by and lose a few games with non-efficient lists and take it from there. Dive in, basically.

Tawnis wrote:Welcome back to the hobby.

Most of the old units were given Legends datasheets, so while the are usually lower powered than whatever the current range is, they are at least playable in anything outside of competitive events. I run a lot of mine in causal games.

For use of old marines, depending on the attitude of your playgroup, it's not hard to proxy them as the newer models as you get a feel for things. Tactical Squads are pretty underwhelming at the moment, but you could drop the special weapons and proxy them as intercessors. The Assault Marines can be Jump Intercessors provided they aren't rocking flamers or plasma pistols. Devastators... are actually still pretty decent.

Your Tyranid models should all still be good, I think we've only lost The Red Terror and some of the Forge World stuff from general rules.

What helped get me back into the hobby was wahapedia its a legally dubious site that hosts all of warhammers rules and codices and it's a great way to go over everything and practice to help you decide what models you actually want to buy / army you want to play. I wouldn't be in the hobby today without it brining me back into it.

As for the state of the hobby in general, it's in a pretty good place balance wise. While you will always find some complainers on the internet, army balance is overall the best it's pretty much ever been. However, the heavy focus on tournaments and balance has lead to the homogenization of a lot of the fun quirks that armies used to have back in the day into more generic and samey versions, or just their removal all together. I'd recommend looking into the Crusade game mode as it comes closest to capturing the old 40k feel with the newer rules. (Also, they still haven't figured flyers out, they keep being either way too good, or completely not worth it.)

Firstly, thank you for the overview. I have seen homogenization happening in the video game realm too in certain aspects over the years, EVE in particular had a go at it before releasing new ships later... I'm catching up on the stuff that has happened with the SM's, Tac Squads were never really good at any one thing except shrugging off low ap infantry guns and being hard to get out of cover, though it sounds like with the new shooting rules their armor may not be as good as it once was even in that regard? More diving required. But even back in 4th and 5th there were a lot of stuff that started to just laugh at power armor. Back then I would throw as many bodies on the table as I could, even my 1500 pt lists would have minimum 40 guys in regular armor and I aimed for 60 towards the 2000pt mark, never really sinking too many points into characters or vehicles, especially 5th, I don't think I ever ran a Pred in 5th ed, and only brought back the heavy bolter/auto cannon version in 6th or 7th when more shots were better (imo).

From what I have seen so far, there is a lot of room to grow with my nids and with the few amount of monsters I have, I can take it in any viable direction still without needing to relegate any permanently to the book shelf. I found all my bits for them too, which is good, the tyrannofex could probably do with a different shooting option, and he wasn't painted yet so I won't feel bad hacking his arms off.

The SM's have a lot of new exciting options compared to what used to be available, and can probably still be an enjoyable casual army. But RIP assault squads, bikers, land speeders. I had forgotten just how many rhinos and drop pods I had too... 5 rhinos and 4 drop pods, I can't even remember why... maybe 6th ed stuff cause the rhino rush died in 4th

I am thinking of stopping by the FLGS tomorrow and seeing what the crowd is like too. I spoke with the owners a bit a few months ago but it was a weekday and no one was there gaming.

The whole command point/orders/objective control mechanics are completely foreign to me and I will need to see that stuff in action to really begin understanding it all (and read the new rule book too I guess... lol). I am inclined to pursue the nids, I spent so many years with SM, building up from a small "new" army to get a feel for the game again sounds more appealing than trying to resurrect my tired old marines lol.