The 40k Lorecast - The History of 40K - Buying, building, painting in 2nd edition.

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

Today on the history of 40K we talk about the act of picking up the game of 2nd edition 40K. How you found playing partners, where you learned the game. We also talk about the physical game itself. From a era long forgotten of mail order catalogs and magazines. Also what you do when the models arrived how to build them, paint them, and where to go for advice on such things. So join us on a deep dive into a forgotten era of the world pre-internet.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 40K lorecast. Wait, no it's not. Welcome to the history of 40K, a 40K lorecast series with John Barsati and Bradchester. This guy. On today's episode, we'll be talking about the second edition of the game. Joining us again is Brian Horton. Welcome back, Brian. How's it going, folks.

Hussah! Again, for those of who knew to it, the history of 40K is a biweekly show, focusing on the history of the game of Warhammer 40K, on the tabletop, video games, movies, etc. But primarily focusing on the additions of the game, releasing every Wednesday at 7am on YouTube and streaming platforms such as Spotify, iTunes, etc. I also want to point out a bunch of people

gave me grief last week about biweekly, and I posted it literally a link to the definition in YouTube about biweekly does me both every other week and twice in one week. Yes, John. You won the art. argument with no one. Well done, sir. Good job.

It's because my only other option to say the history of 40K is a show releasing every fortnight. And I just don't want to say that. Why would we not be saying that? Why would we not say Fortnite? Oh, she's seeing every fortnight. Fine. We'll change it. Although the kids may go, it's going to be a video game. Exactly. That's why it was a video game. And like something about Abraham Lincoln, I'm not really sure. Yeah.

So, all right, last week we covered how someone would get into second edition. And today I want to focus a bit more on second edition itself. And that's why we have Brian here because Brian was actually played it at release. I said last week I played a little bit of second edition, but it was in a friend's basement and it wasn't that much. And Brad, you came in in the tail end of second edition, correct? Yep. All right. So second edition, let's do a quick recap on it. So it released 1993. I, there were, Brian, I'm going to say this with 99% confidence. There were no games workshop stores in the U.S. at this point.

There were not that I knew of, at least not in upstate New York. I do not believe it. So this was something that a local game store would have just gotten information on and then they would have grabbed it. So your friendly local game store would definitely have. have gotten this in and basically tried and got you to pick it up by putting it in your hands. It was very much a community-driven game at the time. There was got to remember, this was before the internet kids. To play a game, you found out about it through magazines and word of mouth and your friendly local game store.

Well, actually, yeah, let's talk about that. Because I want to spend something about like how you talk about a game store. because a lot of people today, we pick games up with the internet. Like when I came back into 40K, I came back to it, and I'm going to call these guys out, Tabletop Tactics. That's, I found, I googled how to play 40K, and I found videos of it. You could go online.

There's tons of web pages. I mean, I've been seen DACA DACA forum for a while, but you have all of this stuff. It's all over the place. And now here we are. And so in 1993, you're in a game store that I assume at this point is selling D&D, Like what else is in the game store?

Comics. So typically your game store was a comic book store that happened to have a game section. Probably at 93 also had sports cards in a. Oh, for sure. So it was very much, you know, like it was section. So my local game store at the time in Syracuse was Twilight booking Game Emporium. Shout out to Bob Gray, who is one of the old school people. Yeah.

who is now retired from the industry. I hope so. But absolutely fantastic store, run really well. And that store was a gamer's heaven. He carried anything and everything pretty much for gaming. He carried all the comic books. He had sports cards. You know, used books.

It was a haven for the nerd, I will call it, in the best ways possible. You had a lot, though. I actually think it was, it's harder because no internet and people couldn't immediately connect. But you also had the Outrider program. And I thought you had a big push by GW to get people into the game. That really didn't hit hard until third edition, though. Okay. That's kind of when that really came into play.

I really started playing really competitive in third. I was around for second. And I got on my books in second. But yeah, but that was a big thing, though. in and around. It was there at second and then it came to be really in third. I love the cat in the background. I just came through.

But I, we didn't get cat butthole yet, but I assume it's. We, like, right now we have a lot of gaming groups, like communities that will get you in and teach you stuff. They had people that were just,

they got prizes, support, everything else, and they would help you put on your tournaments, and they were, they would show demos. And if you came in, they would just show you how to play the game.

I like that quite a bit. it. They had just people assigned. I think one of the one of the best things in second edition was I want to say in the game stores, typically after, you know, five o'clock at night for those places that were open until nine. There was at least one or two, I'm going to call them guys my age in that in the late 40s, 50s, who would just be at the game store hanging out, having a good time. There is that. There is.

There is. You could always rely on a cat to do one thing. And that one thing is placed its butthole towards a camera. Yeah. So who listen to this on Spotify, by the way, streaming. There's a video version of it. You will see what I'm talking about.

Yeah. So the good part was a lot of times they wanted to get someone to play with them. So they would do their best to go, hey, come roll dice. And that's how I got into the game, as I said last week. I was really a group of guys just pulling me in. One of the things was, though, if you were interested in a game, I'm not going to say every gaming store, but the vast majority of them that I was in back in those days,

they had a community board, which was just a giant cork board with handwritten signs on it, looking for a D&D player, looking for someone to play 40K with, looking for someone to play Shadow Run, rifts, whatever the game might be. So it was just fantastic of the amount of ways

that you were able to find people, was pretty much in the game store and hoping you bump into somebody, because there was many times that I will admit to hang out in the game store on a Saturday. for eight to ten hours to try and meet some new people and to pull them into our group. And then the gaming conventions that there were few and far between compared to what there are these days. But normally your local area had probably one a year. And then within a couple hours, I mean, there might have been another one.

At that time, I think it was actually easier to just wander in. Right now, a lot of people have their groups and everything else. And there's more people, there's wildly more people playing. Yeah. But you used to be able to just go to your store. and just sit for a while and people would be playing whatever and you'd pick a pickup games and whatnot. Yeah, I mean, one of the one of the things that I always did when I went to game stores is I tried to have for if I wanted to get people on the 40K that week, if that was my goal, was I would try to have two small little armies, some terrain and a mat with me so I could go and just, you know, get someone to roll dice with. But I would also have like a Luminati from Steve Jackson games and typically something.

Such a cool game. I love Luminati. something else to go with to allow for players to get in. Because the minute you met somebody at a game store, unless you didn't jive, you know, socially, you could pretty much find someone to go, all right, here's my number you ever want to play,

let's hook up. Yeah. And then all the game stores had designated nights for things. Like in my local area, Thursday nights from five to 10 was game night for Warhammer 40K. Warhammer, what is now called Old World, but it was called Fantasy back then, was on Friday nights,

and other games were other nights of the week, and it was just fantastic. Before we get going out, which one came first, fantasy or 40K? Fantasy 100%. It actually was, it was worse.

Fantasy, the role-playing game was before it then. And then... It's when we should have covered, I think, last week, and that's what I was 90% on this. That's a fantasy came first. and then some of those fantasy players came over to 40K. Absolutely learning, again, this is before my time,

but being learning that basically they built a lot of the original base off the fantasy players who just kind of like Games Workshop games. Games Workshop was one of the very few companies that was easy to get a hold of their miniatures because they had a fantastic mail order system. They advertised a lot in White Dwarf and Dungeon Magazine and a few other spots. Good. There's a blast. And if you had those that avenue, most game stores, they would, you know, they could get easily through distribution.

It was, it was nice that it was available. You could find it. Fantasy at the beginning was a lot easier to find. It took a little while for 40K to get in all your local stores. But if you had a great game store in your local area, 40K just took off like a wildfire because the setting was great, the stories were great, the art was just outrageous. The old artwork was so bananas.

That's what I want to kind of start with is talking about, okay, so last week, we kind of gave the overview of second edition I was coming. Today I wanted to kind of open up with like getting into the game. And so the first one I kind of wanted to talk about

was we talked about game stores, but let's talk about the magazines because I think this is the way you really got, because that's what got me into it, is all of a sudden you see these pictures. And it wasn't like, you weren't, because we couldn't download the document

Download it didn't exist. It was literally a like, all right, I see in a magazine a one page ad for something. And then I would send a, I think I would, I'm not mistaken. I'd then have to send a letter to somewhere to get on a mailing list to get the catalog. So I could. Citadel Journal. Yeah. There was a little cut out.

There was a little cut out with a cool like hand drawn ad. Yep. And they would send you the catalog. And the catalog was fantastic. because it had painted models, bits, the whole nine yards in there. So you could kind of go through and pick out what you wanted. It was an absolute ton of fun to get. I think the Bits catalog was like a couple bucks.

If I remember correctly back in the day to get that mail to you from the UK. But only you big. I also want to point out just for our younger listeners, we would pay money to get access to a catalog so we could then buy things. That was that was the process you went through. What if is the internet? I know. I mean, we're all paying like $50 to $100 a month for internet.

So I mean, it's the same thing. It is, but just same same but different. For anyone over the age of about 35 is probably more 40, Columbia House records. I'm going to keep bringing this one up over and over again. Dude, what are the, you got to remember the white dwarf was such a thing that you, we talked about it before we started recording today. White dwarf was one of the things you had to have as a, if you're going to be competitive in 40K. And because you got, they, they had rules. They put out rules in the white dwarves.

And also the, the, oh, man, I love by. I love by my white. We're all so spoiled now that GW has a website that says, hey, next Sunday, this is coming. That next Sunday for us used to be white dwarf in one month. Yeah. In one month, you are going to be able to order this stuff that comes out the month after that. Well, the battle report, every single month they had a battle report. And it usually was whatever was coming out.

And sometimes it was armies that didn't even exist yet were in that. And I'm sure some of you people have seen on the internet second edition models with that like classic bright, you know, yellow, wacky stuff. Yeah, everything is yellow. And every base you saw was goblin green scent. Yep. Everything. They all looked the same. They were very similar because it matched the battle mat. The GW sold for like 35.

and I still have one of them hanging in my closet, and either or not. And it was just, you painted it to match. And it was super fantastic. Well, it's interesting to me, there's more for the painters that that was the concept back then, where nowadays you actually don't, you tend to have your bases pop out.

The idea back then was to have the base, basically mold in to the, when you looked out aesthetically. So it would look like the characters were walking around on their two feet. That was the idea of the aesthetic. It's changed massively. Well, they also, used to have the actual metal prongs that went into the base.

Yep. Because everybody was, everybody was standing straight up all the time. Second edition, very much back in the day, it was round bases and square bases combined. There was arcs of fire. There was all kinds of stuff that you had to worry about.

So like round bases kind of had 360 degree arc of fire. Square bases had some 45 degree arcs. I do want to throw this out there real quick is just the difference is we talked about fantasy being there first and then 40K was in there. But the difference in those games was significant because fantasy battles was supposed to be a giant battle. 40K was and still

technically is a piece of a battle. It's a skirmish game. It's supposed to be a little and that was one of the reasons that they also switched on bases and stuff like that because the people were individual because everything in fantasy battles is on movement treas. And like now we go, all right, we're playing a

2,000 point game, which is a ton of of models. I've seen armies with 200 plus models in it. Yeah. You know, as low as six to seven if you're playing Imperial Knights or something like that. But back in the day, most people kind of averaged a 30 to 35 model count. Yeah. And GW put out at one point these beautiful boxes in second edition that were a 1,500 point army box because that was our standard gameplay. And you bought it and you were like, bam, army, new army, ready to go. And then you would buy your pieces and add in and take out stuff, but it was, it was so much fun and so fantastic. I'm going to be honest, Brian, I don't think I've played a game with 30 models or like,

like, with less than 31 models. I mean, for those who know me, I mean, I do like hoard, but like my most recent tournament, I ran 147 models. Like, so 30 models. They're a rookie number four. You need to bring them up. Oh, believe me, I thought I'm pulling the mega knobs to get more boys in just to make people concerned about how many models do you have all of them.

I will always go in one of the additions of 40K, and I'm not going to remember which one it was right now, probably sixth editions, my guess. I used to carry around, and Brad can attest in this, a bucket Ogonce, because the Turvagon used to spawn termagons. Yes.

I had 256 with me, plus the 30 that were in my list. And I actually ran out of Gonson one game. Let me get my chi together because, man, whosa, it took them so many additions. to figure out that you couldn't just let players add models to their army.

You can add models to your army now, but you already paid for them. Back in the day, man, was summoning and... Oh, there was some time. You would finish a game with twice as many models as you started the game, and you lost things during the game.

I remember multiple adepticons when you had Kelsey and Austin showed up with, what's his face, his entire tray. You're like, all right, the top tray is what I'm starting with. And these three other levels are all the things that I may or may not summon. So it was, again, second edition is we should be focusing on, I guess. Yeah, we should.

Yeah. Everything came back to the way you found out about it was typically word of mouth. If you were into another gaming thing or you read comic books, you would have saw an ad in one of those. for Warhammer more than likely. And then mail order was the big thing, right? Like, because your locals didn't always have what you wanted or couldn't get it or they were, you know, we order every couple months from Games Harkshop kind of thing, unlike today where it's, you know, a consistent revolving door of orders.

And you would mail order it. You would write down your part number, cost everything, stick it at a check in an envelope. I'm going to go back real flyer and mail it off to them. six weeks later, you'd probably get your models. If they goofed up, they did have an 8-Hen remember you could call to do things over. They did not take credit cards over the phone during second edition. Yeah, 100% that was true because they had international rates with credit cards back. But here, here I'll give you one thing, Brian, if we have the time machine and you're like, why would you do this, Brad?

This is the lamest thing to do time machines. But bits by the gram was a thing in that edition and Games Days. The stuff that you're paying... Oh, no, it wasn't on a Tuesday. Oh, that's true. They had a couple of... There was the battle bus. Yes, the battle bus.

Yeah, the battle bus came around. But back and then, you... All the stuff that you're spending, like, anywhere between $4 and $20 for an individual piece, you would just buy a bag and they would weigh it. And that's how much it cost it. And you would be making bank right now if you just had all of that stuff. All that pewter.

Anyway. So back in the day, it used to be a shoulder pad, a specific shoulder pad you could get for every chapter. I don't care what chapter you mentioned, what subdivision of chapters you mentioned. And there was a shoulder pad. They were a dollar apiece. When the battle barge rolled into town, you could buy them by the pound. I may or may not have bought at one point, like just handfuls of every shoulder pad out of every bin they had. Just because I was like, oh, someday I want to make Death Watch.

Yeah. So actually, that's a good segue to what I want to. cover next, which is how you'd build the models. Because there's nothing, too. Like today, we've got full, if you build the models, you've got two options. The GW provides you with a multi, multi-page assembly. And then you can also go online. You can see

videos of it of how to build and also more probably how to paint. There are innumeral painting classes available all over the place. Back then, I believe, not my second, Brian, there was one picture of you got a picture and

White Dorf was your source for step-by-step instructions that were not super clear. It was like you put red here. You put shade. Didn't tell you how to do the shade, but I said you put shade. Oh, yeah. And you put another layer of red here. And then voila. It looks like this.

And you'd be like, uh, no one doesn't. Yeah. I've, in practice for this, I went back and looked at some of them. And they would be, just so people understand, we're talking about a model like six or seven colors on it. And it would be three steps. Yeah. Okay. So it was it was definitively, you, you learned from the masters, I would say, of the people who were good at it.

I can always fully admit that my first model, and I will say this until they had am a decent painter now, I think I'm pretty good. But my first model, I painted with, you know, 50 cents tester brushes that came in like a pack of 10 for 50 cents. Testors, enamel paints, they looked like just hot trash. Hold on, though. Is your first model you ever painted still better than anything I paint right now? No. Come on. They were bad.

I know what Brian is talking about here because the difference is like, Brad, you're not a good painter, but you have a very good painter as your best friend who gives you very good paints and all this good stuff. So the difference is Brian was painting one step above actually buying paint brushes for like painting a room like in a house. I was taking like, I was taking like this size brush, right? Yeah. Which is one of my terrain brushes for dry brush. And I was just like, all right, that lictor is going to get a coat of paint. Yeah.

You know, it was, it was definitively a different time. By mind, you just have a roller. You said roller can't go over multiple models. I mean, covered. So like I can always go with the, you know, this is like two of my five brush cups. This is like a terrain cup. This has got a variety of things in it. But I'm like.

That wasn't the options back then. GW had these red brushes that you could buy that were, I want to say like three bucks a piece or they were, no, they were blue first. They were blue then red. And they were a nice brush, but you know, back in those days when I made $4 an hour,

buying a $3 brush was a luxury when I was buying $6. luxury. Yeah. So how much, tell me the different, just go into the modeling side of it. What would you think the difference between then and today is.

You don't have to deal with metal models now. Unless you want to. That is one of the big differences. Also, those things, if you put together a second edition Marine, the instructions were cut arms, put bolter. Oh, they were hilarious. Brother Philip, here you go. And if you didn't really like cut, there was a piece on a bolter that you had to cut off

to make it look like they were holding them correctly. If you left that on, you would literally get a guy like holding the bolter like this, going, ah, a bolter. Hot potato. Yeah. It was the bolter was two-hand, eh? I mean, the old, the old pewter models, if they were, if they were, hands were independent, it looked like a mix between like a karate dummy and someone trying to give the world's

most awkward hug. It's, that's, that's, it's. The best thing I can say is, uh, metal models were, were great. All right. The detail on them was fantastic compared to the plastic injection molding at that time. Yeah. Um, there was. so much more detail on them. There was so much more of everything. The technology is evolved

to where plastic models are far superior these days to what you can do in metal, because spin casting really hasn't evolved in the last 40 years. Nope. But plastic injection molding definitively has. And the big thing now is the instructions are actual instructions for the most part, with the exception of a few kits here and there, that have like step by step, numbered parts, everything. It wasn't like that in the day was take these two arms and make a guy. Candidly, you know, take this torso, glue it on. Unless you got, there was a few kits that had good model instructions. But if you were to get like now, uh, there's instructions on how to take mold lines off,

how to remove burrs and things like that. Back in the day, you'd get a bad blister pack where there's like quarter inch thick rim around the model. And if you didn't know any better, you're just like glue paint. Yeah. And you're like, why is your guy got? like a halo around him and you're like, it's the way he came. The detail in models now is so bananas better than it used to be.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's not even the same dimension. I will say that some stuff now is a little vanilla. I think that the intercessors, although absolutely beautiful models, go together with a dream intercessors, assault intercessors and things along that line, don't have quite that genus Sequa. I'm going to use a big word there, to of a lot of the old. metal models because, you know, like, if I wanted a guy with a melta, I could walk into a games

workshop store or a local game store. I could go to the blister wall, pick up a metal monopose space marine with a melta gun, who was basically a guy, melt a gun. And file them, put him on a base, prime them, get them going in a couple, you know, in a day, pretty much. You know, where now you got to buy a whole kit and there's 10 models and you have to decide if you're building a alter a plasma or you got eBay a second body. There's a lot of goods. As the internet has evolved and got made certain parts of modeling a thousand times better than what they were, I miss some of the simplicity of second and third editions.

You know what they used to have. If you said that's no metal models anymore, I'll give you a quick story because I barely modeled. Everybody used to always get annoyed with me because they had to put my stuff together. So Dustin, who you know, I broke my demon prints for the 400th time, and he walks up where Greg sparks his house and I was in the basement and everybody had gone upstairs to eat. And I'm trying to put my demon prints back together. And I find out later that he goes, Brad's going to be a little while. I gave him plastic glue for his metal waddle.

He'll eventually lose his mind and run up here. So I'm just jamming it together. Nothing's happening. and eventually you just hear the dunk with me throwing it against the wall. And they go, happy, finally, I wonder if he's going to realize that we gave the wrong glue.

No. The original Lichter model, which is absolutely gorgeous, an absolutely gorgeous model, had these two big hooks that, you know, that came off its back, the sithing talons.

They were a slotted thing that went into the shoulder. They were never molded correctly. I don't care how many times I've put together plenty of them. over the years. They never went together well. At one point, I got so mad because I couldn't get pins, super glue, they just wouldn't stay. I went out and bought two part epoxy. And I legitimately just put a big glob of it on their back and went, yeah, it's going to be slime and crammed, you know, held them down with clamps for like five minutes. The clamps I had to pry off and break off the model. And I was like, oh, look, he's, uh, that's the way the Lictor was. I like had to model stuff to make it

look like he was, you know, around, you know, like ruins and stuff to cover his backup a little bit. So, yeah, I love that you brought that up because I do think that's a lot of difference between the old guy modelers and new modelers. Because the old guy modelers use a lot of stuff from random hobby lobby and whatever else incorporated into their 40K. And a lot of the newer players only use stuff from the game stores because there's so much stuff now that you can use. So there was iPhone. I phone in both those categories is what I would say I started back in the old days

now I'm back now when I came back in I went to the new style I was like all right what's in the box I built a box through that stuff and it wasn't till

kind of I started hanging out with a lot of the players that'd been playing longer at that point where it was like no it's actually more fun to kit bash don't the kit bash

we all have friends in this game who kit bash almost psychotically where you know every every model comes from seven different boxes

I'll say Matt Aaron who like Has it a very, he'll immediately drop dead if he makes a model come actually out of the box and doesn't put 14 extras with it. It is, but it does. It comes from that era to Brian's point where, I mean, I think what I wanted to talk about is like, there wasn't that many models and they were very monopose. So if you wanted to edit any variability, you had to, you literally had to do it yourself. I mean, Puter will bend.

You can actually just kind of move some models around if you want to, but it also will break. But it was that piece of you had to kind of. you had to customize. Otherwise, your army just was 50 dudes with one hand in the air and one hand facing forward. That's what you had. Yeah. If you were running tactical Marines back in the day, you're a sergeant because most of them until they came out with the non-push-fit ones in second edition. Or you could find an old box of RTB ones, which is the quintessential space marine box that ever. You mean the sergeant that gave the breakfast club the end of it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We were always having a good time with that.

And once we found out that it was like, oh, you can cut these. And testers, airplane glue was the name of the glue that we almost all used for plastic models. I must have been a fun time in a closed room. Yeah, you learned out real quick that ventilated meant do it by the window. That's just I know, airplane glue.

And you would, you know, monop-you know, take the, model poses and snips and cut them and green stuff. And we all didn't know how green stuff actually worked properly. So it would never came out exactly. But we, we learned over time and through many, many, many failed attempts of making our own models. And I can say that now there's, it's so much easier to convert things because plastic is much more malleable.

You can do a lot more with it. But like one of the things that's a lost art. And this is something that. a lot of players willing is drilling out your barrels, right? That was like when you found the quintessential hobby guys in the second edition, their bolter barrels were drilled out. Their melters were carved out. They took the metal bottles and carved them out.

I mean, it was looking back on that going, man, that was so much effort and so much time because there wasn't, there wasn't the electric little hand drills there are now. There wasn't all the precision bits. You had to, you know, you had to learn like, oh, if I want to drill out a pewter model, I have to have a drill oil handy. That's what I was about this phase. It's going to get too hot and break.

There was all these little nuances that you just learned over time. And it's like, you know, like I have as I'm sitting in my, you know, my gamer. And this is like a box full of broken pieces of cork that I use for bases now. But it was something that I learned. And like, oh, the hobby sand, which was at, G.W had it in like a bag. But Gail Force nine came out with it, a little plastic tub for like hobby sand. And then you find out that, oh, I can go to like, at the time, true value, and buy a 50-pound bag of sand for like a dollar.

Or I can buy this hobby sand for four bucks. So you started to learn all the little ways to save a buck or two. I'll be honest, for anyone who plays this game in hobbies, Home Depot is your friend. Home Depot and Lowe's have some stuff for basing. I mean, you could get fake rocks or you could get rocks. Just rocks. It's so much change.

It's funny because I didn't think about that. I only knew the stuff at the store at first because it, and everybody, but then I'd go to people's places, you know, Snakes is modeling, pajamas is modeling. And you're like, man, did you buy all this stuff from,

yeah, did you buy all this stuff from the store? You know, that sounds like a lot. They're like, no, we went to exactly, Home Depot, Lowe's, Hobby Lobby,

whatever. The place that you found out relatively quickly from the old guard back in the day was Woodland Scenics, which was at your local train shop, which they all, still exist. Local train shops still have all this good stuff. Yeah. And like, this is a box. This is a thing of flock. I'm sure you've all seen an army painter one, which comes in a little tub about this big. There's $7. I got this at my local

hobby store for 13 bucks for more than I'll probably use in 10 years. But it's, it's one of those things of back in the day, you had to create things. The, the land speeder for space marines will be the best example. There was an article in White Dwarf on how to use a used deodorant stick with some parts on how to make your own lands feeder. I mean, I want to make the joke about the player base. They had a metal one for a very short period of time. And then they made one. And they were like, because everyone was like, oh, when can I buy that model that they saw in White Dwarf the month before? And somebody went, I made that out of a deodorant stick and some bits. You know what's weird back in this time? I mean, it's a little bit now, but

wildly back then was everybody was super cool with you making, you know, something to fit. But they were super protective and GW was super protective. You couldn't use any other, anything, basically anybody that would be considered another model company, any of their stuff. You could use all of the random Home Depot, whatever's. Second edition didn't really have GW organized play to speak up unless you went to

Games Day or you went to Glenn Bernie to their store because that was the only U.S. store, if I remember correctly at that time. And everyone was like, hey, look, as long as it kind of fits the model. And at one point, it was like it had to be at least 25. I think the rule that I remember the most was it had to be at least 25% GW parks. And you could always go, I bought this package of green stuff that GW sells because they used to sell little strips in a blister pack. And I specifically remember it was $2.9. for a strip of green stuff.

And you'd be like, oh, I made that out of green stuff. And they'd be like, oh, that's a GW part. There we are good enough. Third edition changed that quite a bit. The future one of the, I forget which addition it was where you could make your own units, like vehicles. Or it's four. Yeah.

That one did not have that restriction. That was the one where people were using like old toilet paper rolls. It was wild. No, that's the thing, John, is they, that was. GW has always been okay with you using RAMS. random stuff. It was if you made somebody else, if you got Mantis mini-chid, you use somebody else's

anything. I think that shifted a bit, which is fine. I mean, to be fair, I'll defend GW back, you know, back then, they couldn't make supply. That was kind of part of it. They were just happy to the game grow. Now they, I mean, there's a lot of supply. I mean, like, there's still, look, is someone

who is a retailer on the side of things, like, GW should open it back up to please make models because they can't make enough to meet their demand. right now. I know they're working hard on that. They're opening a new factory anyway. But one of the things of back in the day was like you couldn't, there was a time where the land raider was the bomb. We all loved it. And GW went, our mold broke on the plastic one.

It's now discontinued. So if you want one, armor cast, which became Forge World at one point, they separated companies anyways, but you could buy a conversion kit to convert a Lehman Russ into a landrater. Whoa, I'm going to go one more on that. Hey, what's the basic transport for Eldar? The wave serpent. You know what? You couldn't buy a wave serpent. You had to get the conversion kit.

Pardon me, sir. Armourcast had the triangle wave serpent. My bad, my bad, my bad. I hated that thing. Actually, let's transition. I'm going to get to this part. I do want to spend some time on second edition. Exactly this.

We're messing on a little bit here. But what gets you into the game, it's the models. The rules were whatever. It was the models. And there were a few models from second edition that really are iconic. And I think actually helped make the game go. I think it's because they made the Land Raiders, a restaurant I'm thinking of, that really drew players into the game.

Basketball? Yeah. But it was seeing that on a board as a player. You look over. I also would say the Rath Lord on Eldar. There's a few models from second edition. that I really did like that was a badass model. The screamer killer is probably,

it wasn't called the Carnifex. It was a screamer killer. But it was probably the most iconic. I have been to as Brad has and as you have, I've been to a million game conventions. I have seen the second edition Carnifax tattoo from the original pencil line art from that on tons of Tarynod fans. Yeah.

And it is an absolutely glorious model. It was so good in the most recent. you know, Leviathan box set, they redid him and rethought him, but he has a homage completely to the original screamer killer. Don't love the rules. You know, if you want to go lower in models, though, I actually think that second edition might have been the heyday for Terminators to be. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Closest to the lore friendly. Well, but let's talk about like, I want to talk first about the land reader, because that's the one that to me is like, because the truth is as much as actually all three of us are Zeno players, but we'll pretend for, well, Brad Wean wants to

win tournaments will be a space marine player but the rest of us are ibo whatever player there's like 10 20 000 points of space marines behind me there is and i don't think i've ever seen you put them on the board we are you you are you're gonna make me play them at an event aren't you i am i am it's because you know you like zenos but it's fine what i'm getting it though is but the thing is that brings people into the game though is space marines space marines is almost everyone's first army it's a natural transition piece in and gw you know, it's like when we think about like, my wife works for Ford. So like Ford has the Mustang. There are like, you know, Chevy has the Corvette.

There are things companies make where they say, don't F with this. Costco has the hot dog. You know, it's the don't F with this. This is our brand. And we're going to focus our number one effort and number of designers into it. And so space marines are that for games workshop. And I think, you know, for a second edition, the two, and we just set them up, we're Terminators and the,

land raider. Those are the two people would look at a board and say, hey, what's that thing over there? And the rules were good. I'll be honest. Tell me the rules and segregation were great. The land raiders and Terminators were in, if you were playing space marines and you were trying to play even slightly competitive. Right. You had those in your army because they were just solid. They had great rules. The cyclone missile launcher was ridiculously awesome and fun. And the landrater got your terminators there who weren't real fast. And because deep striking was definitively a thing, but very unreliable. It's super dangerous, though.

You had to roll where you went. You might die. Real quick for everybody, this is an era where you would, right now, when you deep strike, I say my models are going here. And the question is, are you nine inches away from all enemy models? Yes. Then you can go there. In second edition, you'd said, I'm going here.

I hope. And then you would roll dice. And sometimes you would land. 2D6 with a random direction. Could be a hit, but you also could set your models up 1.1 inches away from them. And if they did, you remember, you had to make a circle around your guys when they came in. So you could just go, oh, everybody died and or maybe one guy lived. And there was always that chance of the hit messfire.

Yeah. Or he just was like, up, I'm not coming. And sorry. Yes. I mean, it's a different error. But the terminators this era were, I mean, that's what they were made to be iconic. This is before or is this before after Space Hulk? This is before Space Hulk.

So same time. Is she yeah. So there was, you know, there was metal terminators and plastic terminators. The plastic terminators are what we call these swivel body terminators. If you've ever seen them, they are the most ridiculous looking things. I love. I loved them. Terminator's for back in this age, like, we're so badass because they had all these heavy weapons. Everybody was power fisted up and or chain fisted up. But like they had they just put out this dumb amount of firepower. And they were wildly durable for the time. Oh, yeah. And the assault cannon had it's, there used to be something called jam dice. There was a number of shots. Oh, whoa, whoa. Not you're, you're, you're putting negative energy out there. I know, I know. I called them jam dice. They were the same fire dice. Until they jammed. Until they jammed.

But it was a D3, but it had to, it had a jam on it. And if you rolled a jam, it jammed, it didn't fire. Or if you got, if you had a multiple sustained fire die and it rolled multiple jams, your weapon could blow up. It was, it was good fun. Orks got that back later on the stompah. The stomp could fire in infinite. Yeah.

Until you rolled triple jam, the stomper. Yeah. The cyclone missile launcher was the one, if I'm not mistaken, where each missile would increase the radius. Yep. You could blow your load and get a really big time. You could fire multiple into an area and eventually you could hit like half the board with missile launchers. I actually do miss that in some of the vehicles and the terminators and stuff like that because

that continued in the third edition. Hell, he went for multiple editions where you had all of your stuff had X amount of missiles. They were gone once you fired them. Right. You know, it wasn't just a weapon profile where you fire this all game. I'll use the Seeker missiles for Tao right now. That was the one that you have multiples of. You might have two one use only models.

Almost every missile launcher was like one, with the exception of the generic missile launcher, what's a one use only? Like you got to, all right. It has five missiles. I'm going to shoot them all. Yep. The typical thing to say was I'm firing the rack. But it was it was fun.

Now, like, as we get into gameplay side of things, competitive versus casual, I'm going to say like, 90% of things were casual and competitive tournaments were all heavily comped on how you could build your army. There was specific rules. Every event had its own FAQ. And all of that was organized by your local, you know, gaming club, which may have been four guys, may have been 24 guys. It just depended on how things were in the area you were in.

So if you would be like, for me, the big thing to go to was Rwegg, right? They had this gaming convention and Rodney. Rochester that was run by RIT students. And it was super fun. And it was a good time. But like Courtney and Kemp and that crew that was playing at that time had some really specific ways they felt like the game should be played. Courtney had some ideas about the way he felt the game is going to be played.

And you would build into those rules. And like there was positives for taking some stuff. negatives are taking some stuff. And you always wanted to get a comp where you were like in that zero to plus one range. So you didn't get dinged by your opponents on sportsmanship as well because that was also part of the competitive scene. That's something that's actually, you know, that's a fascinating piece to me because what we're discussing is like it wasn't you, you, you were graded on numerous levels. And one of the big ones was kind of are you for lack of phrase being a dick in a sense of are you, did you bring an army that were because as we as we as we. we've been discussing through this, right? My army has to be mail-ordered. You know, my army is like,

the rules, it's a goofy setup. So the idea of being hyper-competitive, and we're talking 2025 right now, I can go online, find the best list that exists in the game currently. If I have the money, I can buy it all. It's here next week. And I can go to that point, back in the day. And it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be unsurprising in a tournament to be like, oh, crap, I'm paying, like, we've all, a few times in this last edition where you go to an event, and you might play the same list four times, because it's a very good. list, right? Well, we accept that.

Whereas back in this and you haven't brought this up. You're a jerk for pulling that. You come in there with just hardcore, like, dude, what are you doing this for? What? Well, remember you had Cobb? You basically got scored twice in comp because you got scored by the judges and you got scored by your opponents each round.

You also had a sportsmanship sheet. Well, you did after the event of 98. We'll cover it. Don't worry. Yeah. Sometimes people have to keep the pants on, but whatever. And that's what happened. But you got scored for both of those, but also you had a bunch of other theme scores and stuff that went in that.

You had to have your little blurb about what the hell your army was. I will go back to, I went to an event and they did a paint scoring. And I had stripped my testers models and painted up a new thing. And if you were to read the Ternid lore back in the day and the Ternad lore was, hey, they dragged biomass into a digestion pool. and something crawled out. Well, every one of my tyrannids was painted a different color. There was a general overall, like brown scheme in there, but there was different shades. And somebody went, man, I got a one for painting and I went up to the job out of a, out of a 10.

And I went up to the judges and I was like, why doesn't, it doesn't look like a uniformed army. And I'm like, but in the thing it says it drags like, if I drag a tree in versus dragging a human in, it's going to crawl out differently. I was like, when you eat Cheetos and, you know, orange food, when you go to the back, bathroom. Is it the same colors when you ate veggies? And the judge looked at me and went, that's kind of brilliant. And all of a sudden, my paint score went to like a seven. And I was like, oh, all right, there we go. But it was, I had to explain why my army was the way it was. And that was cool. And every, every army had like, you had a one paragraph, a one page blurb about your army. And that was scored as well. And then there was, and Brad's probably remember some of these, there was a pub quiz.

Right? Where they would read the rule books and the books that had come out and the codexes and ask you questions out about his, the lore and the and rules. It was fantastic. It was always 10 questions on that. One of my other favorites, you, an example of, I told you we had the cop and for each game, you had your opponents, comp and sportsmanship. Well, a lot of times if you had bad cop, you would get a bad sportsmanship, even if you're fun, because we also had favorite player, Baltimore GT, if you remember this. the group didn't bring my army. They brought a different army that everyone hated insane clown posse.

And I played six games. I got five zeros and four zeros and five favorite players. The judge quit came over to me, he goes, how are you getting zeros in sportsmanship and also rated as their favorite opponent for the dirt of it? I'm like, and I'm like, this is when I'm playing.

And they just went, oh, okay, never mind. Just walked away. Like, oh, yeah, yeah. But it is, again, because the reason why I would get to this is as we get to the end of the episode, next week we're going to move into the third edition. And so as we move from second or third edition, competitive starts to rise, for lack of a better phrase. We start to see a lot more boom of competitive.

And I think it was, to the people who played second edition, that the most negative part of that transition was exactly this, was we started leaving behind this game's meant to be a fun, social contract between two players, enjoying it and finding a good time and started morphing itself, not all the way, it still didn't do it, but started morphing itself and doing more of a like, I'm trying to win this. So the way as we,

as I foreshadow for you guys for the next one, it is very much like if you've played eighth and ninth, and then 10th came out and there was a complete reset, that's what second to third was. Yeah. It was a complete reset of the game. All the codexes went away. And unlike the most recent reset where you got indexes with tons of stuff.

Yeah. It's one of those things of it transitioned into here's your index. Here's the points. Here's the generic rules. We'll add flavor later. Yeah. And I think it is this element when we talk about second edition. And guys, we're going to come back to second edition in the future.

I just wanted to kind of move through the way I do stuff with we'll go through the additions, spend the time of them. And they'll come back through to kind of individual pieces of each edition. But the thing about second edition, because it is the origin edition, for lack of a better phrase, it was what was it setting the game up to be? And it was setting the game up to really be a fun, kind of enjoyable narrative game that it, by the way, still can be today if you want it to be. It won a hundred percent. That's not gone in any way, shape, or form. But it was, like, I look at 40K, I might be wrong as one.

And GW, maybe one day with the interviews with GW. But I viewed it as almost an accident. dental success. It felt to me when I look at seven edition where they're like, I just want to make this game and I'm going to make it and it's kind of fun. The rules are goofy. And then all of a sudden like, ah, crap, we're making money on it. All right. Someone write rules. Ah. Types in there. So I always, I always like to use, Zuber said this a number of years ago. And it was four guys in a basement who were like, hey, let's make some models in a game. Yeah. And they all of a sudden were like, oh my God, we've made a million dollars exactly and you say that how do we become a company yeah and in some ways i feel like some days

they're still going we make a billion dollars how did we become a company so it's just it's fun to be it's also why i do love the game it is this is where my love of the game comes up because it's like what just happened here man it don't make sense but i think but i think that's good for here we're kind of run a little bit long on time anyway so what i wanted to do is this is a good kind of chunk of second edition next week we're going to move into third edition with uh bradette and his buddy Sniggs, who we haven't told is coming on next week. So I'm telling Brad, you know, that Sniggs

now he's going to be on in a fortnight. A fortnight. Within a fortnight, we'll have to get him on here. But I want to discuss because Sniggs and Brad, this is actually, this is now moving out of my knowledge pool. I had left the game at the point of the move to the third edition. And I was aware of the game, but, you know, just, nearly years, I think I was graduating high school

when this happened. so I was busy. But I think it would be exciting for everyone to kind of learn like, oh, wow, this, because third edition is what starts really moving it forward as far as a return in the play for sure. Absolutely. But until, so real quick, though, Horton, where can we find more of you for people who like you? So you can always find more of me at the art store in Syracuse, New York, the art store, CNY.com. And of course, if you would like to come playing a competitive 40.

K tournament at the Salt City Gt.com. We still have signups available for AOS and 40K and Marvel Crisis Protocol. So pop in there. Come have a beverage with us because Brad and I will do tons. I will be playing. Brad will be playing and Horton will be,

actually Horton will be judging. So we will be there. I will be running around like a chick on my head, got off. Exactly. And hopefully a ceiling will follow me for more free drinks. Hopefully. But thank you all for listening

and following along with us. Yeah, but have a great Fortnite.