My 40k Story (and why I loathe GW.)

[amachan 25655xp 6]

Last weekends XLBS really made me think about my wargaming history and what I liked and what was great and ultimately wishing Games Workshop hadn’t ruined 40k. This is my story about how I got into, got out of and failed to get back into 40k again. And why I have such a problem with Games Workshop’s games and why I will never get back into them again.

It all started with Dawn of War, the video game back in the day. That really got me into the lore of the 40k universe and I was looking at the tabletop game at the time. It was way too expensive for me at that time, but I did get a box of orks and some of the old plague marines. I enjoyed building and painting them even though I was terrible at it, but that is kind of where it was at.

One of my first miniatures ever painted.

Then I came across Miniwargaming and their battle reports that were amazing at the time, this was around 5th edition 40k. I really wanted to get into it, it looked great and I loved the way it played. Then on came 6th edition and I also found Beasts of War. And I decided I will go on and learn the rules, I illegally downloaded the rulebook and printed the rules out so I could start learning them. I then also bought some more models, this time Imperial Guard as that was where I wanted to go. Then along came 7th edition and I really started to like the look of the Space Wolves, but then came a friend who was also interested in it and together we decided to get going with it. I managed to get some money and really started investing in Space Wolves models and painting supplies as I was really wanted to get into it. Them me and my friend decided to both really get into it and got the Dark Vengeance starter box. We split the box, he took chaos and I took the Dark Angels. By this time I had decided that Space Wolves with a bit of Imperial Guard support was going to be my main army, and I would do Dark Angels on the side. This was great.

I recall having this one part of a battle with Balthasar, my warlord for the Dark Angels in a melee combat with my friends Helbrute. They were going at it for most of the battle. Balthasar being far more skilled in melee combat with his higher weapon skill was just incredible hard to be hit by the slow and cumbersome Helbrute. But equally, while Balthasar was easily able to hit the Helbrute, his weapons struggled to penetrate the armour. This was easily the most epic fight I have had on the tabletop.

And then came 8th edition….. GW decided to overhaul their game as it was getting to bloated with random stuff. The game was perfectly fine before, that wasn’t what was needed to change. Yes, it was rather complex to get into, but an easy way in like Infinity does with Code One would have been the right answer. They simplified everything that gave the game it’s depth and added complexity to things that didn’t need it.

Right, so getting along with with 8th edition, I got the rulebook and the indexes for my armies so I could play and it played well, it just wasn’t as deep anymore and I often just got bored during the games. I tried to hold on as I had invested a ton of money, time and effort into building and creating my armies. I wasn’t just going to give up on it. Sticking with the older edition wasn’t really an option as everyone else was also playing 8th. So anyway, I went on to build and expand my armies and made some lore for my Space Wolf/Imperial Guard army. The game wasn’t as good anymore, but I could still enjoy hanging out with friends and building and collecting my army while we threw some dice in the meantime. I even entered a tournament at one point. So I was just hanging on.

A picture from said tournament.

Then came the release of the Space Wolves codex for 8th edition 40k….. The characters I had kitbashed/converted for my Space Wolves were mostly becoming invalid, their weapon options just weren’t there anymore. This included my Forge World dreadnought with its twin autocannon. I wasn’t going to rip apart my models and rebuild them, so this was a huge blow to me trying to hang on to 40k. I always like to play as WYSIWYG as possible as it helps paint the image in my mind for what is happening on the tabletop. So after a bit of time I decided to not leave 40k and focus on my Dark Angels. I also had a look around at what else was available as the lifeline for the normal space marines was written on the wall at this time as well due to the introduction of the primaris heresy. So I got some Adeptus Mechanicus as something to move forward with. But I really just lost all my mojo for 40k and I was just going to leave it there.

My Space Wolves/Imperial Guard Army

So some time and some other wargames later, I met some new friends and started to get into Age of Sigmar. The Total War: Warhammer game and its sequels really got me in the old Warhammer fantasy lore setting, which of course GW already nuked as well. But I had my Order of Heimdallr fantasy army that could easily work as Bretonnia for which there stil was a very outdated armybook. So I started to learn to play Age of Sigmar. It had some interesting things going in it, but there also were some rules that really annoyed me. But, playing games again with friends after COVID and all was great. So I started looking into making a proper army for Age of Sigmar. I wanted something that wasn’t changed all that much from the old fantasy world so I thought of Skaven. One of my friends already had Skaven so I went looking further and found the Lizardmen.

The Order of Heimdallr on top and my Lizardmen on the bottom.

In Total War: Warhammer I really enjoyed the use of cavalry so cold one riders where going to be one of the main things in the army for me. I then got the armybook and started building an army. I decided not to use GW models, but rather 3D print OnePageRules’ models instead as they fitted the lore better in my opinion and looked better than the outdated GW models. Things were going well and I was enjoying it. I even then announced that I was getting back into 10th edition 40k with my Dark Angels and Adeptus Mechanicus onwards. As I was paying close attention to the rules that GW were announcing I already started rewriting some to house rule them so the game would be more enjoyable for me. And then came the new armybook for the Lizardmen or battletome or whatever they are called. And out went all of the cold one riders, they just didn’t exist anymore. Some other models I was making for my army were gone as well and I was devastated again. This time I didn’t try to hold on to a sinking ship anymore and just got off GW games all together.

This is my story with 40k and Games Workshop in general. I just thought I’d share my story so people can hopefully understand where I am coming from with my problems with Games Workshop. And maybe I am not the only one, let me know what you think.

[taochi 6267xp 5]

You are not the only one. I met the GW guy early 80s in London and we had a blast. Alas, the company is now a corporate entity and all of the early creative insanity seems gone in favor of investors pleasing strategies. Granted, the miniatures are still exceptionally beautiful and the product quality overall top notch, yet the prices are stratospheric and one must admit, besides a gem such as Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game, the 40K and AOS rules have not aged well and continue to  embrace antiquated mechanisms. Finally, the constant modification of ‘lists’, leading to the antiquation of armies, is likely to drive away players. I ahve left GW behind and never intend to come back, save for their resuscitation of Battle Fleet Gothic and Space Hulk (maybe)… THere are far better rules out there in which you can put your old GW miniatures to good use.

[sundancer 42621xp 4]

I know that feeling. It’s hard to let go of things you’ve spend a lot on money and time on. That’s what happened with X-Wing to me.

That’s why small games look more and more appealing to me.

[pagan8thParticipant 9574xp 3]

My GW story is a longer… but briefer… if that makes sense.

I used to play WHFB 2nd edition. Loved the old world. Still have 2nd edition and Ravening Hordes.

Got out of touch with wargames for decades. Next purchase was Age of Sigmar Soul Wars. Never played it. Hate 40k universe for wargaming. Everyone is a fascist and/or evil.

Went nuts buying small games like Necromunda, Kill Team, Warcry, Speedfreeks. Hardly played them (some not at all). Bought more factions because I liked the sculpts.

Bought Blackstone Fortress (played once) and Cursed City (assembled, primed… that’s it.)

In short… I bought loads of stuff I don’t need and may never use except for RPG’s.

Also bought Middle Earth three times (I must be crazy): Escape From Goblin Town, Pelennor Fields, Osgilliath. I have plans to to use those in One Ring RPG.

May finally have got my buying under control.

[onlyonepinman 18055xp 5]

Although 40k was where it all started (well, technically it was Heroquest and Space Crusade), I was always more of an Old Worlder than a subject of the Imperium.  But even before they cancelled Warhammer Fantasy Battle, I was starting to get really frustrated due to lack of support for Bretonnia. I wasn’t as upset as a lot of people were when they moved to Age of Sigmar but it became pretty apparent pretty quickly that there was no place for Bretonnia in the Mortal Realms, not like the “Free Guilds”, so I never made the switch.

I’d already had my eyes opened for me by Beasts of War several years before (can’t remember exactly when) and started collecting Infinity miniatures as my primary source of science fiction, leaving the Grim Dark behind.  Therefore it wasn’t really that difficult for me to make the decision not to migrate to AoS and just keep the painted armies to use in other games (like Kings of War – where Bretonnia actually look much more in keeping).

In the years since I have pretty much stopped buy anything GW bar the occasional special edition (like the Eisenhorne and Gaunts Ghosts miniatures).  I grew so pissed off with their flip-pot paints that I switched to Army Painter and I hadn’t been using GW brushes for years.

These days, my interaction with GW is limited almost entirely to painting the occasional miniature for my brother. At the moment I have a few Blackstone Fortress character miniatures sat waiting and I might offer to do some of his Cursed City miniatures (characters only, of course).

[admiralandy 1642xp 2]

Hi Amachan,

Firstly when its been a big love of your life even though it was entirely yours, there’s an almost relationship ex-effect. Some folks are much more vitrolic about there former abusive GW partner.

Secondly, GW are trying to act like microsoft and the corporate dream, how can I sell you something making a nice profit, and then do it again. Which in the long run hits there player retention. They might have been able to get away with 15 years ago, when it was like a dozen books over 4 years, folks didn’t notice so much. But since they ramped it up to an industrial scale it does lose them players.

They only card they’ve got is nostalgia, there’s more talk about the old systems coming back Epic Horus v Age of Darkness, Warhammer v AoS. But there’s only so much to re-release and if the new version is crap is going to hinder them and not help. There’s a very Oldhammer movement too.

15 years ago they could have gotten away with it as the main game in town. But now, there’s the Perrys, Warlord, Wargame Atlantic, Northstar Minis with Stargrave, Frotgrave and Oathmark, Conquest Games, Gripping Beast, the Osprey Wargames and TooFatLardies.

Many of those are better games, metal and plastic mini makers etc, etc, and thats a far from exhaustive list of popular games or metal or plastic mini ranges, and not even mentioning Disney based games.

I wonder if in a few decades time we will talk about GW the way we talk about some Mini producers from the 70s…

 

[totsuzenheniParticipant 5651xp 2]

I think a ‘Code 40K’ simplified version of a more complex W40K is a good idea.

[hobbyhubParticipant 4169xp 5]

I, for one, am glad that GW is as good as it is at getting people into the hobby and as bad as it is at retaining them.

If the latter were not the case, there would be way less room for competitors to operate in and people looking for their products.

[amachan 25655xp 3]

Thank you for all your replies, they have been great!

[warbossd 4562xp 4]

Thanks for sharing @amachan.

I consider myself now an ex-GW gamer for very similar reasons.

I began with GW in 1986 with Blood Bowl first edition but quickly got drawn into WHFB 3rd edition and 40k Rogue trader.  Teenage me loved the almost unending and grindy games of 40k 2nd edition where I played Imperial Guard and Squats.

Obviously I didn’t have long to wait for half of my model collection to be rendered unusable with the elimination of the Squats from the game.

At Uni I switched to mainly RPGs as money was too tight to keep up with the miniatures hobby so I dropped out and stayed out due to work and family restrictions until 6th edition when I got back into miniatures in a big way.

Like you I discovered Beasts of War around this time too and to be honest that was probably the beginning of the end as now I realised that although the only games played locally were GW that this was not due to lack of choice.

I built a shiny new Necron army for 7th and then watched as all the models were made sub par and obsolete by the raft of new models for 9th edition (which I refused to buy). I tried AoS but found it sterile and tedious.

My first non GW games as I recall were first edition Deadzone, first edition Batman miniatures game both of which rekindled my enjoyment for mini wargaming after the trauma inflicted by my GW experiences, and thank God they did.

I still own 40k minis and AoS minis and as a favour will engage with guys at our club who need an opponent and won’t play a good game, but I don’t play any modern GW game out of choice any more.

I still get to use my 40k model collections using the One Page Rules Grimdark Future system which is great.

[grantinvanmanParticipant 2017xp 2]

I started with GW in 40k, 2nd edition, and then into Fantasy around 5th edition. At my peak, I ran the largest GW club in Canada, and the club was featured in White Dwarf twice – before GW gave up on Canada and moved to Memphis.

 

Somewhere around then, I also gave up on GW – and after two years or so of eBay flogging, I was out.

I started again a year ago – just to paint, and have had some fun. Gaming doesn’t interest me much, anymore.

 

 

[guillotine 16022xp 2]

Thanks for sharing @amachan and others.

I’ve been recently reorganising my hobby storage and unavoidably ran into bunch of my old 40k and WHFB armies. And man, does nostalgia hit hard at times. It’s the fond memories of the gaming and the gaming groups years (welp, decades!) ago. The time of my life when I would fall as sleep thinking about Warhammer and when all of my friends were wargamers or if they weren’t we would make them.

And I would actually have the option to back to gaming with the old miniatures and rules. There’s people at my club who do play 5th and 6th edition Warhammer and if I called my old friends they would probably be happy to come over for some games of 2nd edition 40k.

But I won’t. As I know the games would be disappointing. It won’t be like driving a classic car or listening to an old record. It will be just kind of shite. The modern games are just so much more fun and easier to play, and there’s many that work fine with those old models.

Speaking of old models, what I should do, is get painting some of them in old hammer style. And better yet, phone some of those old gaming pals and invite them over for some beverages and painting. That would be epic!

 

On the topic of loathing GW… While I’m not interested in their current games and if it was me, I would have taken them to different direction, I cannot say I loathe them.  Companies have to change and reinvent themselves or they will die. The competition for the time of the GW customer gets tighter every year, with people spending more time online, various forms of content and digital games. They’ve been in fact doing surprisingly well under all this change, despite holding on to the core tenets of building, painting and gaming which all take comparatively lot of time for a hobby. And hey, if the new direction isn’t for me, then I’m out, no hard feelings.

 

 

 

[bigfatfredParticipant 281xp 2]

I remember WHFB being really great – like, “OMG this is fantastic!!” kind of great.  But that was the 80s and I was a teenager.  I’ve played loads over the years and had loads of fun.  I really still like GW (apart from a patch in the late noughties when they were total dicks) and still play a load of Adeptus Titanicus, LOTR and Underworlds – I still can’t believe GW came up with a game like Underworlds. Its too good for them.

But I’m in my 50s now and there a soooo many great games out there, and 40k really is kind of meh these days – too complex, and un-necessarily so.  And game balance is shocking.  So it’s X Wing, Armada, MCP, Titanicus, Deadzone, 7TV and always ASOIAF for me.  I still have loads of GW minis that I should get round to selling but ya never know, GW may actually get a grip and do game development differently.  I won’t hold my breath.  The rumours going round are that Tom Clarke (current Ad Titanicus writer) tried to do something modern with new Epic and the grown-ups told him to make it play and feel like old Epic.  So they haven’t learned yet.

[frankdrebinParticipant 285xp 3]

It does sound as though you have been particularly unlucky with your miniature choices and what GW then decided to kill off.

If I can give a different perspective, I’m a 50+ year old gamer who first played Rogue Trader in the 80s and have played GW games on and off since. It has opened the door to me for a whole world of games and although I havent liked some editions (9th had far too many rules in different books, bloated command point/strategy card options and I couldn’t really be bothered to play it) 10th edition is really good fun to play. GW, I would dare to say contrary to the hate, listened to the community and brought out the 40k game that the public had been asking for. GW are not perfect, and some decisions made are very frustrating (I have always been an Old World fan and cant get into AoS) but they have given me a lot of happiness in the last 4 decades.

[deamonwolf 905xp 0]

i have a similar experance.

started with 7th Ed WHFB , went to 8th ed and the only way to run an army was mobs ., and loosing the extra armour point to the front for melee combat with sheild just destroyed the army , Dwarfs went from a slow ploding army that didnt stop for any one to having to be a gun line ( note i  liked close combat and in 7th ed , people discunted dwarfs in close combat)

played a beast man army and the guy quit turn 2 because my organ gun and 2 x 10 man hand gunner units were too powerful apparently.

 

i popped in and out of 8th ed until it was pulled but i only ever felt dissappointed with the rule set.

 

i moved to WH40K with Grey knights and Space wolveswent to tournements and had lots of fun up until 9th ed , where things stared going down hill, i started finding more and more rules lawers and A*rsehole players in tournements

they then brought out the story where fenris was filled with deamons , and the inquisition told the space wolves , kill everyone on the planet or we will kill you .

that cost my love of the wolves ( i understand that they were trying to progress the story but i couldnt play them after that )

 

then the thousend sons grey knights starter box came out and the grey knights got some cool stuff , but the thousend sons were just so powerful you couldnt block thier powers .

 

i went to the 2019 LGT and was just holding by my finger nails , i played 2 Custodian guard and 2 Thousend sons armys , and had okay games but lost . , then i played a Guard player who rules lawayered everything  i did to the point that for every thing i did i had to make sure i had the rule book open at the page that it said i could do what i was doing .

I quit in turn 3 because I couldn’t take it and told him take the win, we were right at the bottom of the tables and the win meant nothing in the grand scheme of things.

 

that showed me that the community GW had fostered was turning rancid

 

i moved away from GW games into Star Grave , Infinity , Silver Bayonet and one page rules and have not looked back as people are veteran gamers and there for fun even when at a tournament

 

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