Nostalgia, it’s a great thing, you can while away many hours
looking back on things from the past fondly, basking in the warm reassuring glow of
a less complicated time.
Hobby nostalgia is a growing thing apparently, as the kids of the late
80s to mid-90s become adults, they look back at their childhood, when Games Workshop
was the coolest shop in the world, that transported you to a fantasy realm full
of treasures and adventure, before you realised they were a business that
wanted your money, before you became a jaded, bitter adult.
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Shaitan from the Oldhammer forum's
really cool Khorne Chaos Champion |
Some take this nostalgia very seriously. They call
themselves the Oldhammer community, and it has many admirable traits, they take the hobby in
the spirit it was presented at the time, when the rules were a bit more
slapdash, the armies weren’t as structured and the armies were smaller and made
of lead. They want to play with models they loved as kids, playing the game as
a friendly RPG-like experience as it was designed in the late 80s, they favour
the late 80s 3rd Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle and the Rogue
Trader Warhammer 40,000 rules, complicated tomes with a lot of mechanics and
imbalances that overcomes that with the narrative driven, GM-led gameplay it
suggests. They claim to appreciate a time when GW wasn’t afraid to be funny or
satirical, saying today’s books are overly serious and po-faced.
These are all good and fine ideals, the models have an aesthetic
that is easy to admire, they were all sculpted by hand, each model is an
individual, made to be a particular person in a force, when a unit might have
10-20 models at most, and an army rarely had more than 50 models in it, this
was a lot more feasible than with the modern editions. In effect, each
character comes imbued with the personality by the sculptor, and a lot of the
time, this really shows through.
There are problems though, one is prevalent in almost all
hobby related communities, an attitude that
ranges from distrust to outright
hatred of Games Workshop. There is more though, there is a sense of
superiority, that lead models are inherently better than today’s plastic and
resin, that sculpting by hand is inherently better than the CAD and 3D
prototyping assisted sculpting, that the rules were better when there weren’t
as many inherent restrictions and while they claim to love the humour of the
period, I’ve yet to see much of that humour manifest itself in their discussions.
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Brand new Champion of Khone, similar
but different, better? Thats subjective. |
These aren’t universal truths, and they manifest themselves
in massively silly ways. People decry every new model Games Workshop release,
no matter the quality, out of hand. They compare models to older versions and
claim the old ones have more “soul” or “character” or other such indefinable
qualities, seemingly unaware or unable to admit the role that nostalgia plays
in how they’re looking at the miniatures.
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The Legio Cybernetic, original
80s Robots, cerified Oldhammer |
I’ve seen people argue that the original Legio Cybernetica
Robots, great models and really inspiring, are much better than the recent
Forge World equivalents that were inspired by them. Maybe I’m bias, I never
owned the original Robots, they weren’t in the game anymore when I started,
thanks to some ridiculously complicated rules, but I just can’t see how anyone
would argue with the idea that the Forge World ones aren’t just the same
concept but done to a better standard.
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The Castellax, the new version
of the Castellan |
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The Vorax is a reimagining of
the Crusader |
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, Oldhammer is just
the Games Workshop/Wargaming hobby from when you were 10 until whenever a
person you liked touched your genitals and you reassessed your priorities. It’s
as simple as that, and that’s fine, just admit it and don’t let bitterness ruin
yours, or other peoples, hobby.
