The Trouble with Oldhammer

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.

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 3^rd 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.

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.

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.

The Castellax, the new version
of the Castellan

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.