The 40k Lorecast - Bonus Episode - History of 40k - Episode 0 - How we started and what the show is all about

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

On our first ever episode we discuss what the History of 40K is. what the show will be about, and the topics we plan on discussing. We then do a personal one about our journeys into the game. With a breakdown of how we started the game and what we love about it.PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the history of 40K, a 40K lorecast series with John Barsati and Bradchester. This guy. On today's episode, we'll be discussing what the hell this is and why we're here. Do we know that yet? No. So first episode, TBD, everything you guys are watching or listening to right now may change. But let's get into that. What are we actually trying to do here today, John? So the history of 40K is a biweekly.

show focusing on the history of the tabletop game of 40K. When I say biweekly, I mean every other week because in stupid English, the term can be either twice a week or every other week. So I say biweekly and then clarify what biweekly means. So every other week, we will be joined by a guest to discuss elements of the tabletop game over the years. Did you say table top? Find the table top.

Every other week, we will be joined by a guest to discuss the elements of the tabletop game over the years. I'm a little disappointed because you had the chance to say we're going to discuss such diverse elements as... Well, we'll get to that in a second. So for all of you listening to this, because I'm going to release this on Spotify first, this is actually going to be our first YouTube show. So if you go to YouTube, you will see Brad and I discussing this with a guest.

So it'll be available on both platforms, YouTube and Spotify. TPD on a lot of this stuff, guys. We're literally recording this today. I'm going to release it in next couple of days and we'll see what happens. But let's talk about what we're doing and why we're doing it. What we're going to be doing is doing deep dives into the history of the game on the tabletop, as opposed to the lore, which we have in our other series. We really want to focus with our guests on things like how the game was picked up,

where you could buy it, how you could learn about it, you know, what the game was, what the rules were, what the player, base was, what factions were available. A lot of them. It is a lot of it was what the game was wildly different over different times. But it wasn't even just the game was different. The community was different. How you interacted with the community was different.

You damn kids before the internet. Or, to be fair, is almost worse when the internet first came out for being honest. It didn't matter to me because I didn't know about the internet until recently. Good job. So we'll be doing things like dives into a lot of the fun and the crappy of it all. You know, void grenade missions. They were awesome and they should all come back. The player base would have an uprising if that happened.

Great. Right the end of 10th edition. We're bringing back the void grenade mission. Surprise. For those who don't know, we actually did a very fun episode on that, talk about GW rules oopsies. And that's what kind of started spurring this, is talking about, well, what was the game like? And we want to focus on some of the hilarity and tragedy of these moments,

Space Wolf Terminators with missile packs. Oh, man. Something, you hope they jam. Yeah, yeah. You remember that one, don't you, Brad? Sustained dice, ever-increasing circle. Yeah. Because our goal with this is to really express, like, the joys of the game.

And we also are going to spend time in this. Another big request we've had is talking about ancillary games. So we're going to talk about video games, movies, other things that are kind of adjacent to it. I mean, my... Space Hulk, Battlefield Gotham. Everything that goes with... Secret level.

Everything that goes with it. Cadidly, I was playing Dawn of War last week because of the titanium mod pack that's available for it. These games, this stuff lasts and that's why we love it so much. And we're also going to talk about movies, TV shows, other things that may not have been

40K but resembled enough to scratch a niche. I'm going to be honest, guys. I don't know how to cover the Starcraft thing because I really don't want to get double sued by GW and Blizzard at the exact same time. We should use clips of each and just keep intertwining them. Oh, God. Just do you realize that the speed that Seasons desist would come in? Because I don't know if people are aware, Blizzard's mildly on the internet.

Still going to go for it. Seasoned to sis. Still mad about the lore cats. I'm still going to go for it, by the way. I also want to talk about some of the drama of the game. In the future cast, we're also going to talk about. about some of the drama that has surrounded this game. Cheating, poor sportsmanship,

abusive rules is written, AKA raw, et cetera. Which, to be fair, I actually think that, well, we're going to talk to later episodes on it, but you're like, oh, cheating in poor sportsmanship. You're like, the raw actually was the thing

in the dark days of GW was a bigger deal, and it caused more problems because that's when they were the gods on high of Mount Olympus. Because for a long time, we'll talk about this in the history, GW just went away for a while. Yeah. Here are your rules. See in two years.

But there's a typo. Is there? And here's a thunderbolt. Deal with it. This isn't written correctly. So you say. It might be in one of the interpretations. And I will say I want to call out,

I'm not going to do this as an effort to call out individuals because I don't feel like ruining people's social media, but really talk more about some of these bad things that occurred and how the game dealt with it. You know, hell, ITC. We will be doing many episodes talking about the birth of ITC who came out to handle this problem. But you'll notice today there's no guest. And that's because it's John and Brad time. Sounds like a great time. One of Brad's favorite things.

Yes, it is. So we're doing this as a bonus first episode to discuss ourselves how we got into the game, some of the bits and bobs around that. Things like, you know, when we started, how we started, et cetera. So let's start with that, Brad. What year and which edition did you start in? The year is weird for me because I started with lore first because I was... We're talking about the tabletop, Brad.

What year did you start? No, but that's the thing. I dabbled in, don't mess with my origin story. I'm joining the mystery. Because the origin of the story, you're trying to get credit for years you didn't play. So, when did you start playing? Competitively in 2009, was when I started playing around. So 2000.

No, because I played some with Sniggs. And when he had all his Space Wolf Terminators and stuff. Oh, God. And I was like, this is insane. And then I started reading the lore. And I was like, this is the best thing ever. And then I had my first open heart in 2000. And I went, I can't go anywhere.

And I was getting dropped off at the game store and started playing. And everybody was super excited to beat the crap out of me in something. So I was also old when I started. I was 29. There we go. That's a hell old. That story you tell is so great because it's impossible to figure out the age. Because you say, I was getting dropped off at the game store, like a child being dropped

off at somewhere to go. But you also just had open heart surgery. So it's very confusing as to what's happening here, Brad. Look, I was an old man and I wasn't allowed to drive because I had a heart hugger on. Yeah. And I couldn't do crap. And I have the attention span of a gnat. So about eight seconds into being to the store, I went, I want to know how to do something.

And I started learning how to play fantasy battles and Ramer 40K competitively, not just a thing. But also at that point in time, why I got so. excited about this is I knew how to play second edition. And right when I had that, that's when third edition dropped. Yeah. So I was super excited to go, I felt like I was on a, I could start on an even playing field if everybody was playing a new edition. Also, that wasn't the case. I got so clubbed in the beginning because I knew nothing at all. It was my first field without miniature. Wild back then. We'll talk about that. Those rules weren't crazy. So I on the flip side started in second edition. Because it would have been about

1993, 94 somewhere in that realm. You were like a baby though. Well, yeah, because it was a friend of mine had actually a pretty good collection of Eldar, space marines, and something else was the third one. I don't have so many factions back then, so I

couldn't have been that many of them. And played in his basement. We played what people have actually called Floorhammer, where you just kind of make terrain out of books and crap that you have. that was the case for a really long time by the way oh that was the only way to play the game i mean that's that was when you would get out and play it's like they didn't make terrain and it was god gw was expensive now it was expensive then too so it was not even competitive oh whoa whoa back with that

thing into reverse man yeah no it was not even even the same dimension it you had 11 dollars because you were a child yeah in the beginning you could buy an entire army for nothing, basically, or at least you could buy lots. I bought actually, not lots as in an amount, lots as in armies that people had traded in, because I had the benefit, the good fortune where I thought all stores were like this. I had the bits guy. I'm from the, I have the game room. Yeah. So I was buying used armies and bits. I thought everybody's store was like that. That's a real thing. Yeah, it was not. Most of those at your GW stores. So that kind of covers how we started and a little bit of where we played. So for me, I played in someone's

basement and eventually I played a couple times in stores and that sucked and we'll talk about that in a second. Brad, so you played mostly in the game store and then I guess, wow, I was about say Sniggs basement, but at this point, Sniggs didn't have that basement, did he? No, Sniggs was coming to my basement at the time. Yeah, that's wild. Yeah. Things have changed. Because he's younger than I Yeah. So I, one of the biggest things is I didn't get the casual state. So like the late 90s was me not really, like I played some games and people tried to draw me in and I just, I didn't get the bug yet.

So like when I started playing, I went all in hardcore right now. I actually, I'm going to say that one of my favorite stories is still the first time I ever bought models. I bought five Chaos Terminators as the first. thing I ever bought in the entire game story. Hold on, this is the first thing you ever bought or the first thing unassembled and painted that you ever bought.

Well, let's let the story play out job because I didn't know there was a difference. So I never, I still don't model, but I had never modeled, never, however, never anything.

And I'm going up to buy my first models. I'm all excited. I've read the Chaos Codex from second edition. I'm super pumped, you know, to learn it and play in third edition. and I start walking up with my purchase of my five shiny new Terminators. I'm about to pour out of this box.

And there's just 20, 30 people. It's like a Saturday. You know, and everybody's just sitting there waiting for me. I'm like, why are you idiots all staring at me? Like, just open the box, man. So I open the box and spruce come out and I instantly get super angry. I'm like, my late 20s now. I've still, I haven't become old slow down, Brad.

I'm still angry Brad. So I get super bent out of shape because I feel like I've just been robbed because there's a picture of five Terminators on this. I got gray plastic. I don't even know what's happening. Also, with my very bad ability to understand how models work,

I still look at spruce as just oozing blob of nothing. But the entire store just started laughing. Snakes came up, actually pushed me away, grabbed the box from me, and just started putting them, Yeah. What I do like is that so your first models were plastic. Yeah. Well, all the pewter stuff was at the time.

I'm going to disappear from frame for a second, everybody. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. I'm so disappointed that you didn't do the walking downstairs thing. We had so many opportunities missed here. There is. This. I bought. This is a Vindicare assassin that I still have, that I would have purchased in England on a family vacation in 1994 or 95. That's how old this is. He's okay now. The rules are okay now. Been waiting a while.

Back in the day, not only you get stuff, I mean, obviously it's a million years ago, so it's cheaper, period. But the game has exponentially become more expensive, but also they went to different ways that they make models. Back in the day, those were like one of the. first plastic things that came out. It was, there, what was it, 80, 90% of the models at that time with pewter. Yeah, I mean, I just grabbed this one because it's the closest one of my mother closets I have

here. I have, um, all my, all of my pewter are space marine or guard. I have no pewter outside of those, but I have catachans, got a couple of random, I got some random guard stuff and some random space marines. I mean, I don't even have space marines. I just kept those models. I mean, I had the entire units of. blood crushers, which were at the time

weapons of mass destruction. You could harm someone with the blood crushers, yeah. What was it? Was it the juggernaut back then? There was something else that was like that thing could actually you could throw that and get arrested. Yeah. It was a lot. I would actually say a unit of those is a

kilogram. That's it's possible. I mean, pewter was not expensive metal. No, but I'm saying. Still bets. Because they had the thing. Yeah, oh yeah. Especially even back that I was known for destroying models, sorry every single human

that's ever lent me anything. My bad. Now, I will say the difference between Brad and I is, as I said, I started playing in 1993 for somewhere in that realm, I didn't quit the game. I quit the game for almost

25 years, somewhere in that realm. Because as a child playing this game, and a lot of those can probably attest to this, it sucked. It just did. Playing with other people your age was fun,

but if you wanted to play the game and you had to play with adults, they sucked. And they sucked because there were a lot of, and we're going to spend a lot of time talking about the rules, but I'm just going to tell you, armor rating was stupid and I'm so glad it went away. It was raw.

It was the rules as rid of ways. It talked before also because if you weren't in full understanding how things worked, and for a while, we, again, we had some bad times. where. Yeah, no pre-measuring, which direction your gun was actually facing. I mean, to this day, I still can't move models correctly. Brad gets super upset when he watches me move models on the board.

I do it legally, guys. I just do it with no purpose. I just move the front ones and the rest of the guys are lying down behind them. But the thing is, you could really abuse the rules back in the day, like really abuse. And the thing was, is that it was funny because I, you started off casual and then got competitive about stuff. I started off competitive and then it took me a long time to get casual because of the way the game

was originally played. It wasn't it was supposed to be a beer and pretzels game, but the competitive scene was a like a wild. Oh yeah, and we're going to do a lot of cast talking about how the competitive scene has actually overtaken. This game is still largely casuals.

It's like 97% I think of players who buy in 40K models that would play them. Well, let's talk about what are the, here's how much they don't care about the competitive, this is a real thing. Yeah. In 10th edition, they changed, 10th edition, 9th edition, whatever. In 10th, they changed the size of the board that we play on.

Yep. The reason that they changed that side was that was the average size of the dining room table of play people that play. Yeah. And there was no one had a 4 foot by 6 foot table, and it was not fair to expect people to purchase something, so they changed down. Right. But I would also be at GW's released the numbers you can see over the years.

If you look at the number of competitive players versus the number of people who purchase models, these numbers do exist. You can see it's not even close. It's not even ballpark. But the tournament scene has a very strong influence even within the casual scene. And again, so for me, I was a casual player. Because of people, us, everybody, anybody that puts out content influences what people do, when people play what they think is good.

Our content is not competitive. I mean, I'm saying people that make content. Maybe not our content. Oh, good, God, no. Every one of my tier lists would just be me basing off of who I like and don't like. It would just be a cool. It would be a rule of cool. Yeah, it's just all rule of cool.

But speaking of that, I have been pushing John to do that, and sometime we're going to do that in the future. Oh, we will, yeah. We'll do it. But it's just which faction's coolest. I think we all know what I'm going to vote for last place. Tom. Actually, the problem is I couldn't because their models are actually cool.

There's armies out there who I just genuinely hate because their models are ugly. Tao, I have the of credit. I may not like the lore, but the models do look really good. I did get called out just recently, and I want to throw this into this cast, because you're always trashing on Tao, and somebody saw a picture of me from LVO when the year I took Tao. I was on stream with him, like, hey, man, did you go really far with that RV? I've watched you play Tao. I've been present as you played Tao.

It's fine. They're a competitive army. The one I'd rather watch you play is Rogel Dorn or all airplanes. Oh, no. If you put those together somehow, I would just not play any more. Oh, wait, that worked. Wasn't it? It was like 10th edition year and a half ago where the triple Storm Raven.

Oh, God, it's a triple Storm Raven, Rogel Dorn. If he comes back, oh, just watching Brad have to win a tournament just angrily. Oh, speaking of that and people, There's nothing like waking up to a personal message of the Lords of Terror did nothing wrong at the table. Prove me wrong. So as you can see, this is not a very serious cast we're doing, but it'll be fun. So quick teaser, some things that we find fun. These are stuff will be asking a lot of our guests.

So first off, Brad, what's your favorite edition? And why? Well, I'm going to do a double on this because it's just answer one question. There's no chance I'm not. I'm not going to politician all of my answers. There are field sobriety tests. They're less rambling than this. Fourth edition, then ninth edition.

And they're for two different things. Because of the fact, fourth edition is a long time ago so I can look at it with rose-collar glasses because there was a lot of problems then. But it had bananas amounts of customization in fourth edition. Ninth edition, I thought, was the perfect kind of amalgamation of that. And I think it was the best edition. in modern times. Okay.

That's fair. To me, honestly, I'll just go with end of ninth edition. I genuinely think was the best edition. It might be, competitive-wise, yes. But even if I'm competitive-wise, it was so well-balanced. It was right, they just started tweaking the rules in a good way to make it so when you had to customize your army, it wasn't a complete nightmare looking at you, Tao.

Come on, the Tao battlesuits were just a wreck in eighth edition of like, hey, what's on that, none of us know. Because you also can have more stuff than you actually have. Yeah, exactly. The rule is it had to be on, it still is actually that it has to be on the model. You can have extra crap on the model.

Yeah, but no one knew what it was. I mean, unless you played another towel, like, and this has always been the kids, it's why I kind of, I will defend GW and they kind of did this way, where it was like, like my harlequins, for example, which melee weapon did my harlequins have? A caress? A kiss? Yeah, embrace?

Yeah, it's like it is a way, which one's which, so, whatever. Again, do you want to ask that one? Also, Brad has a gun to us, and he has to identify an embrace of kiss. If I'd go, oh, yeah, that point, no one can identify. The embrace I remember, actually, I can, but I play Harlequins. All right, so the next one is, what was your favorite rule in which edition and why did you like the rule? Tank Shock and I wish it would come back. Okay, tank's shock in the game right now is a vehicle.

You need to be clear, like which type show is. The tank shock right now is a strat that says I smash into your unit and I roll dice equal to my toughness and every five is a mortal wound. Tank shot back in the day was not a strat, wasn't a special anything. It was a, I'm driving over you. Get out of the way. Which gave rate to the rule, the, what you could do, you had two options. You either got the hell out of the way and you had a roll to make sure you didn't. fail in your leadership

or you could choose death or glory which you would get to auto hit the vehicle by the way once and if you immobilized it which is a

used to roll in a chart to see what happened if you blew it up or you immobilized it you didn't die anything else they ran you over you did some damage and you died because you're standing in front of a tank. And I miss that quite a bit because it does bother me a ton to watch a Lehman have to send a guardsman out to go, yeah, we can't move forward, guys. There's a nergling in

front of us. You're like, really? I can't see him. That rule was bad. Yeah, I'm going to piss a lot of people off. My favorite rule was flying head. But it was it was, so there was a rule in ninth edition, right? Yeah, ninth edition where a very specific. Ork plane called the burn Obama could intentionally crash itself and when it did

it did I so much damage it was like two or the 2D three mortal wounds to everything within an or I guess six inch aura the only I thought it was funny because as an orc player there's nothing more orky

than crashing your bomber into stuff and making it blow up the issue was there wasn't a restriction on when you could do it. So you could do it on the first turn when you went first, your opponent didn't get to move any models. If you played someone who wasn't playing custodes, they usually didn't have a way to spread their units out. And you would just do a horde of mortal wounds to someone's entire army, which people didn't like and they got rid of it. But I still wish you would come back. Just

make me do it on turn two. I will bring that airplane to every single game, if you're it back. On that note, Brad, what's your favorite 40K memory? I have so many. Right. Well, just what was your best tabletop experience? What was the best like? Team tournaments. When I found when I discover team play, you're still not there yet. I'm trying to lure you in. But I love team play more than I like singles play by a long shot because it's you and a bunch of your friends. And you're playing with and for them. So even if you get clubbed, one of my favorite experience at all time I've talked about this before, when we won the world championships USA won the world championships

I won six other games which I smashed every game and I lost one game and the only game I remember from that winning that win that run there was the game that I lost 1 to 19

I was tied on turn 5 slightly below in turn 6 this is random game length and on turn 7 I was grinding for a point. But we won by one. We won by one point. That game

it just, that's why I like teams, because even when things just fall apart, like I had, I won six other games, like just smashed, 600 games. I remember nothing about any of those games. So, like, those are the things that I remember when you're playing teams, because teams makes everybody score count.

And that's what I really enjoy. And I think it's the, for me, it's my favorite way to play 40K, because it brings people together. to play for it again. That's fair. I mean, mine is just simply, I can't remember when this happened,

but I remember I shot someone's, I don't know, it was me or them, but someone's vehicle got shot. The vehicle exploded. It then did enough damage to another vehicle that then died and then also exploded. And it was this multiple chain of explode. It was like,

I think two vehicles blew up, but in doing so it killed off, like all the main characters. I think Gilliman died. Because this was back when the repulsor would blow up and do what, insane mortal wounds when it would explode. Oh no, no, that's right.

Sorry, Nyberg, it was a night. A night exploded. Knights used to do D-E hits. It was multi-D6, and so it exploded. That's right. And then it took out another night, which also then exploded. Now it's all coming back. And it was playing in a game store in California when this happened.

And this is a nothing casual, hilarious game. And it was fantastic. And that's a lot of the best memories on that. It is just because in the end, we're playing with toy soldiers. It's fantastic. It's very serious. But I tell people at the time when I coach, when I talk about getting ready for the game, in the end, you have to ask yourself, how would I explain this to someone that doesn't play 40K? You're like, why am I angry?

What are they doing? Yeah. Another adult and I, we're playing with our toys. And this is why I'm mad. And you're like, maybe we should never talk again. All right. last question. What's the best non-40K, 40K game? StarCraft. Go.

StarCraft, too. That's all it is. Sorry, guys. It's like, it's StarCraft, StarCraft, too. Those are perfect games. But with that, let's bring us to a close. Next week, we're actually going to be bringing on Brian Horton. Brian is a, if you've been around us, you've probably seen Brian before. Brian's been playing the game longer than anyone I know. Candidly, that's why we're bringing them. on. Brian picked up the game at the end of Rogue Trader. Might have even been in Rogue Trader.

I'll say he's into Rogue Traders he started playing. Yeah. So Brian, and so we're going to be talking. We're starting with some second edition. And we're going to bounce around for a bit talking about this. But we look forward to you guys watching it or listening to it, however you want to consume it. But with that, this is John Barsati and Brad Chester. This guy. See you next time.