There is something fun about drooling over new minis, anticipating new content, and checking the store to see if the newest installment is in.
Do you know what else is fun? Not having to do that at all.
I touched on this a bit when I was considering what fantasy battle game to get into. My final decision was 4th Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle. I chose that over all other editions of WFB, One Page Rules and The Old World. The Old World is intriguing, but nostalgia overruled modernity. I nearly went with 5th Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle (and I suppose still could since it’s so similar to 4th). The 5th edition box came out when I was exiting the hobby, so I never really ogled it. It’s a superior box to 4th edition, even if I’m not too keen on lizardmen. I had to go with 4th, and I have every White Dwarf spanning those years. It’s fully my initial time in the hobby. That’s where my nostalgia lands.
Plus, The Old World is still a “living” game.
I didn’t start the search thinking I wanted to learn a dead game. It developed naturally. I wasn’t looking for something new to follow. There’s definitely some appeal to having a game exist in its entirety. No force will be nerfed with the “latest edition”.
Same thing with Warhammer Quest (1995). You can run non-canon scenarios, or homebrewed characters, but the game won’t change. The rules were written. The expansions are out. There’s no new 30th edition of WHQ coming out to nerf your Bow of Loren and make the Halfling Thief turbo overpowering!
The games are stuck in time. I guarantee there’s still plenty to explore and fun to be had even in an old cobwebby game like WHQ, Rogue Trader, Heroquest, Space Hulk, or other elegant artifacts of a bygone era.
We should call them something other than a “dead game”. “Established”, perhaps. Maybe “settled”, “proven”, “bonafied”, or “institutional”. Ooh, I have it: “immortal”.
IMMORTAL GAMES
These games aren’t dead! They’re immortal. You can’t kill Warhammer Quest, Mordheim, 40k, or D&D! They will live on forever!
You can keep playing, and you don’t have to keep doing the same thing over and over again. But you also don’t have to get hung out to dry by a megacorp to boost their quarterly earnings!
Get those minis out and sit down at the table. It’s game time!
