How was it to actually play RT during the first years?

[twisted moon]

i don't remember that from my youth. it must have made for some excellent games.

 

[symphonicpoet]

^I . . . uh . . . can't imagine borrowing any model train bits from my father for creative play purposes.

Good times.

 

[AranaszarSzuur]

Bearing in mind that when it first came out, really you only had the choice of an army of 17 Space Orks or 30 Marines (for a tenner!), so nearly everybody (unwittingly) played Horus Heresy games. Everyone I knew that was into 40k when it first came out went and bought an RTB01 box set, moreso as Orks were pretty much useless against them in such a small number, as well as being twice as expensive, cash-wise.

Interesting. So ultimately switching to plastic for Space Marines was harmful to game balance? It sounds like it would be better if they'd use C100 marines instead.

 

[AranaszarSzuur]

Like everyone else here has said, I started out playing friends with plastic beakies in fairly even sets on the basement floor around books, shoeboxes, and blankets. We used WWII artillery and homemade vehicles and heavy weapons for spice. Kitbashed aircraft and toy tanks. Eventually we started buying the metal stuff, but my first group was always pretty much Marines all around. Space Wolves vs. Dark Angels and each says the other is the heretic. Eventually a friend added eldar and I added orks. We were always pretty fast and loose. Never really worried about points. And if the battle takes all day, that's fine. We even improvised rules fairly frequently. (For instance using scatter rules and for an ork dreadnought lobbing orks across a bottomless chasm the humies were counting on to keep the orks at bay. Well, some of them got across that way. And orks are pretty durable, so they were still mostly intact and able to fight after.)

Believe it or not, I actually have a tiny handful of photographs from a battle my brother and I played in the front yard. The basic scenario was a red vs. blue exercise where a mixed unit of Imperial Guard and Marines were defending a position while a larger unit of Marines attacked it. This is scanned from a print using an old Kodak Discman camera, so the resolution is not the best. I dated it 1991 on Flickr, but thinking about it, that's probably too late. I was in high school at the time, so between 1987 and 1992, but leaning toward the earlier end of that.

Whoa, that's epic. Also, wow photos of game from the original times D: .

 

[symphonicpoet]

Whoa, that's epic. Also, wow photos of game from the original times D: .

I wish I had more photos. It was pretty early in my photographic experiments, and even cheap film cost money that could be spent on more beakies, tanks, or model airplanes. They were difficult times for a teenager's budget. I had an arms race with a neighboring ki . . . I mean power. But I tell you what, I am glad I have even the few pictures I do. Now that I have my own yard I should do some landscape hammer. The only question is where to put the mud pit. (My neighbors are going to love me! Thankfully, they all have dogs, so nobody is likely to get too upset by a bit of carefully crafted mud.)

 

[TheLion]

My favourite memories are from my teenage years playing Rogue Trader with my best friend. It provided escapism from my alcoholic father and being bullied at school. Even though those years were really bad, RT helped to get me through.

We didn't have much money so we used one inch squares of card for miniatures, and noted on them what they represented. We used dried peas for buildings, which was cool when you hacked your way in as you just removed some of the peas.

We did buy the odd miniature but it was more about the narrative, not what miniatures we had, whether they were painted, or who won or lost. We had a lot of fun and I miss those times.

I've played every edition of 40k to date and RT is still my favourite.

 

[symphonicpoet]

^Were you using it more as a roll playing story driven sort of game or more of a battle simulation kind of enterprise? Sounds like enormous fun either way. I love the idea of gradually dismantling semi-edible buildings during a game!

 

[TheLion]

We always used the mission generators in the main book, which were tweaked to what we wanted to play. It was always very narrative driven gaming, no extended campaigns, just crazy one off stuff.

Yes, the dried peas were pretty cool. You could create the outline of the buildings, including the interior. Had to use your imagination with regard to line of sight and heights.

 

[AranaszarSzuur]

*bump*

 

[Eric]

A worthy bump.

The smell of preserved lichen (moose moss to some) from model railway shops - that's one other strong "back in the day" thing I remember. You would just buy a big bag of multiple colours and bam hedges and undergrowth everywhere. In fact we used to use a lot of model railway bits, tunnels and the like probably because we had them in the house. I did have to get some lichen a while back just for the nostalgia and I keep wondering about trying to try preserve some of the tonnes of it that grow on the heathland around us (I think it's generally getting it to take up glycerine to prevent it going brittle - better go and find the old railway modelling magazines/books).

Otherwise as others have said - lots more narrative play. I don't think in the RT days we ever did a game that didn't have some kind of other objective (beyond destroy the opponent) for one or both sides. Also getting hold of the dungeon floorplans meant a lot of games had to have secret tunnels and bits hidden underground for models to explore, to be honest I think we probably over complicated it when we tried to have too much Z axis play!

 

[EGG]

I'm not sure if this pic has been posted here before?

 

[Eric]

white stones for minis

I see they couldn't be bothered to paint the stones, just primed them. Just like all my old 40k games then...

 

[symphonicpoet]

^^Damn! That's pretty hardcore.

^^^The Z axis! We used to set up mountains made out of old army blankets wadded up. I always argued in favor of a house rule to give the guy on the hill a firing advantage. (Basically the guy on the hill gets the measure straight out, but the guy on the ground has to follow the terrain.) I think I was soundly voted down every time. But yeah, that was the days when we were using fishing weights for plasma guns, lichen for hedgerows, German flak cannons for tarantulas, and things like that. Ah me! Lovely stuff. (I really should have treated that lichen. It's all brittle and faded now. I still use some of it every now and then though.)

 

[AranaszarSzuur]

*bump*