Goatboy’s OldHammer 40K – The Craziest Relics From Old Editions
Back in the day you gave your 40K characters artifacts of power, lost relics, or a crazy experimental tech. Here are some of the craziest ones GW ever made!
Back in the day you didn’t have enhancements for your characters. You would instead get some kind of artifact of power, a relic of some old age, or a crazy experimental upgrade. All of these things would be available in your codex for a price. Most of the time they were some kind of awesome weapon but other times they were something you could build your army around. Let’s look at some of the ones I remember or hated to see.
Dark Eldar – Webway Portal – 3rd Edition Codex
There was a time when your table edge was where your reserves came from. Or you had some other method to deploy them but in the Dark Eldar Codex, got you a relic that you could place on the table top and create your battlefield edge. This would let you pour out all your units from this point and let you “quickly” get across the field with your fragile little pain elves and into the enemy. I remember there was some rule that if you died before you could place it your army couldn’t come out but it was so long ago. I just always hated this little jerk who would jump out and locked in my portal – DRAT!
Space Wolves – Saga of the Bear – 5th Edition Codex
There was a time when your Thunder Wolf riders counted as toughness 4 so any strength 8 or above weapon would instant kill him if you failed your 3+ invulnerable storm shield save. The Saga of the Bear gave you Eternal Warrior which let you ignore instant death weapons and helped me create a giant ball of Thunder Wolf Nonsense to take on and let me win an Adepticon Championship one year. Oh the glory days of the Space Goats taking it to a the players as they rushed across the battlefield. FOR FENRIS!
Chaos Daemons – Lash of Submission – 6th Edition Codex
This was one of the Chaos Rewards you could default too. It was a 12”, 2d6 shots, and strength whatever your model had “gun”. I would use this plus some psychic shenanigans to get my Daemon Prince up to strength 10 and cause a pile of penetrating hits to any vehicle I ran into. They were such a threat to the newly released Knights. It was my favorite weapon from that time period.
Chaos Space Marines – The Black Mace – 6th Edition Codex
This was a crazy little weapon. If you caused an unsaved wound the model would have to take a toughness test and if failed they would be removed from the game. You could give this to your Daemon Prince and it would just come in hot and wreck whoever they get into contact with. I killed many things with this dumb little Mace.
T’au Empire – Command and Control Node – 7th Edition Codex
This one let your commander giver the unit he is joined with Twin-Linked. This let you reroll misses and on a giant unit of murder machines you can see how this is just brutal. I remember those days of the old suits just blasting you to death and this was always on one of the Commander units.
Orks – Mega Force Field – 7th Edition Codex
This replaces the old KFF with a better one that gives you a 4++ to shooting attacks. Remember this was back in the day when having army wide 4++ was important in letting you survive getting wrecked by Guard shooting. You would take this for one of your dudes hiding in the middle and watch as all your special little boys survived a bit longer than average.
What other relics do you remember from the old days? Most of the time they were cool weapons but sometimes you got some extra bonuses like the T’au got for their Commanders basically not shooting anything and just being Wing Dudes. It is a wild time as we have seen some of the newer enhancements become major factors in how the army works while in the past they were fun ways to spend a few extra points like a Plasma Pistol or Meltabomb.
There’s no school like the old school!
