Oldhammer, what does it mean to you?

[Tactalvanic]

late 80s early 90s was my time, and that kind of sculpting and rules sets are fond and still current memories and influences.

Grenedier, ral partha, alternative armies etc , not always GW as what was available to me varied but certainly mixed/matched other manufacturers than GW back then as well as now.

Like other things -(doctor who - which one's yours etc) - that was my "best times" - younger, less money but oh, those days.. much missed through the rose tint, even if other things, are not.

At least I still have most of it, and it still makes me happy at times of need

[Robosmith]

To me, Oldhammer is more or less signified by the pre-2000, pre-corporate era of Games Workshop.  There was a period where Games Workshop was a business, but still felt like a group of gaming geeks...making games for other gaming geeks.  For me this was up to the end of 2nd Edition for 40K - not sure what the coinciding Warhammer Fantasy edition was.

At a glance:
-Contributors/designers like Andy Chambers, Jervis Johnson, Rick Priestley, etc.
-Art by Blanche, Gibbons.  Painted models by Michael Perry
-Sculpts by Jes Goodwin
-The high-water mark of GW metals (which weirdly got far worse after around 2000)
-White Dwarf featuring content-rich articles and not short sales-blurbs masquerading as content
-Games Workshop recognizing other games and model lines existed, even though they were starting in on the "Games Workshop Hobby" silliness.
-Units existed in the game with no models and players were encouraged to actually build their own
-Articles in White Dwarf actually told you how to make terrain, and build custom models (even if they weren't using GW bits, gasp!)
-I'd argue the high water mark for GW's writing/rules/lore/articles
-Best codices every released by GW (haven't been touched to this day as far as quality goes)
-Superb one-box games (Warhammer Quest, Mordheim, Necromunda, etc.)  With content/quality that far exceeds what you commonly get today in the re-released versions.
-Rulezboyz phone lines
-Bits ordering
-Very solid support for Outriders (independent retailers who carried GW products)
-Actual hand-made terrain and (gasp) grass/trees pictured in games of 40K, .  Before the days of "everything in every picture must be a product we can sell you".

There was a decidedly different "feel" to the company as a whole.  Far less "every thing to squeeze a cent out of you", and a lot less corporate/sterile, etc.  However, I can assume as well, Games Workshop was not as financially stable as it is now - a literal money-making juggernaut.  And I think that's the real ticket for me; when the company was probably borderline broke...but existed with far more geek passion than it does now.  To me that is Oldhammer.

This is pretty much spot on for my definition of Oldhammer as well. I would consider 3rd edition to the AoS era to be the shifting point for Middlehammer but a lot of it is based on nostalgia for the era you grew up in I suppose. Everyone wants to be the cool kid and not the red headed step child in the middle.

I foresee this thread getting moved to the dedicated GW section before long....
I never played Warhammer but I do think the miniatures were better then. The latest stuff just turns me off and has for a long time. So that's  what "Oldhammer " means to me.

It's how most of us got into the hobby and it's an easy way to define eras that are other wise very nebulous. Like you might love Italian horror but you're still going to judge horror genre changes based on the big releases like Halloween and Scream.

I don't see a need to do so unless it veers off irrevocably into diatribes about current GW price, rules-writing and/or release politics, which would be better off in the general GW thread. I too love me a spot of rose-tinted nostalgia as much as the next man-child. 

Coincidentally, I have been pondering that over the last few months, too, being less than enamoured with current releases aiming at said nostalgia after the fact of spending too much on it.

I'm drifting back to finishing up some Kryomek stuff I had lying about for decades, as that falls into that nostalgia spot of early to mid 1990s minis; for me, the most pleasant memories I have of that time were of the ultimately unsuccessful attempts to compete with GW in the field of "game systems", and the fact that their moments of glory predate the internet fandom for the most part, so that there is little else than the actual mini ranges and a handful of print media (mainly rulebooks, but stuff like Forge magazine etc.).

Warzone, Heartbreaker minis, the aforementioned Kryomek, Leviathan and Flintloque would be my nostalgia triggers, whereas even my perennial favourite of the golden years of 2ed 40k has pretty much been terminally afflicted with my general ennui concerning GW games as a whole.

Lately I've been digging through Reaper's back catalog and drooling over their dragons. Birthdays coming up soon so I don't want to step on the lass's toes by buying them all up but I love that weird old style of models. I can't find it on a UK store but the US store had a Dwarf sky ship with the main ship hanging from a Dragon's belly and a crow's nest on top. It was such a cool model and told a real story even in pewter. It's stuff like that which makes me want to dig into the archives and hunt down those minis full of character being forgotten. We almost need an oldhammer preservation project where there's modern ways to access how things used to be done without having to dig into sketchy archives from god knows where on the internet. I'm thinking for 2023 I'm going to try and build something like that and share it as much as I can.

One mini I would love to track down from the era was a pewter knock off Xenomorph. I remember being bought it very clearly but I can't for the life of me find where it came from. I don't think it was an exact xenomorph but it was pretty close. I bet loads of us have minis like that. Old faint memories from corner shops while out shopping with Mum.

[Major_Gilbear]

One mini I would love to track down from the era was a pewter knock off Xenomorph. I remember being bought it very clearly but I can't for the life of me find where it came from. I don't think it was an exact xenomorph but it was pretty close. I bet loads of us have minis like that. Old faint memories from corner shops while out shopping with Mum.

It wasn't a Kyromek alien was it? They are still available from Scotia Grendel:

https://www.shop.scotiagrendel.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=217_218_3_113_119

[Reed]

70s-80s kids nostalgic of their youth mixed with exorbitantly overpriced miniatures with high lead content for sale on eBay.

[tikitang]

This is a question I've seen asked many times before, both on the Oldhammer Facebook group, which I was a member of (on-and-off) during the 2010s, and also the Oldhammer Forum.

It's a good question, and continues to generate interesting responses.

My personal "Oldhammer journey" was fuelled by a combination of several interests and passions.

One of them was an interest in old-school fantasy art which I find more immersive, atmospheric and aesthetically pleasing than what is typically used to illustrate most wargame or RPG publications today.

Another was a general "retro" attitude to life which I find manifests itself in many of my hobbies and interests; I generally like things "old-school" and always have, since my childhood days.

Another was the "DIY/sandbox" approach which the older rules offered, allowing you to create armies/warbands in whatever way you pleased, with whatever miniatures you had, most excellently summarised by Zhu Baijee's THE OLDHAMMER CONTRACT blog-post from 2011. This was a most pleasant contrast to the overly prescriptive nature of later editions of Warhammer, continuing up until this day.

Yet another was "historical interest". I was born in 1983 when the first edition of Warhammer was released and so a part my journey into the "Oldhammer" scene was discovering the shrouded world of my infancy; I wanted to see what tabletop gamers were doing while I was being pushed around in a pram and Margaret Thatcher was still Prime Minister.

Overall, though, I would say the predominant purpose of "Oldhammer" in my life was (or certainly became) an attempt to reconstruct an imaginary "lost childhood". This is important to note: not relive an actual childhood, but to reconstruct an imagined one.

As a child, through a combination of complicated factors, wargaming passed me by. I was aware of it, very much, and spent many an hour of the early 90s staring at the photographs printed in White Dwarf magazines that I found in the school library, or loitering about my local Games Workshop store after school, but I never seemed able to take the steps required to actually partake in the hobby. Making things with my hands, and understanding tabletop game rules were two key abilities that I seemed to completely lack as a young lad, and that put me off. I also had extremely poor social skills and lacked the ability to engage with other people in most activities! As such, while I dearly longed to be in a position where I could play these exciting-looking tabletop games, my circumstances just never seemed well-aligned enough to permit it, and I drifted into solitary video gaming for many many years.

When I finally emerged from that cocoon and re-engaged with the real world, I threw myself wholeheartedly into trying to reclaim those "lost years"--the ones in which I felt I should have been playing Warhammer and the associated board games--by furiously collecting old games and rules on eBay. By 2017 I had managed to acquire a fairly sizeable collection, but in the spring of that year I went through a bit of a personal crisis and wound up throwing the entire collection on eBay once more.

After that moment, I largely drifted away from Oldhammer and it's not something I identify with any longer.

In conclusion, what does Oldhammer mean to me today? A road I once walked down, searching for meaning and answers in the lost world of my foggy youth, as part of a greater exploratory journey to find fulfillment and meaning in this hobby, but also a road I have left behind me, and do not intend to retrace.

[Lost Egg]

I have mixed feelings about "Oldhammer".

On the plus side, for me it is anything 1980s or early 1990s by GW. Rogue Trader and the earliest iterations of Warhammer. By 1995 you're no longer in oldhammer territory for me at least. 1980s/early 1990s fluff isn't worked out in so much detail, it is really more suggestive prompts for your own imagination rather than delivering you a fully built world, if you get what I mean. Miniatures-wise as a general rule it is the same: factions are recognisable but there are lots of obscure suggestive little details on lots of the sculpts to make you think about the minis personality. By 1995 things are much more uniform and (to me) boring. Other people might draw the line at a different date, and that is fine by me!

There is also a wonderfully supportive and friendly community, exemplified by people like Axiom on this forum.

On the downside, part of the "oldhammer" community can be very prescriptive and high-handed about what counts as oldhammer (see that "declaration" thingy that was going around years ago). Speaking purely for myself, I can't stand that side of things - the subcultures I've spent 2/3 of my life in now have enough of that nonsense going on perennially ("that's not punk/hardcore/straightedge, *this* is" etc. etc.) that I don't need it in my wargaming hobby.

I agree BP.

However I do enjoy the irony that in just 20-30 years the GW hobby has basically become the Imperium with factions all over the place, calling out that they have the truth of GW / 40k / Warhammer. Oh course they are all wrong...because I'm 40k and so is my wife!

[Storm Wolf]

I agree BP.

However I do enjoy the irony that in just 20-30 years the GW hobby has basically become the Imperium with factions all over the place, calling out that they have the truth of GW / 40k / Warhammer. Oh course they are all wrong...because I'm 40k and so is my wife!

"Blessed are the wargamers!" 

[DivisMal]

I don't know exactly when they were released, but the Grenadier sci-fi/post apoc gang range (later taken up by em4, not sure if they're still around) also has that oldhammer feel for me. They blend almost seamlessly with the Confrontation gangers from GW, for example.

Yeah those Copplestone Future Warriors are more Oldhammer than Oldhammer itself 

For me it’s the sheer amount of *individual* metal miniatures; many different styles (not just GW grimdark and the people who copy it), but also a lot of diy terrain, background stories which I still can laugh about and be fascinated (that tongue in cheek approach was mostly lost already in the later 90s.

And last but not least: more freedom. Not every little detail was described and prescribed in codex books and the monthly inquiditorial newsletter, but customization and different colors were actually encouraged!

[Robosmith]

It wasn't a Kyromek alien was it? They are still available from Scotia Grendel:

https://www.shop.scotiagrendel.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=217_218_3_113_119

Holy shit that's it! My wallet hates you but I love you for answering one of those life long lingering mysteries everyone's life has!

[Red Orc]

70s-80s kids nostalgic of their youth mixed with exorbitantly overpriced miniatures with high lead content for sale on eBay.

Nailed it.

For me, it's 2nd Ed. Most Oldhammer people go for 3rd, so maybe my 'Oldhammer' is actually 'Palaeohammer'. Or 'Archaeohammer' at least.

Pre-40k, pre-Skaven, when the Empire was barbaric and only the Southern states (what became Tilea and Estalia) had black powder (and Dwarves of course), pre-WHFRP. Harboth, Notlob, the Knights of Origo and Grom's Goblin Guard. Some 'great' (perhaps only through the nostalgic haze) minis.

But I haven't actually played Warhammer in donkeys' years. Kings of War a bit, and I've just got Oathmark for Christmas, so i'm going to see if that captures any of the spirit, and of course, I've mixed in many newer minis and different ranges and different companies, over the years... some units in various armies are not 'Old...' by any means, and some aren't strictly '...hammer', so it's a movable feast I reckon.

[Hobgoblin]

Nailed it.

For me, it's 2nd Ed. Most Oldhammer people go for 3rd, so maybe my 'Oldhammer' is actually 'Palaeohammer'. Or 'Archaeohammer' at least.

Pre-40k, pre-Skaven, when the Empire was barbaric and only the Southern states (what became Tilea and Estalia) had black powder (and Dwarves of course), pre-WHFRP. Harboth, Notlob, the Knights of Origo and Grom's Goblin Guard. Some 'great' (perhaps only through the nostalgic haze) minis.

That's the sweet spot for me too - though the Skaven were introduced for second edition (Vengeance of the Lichemaster and all that - scenarios were a real strength of second edition). My friends and I all got really excited about third edition, but - in the end - it wasn't as good a game (overpowered magic, etc., and less emphasis on compelling narrative scenarios).

I don't think it's pure nostalgia that makes the miniatures great, though: the original Harboth and Grom figures are cases in point: superior to the more cartoonish subsequent iterations when considered purely as sculptures. The Perrys had really hit their stride by the time Warhammer's second edition was out, and there was all that lovely Morrison/Carden and Meier stuff too.

Another thing that's quintessentially Oldhammer to me is an army made up of lots of different manufacturers' miniatures - like Bryan Ansell's famous chaos army, which has all sorts of stuff lurking among the beastmen. I recall orc armies with Citadel, Ral Partha, Grenadier and Asgard all ranked up together - glorious!

[RSDean]

So, when did Games Workshop stop admitting that other miniatures existed?

I started gaming in the 1970s, so I had already been playing for quite a long time when Warhammer 1st edition came out in 1983.  I’d just started my first job and things were too busy to pay too much attention to the miniatures world.  Besides, we had settled on Heritage Games Knights and Magick as our standard fantasy rules.

My only contact with Citadel Miniatures was with the lines cross-licensed and sold as “Ral Partha Imports”, which I could pick up locally. 

Games Workshop took over my local (Baltimore) Compleat Strategist store sometime in the late ‘80s, and I stopped making the trip there after they starting selling GW exclusively.  I suppose that was during the WHFB3 era.  Sometime later, whenever Mordheim came out, I stopped in a GW expansion store to see if Mordheim might be interesting, and left after I was berated by the staff for not already playing GW games.  So, presumably they were pretty gung ho about GW-only by then …

Anyway, my Warhammer experience has mostly been limited to WHAB, which we played for a while in the early ‘00s.  I recently picked up a Warhammer 1st edition, just to see what I missed out on all those years ago, but I haven’t had time to organize a play through. Unless I use Byzantines, Carolingians, and Fantasy Adventurers, it’ll be a mixed manufacturer affair. 

[Daeothar]

I think Major Gilbear has it pretty much spot on with his classifications.

However, I very much look at miniatures from the early nineties with rosy rose-tinten glasses myself. The nostalgia is greatest there; I was introduced to the hobby around that time (maybe a bit earlier with Hero Quest and Space Crusade and my first box of RTB01 marines), and the aesthetic of the era has firmly rooted itself in my psyche as the baseline for everything miniature related.

So pre-slotta miniatures I find nice, but they're too old for me personally. So I am not really into Oldhammer as per the stated definition, but have a squishy soft spot for the Hero/Middlehammer era of miniatures, with a strong fading into what was defined as the Classic era.

And this does not limit itself to GW games at all. Warzone, VOID, Confrontation, early Warmachine and 1999 are also huge favourites of mine, to name but a few.

It goes so far as me having collected (almost) all boxed games published by GW during this era (I'm only missing Adeptus Titanicus and the Plague Fleet expansion for Manowar at the time of writing this).

I had to look at my collection when moving rooms a couple of years back and admit that collecting these games forms a substantial part of my hobby (now for painting all of the included miniatures... ). And all of this is basically fueled by a sense of nostalgia for the era.

I remember stepping into the only GW store in the country back then, and seeing all of these awesome, diverse and colourful games stacked to the ceiling. And not being able to buy any of them. But now I can and I do!

Mind; I never played any of those games back in the day because I could not afford them (exceptions being Hero Quest, Star Quest Space Crusade and Necromunda, which I did actually own back in the day), but they do invoke the same feeling, so I love them, even though most of the gameplay is questionable at best; the systems did not age well in many cases, but boy do they look glorious when on the table (and each game needs to be played at least once!)

For years now, I've been almost exclusively buying OOP, used miniatures; very few actually new models find their way into my collection these days. And GW's new aesthetic really does not do it for me. My nephew loves it though, and more power to him, but I can't help but think that this is now forming his personal baseline.

And when he's, what, 3 decades older, he'll look at his 3D-printed, pre-coloured current armies and think back fondly to his Kruleboys from back in the day and unconsiously compare every miniature to that standard. Who knows; he might even go so far as to start collecting all of this old plastic out of nostalgia...