The Future Is Buried In The Past
It has been said that the best time to be a Warhammer fan is the first seven years. During that time you fall headlong into lore, and experience your first ruleset, as well as the one that shakes up the bedrock of what you thought it was. As you enter the third system shake-up, something starts to happen. Something that toy collectors and movie aficionados know far too well.
Nostalgia rears in the brain, colouring the past in rose-flavoured tints, replacing any and all bad memory with only the best ones. Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time researching and studying Nostalgia (and have named it the Sonic Adventure 2 Syndrome*). I could go into why Nostalgia has the power it has over people, but that would be quite a dry read for what its for all purposes a site half-dedicated to the history of the warhammer worlds. Needless to say, we are all guilty of using Nostalgia as a way of proving that “things used to better” without ever realising those memories are utterly false. Memory is over-writable, and is overwritten constantly, and each time you’ve though fondly of why 2nd Ed 40k is better than 9th, you’ve self-reinforced that as well as providing evidence via your own dopamine increase. It’s crazy, but as I say, Memory and Nostalgia were the basis of my thesis so unfortunately, I kinda know what I’m talking about here.
So, We are all guilty of Nostalga, but that does not mean it’s only a negative. Nostalgia created the smart phone, being as it was built on the memories of Star Trek. When used as a foundation for going forward, it can be a powerful force, attaching itself to existing emotional weight by those involved and those wishing to engage. No-one remembers that Bugs Bunny was based on a now almost totally forgotten movie character, but everyone remembers that rabbits eat carrots. Its all very mutable and strange.
What we have seen Games Workshop do recently, is try to mine that feeling and those emotions in a very particular way. The reason we have seen Squats, Zoats, 2nd Ed style Orcs and the like all comes from digging down into their past and seeing what people have a strong reaction to in order to gain that interest and at the end of the day, sales. The Squats becoming the Leagues of Votan is a strong example of how this can, and often should, be done. We saw it with the Sisters of Battle a few years back, where the company drips out the information for the new thing whilst also reminding the viewer of what the old thing was, and in the case of the Squats, tying that into the near-mythic levels of fan-base that these also-rans of 40k have enjoyed for decades. Everyone wanted Squats as they remembered them, and by taking a very different but still recognisable route, GW managed to do just enough to fan the flames of the fandom. This of course means that much like the Sisters, and the High Elf evolution of the Lumineth, there is more to come to firmly cement them in the now, and less in the Nostalgia**.
What we have seen with the Kruleboyz of AoS is the idea not gaining ground as the balance was not correctly thought out. Too much of the new with only a small amount of the old, a shame as the Ian Miller / John Blanche design choices are there writ large on the armour and shields, in the faces and in the stances. It’s in the completion it falls apart, and loses that older feel, the “oldhammerness” of it all. It’s become part of the hobby in a multitude of ways, as people return to “my edition” to play, and living rule-books of these eras find new life online. It’s beyond easy now to find streamlined and patched versions of 2nd Ed 40k or 4th Ed Fantasy Battle to download and play. We live in a world where Advanced Heroquest has a living rule-book. It’s not because these things were better, after all Mordheim is quite clunky compared to anything under Osprey Publishing’s Frostgrave label, and I dare anyone to tell me pre-4th Ed Fantasy Battle is better than Dragon Rampant. But, they are important steps on the ladder, not the ladder itself, and whilst there is every joy in rediscovering these fledgling steps in your own hobby history, never become glued to one way to thinking or of one way of enjoying.
As time ravages us all into dust, these things will continue, and we see it now as ideas and concepts from the turn of millennium (22 years ago now, the perfect time for reappearances) push themselves to the fore, and I cannot help but feel that within the next few years, Necromunda will have a Gorkamorka update attached, and the last two versions of Warhammer Quest were breeding grounds of older ideas being brought back to the fore, so all my bets are on a group of adventurers going after monopose skaven within the decade.
As Always, I remain
Adam
*No-one remembers how bad the game was, only how good the opening level and music were. Because they were the parts people played. because the rest was rubbish.
**Something Hasbro needed to learn to do a decade ago with the Transformers franchise