Nice to see the space wolves photos I took from when I worked in the studio getting called out 😊 When I was there the design studio was amazing with writers, artists, graphic designers, photographers and sculptors all working together in one place. But after 6th Ed 40K it all got split up into separate and access controlled divisions. It made sense for the business to grow as more space was needed. But it meant sculptors didn’t work close with the writers anymore. Early on this led to weird discrepancies between sculptors intent and the writers bg and rules. Biggest impact though was expanding the books team into its own division. You can see when this happened when there was a big spike in books and supplements, an increased frequency in edition refreshes, as the new publishing division needed to make more products and money. This of course impacted the art. More was needed and fast. This led to digital art and freelance which early on had a mismatch in quality. I hope we’re seeing just growing pains at GW and they change things up.

Back in the days when character and narrative were more important than tournament balance. 40K was basically DnD with armies. I miss those times.

It's quite simple : suits don't have souls. So, as a company expand, and the numbers of suits raise, the end-product ends up reflecting the loss of soulstuff.

6th is when I started and I got the dark vengence Dark Angels half of the box. I have since amassed a huge Dark Angels army and also started playing Grey Knights in 7th when I could take a small detatchment of them. The psychic powers, the penetrating hits on vehicles, the scatter dice for deep striking, the challenges my characters could issue, all of it was just so much fun amd I count myself lucky to have had a great hobby store owner who wrote awesome 4 month long campaigns with unique narrative flavors and fun twists. I think my favorite time was when we lost power at our store and our store owner suddenly shouts "Oh no! A sudden warp storm summoned by the forces of chaos has blotted out the sun! As of right now night fighting is in effect!" We all used our phone flashlights to represent searchlights on our vehicles and it was a blast. When the power was fixed he then said "Huzzah! A brotherhood of Grey Knights have broken the storm and the powers of the warp have subsided! Night fighting is gone!" You were a great store owner Steve and we did not deserve you.

I only ever played third edition. I had all the numbers memorized. It was so stream lined and simple. I watch play on table top now and I'm astonished by how complex it has become. I poured over the codexes and rules book, learning the lore and falling in love with the artwork. Ah nostalgia.

As a 1e veteran (yes, I started in 1987, I'm _that_ old), I really appreciate this look back to an earlier time.

As someone who got into 40K because of what happened to Magic The Gathering during the Fire design era I kind of understand what a lot of Warhammer players feel about the game today I'm saddened that all my Modern decks got removed due to powercreep and bans I'm starting to see that no matter where we go we're all seeing a decline in the games we've enjoyed our entire lives

Great rant. Couldn't agree more, my playgroup had similar feelings regarding 10th and bounced off it. Now we just play Horus Heresy with fan made / 6th edition rules for the Xenos factions.

I miss the Codex rules that gave you the ability to make your own original armies/regiments/chapters/cabals, instead of just picking from the 10 most famous from each faction. Guardsmen with snipers, rough riders, and grenadiers. How I miss thee.

This brought back good memories from when I played 3rd - 5th edition. It was a more narrative game style and it made battles feel like a movie sometimes with people often standing on the sidelines and watching battles at the local club. It was like watching a story play out.

I had the joy of playing some of the older editions, i prefered 40k as more of a small scale skirmish game that actively encouraged experimentation and customisation.

I started playing tabletop with 10th edition and what you’re describing sounds way more fun and dynamic than what i’ve experienced of ‘move model, never understand cover, get lucky with rolls, and hope your opponent didn’t bring a meta list’

Hearing all these old rules explained again, seeing the old artwork and models, the charts and tables you could roll on. Makes me smile, I will never forget those times of my Warhammer journey.

I just recently went to a Warhammer shop and got myself some paints and brushes to finally finish my "Alpha Legion simping over Bel'akhor" army as I have some time to kill. I was a GM zealot as a kid about 24 years ago. I saw the release of Necromunda, Mortheim & Gorkamorka. I saw editions come and go. I will never forget the time we actually ran a 10,000 point Warhammer fantasy game with my armies led by Nagash and Egrimm van Hortseman... Even though Warhammer eventually faded from my life, I have always been a big fan of War Occaionaly, checking out the lore updates over the years. Listening to what you describe, the incredible dedication to the lore and the diversity of the rules that allowed us to really customise our army and show their differences is something that made it a great strategy. To see the state of the franchise is to see the Emperor on his throne... what has become of you... There is something that bad management decisions cannot take away from us. The old rulebooks we own, our armies and the amazing memories we have made along the way. Heard that the regulars in the shop are still playing 9th for the time being, I guess I will have to try out those "Bel'akor's Simps" with them sometime soon. Keep up the good work, brother. Let the galaxy burn

0:17 ooft, when you showed that Dark Vengeance box I looked over at my brother's old copy that he gave to me a couple months ago. He's the only reason I'm interested in Warhammer at all, so a rather wholesome connection there

man, as someone who hasnt played since 5th, its blowing my mind to hear what things are like now

I feel like 40K just takes itself a little too seriously nowadays.

i'm an old school gamer from 2nd ed, when blood angels and dark angels shared the same codex, when things were simple, and Captain Tycho was still alive!! we had more freedom in army building and even down to each figure customization in and out of game. we had so much fun just playing to play. i remember playing till 2am and had work at 7am, but that didn't slow me down. I'll admit the newer models and newer factions brought a bit of freshness to the game, but at a sacrifice to the fun. i haven't played a single game in 6 years, as it just doesn't feel right anymore. i still love the entire warhammer universe and miss my scratch built creations, but i doubt i'll every pick my dice back up again, and my passion for warhammer builds is a fancy version of models. some people build model cars, i build warhammer models, but i'll be sticking to only those pieces that catch my attention.

I miss armor facing.

I missed all the extra rules like eternal warrior and instant death. And I remember I played chaos Space marines during the dark vengeance box era and we had rules like champions of chaos and challenges it was so much more fun. Now its pandering to competitive spammers and to new players too lazy to learn the rules to try to appeal to people not that into the setting.

Thank you for putting literally every recent thought I've had about Warhammer 40K in this video.

The simplification of the rules is not bad (they could add some lore friendly mechanics though), what is actually sad is that Warhammer40k lost a bit of its soul everytime it got a new editions.

I'm still fairly new, about two years into it. But two of my friends are old school and know everything top to bottom and one thing they taught me was the classic Warhammer stories/lore/ gameplay and I certainly think it had more of a soul.

I loved the "Why would they fight" at the end of the Codex. Really added another level to games.

My first thing i ever did in this world was warhammer 40k. Im in love with warhammer.

Brilliant work brother, expansive, concise and a great video 😁

A really enjoyable watch since I started at 9th Edition and didn't know much before then,

we as fans should make a fan edition which would implement the best rule set's of previous editions in one package and isn't mega competitive or just by the numbers borefest but what the game should and was and that's fun.

Totally there with you man. I started in the tail end of 4th edition and used to buy every codex and rulebook I could get my hands on, nowadays I only occasionally bother. I miss all the awesome psychic powers the most and totally agree formations were the major fuckup, one that could have been solved so easily if theyd just made them cost points...

DIY terrain tips. Those were the days.

I never played Warhammer just collected my admech. Mostly because I’m slow at painting and because the rules in 9th was so intimidating. I love Warhammer but I must admit that most old art looks better than never and the thing with the rules for characters without models is just so awesome.

yup.. I went back to 4th ed, that´s what i started with. Love it.

The two things I missed the most from 7th edition (when I started playing) are the templates and vehicle armor value.

From the description: Allies. Can't believe they took that out, it was a great way to get people to buy more models!

Man this made me miss the days of playing 40k at my FLGS during 7th…

I think Heresy's use of 5th and 6th edition rules means it retains some of that character. I appreciate if you are a Xenos player then it's probably not for you, and some factions such as Solar Auxulia are incredibly expensive to collect, but the community's stance on ultra competitive play (Stone Gauntlet, Contemptor spam) means it has a different flavour than modern 40K.

my lead beakies are crying in the corner right now. Thank you so much for this you've perfectly summed up my own feelings in a beautiful way.

👍👍 This is the 40k I remember!

Could not agree more.

I REALLY MISS SCATTER DICE AND BLAST TEMPLATES!

Didnt realise till watching this video but this pretty much sums up my feelings towards the table top right now

Unit modularity is definitely something I wish I had building an army in tenth, I feel like I could make so much cool stuff if I had it

The Andy Chambers days, that's why I'm starting a 3rd edition player group. 3rd Ed was peak

Bought my older brother who is a casual 40K fan (By that I mean, he plays a Darktide mission 3 times a week and goofs lore references when talking to me) and also enjoys going to the gym a lot one of your bezerker muscle shirts for Christmas and he absolutely loved it. Thanks for the perfect gift for my brother.

Love

Came back to the hobby after leaving in 4th edition, was honestly baffled by the changes to vehicles. It feels like a shift from an attitude where mechanics were trying to simulate the lore to an optimization of gameplay.

23:59 Ah Molten Beam, Lorn's favourite.

I'm glad I like painting more than playing.

Gosh the nostalgia! I crave those days and coincidentally have just bought all the chaos codexs from 4th ed to 9th Ed to determine which will be the best era to reset my gaming group to as most of us hate 10th Ed

14:40 Magical Vehicles... poking out a mm and shoting with everything.

I am also burnt out of 10th, Thank you for your video. Nice to know I am not alone.

I miss it so much. I started collecting at the end of 6th but took too long and had no one to play with. Only recenlty have I started playing. I think I'll go back and try some older editions; even homebrew some rules for factions which didn't exist back then.

This vid got me crying in TS and GK. They took too much with 10th. I loved playing Rubric marines and making every squad unique even though it was the same models. I miss playing TS, they're not The sons of Magnus in 10th, they're just space marines. :(

There was so much room for customization.

I joined 40k tabletop at the beginning of 8 edition, but got interested in the lore like 6 years ago. I always thought that a lot of the rules felt wired like lasguns doing damage to a dreadnought or tanks and I guess this is why. I would love to try this 40k tabletop

Amazing Video 💎

I got into warhammer during the pandemic because of Astartes. I have read something in the neighborhood of 100 books thanks to the Heresy, and I've just started getting into the models last year and playing kill team. I'm loving it

Thank you for making this video, I relate with it a lot.

Got into Warhammer in 2021 and Black Legion was my first chapter, I think it's the fun fact I'm allowed to take any warband or cultist marines as long they are in a black scheme like Khorne Berzerkers and Rubric Marines

Yk, to have a name like Deadlifts for the dark gods, you have a very gentle voice. Not a bad problem! that just means I'm gonna be rewatching this video while i paint or something so I can have a calm voice in the BG over some of the more "extreme" 40k channels! ^^

Just picked up 3rd edition recently and I've been enjoying it a lot. Much simpler, and there is more of a focus on tactics over the "build".

I’ve discovered Titanicus in recent years. Feels very much like 4th. Character creation with the titans, blast templates, scatter, armour vs strength etc. plus random explosions. Totally love it, and the rules don’t change every other week.

i started focusing on warhammer games during 6th edition, watching this i realized what i missed, what i don't see the story armor values, initiavtive, challenged, all those sublte rules that just created stories right then and there! that got you even DEEPER into the lore! if votann were in 6th i'd bring them there without question...but for now i'll make my own stories with poorhammers horde mode and my friends.

6th was my favorite back then.

I wasn't even playing in the earlier days, just reading the novels. Even with that, I know how on the head you hit this nail.

This was an amazing video. Thank you so much for making this. It really is everything about what I loved about 40k and idk I just can't find that feeling anymore for the game. This was perfect. Thank you again.

Dang dude this is great; beautifully done. I just got into Warhammer in 10e with some friends, and with a heavy background in game design, I could *feel* something was off about the game from how all my "old" friends described their play experiences 5+ years ago. I chewed up all the rules in a couple of months and just a handful of games, and could very clearly feel the lack of flexibility / creativity in list building and play EVEN THOUGH my faction has its codex already. I found a bunch of legend and long-gone units and made homebrew to update them into 10th, bringing back their rather unique mechanics and interesting play patterns. Then I made some custom units to bring the forgotten / unviable playstyles up to snuff. "10e is just Rolling Dice and pointing at things; it's a game of who can hide their units best and sitting on points." But man... do I feel this. The game DOES feel bland. There's SO MUCH focus on the models (buy them, paint them, base them, kitbash them, make lists, attach them). But when you sit down to play the game the ONLY focus is on VP. "Who cares that 95% of your guys are dead? You got more VP; you won, dude!" *Doesn't feel like a win* The game has ABSOLUTELY moved from a top-down design (where the flavor and lore come before the mechanics, and the mechanics are meant to serve that vision) to a bottom-up design (where mechanics come first, and you combine/alternate them together to try and fit the flavor). Both are valid approaches to designing games, but you'll see the same divide in the playerbases as "People who are here for the story" vs "People who are here for the gameplay". The reason certain games like Magic: the Gathering have thrived as long as they have is that they ALTERNATE how they design card sets, so no group stays alienated forever. Very sad to see this moving in the direction that it is. It's so obviously boiled down that it's tasteless now.

10th edition drove me out of 40k and into the loving arms of horus heresy. God I love that system.

10th ripped the soul out of the game.

You talk about 5th edition like I talk about Rogue Trader! I remember scratch building many vehicles. My favorite a Ork Gobsmasher with a cannon half as big as the rest of the model. FUN TIMES! And does anyone remember torc grenades.

I stopped following GW's lore and stopped buying their books after 6th Edition came out. I much prefer to dip in and out of the old books for rules, ideas, and artwork. I'm probably one of the few who preferred it when the hobby was much more niche than it is today. Seems to be more popular than ever, and has become more corporate because of it. I liked having a hobby nobody had ever heard of.

Man I have been at it since 2nd Edition.

Got into 40k at 8th edition. Towards the end of 9th when heresy can out I invested into the $300 AoD box thinking I would divert the minis into 40k. Local gamestore hosts an HH tourney and since I have the rules I figured why not? Now I am not only hooked on HH, but prefer it’s 7th ed 40k-style rules as they are more in depth and gave me games that felt more fun.

A friend of mine and I flipped through the 8th ed warhammer fantasy battle core rule book yesterday. He had no exposure to it beforehand and he simply was baffled about how much better the art used to be. (Mostly the Blanch stuff) Don't get me wrong, 8th was the worst edition or WHFB, but it was league's above new warhammer when it comes to art, lore and feel.

My friend group only plays 7th edition (and 1st edition, but I consider it a whole other game to be honest). We all played 8th, but by the time 9th edition rolled out, we checked it out and just decided 7th was better than the two that followed it. 10th was almost interesting, but personally it doesn't offer anything that 1st and 7th can neither offer. It only brought back some earlier lost ideas and added some very bizarre things that we didn't think made any sense. I also run some 40k tabletop RPGs so we can experience 40k in a wide variety of ways... honestly I fear even 11th edition will probably just follow the current trajectory for the game. An unforseen boon for playing 7th is that the meta for us doesn't change arbitrarily... it only changes if one of us figures out a thing about the game nobody else had thought of. So we don't need to update lists every time GW wants money.

Targeting rule, Eg, having to target closest model small/medium/large, No soldier is gonna ignore an enemy 1 inch away to shoot at something 20 inches away

Man the loss of initiative really sucks. I'm glad it's back in Old World it just makes sense

Bro that assault on black reach box was literally the first Warhammer product I I forgot my dad got it for me for Christmas or something like that

I watched my buddy play a match of 10th and realized that I wanted to play AOS for more than just fantasy

Warhammer struggles from existing within its own ecosystem separate from wargaming as a wider hobby, I get the impression the newer people that write/maintain the new rules only really play warhammer. I personally think streamlining and simplifying the core rules for 8th was a good move, however some of the ways they did this weren't done all that well, I missed using templates and there's a bunch of stuff they really should have streamlined that they just didn't bother with (like the turn system, I love sitting and waiting for my opponent to complete 100 different rounds of combat before I can start my 100 different rounds of combat).

I concur entirely, great vid!

Bolt Action, although a very different setting, has some of that soul in it. You can tell how is an ex-GW behind it. Like the cover or vehicle damage, how the different types of narrative scenarios, a more organic terrain set, etc. while incorporating modern mechanics like random activation. Honestly, I would love a sort of 40k that plays like Bolt Action.

I felt this way when necrons got named characters XD

I also joined during 5th edition and left around the time 6th started coming out. I never knew I was this nostalgic for the old times... I remember that space wolf codex, and I remember those stat lines.... Back in the day: It might take a decade for a new edition to come out These days: A new edition every 3rd year! Gotta keep pumping those numbers!

Having a leadership roll off with my Ork and if they lost they turned in to a squig. New stats and a model I handed them to use instead.

3rd edition rulebook black templars art is still the goat. I used to stare at it for hours on end

You put into words quite perfectly what I feel 😎

Rending was a fun rule, my genestealers and ymargl stealers would always give me a chance no matter what

I can't say I was ever too into the 40k tabletop, I came in at the end of 9th, One Page Rules is my drink of choice these days, and as much as I can and will ETERNALLY simp for OPR, I wish they had an optional extended rule set that added some stuff like this, just so you could make your legendary heroes feel a bit more unique

It went from a company making a game for everyone to get creative and use your imagination into a company that sells you nothing but more and more and more and more product.

Just wanted to say thanks for this, nothing like a drop of nostalgia at 5 in the morning. Brings a tear to the eye.

Having played through editions 5-10... While I agree on some of the aesthetic points (I like grittier artwork that leaves some things up to the imagination, and for the reason you mentioned I like black and white illustrations more) the rules are so much easier to understand, quicker to play, and easier to keep track of in 10th, and while there is still plenty of room for improvement (I miss 9th edition's fly rule for example) it is still my favorite edition yet, and generally I have enjoyed each successive edition more than the first.

This is why I moved to HH 2.0. Its the good old days again :')

3rd, 4th and 5th for me, you can keep the rest.

OPR baby !

james workshop has to get his stuff together...

I miss playing orks and killing half of my army and the enemies with a wacky roll, sure it wasn't competative but orks was never about winning tournaments and all about just having fun.

I’m not even through this video fully and it already makes me appreciate 30k so much more since it’s basically a modified 7th ed and fixes a fair amount is the problems late 7th had.

I really enjoy mesbg. Thanks for giving it a shout

Old 40k was amazing. I haven’t played since 7th. I’m trying to get into Heresy though.