Goatboy’s Oldhammer 40K – The Old Tools & Accessories We Put Away
Goatboy here with another look back at old editions of 40k. Today I want to look at all our old tools and accessories lost to time.
Once upon a time, we grimdark players had a giant drawer of accessories that used to be mandatory to play your army correctly. A few of things could be missed but most of the time the new way to play is just better. You have less to carry and less to lose in-between rounds. Let’s break out an Old Fashioned and remember the old times.
Army Rulebooks – 8th Edition and earlier
Do you remember the old days of army rule books you had to carry around to let your army work? You would end up having your main army book, a supplement for the army you played, a Forgeworld book you needed for one of your units, and finally a campaign book that also had some extra rules? Oh and you had to have a heavy rule book all in your backpack to be able to play? So many editions had so many band aids to try and get all this to work. We didn’t have a fancy cell phone that housed all the rules in a convenient location. Heck I remember having to print out everything to make sure I could give my opponent my rules so they could look while we threw down on the table top.
Templates – 7th Edition and earlier
This is one of the things I sorta missed as I had some sweet customer Chaos Templates made right before the edition changes and they died out. Initially you just needed your flamer template, a small blast, and the big blast template. As Forgeworld got involved you ended up having 5+ of the small templates to play any of those massed blast armies had. Then as Apocalypse came around you had even crazier templates that would sometimes show up for crazy tournaments like the old Adepticon events that allowed for all that Forgeworld stuff before it became something we all could play with.
Faction Stratagem Decks – 9th Edition
Hey do you remember the old Chaos Space Marine play deck that looked like the size of a Magic deck? Or what if you took the CSM deck, add in some supplement stuff, and even had your Thousand Sons or Death Guard army to it as well? There used to be a day when you had to take with you a 50+ card deck to every event to make sure you had at the rules so you could show your opponent. I know we still have decks right now but with some of the Apps out there you just don’t need to bring it out every time you throw down. Of course the biggest issue with these Stratagem decks was that 75% of it was trash that we still somehow had to take with us game to game.
Destroyed Vehicle / Damage Markers – 5th Edition and earlier
There was a whole edition where blown up vehicles created Terrain you could use thru out the game. You would have all these fake craters made to showcase where you got cover from. It was important to have these as you could utilize these to create walls and to other ways to funnel the enemy into your kill zones. Heck just getting cover was the best thing even if you died while trying to move over it.
Scatter Dice – 7th Edition and earlier
Scatter dice would win you games sometimes – especially when a buddy lost a unit into the chaos that is the edge of the battlefield and you won the game with 1 extra kill because of that. I sometimes miss the random nature of it but it was always such a pain to watch things scatter around the table top. I lost out of an Adepticon top 16 due to a little portal shooting 10 inches into the center of a table and giving up a kill point to my opponent. I lost by 1 kill in a game where math was at odds for both of us as I made saves but couldn’t hit any Grey Knights. Good times!
Printed Armylists – 8th Edition and earlier
With the big push of a digital Army builder from GW we have finally seen the removal of printed army lists from the common things you need to play this game. It is a huge thing and really helps lessen all the things you need to carry. I remember that most events had you print one for each opponent and then one for the TO themselves leaving you with needing 5-7 army lists to make it work for the event.
What old school 40K accessories do you miss the most?
