Hi all! I am living in limbo at the moment largely due to a complicated and ever delayed house move. Hopefully, I will be set back up and Oldhammering again by late summer and have plans for a far more spacious (yet not so light) painting area in the near future. In the short term, I have to start boxing up my collection for transportation. For the last month or so things have been neatly stacked up in the conservatory but they are in no way ready for shifting via burly men. It's funny, the last time I moved, my Old School Warhammer collection fitted neatly in a single box and now it's a sprawling mess spread across multiple locations!
It just goes to show how much lead a man can collect in seven years, eh? It's astonishing when I look at it all. Anyway, as I was 'tidying up' (what this really means is flicking through my stack of old Warhammer mags while the wife doesn't notice my laxity) I came across this little ad in White Dwarf 138 and as far as I can tell it is the very last advert for Warhammer Fantasy Battle Third edition.
Time to fetch the tissues?
Not that I was actually playing Warhammer Fantasy Battle at this time. I had moved on, as many of us had I think, to the glory of the Big Box Games. I can recall hours of playing and modelling time being pumped into the first edition of Space Marine and the immortal Bloodbowl and the demise of 'classic '80s style Warhammer' passed me by.
Of course, when my interest in the game was rekindled after a re-read of the WFB rulebook in 1995 it was too late. Fourth edition just didn't cut my mustard, even after I tried so damn hard to get into it. Luckily, this was the era of Hogshead and it's period of publishing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, so I switched systems. It still missed GW's glory boy (at least my preferred version of it) but there were at least loads of great spin-off games still being released.
Even ten years later after the birth of the internet as a mass media outlet, my beloved Third Edition of Warhammer was practically impossible to find reference too online.I still clung to my battered copy of the rulebook and felt myself to be the only person in the world who loved that edition like no other and saw every subsequent edition as a watered down version of something once so special.
Looking back over this advert, I find it all a bit cynical really. One final push on stock in the knowledge that a new edition was being developed just around the corner. But I guess that is just the nature of business, eh? Still, Warhammer Fantasy Battle Third Edition is played more often now than it has been for decades. So there is a little happy ending to this ramshackle blog post.
Why don't you do yourself a favour and pull out your rulebook and organise a game of WFB3 with your mates this week? You know you deserve it!
Orlygg
Last year you told me you never even tried a game of 4th. If that's the case I challenge you to give it a go!
ReplyDeleteBy 'tried a game' I meant with another real life player. All I ever did with 4th edition is fiddle around with the plastic models in my bedroom and try out the rules a bit. I worked so hard to like it and for it to capture the magic of 3rd. It failed. ):
DeleteThough, with hindsight - a ruleset is, by and large, only as good as the people you are playing with. With this in mind I accept your challenge - but there must be skaven!!!
DeleteI think this would be an epic blog post: The Day Orlygg Entered The Nineties. :-D
DeleteI think the world might end with the impossibility of it all!!! (;
DeleteHouse moving isn't much fun is it? I'm in the middle of looking for a new geek pad myself. The thought of moving my hand made terrain... :-O
ReplyDeleteAgreed. As I type I can see the cabinet full of hundreds of painted '80s Citadel. How on earth am I going to move that lot!!??
DeleteRe Snickit's comment , I have pondered before running a similar skirmish in multiple editions of GWs game. In my case it was 40K but it could work just as well with WFB if you made up a simple Orcs vs Dwarves or whatever matchup then saw how it played and felt in the differing versions of the rules.
ReplyDeleteI nice idea. It would be fun to try and play a scenario with each turn using each edition of the game. For example; turn one first edition, turn two second edition and so on. You'd need a super geek rule lawyer to make it workable though, someone who knew the subtle (and not so subtle) changes between editions. Certainly a crazy idea to play with!! (:
DeleteSwitching every turn might be a bit too bamboozling for my tiny mind, but it would certainly make a heck of a special game! Running multiple short games would take a lot longer but it might be interesting to see how the same initial Boar Boyz charge worked across the decades.
DeleteIf you want to be really bizarre, a similar scenario in 40K could be drummed up - go from Orcs vs Dwarves with artillery and two heroes each to Orks vs Squats with some artillery and two heroes each. I keep trying to convince my modern 40K chums to try converting their armies to Rogue Trader for a comedy night of 1987 wackiness.
I had similar thoughts to you re 4th edition. When it came out I didn't like the minis that came with it and thought it was dumbed down to appeal to 12 year olds. It was the start of me moving away from GW stuff really, especially the oversized minis and focus on massively overpowered characters. I did get into the new version of blood bowl that came out in the early 90s as the rules were very well done for a game like that - the minis less so but I had to wear that to play it.
ReplyDelete"Dumbed down to appeal to 12 year olds" is a perfect description. However, I loved the complexity and depth of the game as a 12 year old myself so I have never quite understood the requirement to simplify things.
DeleteI always find it interesting how the same game system can get very different interpretations from people. One man's "dumbed down" is another man's "streamlined", one person's "overly complex" is another's "nuanced".
DeleteMy experience with edition shifts is more with RPGs than Wargames but a lot of the same language is used. Some people immediately click with a new edition, others stick to the older ones even decades after it's out of print. You do sometimes wonder if they're talking about the same game system as you've seen when they sing the praises of something you can't stand or bemoan the horribleness of your favourite game ever. Doubly so when it's someone who doesn't seem to know as much about the history of a game as you!
Just this week I was having a conversation with a man who only really knows D&D 5th Ed, the latest edition, while I own basically every edition apart from that. I was getting quite irate as he trash-talked parts of the older editions and talked abotu how much of an improvement 5th Ed was but it became apparent that he was just interested in VERY different things than I was.
well 3rd is more alive then ever
ReplyDeleteWell said! Hurrah!!
DeleteI had to hire a shipping container for my collection last time I moved, not room in one, a whole one. That was nine years ago and the collection has grown, I shudder to think about moving it again.
ReplyDeleteMe and Snicket continued to play 3rd over the years, at first because I made him but later on a very occasional basis. Now I play 3.5 ed as there are so many options to be taken from 4th that speed play and make for better outcomes.
A shipping container?? Is the legendary collection of Erny really that big?
DeleteA shipping container yes but with room to walk to the back down the middle. The collection now exists in the loft, garage and basement, not all of it old citadel/marauder there is a lot of historical stuff too.
Delete