Goatboy’s Old Hammer 40K – Back Before GW Stepped In, Indies Created the Competitive Scene

Goatboy here with some 40K Old Hammer memories of where the competitive scene actually came from – the players themselves!

Today’s step back into the past is something those players who have been battling these last few years haven’t had to deal with.  Today’s we are pulling back the curtain on the unofficial FAQs we had to play with when competing in the loose old-school days of Competitive Warhammer 40k.

Once Upon a Time, GW Wasn’t Involved With Competitive Play

GW wasn’t always that receptive to the competitive Warhammer 40K scene – it’s actually only been on board since 8th Edition (plus the Apocryphal ‘ArdBoys events run by GW sales).  For today’s competetive minded missions, and overall 40K scene, you can thank a lot of the initial Rogue Trader GT’s that popped up for pushing the scene we have now – the FLG’s, Novas, Adepticons, ATC, and a pile of other events that literally created the format we now know and love.  With GW not really pushing that side of the events this universe of indy community driven tournaments had to come up with their own interpretations of how rules should work or what GW might have wanted when cobbling together those words into a cohesive gameplay experience.

The “Event FAQ” Era

These “house” rules to play 40K competitively varied widely from event to event.  As the game’s rules changed from month to month (some things never change), the players would update dozens of seperate house FAQs to make the game playable in a competetive environment.  Remember that back before 8th the “Rulebook Missions” where totally unlike modern 40K and usually did not lend themselves to helping an event with hundred os players determine an averall winner. Many of the missions were simply win/lose/tie, and often had oddbal army composition requirements.

Sometimes these event FAQ rulepacks made a lot of sense as something in the current meta didn’t really work well or was abusive so it needed a tweak.  There were other times it was a pet desire from an individual TO and how they wanted their favorite army to work on the tabletop. I remember having to tweak lists and update things weeks before an event as some new release forced the TO’s to figure out how something should work.

This was also the time frame before Discords, Facebook groups, and well written websites had PDF’s with all their rules placed on it.  You would be forwarded an email or find some method to see what rules interpretation the event was using. You had to be in the know, and you had to be on the big forums constantly to keep current. It was a wild time trying to figure out if  going to an event would allow your busted combo to work or you would get wrecked by some other combo that popped up.

Everyone Had a FAQ

It was an interesting time and most likely this pushed events to start to figure out one  FAQ to rule them.  You would have resources and groups like DakkaDakka that would publish a cohesive FAQ.   Adepticon had a FAQ. You had European groups that would publish their own events like the WTC FAQs.  There would be arguments (on the big forums like Portent or Warseer) about who was right and if something was too broken.  As you could imagine, over time, the smaller events would simply throw in the towel and decide to use the FAQ from larger groups such as the INAT FAQ (seen below), instead of making their own. Over a period of years from 4th Edition to 7th the number of these FAQs slowly but steadily decreased, but they were still often quite different from each other.

The era was wild, and Warhammer 40K certainly had a local flavor, that you had to adapt to when you traveled to distant events.  This was the start of players traveling around and trying to get fame with the Warhammer events.  I know I went around to a lot more tournaments outside my localized areas (most likely due to not having kids).  The House Rules defined if something was good or not just like we currently have events defined by what kind of terrain they were using.

Welcome to the Modern Era

With the reboot of 40K in 8th Edition, GW finally stepped back into the competitive scene with both feet. Warhammer Community was launched, with official Errata, Balance Dataslates, and FAQs centralized in ONE PLACE (amazing)! Nottingham stopped fighting against the sea, and championed the competitive scene, in time spinning up their own event circuit.   I am thankful GW has stepped back into the scene as heavily as they have.  It is nice to know the rules we are playing with should be the same at any event globally.  They have done a much better job of ensuring their initial rules write up works well with changes really only happening to make things better or fix a busted issue.  The era of players trying to interpret a comma, space, or period in a rule written is long past.

But as you look at the general layout of modern 40K missions, mission decks, and events, take a moment, and tip your hat at all those unsung players who literally built up the backbone of the modern competetive scene. These lonely heroes burned the midnight oil, called friends, argued about rules on forums, and created the mission/rule FAQs that kept 40K events running for over a decade.

This one’s for you guys – THANK YOU!

Thomas Reidy, aka Goatboy, the ever-evil member of BoLS. I do arts, play 40k, and even paint a lot of stuff. I have been playing Warhammer 40K since the 1990s, and have won multiple national events including Adepticon and GW GTs. I’ve been writing for BoLS for 15 years. Look at my Instagram to see what I am working on – or working on for someone. I am always doing something hobby related.

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