40K Friday: 40K, One Page Rules, The Old World, and Kings of War

 

One of the downsides of playing a Games Workshop game long-term is that they drop models and units out of the game - often without any kind of immediate replacement. This can wear on one's soul. Between buying it, building it, painting it, and playing with it - possibly for years - many of us get attached to these tiny figures and it feels bad to see a kind of forced retirement of something like that.  Blaster has just about burned out on the game after being into it for years. He is really displeased with the current state and edition of 40K and the whole 3-year cycle of book-buying and the regular replacement of perfectly good models. I get it and I've been doing this long enough that a lot of that bothers me less but it has been piling up for me too this year as a big chunk of the classic Blood Angels army was culled in the latest Codex and it really took the wind out of my sails for a while.

As just one example back in 2nd edition when dreadnoughts were still metal the BA's got a special dread with a unique combination of weapons called the Furioso. This continued into 3rd. Then somewhere in 4th or 5th we got a brand new plastic kit that made 3 different dreadnought versions unique to the chapter:

This kit made the Furioso, the Death Company dread, and the Librarian dreadnought - all unique units. There was some weapon interchangeability with the Furioso and the DC dread but but you still had the options of dual fists, dual claws, or mixing in a frag cannon with one of those and then the librarian dread had his own special gear and look.

These were all great and the librarian dread was very unusual in being a vehicle that could lead your army since it was a character. 

If you can't tell I love this kit and have built it multiple times. In fact I still have a couple that need to be built which didn't help my feelings on this.

Well, fast forward to the 10th edition Blood Angels release and these options are now gone from the codex. The librarian dread is no more. We do still have the standard space marine 'dex options for the Redemptor, Brutalis, and Balistus - fine. The Furioso is gone - if you paint your Brutalis red it looks the part at least but no special rules or equipment apply anymore. The Death Company dreadnought is still a separate datasheet at least but it's not all that different from the regular Brutalis and neither one has a frag cannon option so that's gone too. For this particular edition we do have the index rules for these things and so we can still make it work but it's debatable if and what kind of Legends rules these will have for the next edition and going forward. So it's going to be swimming upstream to use any of these models in 11th.

Dealing with this for years means you expect it here and there but when it hits a big chunk of a favorite army it hits harder. You might start looking for a refuge from the constant grind. I dug back into One Page Rules looking for relief. It's there, to a degree. Grimdark Future (the 40k type module) has rules for many obsolete 40K units that are perfectly valid and they even divided "Battle Brothers" (firstborn marines) from "Prime Brothers" (primaris marines) and then each of those has subdivsions into the various specialist chapters like "Blood Brothers", "Wolf Brothers", "Dark Brothers" etc. Under the Blood Brothers list there are options for all of these dreadnoughts including the psyker option. So there are ways to keep them on the table within a modern set of rules. This is honestly pretty gratifying to see.

The other option of course is to just play an old version of the game. I have kept all of my old rules and codexes from each edition so I have the full range of options. I do like this idea but I can also tell you "edition bleed" is real so trying to play an old version at times and the current version at other times ... it's more challenging than you think as rules from various editions collide in your head. There is defintely some nostalgia at play here too and if I can get one of the crew to try it I will make the attempt but I suspect using a different set of rules - like OPR - is probably smarter in the long run.

The only downside to OPR is that they change up the rules and the army lists once per year. They did make the promise that it will only be once per year - unlike GW's quarterly (or more) rules updates - but it still does change once per year, which can cause some upset when your army gets nerfed. I still think it's easier to live with than GW's current approach. 

A similar thing happened with fantasy. When GW killed off classic Warhammer Fantasy after 8th edition and replaced it with Age of Sigmar we were left with a completely different setting, the outright elimination of many armies and dramatic changes to others, and a completely different approach to the rules. If you had been playing Warhammer for 20 or 30 years when it happened there just was not much left that looked very familiar. Along comes Kings of War and, well, look at this - square bases, large blocks of units, similar maneuvering, and a lot of very familiar-looking armies. It was an incredibly welcoming refuge for orphaned Warhammer players. It was also willing to make some interesting changes such as eliminating individual model removal and cutting way back on magic items and spells. It was a little less flavorful in some ways but it worked really well and felt like your units were doing the bulk of the work, not your tooled-up level 4 wizard with Von Carsten's Ring riding on a dragon. Hey, nobody said Warhammer didn't have a few problems - but this was a well-done approach that respected what had come before. 

The only negative thing I will say is that over the course of 3rd edition and now going into 4th edition (coming in December) is that Mantic is really looking to promote their own setting and put it out in front rather than being a simple shelter for old Warhammer players. If I'm being honest I don't care at all about their World of Pannithor - not the background, not the armies unique to it, and not the fiction they are publishing. I get it, they are trying to build their own thing and I certainly understand that from the company's point of view, but there is no lack of settings in the fantasy genre and for miniatures I am anchored pretty deeply into the Old World of Warhammer.

Now when a beloved game goes out of print there are usually some fan driven options as well  - like OPR -  and they can be really good. Heck I played some NetEpic 25+ years ago when GW dropped support for Space Marine/Titan Legions and it is still around today! Warhammer had Ninth Age and Warhammer Renaissance seems to have some fans but GW eventually did the unthinkable and brought it back!

They even added a new army this year - Cathay!

Warhammer: The Old World is a truly unexpected gem. They brought back the old setting (pretty much), the old armies (pretty much), and even the old miniatures line (pretty much). The rules are new and are a really nice mix of things from old editions with some new ideas mixed in and I think most people were genuinely shocked to see this kind of product line coming from this company. It was a real effort to bring something back to life, not a token Specialist Games one-off book. It's just amazing and it absolutely kneecapped my interest in Age of Sigmar and even some of my feelings for Kings of War. 

I have a few armies for Sigmar that I will keep for Sigmar, either because they are unique to that game or because I am not going to rebase yet another army. These are my Stormcast Eternals, my Fyreslayers, my Seraphon on team law, then my Chaos Warriors and all of my chaos daemons for team chaos. The rest, including Undead, Beastmen, and some of the Chaos Warrior stuff are being retasked for Old World and I am pretty happy about going square-based with these. 

Who thought we would see these guys hitting tables again as part of a new army?!

So yes, as the years and the editions roll by it is possible to find refuge from much of the chaos. I'm still going to play 40K, but I'm also going to play some OPR. I will pay some attention to Age of Sigmar and Kings of War but I am heavily leaning in to Old World, and I am happy to have the options - some really good options.

The I-Took-A-Month-Off Update Post

 

It wasn't really planned but it ended up working out that way. No particular crisis, just fell down the priority list in a busy month. I do plan to do more here in November and December to finish the year strong. 

That said last night was our 3rd Halloween in this house and years 1 & 2 we had all of one trick-or-treater each year. We do live out in the country a bit and the houses are spread out and there are no street lights so we just assumed that was normal. Then last night we had at least twenty! So it almost turned into a crisis. Had to pull some reserves out but it ended up OK. We do a lot of outside decorating so maybe that has some kind of cumulative effect and it finally came together this year.

The Temple campaign continues - I stopped posting about it here but we have not stopped playing. I will start catching up on session reports next week and link over to the Obsidian Portal report for each one as reading the players' take each week has been a lot of fun. I do love having a steady, regular campaign with a real commitment from the players so it's a good thing right now. 

I have picked up some new RPG stuff - rulebooks and supplements here and there. The revised Necessary Evil set came in, as did the anniversary edition of Night Train for Deadlands so the Kickstarter stuff is feeding that need but I am trying to maintain focus and not get distracted with other games.

We haven't been playing much in the way of miniatures lately but of course that hasn't stopped me from reading rules and acquiring figures. Last month the big 40K focus was all the new Blood Angels stuff  so I am amassing a nice new pile of Primaris Blood Angels that I will be working on for the foreseeable future. I've decided to treat them almost as a separate new army - combined with the Primaris stuff I already have - and see what I can do using that mindset. More on 40K stuff next week.

My dissatisfaction with the current state of 40K in general did send me off down a seemingly inevitable path: Exploring One Page Rules and Grimdark Future. This is a set of rules (and figures) that have been developing for around 5 years now as a lighter (and cheaper) replacement for 40K. The basic rules are free, the army lists and builder are free, and the bigger Advanced Rules document is all of $4.99. The rules are solid, the army lists re-create every 40K faction (including Knights) and add some new ones as well and they also have 3d printer files for a bunch of alternate figures for these armies too.

Now I admit the OPR/GDF fanatics showing up in every damn 40K group or forum over the last few years had me rolling my eyes on an almost daily basis. When someone in a 40K forum asks about a particular army or rule problem they have encountered I don't need three people telling them to  go play OPR games - it got to be really irritating and I think it's bad behavior to evangelize one game every time someone mentions a different game. The answer to every 40K rules question is not "go play Grimdark Future" and this habit amongst some of its players put me off of the whole thing for quite a while. 

But ...

Seeing my Space Marines losing units this codex ... seeing my Orks losing units to Legends ... knowing my beloved Grey Knights are rumored to be getting a revamp next year, and then seeing the Blood Angels losing multiple unique characters ... I felt like I had to take a look at other options. Having done that now I have to tell you that it is a very very good option indeed. I won't get too into it here but I will talk more about it next week too.

Oh look they decided to combine the 4 books I bought a few years ago into one and add in the minor powers as well - maybe I'll pick it up down the road.

Now besides the 40K and 40K-adjacent stuff I also got into a WW2 mood and decided to revisit my Flames of War stuff. I had been working on a North Africa Mid War setup with British, Americans, Germans, and Italians, but I just wasn't feeling it. With a couple of books about Soviet tank units sitting on myself I started looking at what I had and ended up working on T-34s and KV-1s for a mid-war eastern front army. It looks like I have enough Germans to make a decent opposing force for them as well but getting the Russians built and painted is the priority right now. It's going to take some time but the numbers are still smaller than most of my 40K armies so I'm going to prioritize it and see how much I can get done in November. 

I also picked up the new 3rd edition rulebook for Bolt Action. Haven't read it yet but I have some starter sets sitting around and for this game I want to focus on the Pacific option and finally build those Marine and IJA forces sitting on the shelf now. This will probably come after I get the FOW stuff at least built and basecoated so it may be next year but reading the rules and sketching out a force for each side will give me some non-paint work to do. 

Boardgame-wise I picked up the 40th anniversary (!) edition of Axis and Allies which I will likely manage to play sometime soon. Other than that I added a few wargames that I likely will not get to play anytime soon but hopefully that changes. The occasional eBay deal plus GMT's annual Fall sale plus some of their P500's fulfilling now as well mean I have to find some new shelf space this month. It's not a terrible problem to have but it's a still a problem on some level.

So there's the catch-up talk - steady RPG time, continued work on old miniatures while checking out some new stuff and some new wargame stuff as well. More on all of this next week!