Andy Chambers On Specialist Games
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- Опубліковано 10 лип 2024
- I went and met with Andy Chambers at his home, and got to hear some of the stories on the Games Workshop Specialist Games: Battlefleet Gothic, Epic 40k, Gorkamorka and Necromunda. Really great to hear the details on how these games were developed and perceived at the time!
Time references for each game:
BFG: 00:00
Epic: 03:35
Gorkamorka: 08:55
Necromunda: 12:52
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This can’t be right, Andy Chambers has a mullet and is about 30.
Also one eyebrow raised at all times
@@demonstructie ooh yes! And the big mo.
Yes - the most surprising thing about this video is how normal Andy has become - what happened to GW's own Wild Man of Wonga?!????!😮
@@jeffholt9437 the games studio he started after he left GW was something like ‘Red Socialist Gmes,’he was a badass.
haha I was shook
These guys were my heroes. Andy, Jervis, Rick, etc. Back when GW let designers be seen and recognized. The era of specialist games and 'zines was golden
Andy mentioned Once on a time in the Wild West, or something. I remember Jervis saying he'd kinda come from a background of those wild west games that had a strong rp feel? is that right
Its kinda mordheim/necromunda-ish with a pinch of lotr rules, which is a good mix and makes it dynamic.
Ruleswise its about as rp as the other campaign skirmishers, but its generates a lot of player driven banter and stories depending on your group. As it is a "historical" system, you can weave in all your favorite bits and bobs of real (or fictional) western stories.
One of the supplements introduces slightly larger battles around the indian wars, but we havent played this.
Agreed! Hear, hear. Man, what an awesome company and nicely paced releases. I'm a Power plant operator now and still can't afford the big stuff! XD
was honored to meet Jervis in 2004 at a game convention in california, very nice fellow.
Chambers leaving GW was the beginning of the end for me. They still had some amazing talent that loved the games but turning corporate was a clear writing on the wall.
Same. The thing that shook me to my core was the reboot of epic being junked after what felt like five seconds, and Battlefleet Gothic feeling like it had about the same treatment (though I think it was going for a bit). I was never into collecting massive amounts of the same thing for huge games: I’m a kitchen table guy, a few squads and a tank or a fleet of ships or a bloodbowl team was my jam. Worked at a GW store for a while in the late nineties and I was very much the “other games” guy.
I think that for me, beyond the ridiculous value of documenting these foundational designers from GW's early days, finally hearing their voices is just so rad. Humanizing my heroes of game design whose voices I have only read in print. Thank you Tom, and thank you Andy, for the time and effort to make these.
orz
I am 53 and was a huge Space Marine and BFG fan. In all that time though I have never heard Andy’s voice. Damn it is deeper than I imagined.
I wholeheartedly agree, getting interviews like this is incredible! Thanks to everyone involved.
@@kennethfharkin felt the same meeting Jervis, very deep voice
Nearly 30 years on, and Necromunda is STILL my absolute favorite miniatures skirmish game to play. Chambers is truly a design genius, and I'm forever in his debt.
yeah, my fave standalones were Necromunda, Space Hulk, Blood Bowl, and maybe Man o' War
Mmmm... Genius? More like wacky inventor. Andy's had, by his own admission, a fair number of misses. But his hits were hard hits.
I love that his office looks exactly like mine with miniature and hobby stuff all over the place 😂
Ha, mine too! 😂
I will always remember being in awe of Andy's Skaven army from way back in the day
He clearly decided when making that list: I'm going to have "everything" in this list! Definitely one of the best made with tons of flavour and reference informing the whole thing. Cementing the Skaven as a true GW invention and one of the fans' enduring favourites.
These guys made a lonely bored kids life bearable. Loved this period of games workshop. Thanks to all the devs, artists and lore makers.
I love BFG and EPIC and the creativity of old Games Workshop. So much is lost.
I remember reading about Andy's Piscina IV Campaign in White Dwarf still all these years later. It was an incredible map campaign set in WH40k and really showed how you can bring the background/fluff to life in your games. Huge respect to him for his work at Games Workshop!
Summed up a lot of my own feelings on the current state of GW with a transition from a games company to an editions company. I loved Gorkamorka, easily one of my all time favourite games, same with Necromunda, Battlefleet Gothic and Blood Bowl. Amazing times, Andy is one of the generation of rock god level games designers in my book.
For me Andy is a legend among legends, so much of my childhood fun was due to his creations.
Him and Jervis Johnson, re: Blood Bowl. Great game.
Ah. Gorka morka. One of my favourites. The trukk in this game was later put into the 40k ork army rosters. Loved it!
I think Necromunda, with its campaign system, was the best game that GW ever made. My group of of friends had the best time with it, and we wrote an underhive newsletter to document our games, and our gangs developed feuds and personalities, lucky and cursed gangers. I think the only thing that would have made it better would have been if all the gangs had been in multi-part plastic with loads of spare parts and weapons. Much appreciate all the work done on that. (We enjoyed Gorkamorka too!)
Campaign newsletters are great. I do that for an ongoing Blood Bowl league and ended up with grudges, heroic players, buffoons, and cinematic events that people remember and talk about years later. The 'Dwarven Dance Party' story, where a group of six dwarves fouled a Rat Ogre to death, still gets laughter.
The Andy Chambers from White Dwarf #187 (July, 1995) is how I will forever remember him. All hail Lord Varlak! 😭
For me epic was the bees knees , and warhamster a close second, i just loved big armies on a board
Same for me, except Warmaster was the best and Epic a close second. Huge games on big tables led me into 6mm historicals.
Warhamster? Is that a new skaven model? 😜
for me it was warhamster played with wfb models! giant tables, epic game, there's a version of Hail Caesar (Rick Priestley similar to Warhamster) called Storm Shadow that's amazing
Warlord Games historical rules systems Hail Ceaser, Pike and Shote and Black Powder are essentially Warmaster.
Which just goes to show what a great system it is that it endures to this day.
@@waylander1978 Also Warmaster Ancients in the interim between GW and Warlord. That was probably my main historical game for ages.
Battlefleet Gothic is my all time favorite game. Fantastic. And Andy Chambers was the face of GW. To me anyway.
To me as well. As GW turned its back on all but the core games and Andy moved on so did I.
I still have all my BFG. Large fleets of Chaos, Imperial and Eldar with a smattering of Space Marines.
It was a grand time, it was a fun time and it was the old grognards like Andy, Jes, and Rick that made it what it was. That and the fact the bean counters did not yet sap all the joy from it. The designers were having a ball and it showed in the products they made Necromunda and Mordhiem to me were the pinnacle but Epic and Warmaster and even the Historical stuff was a delight to play.
Thanks you guys for some of my favorite times. I still play Necromunda on occasion (YakTribe rules) and enjoy it thoroughly.
My first miniatures games were ManOWar, Space Marines/Titanicus and Battlefleet Gothic. Still play them to this day. Truly was a golden age at GW back then.
Andy was the Goat of GW. He helmed all my favorite games and peojects.
Mr Chambers, you're spot on when you speak about learning new sets of rules.
As an "old" (50) hobbyist, I now lean more into simpler game systems like Warcry than jumping for the 10th time in the rules of 40k as an example.
And that's coming from a former GW Mail order troll and then Ruleboy that had to learn all the editions as they kept coming.
Newer doesn't always mean better...
When a set of rules is good, it can stand the test of Time.
Epic 40,000, BFG, and the best among all (in my humble opinion), Blood Bowl, are gems from the past that have never lost their depth and interest.
Latest versions are not always an improvement.
Are you the Thierry from the French VPC team? You don’t know me and I don’t know if I got to talk to you over the phone but I loved the zine and am very happy you were there at a time when there was no official shop nearby (and I was too young to have a car to drive to one).
@@Dante-xv3bw I was, I am, I'll always be )
Hiho, I worked at the German Mail Order in Glaisdale 97-99. Funny thing for a not so short time I was the only one who could answer rules questions for WHFB as I was the only one who played it prior to moving to Notts. Andy pinpointed my impression of Epic at that time. The Miniatures were good, but blast markers and firepower additions was too abstract for a game of fun. A mate from Mail Order and I switched back to Space Marine and had much more fun rolling buckets of dice. Also Necromunda was translated to German within half a year of the release of Gorkamorka due to a new and very lets say POS as a manager for GW Germany (I am still grateful that his contract wasn't renewed after one year) Now we had to sell two systems and we just asked customers which movie they liked more, Blade Runner or Mad Max.
These interviews are excellent. Please do lots of them while everyone is still around.
These interviews make me very happy and very sad at the same time!
The Bean counters ruin everything.
So good to hear Andy talk about the development stages of games like Necromunda. Big thanks to him and the rest of the 90s crew for making a lot of wonderful memories!
These interviews are fantastic and incredibly interesting for someone that's been involved with GW stuff since late 2nd Ed 40k. Thank you!
I'm a huge fan of Dropfleet Commander - an incredibly well designed (rules and miniatures) game with a sad lack of players and community organisation. Many won't have heard of it, and fewer will realise that Andy co-wrote the rules. I believe he said that if BFG was Battle of Jutland in space, then DFC was Hunt for Red October in space. Just shows that even a decade after he left GW to go independent he was still able to bang out incredibly good games. If I could have one gaming wish per childhood GW hero, for Andy it would be to play him in a game of DFC and have a few beers.
Dropfleet is an excellent system. I've played a couple of games with a friend's borrowed fleet, and I thought it was a blast. In particular the way the opening few turns are about slowly trying to get a lock on an enemy vessel, then the second you commit to the attack you light yourself up for everyone else to fire on. Very, very cool.
The card art is by Don Herndon and Ivan Berryman. Berryman is a noted WWI aviation artist. The painting on the box is of British ace Donald MacLauren
I backed the kickstarter for DFC but sadly the player base never seemed to grow. I ended up selling my stuff as there was just no-one around me playing it
Thank you Andy for all the games and fun. Sorry to hear that Gorkamorka was such a bad experience, but I loved it.
Specialist Games were the best, especially Epic and Gorkamorka.
Still furious over how GW dropped support for Gorkamorka to this day, and Andy will always be revered in my heart for making something so damn fun.
Battlefleet Gothic and Epic 40,000 - two of GW's best games. Modern 40k designers struggle to even come close to their level of elegance.
Yet Andy describes Epic 40k as "missing the point" and "we mucked it up something fierce and killed epic". He was very uncomplimentary"
@@Oliveracc So? I listened to the interview as well and know what he said. Is there a point to what you are saying or are you just trying to be clever?
@@Toxichobbit.Why so aggressive? He's just pointing out the different feelings between the designers and the players.
@@ThomasGallinari Is he? I'm glad you can read his mind to understand his intentions, because I can't.
If all he is doing is pointing out that the feeling is different between the designers & players, then what's the point? Andy states his opinion in the very video I commented on. I think it's safe to assume that I already know about that difference, unless of course Oliveracc thinks that I just commented without watching or I don't understand Andy's words, both of which are bad assumptions to have of a stranger.
Or maybe he's pointing it out to imply that I'm wrong, which is again pointless, as opinions are subjective. Or maybe he thinks I'm stating it as some kind of empirical fact on the quality of various games, which again is a bad assumption.
It's also about the way he did it. His tone is already antagonistic, starting his sentence with "Yet..." without it following a previous sentence comes across as stating that whatever you're replying to is incorrect, and it's not a particularly polite way to do it. It's almost an "Actually", which I don't think anybody likes.
I don't see any reason for his comment to be made that isn't negative, at least not without further context.
E:A is better than E40k though. I think just saying it rolled back E40k towards SM/TL doesn't do it justice, because the AP/AT system solves the problem that at 6mm scale you can often not meaningfully differentiate infantry - a squad of Marines actually plays a lot differently from a stand of Orks in E:A, where in both SM/TL and E40k they aren`t that different from one another. Alternate activations make the game a lot more fluid and retaining the initiative is a brilliant mechanic to go with it, because it increases the number of possible counter-moves to your next activation. The E40k crit tables are clunkier than the way E:A handles super heavies.
Epic is what got me into gaming. I poured over and still fondly remember the white dwarf articles Andy did for 1st edition.
No game can even come close to how well made Epic Space Marine 2nd edition was done. Its THE best ruleset by far.
Can’t get enough of hearing from these legends. More please!!
Thank you once again. Absolutely love to see these and hear about how things came about
Thanks for these interviews, can listen to Andy all day; still waiting for someone to get him to talk about the codex designs around the time of the Eye of Terror campaign. Really enjoyed the Blanche and Priestly ones too. Can’t wait to hear more.
Love all of them. very thankful for them too.
Andys work gave me a lot of joy over the years and decades now; I'm deeply grateful to him for that.
Loving these. Keep it up ❤
Thanks to both of you for this! A very insightful, honest and humorous interview. I was one of those few in my area who liked Epic 40K - still have all my stuff!
Absolutely loved this interview.
Gorkamorka; the game I've always wanted to play but cant find anyone to play the game with me... since '97!
I lucked out because my brother was in on it growing up... a lot of rainy days spent playing that growing up.
That sounds like fun! I know when all those ork vehicles came out a few years back I got stoked to try playing Gorkamorka again but no luck.@@terraneaux
Incredible interview! Thank you Andy, we are all very indepted. This channel is such a gem.
Thank you, it is really fun to hear from the heroes of my childhood!
First time I have heard Andy speak, not at all what I imagined, not that I had anything in mind. Great video!
Brilliant video, very informative about the background to all these classics!
@Filmdegminiatures I had no idea how much I wanted these little interviews until I stumbled across them. Thanks so much for doing them and making them available as well as my enormous thanks to Andy, Rick, and John for taking the time to share their memories and stories.
Space Marine was my entrance into the world of 40k.. great memories, specialist games were always my favorite GW games.. Epic, Mordheim, Necromunda, BFG were my favorites by far
This content is fantastic. Your contacts are "epic". Bravo!
Brilliant Tom 🙌🏻
I always read Warmaster as Warhamster as well. Great interview from a personal legend.
Confrontation is still up there. Love it.
This is great. I started gaming right when 3rd ed 40k dropped. Early enough to run across tons of old books and models. I always wanted to do Necromunda and saw Battlefleet Gothic (and Mordheim) come and go. I always wanted to do all of them but certainly couldn’t manage the expense as a pre teen. The relaunch of Necromunda brought me back to the hobby and the pure nostalgia in this video is joyful for me.
Andy Chambers! BFG is still one of my favorite games.
Great video, well done on getting an audience with one of the greats
FANTASTIC INTERVIEW
Missing the Motörhead look.
Excellent work as always. I think I spotted some Zeo Genesis in there as well
It's awesome to see Andy. What a cool interview. I'm feeling quite vindicated after hearing him describe how Epic went from the magnificent Space Marine and Titan Legions to... pap. White Dwarf readers of a certain age will be getting quite excited about the Epic Horus Heresy Battle Report that even has olde worlde maps! Anyway I'm loving these nostalgia trips!
Thanks for showing us the elaborate shelves of Andy Chambers! I even see some 3D prints and Dust Tactics on there!
That very last point he makes is precisely why I love Necromunda above all (save my family) 😂
Seriously, this man made games that I still play!
Great man. Epic was such a great ruleset. Apsolutely loved it, and was very upset when they changed the rules!
Much love Andy!
Another great interview. Very interesting for me to hear his perspective on Gorkamorka, since I've been playing a campaign and definitely not found it easy or user friendly. And yet I think there is a great game there. This makes me want to playtest more and boldly amend it to reveal the game i think is there lurking..
The White Dwarf with the kind of 'initial' BFG rules - before it got a proper release - was the first White Dwarf I ever got. It had pictures of the mockup models in it! BFG remains a favourite, just top to bottom.
Also! Inquisitor got mentioned! That game was great, too!
Double also, Andy Chambers sounds nothing like how I imagined he would. Like, several dozen octaves lower. And his mild bitterness is palpable (and understandable). Bean-counters, indeed.
I loved Gorkamorka (and necromunda) i never would have imagined gorkamorka was an eight week project
Andy Chambers is my ultimate hobby hero! Have really enjoyed listening to him talk
I vividly remember a two-page advert for Gorkamorka in an old issue of White Dwarf I had when I was maybe 11 or 12, and it just looked like the coolest thing to me. Loved the Mad Max sort of aesthetic. I never got a chance to play it, but it's funny to hear that it was effectively a punishment exercise.
I met Andy at Origins 2003. Asked him a question about Harlequins. He had the pointed sideburns back then.
I am so happy to hear that the army building system for Epic 40k was actually considered difficult or unclear. I always struggled with it now I know why! :D
Cheers for making this! Is there a part 2? Feels like it ends quite abruptly!
What an absolute hero
I can still remember the horrible sinking feeling I got when I found out Andy had left the studio. I hadn't really put it into words at the time, but I think it was the realization that it was never gonna be the same... still, thanks for all you did and all you are Andy. You as much as anyone are responsible for the passion for tabletop gaming that I carry to this day.
Never really got to play most of these great games "back in the day", I dabbled a bit with Rogue Trader/Blood Bowl/Space Hulk/Advanced Heroquest at after school clubs in the very late 80s, but my GW hobbying really took off with 40k 2nd edition (which was all I could afford to play). It's only in recent years I've started to acquire games like BFG, Epic, Man O'War, Warhammer Quest, and Mordheim. I had the last Necromunda printed rulebook from 2003 but only recently got around to playing it. Great games from the great times at GW. I do wish though that modern proxies for the OG miniatures, even 3d prints, were a little easier/cheaper to obtain. Thank you Andy for all your hard work.
Another fantastic interview, I could listen to Andy talk all day (especially about BFG or Epic!)
Matt - Whitedwarf109
It was a great time to game. So many choices ( Necromunda,Blood Bowl, Gothic,ECT...) . My LGS would run seasons/ events for all these games!
I love Battlefleet Gothic. The rulebook opening on the short side was fantastic.
ANother great interview with one of the greats. Keep them coming, who's next on the list?
Great interview, so interesting thoughts from Andy's legend. I always have thought that Epic 40.000 has great mechanics, and it was the first time an Epic game was translated to other languages different than English which was also great to get new players worldwide. Unfortunately it is true that the game was maybe too different than SM 2nd Ed and it seems the old players didnt like it, however I dont see it a creative mistake by Andy, it was maybe just a marketing one, but thats all for me. Many thanks to Andy Chambers for creating all these games, there were really good and hard work is inside them for sure. Thanks to the interviewer too of course for giving us this gift!
I remember the White Dwarf 225 had a small section "Rules for Playing a Space Ship Game" that was basically a generic early Battlefleet Gothic. Had the turn rules, the launching missiles and movement of ballistics etc. Very creative. Mechanics that ended up in BFG. I have an unpunched copy of 225 saved and will probably scan it and do PnP of it to play the game.
Really cool. 👍
For what it's worth Andy, I love Gorkamorka and BFG. I'm in a Gorkamorka Facebook group that still gets some traction.
Why does it feel like listening to a Vietnam vet with a thousand yard stare every time you see a former GW employee interviewed 😂
I loved the rogue lite elements of Necromunda... so cool to have persistent gangs and people getting lasting injuries with negatives and positives.
I've started to dig in my wargame cave after this interview!
I remember my local store having copies of epic 40k stacked up on one of the gaming tables near the window and a £6.50 price tag on them to clear. Boxed nid titans for £2 each and blister packs for £1 around that time too, back when GW actualy had sales !
BEST voice ever
I've always enjoyed Epic, the E40K edition introduced blast markers and had some great minis. the original necromunda was a treat as well, the campaign and experience system was the best part of that game, seeing your guys progress or die. still have my heavy with 1-in-a-million heavy bolter!
I love when people talk in lengths about Blood Bowl :)
Andy Chambers Orks were one of my favorite armies as a teenager. I wish GW would bring Andy back and rerelease BFG 🖤
Love your shirt!
Epic 4000 was , for me, the high water mark of game design at GW. The fact that it didn't sell well speaks to the legions of philistines that populated GW's core consumer base.
Unfortunately, 6mm and 10mm scale miniatures (Warmaster) have never had the mass appeal of the 28/32mm scale stuff. Glad they’re re-releasing Epic again.
Agreed, Epic 40k 3rd Edition isthe best game GW ever put out.
@@Dave_L Also agree, such an excellent game, and it's super easy to learn. There were a few areas in the rules that were a bit vague for me, but for the most part a really solid game and something that scaled up to huge battles really well. I think Rick Priestly might have said he thought it was one of the best games, but the worst marketing decisions because people didn't want to change to a simplified and streamlined version of Epic.
@@davidwasilewski for a few years Space Marine (2nd ed) was a core game. It sold huge numbers that GW made it one of their core games alongside 40k and Fantasy. It was very popular for about 4-5 years - i.e. about 1.5 times as long as one edition of 40k or Fantasy.
However it waned after Titan Legions was released.
@@admiraltee I know. I’m in my 50s and I bought and played all these games back in the day. Unlike 32mm scale armies for WHFB, 40k and AoS etc, I’ve always continued to build on my collections of epic (both the 30k and 40k versions) and Warmaster. Over the past decade I’ve built up a very large (20,000 points plus sized) collection of epic, 8mm scale metal forum ware and a load of resin and metal terrain for epic e.g. an airfield. I actually play more historicals, but primarily in 6mm scale now. I’ve published my own 6mm WW2 Wargames rules - All Hell Let Loose.
Andy will forever be a game design hero for me, but Battlefleet Gothic is his crown jewel. Everything in this game is just the best marriage of rules and theme I've ever seen in a TT wargame. Plus, it's easy to understand and play and provides tons of depth to master if you're so inclined. And I haven't even begun talking about the phenomenal, trailblazing artwork.
BFG was and remains my favourite tabletop wargame. Financial circumstances forced me to sell my BFG collection. I miss the game immensely. Such a pity GW didnt keep the faith with it and some of these other smaller games which add so much to the flagship 40k game. Great interview thanks. I wonder if Andy misses the hairdo?
9:23 “we did gorkamorka in eight weeks” i actually burst out laughing the way andy delivered that line 🤣
Matt - whitedwarf109
Speaking of Epic 40'000, I got caught up in the hype, bought it and then found the gameplay was such a different feeling. The 'freeform' army building was an improvement but the abstracted firepower rules took some of the oomph feeling out of the individual units. Consequently it never really hit the table enough to really get it and enjoy it for what it was.
Battle for Armageddon and Horus Heresy are seriously underrated gems. Cardboard chits, so overlooked in the minis heavy hobby, but they were legit hardcore wargames inna box.
Necromunda is still one of the best small scale skirmish games out there. And the clear inspiration mordheim took from it.
I still have my perfectly painted emperator titan from when I was 12, gave it to my 8 year old
Oh man I love those guys so much. Fucking love Epic 2nd edition, gothic and BloodBowl. Best tabletop and boardgames ever. Too bad I never got a chance to play Warmaster. Didn’t play much Necromunda, but the campaign rules are the best of any GW game. For all the other games except BloodBowl and Necromunda I always needed to create my own Campaign rules.
gorkamorka is great fun. But the fact that is 8 weeks shows.