Warhammer 40K Retro: You Won’t Believe How We Used to Make Armylists!
Goatboy here to talk about the crazy ways we used to make 40K army ists back in the day. How many of you remember these?
Goatboy here with an article talking about some of the old issues we had to deal with in past editions. I have been playing this game for a long time and will say right now is probably the “easiest” it’s been for a player to see your army. The blueprint in how your army is built is easy to read. It wasn’t always the case and today I want to talk about the top 5 things I experienced back in the dark shrouded years of the early editions of Competitive 40k.
#5 – Cute Names for Your Army Units
There was a time when writing your list was how you presented your own sense of humor for your opponent. You would name your units in ways to troll one of your friends on the tabletop or even utilize it to confuse them in some way or form. I remember many of a time seeing a listed unit name with some kind of “screw you” Goatboy theme added to it. We would have units that had “memories” of earlier battles and hard-fought victories versus local scourges everyone feared to play, like Jon Wolf and dreaded Tallarn Desern Raiders guardsmen.
#4 – Simplified Units With Points, But No Equipment Listed
The older versions of 40k would utilize equipment as a method to balance their point costs. Almost every choice had a point cost and so some people would write up very simplified armylists to try and hide things in there – like equipment choices. Or not list it at all so if you happened to see a Marine with a Plasma Pistol you wouldn’t question if they actually paid for it or not. How can you tell if that weird Tyranid thingie had the oddball organic gun of doom? Doesn’t all their guns spit death in some form or another? This was abused quite a bit, and required vigilance to ensure what you saw on the tabletop was actually paid for in the armylist.
#3 – Armylist With “Counts-as” Conversion Instructions
There was a time where the conversion of an army was king in how you presented your list. It was almost like the theme of your build mattered so much in the day and age of Best Overall being the true winner of an event. I remember many a list that had to bring a very large instruction booklet to help the player understand what weird model what was on the tabletop. It didn’t help that some of the armies that lent themselves to this also had a very weird set of rules that interacted. Again, some people used it for truly amazing total conversion hobby masterpieces, while others used it to explain away last minute mini-fill-ins they scraped together just in time to play.
#2 – Hand Written Armylist
Oh, the hope was they at least used Excel to build out an armylist but the hand written list was always a pain. They would write out each unit in some kind of scrawl with a hard to read point cost on the side. You hope they added it up or used a calculator as point costs weren’t nearly as clean as they are now. Did you know they had 8-point upgrade costs? Gone were the days of using base power 5 to 10 for each “upgrade” and instead you would end up with things like 1979 points or other fun things so having anything handwritten was a pain to double check and verify.
#1 – Armylist Printed on Receipt Paper – WTH!
This is a call out to a good buddy who had to bring in a receipt printed list for a local tournament. You could say at least the points were added up using a number adding machine even if it was on flimsy receipt paper. It was wild to see it rolled up and presented to their opponents and the look on their faces. It was probably one of the weirdest army Lists I have seen in a while and thankfully BCP and the digital age has removed a lot of these from landscape that is competitive 40k.
What armylist horror stories do you have from back in the day? Dish!
