Spacefarers: The Sci-fi Wargame Games Workshop had Before Warhammer 40,000 - Codex Compliant

Before 40K, GW had another miniature Wargame: Spacefarers. Let's take a look at it.
Referenced articles:
alegisdownport.wordpress.com/...
goatmajor.org.uk/vintage-sci-...
Find us elsewhere!
🔵 Patreon: / snipeandwib
🟣 Merch: my-store-be810d-2.creator-spr...
🔵 Discord: / discord
🟣 Twitter: / wibdoestweets / / snipethesorrow
🔵 Twitch: / snipeandwib

[@ShallowVA]

Ah the 80s, when men were Men, women were Men, and robots were also Men.

[@RipOffProductionsLLC]

Well, men is technically a gender neutral term in English.

[@Thrano]

@@RipOffProductionsLLC I can one up that one: In german, the term "Männchen" or (in local dialect) "Manderl" is often use to describe any game piece that is vaguely humanoid shaped (like the conic ones) and roughly translates to man or men.

[@kshadehyaena]

@@RipOffProductionsLLC Sure, calling troops "men" isn't weird (especially for such an old game) but calling the individual model a "man" kinda is. And then there's the robots who just aren't in either way.

[@loadeddice4696]

@@kshadehyaena Some robots can be men. Data is a man. Bender is a guy, which is kinda like being a man.

[@YossarianVanDriver]

@@ThranoThis is probably because the common root word began as a gender-neutral one; in old english "man/men" just meant "person/people" and there were other words to refer to specific genders, and then somewhere along the way "man" became specifically masculine and they had to add a prefix to differentiate "wo-man".

[@laurencerushton3544]

With each video about the early days it makes me feel even more ancient. Luckily I have been bald for decades.

[@stephenbarrett8861]

I was born bald!

[@laurencerushton3544]

@@stephenbarrett8861 Were you copying my style?

[@stephenbarrett8861]

@@laurencerushton3544 I inherited it from my Dad.

[@laurencerushton3544]

@@stephenbarrett8861 Then we don't have a Pat Mustard style event. kzbin.info/www/bejne/Zn3Zd6FroLh0eKMsi=h-Tu9rtrN6jtdoVf&t=85 The glory of Speed 3.

[@FnRenner]

So has Snipe but he hasn't admitted it to himself yet

[@Blacknight8850]

Episodes like this and Laserburn always get me dreaming of this long forgotten age of weird little wargames and their accompanying miniature ranges, that you only hear about in specialist magazines and word of mouth at the hobby shop. ...then I remember "oh yeah, that's just what wargaming is outside of Games Workshop", lol.

[@LordChesalot]

Badsquidogames has this vibe

[@Coinneach-ez7ec]

alternative armies is pretty much entirely this and they also publish lazerburn in the modern era so fun!

[@discordinc]

Honestly these side trips into other games of the era are really interesting. I didn't really get into war games as a child so it's fascinating to see the evolution

[@Kroeghe]

It bothers me to no end that in Kill Team they use a pentagon to represent a 6 inch move, a square for 3 inches, and a triangle for one inch. A continuation of a glorious tradition, I see.

[@DeathInTheSnow]

You know, those Star Trek figures would look pretty spiffy with some paint on them. Shame nobody has made a proper in-depth video about them all just yet...

[@CharlesDantonio3]

As a Man, I am proud to say that I can fire (once) after moving!

[@paullittle835]

The "bolt pistol" looks like a Gyrojet, the real world rocket pistol that is often said to have inspired the Bolter!

[@zhouenlai2569]

Great video. Never knew this existed. BTW "the men" is an older way to refer to soldiers or troops. It's not uncommon in that context, that's way you "man" a trench or position.

[@AT-bq7vl]

Don't let facts get in the way of them making a totally pointless argument about gender terms in a 1980's table top minute game....

[@SuperMookles]

But by the standards of today it is faintly ridiculous. Don't be such a snowflake. ​@AT-bq7vl

[@Groovebot3k]

>this game was designed for children >combat has 7 phases per round

[@rmsocarroll]

Children were though back then; or you know had less options.

[@Flamekebab]

​@@rmsocarrollthat typo made me read it as "children were thorough back then!" which is a delightful notion. Back in my day we played the turn all the way to completion, lad, none of this phase skipping malarky you young people are so fond of!

[@rmsocarroll]

"Aye, we dealt out the warp cards even when there was no pysker on either side!" @@Flamekebab

[@CluelessinDorset]

Excellent work as usual! I could look at the lenses of that imperial marine you painted up all day! 😊

[@euansmith3699]

17:59 That's a great illustration of a sneaky space marine sneaking.

[@Scrombo2]

Man I'd love a Gorkamorka vid but, whatever you two wanna do next, can't wait

[@darkstar1360]

To quote noted Vampire, Dracula from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. "What is a Man?!"

[@martincann5052]

Oooh! Ooh! I know this! It's, er... I mean, um... sorry, what was the question again?

[@kshadehyaena]

A very small pile of stats and equipment, apparently.

[@SachikaRomanova]

It's now 40K canon that Conversion Beams are just the Saints Row Dubstep guns playing gothic choral tracks.

[@mrflapjacklover]

gun nerd here, the image of a bolt pistol is based off of the real gyrojet handgun, which uses rocket propelled ammo, cool they were thinking about that this early

[@dd11111]

I cannot express enough love for the fact that the bolt pistol is a Gyrojet! Also that the handgun is a C96 broomhandle Mauser! I mean I think that gun is awsome. But it tickles me that thousands of years in the future people are apparently still using a pistol from 1896!

[@paullittle835]

It had already been used as the basis of Han Solo's blaster as well, ofc...

[@samb.8134]

Today's episode : discovering that Drummer Matt is in fact real, and not a figment of Snipe and Wib's imagination.

[@Kaninjadog]

Gotta say I really love the design for the Imperial Marines in Spacefarers. Would be cool if GW ever brought that look back sometimes, maybe as an Imperial Guard regiment.

[@cleeiii357]

Maybe its just me but they kind of remind me of the designs of the Harakoni Warhawks Imperial Guard regiment.

[@EDSKaR]

Making a hard to play game to sell the models they make.... truly the origins of Citadel.

[@daviddalglish9430]

Always love seeing the type of game that I remember from being a young un. On a personal note (unlike the personal note that I wrote above already...) that Lego space set you showed was the first ever "big" set that I had. I have no idea how my mum afforded it for my Christmas (dirt poor would have been a step up for us) but I loved it and seeing it again her brought back enough memories to have a bit of a happy cry. ❤️

[@meanmanturbo]

9:02 Man, the bolt pistol really looks like a gyrojet in this one

[@Flamekebab]

I hopped into the comments to say precisely that! Clearly bolt pistols really do share ancestry with the batshit Cold War weapon concept!

[@ThomasMurch]

Ten seconds in, and I'm already laughing harder than many sitcom episodes or comedy movies have ever managed ... By the Hive Mind that secretly controls my every action on a subconscious level that I haven't actually realised yet, I love this series.

[@gar2yc]

It's so good to see Snipe going strong. :)

[@johnsowerby7182]

I really enjoy these side trips into the stuff like this, tangentially associated with Warhammer and 40K, and yet so very different.

[@brycemaster]

The BLAH table and shouted "SPACEFARERS" absolutely sent me. Another absolutely amazing video.

[@Retrosicotte]

I particularly love the sublight ship that departs Earth and gets to Alpha Centauri in 26 years.

[@TheMaltesefalcon204]

Odd they decided to use "men" opposed to "units" or even "troops". Very archaic, but I suppose it got the rules across, so it isn't wrong.

[@SuperFunkmachine]

Men is shorter and saves text, also it makes it clear that its about single entity's. Units and Troops have wargaming conation's of them being a group acting as one.

[@BR-bn1mz]

@@SuperFunkmachinegits would be better

[@craigjones7343]

Imagine judging a 40 year old game, that is a product of its time, but there AWFUL standards of today.

[@TheMaltesefalcon204]

AWFUL standards of that day as well, just poor wording, I am not referring to anything else

[@kdisley]

I actually owned a copy of this game - I found it in some random second-hand bookshop while on holiday in Cornwall back in the early '90s for pocket money, and bought it with the intention of trying to actually run it with my scattered collection of WH40K miniatures someday. Never got round to it, though, and it's now somewhere among the random stuff in my loft. I will say that the whole _"manly men men men"_ thing is more of a cultural difference over time than a pointed microaggression... I don't mean in terms of the "Oh, granddad's making racist jokes again" kind of difference where it was okay in olden days to make clearly-discriminatory othering comments because it was considered harmless by white people but rightfully upset minorities, but more a case of institutionalised education. I remember that the masculine form was considered to be the grammatically-correct pronoun for a plurality of mixed- or indeterminate-gender persons when I was learning English Language back in the dark days of the previous millennium - it was just easier than saying "men and women" every time. It's the reason we still say "mankind" as a catch-all term for humanity of all genders rather than "men-and-women-kind". Was that morally right, or justifiable in modern times? No, of course not - but in terms of how English was taught back then, it was _grammatically_ correct. It was what was drummed into us over years of school, it was the answer that would earn you a tick on your exam paper rather than a cross, and it was deeply-ingrained habit by the time you were let loose on the world. If you wrote "men" it was implicitly understood by the reader that the term didn't necessarily exclude other genders - "women" was only used when talking _specifically_ about women, but "men" was a catch-all umbrella term. The point I'm making is, while it probably does highlight the implicit low-grade institutionalised sexism baked into society back then, it would be unfair to suggest that this was an intentional shot fired in terms of exclusive gender politics when it's more likely that it's just how the writers had been taught to write at school. While this sort of thinking is clearly archaic to modern sensibilities, it's not like this is Victorian-age grammar - I'm 46, and this was still how I was being taught English when I was at school in the early '90s, so it's only one or two generations back that this was the _correct_ term to use. I can remember as a small child first finding out that the term "men" could include women but "women" couldn't include men, and asking my Mum why this was, and she just shrugged - she didn't have an answer, that was just how language worked back then. It never sat well with me, but if you're going to write something like a business letter or an essay which you wanted to be taken seriously (or, for that matter, a set of games rules), then you used the grammatically-accepted vernacular or risked being discounted as uneducated. I mean, why take what you have to say seriously if you can't even write words good...?

[@EntropicEcho]

Good write-up! I also think Snipe and Wib obviously know this and were just making jokes about how cultural contexts shifts, where older contexts viewed in a modern one can give some funny results. :)

[@commanderjarak]

Originally mann referred to all humans in old English, with modifiers added to refer to people of a specific gender being wer- for men, and wif- for women. So you'd have mann for all humans, wermann for adult males, and wifmann for adult females. The term wer or wif were also used on their own some times as a shortened version. This died out sometime around the 1300s from memory.

[@EntropicEcho]

@@commanderjarak Cool bit of trivia, thanks!

[@geoffwalker9210]

I dunno why force sword next to normal sword cracked me up. There's a few peices of artwork in rogue trader that feels like it could have been for spacefarers. Especially some Imperial army stuff, that look radically different from the models for that faction. It is one page 164-165 I spent way too much time tracking that down

[@mikevincent8728]

This is just the friggin' best channel. Keep nailing it, MEN. :D

[@SimonClark]

Whenever I see a new codex compliant has been released it honestly just makes my day better

[@cptmachine]

Amazing work as always. I as a long time Ork fan waiting on the edge of my seat for your GorkaMorka video (it’s affecting my posture)

[@laguaridadelgremlin]

I love it when you unearth things like these. I'm so adding "sarulite" to my sci fantasy metals collection in my games xD

[@EntropicEcho]

Nah mate, sarulite is way more brittle than plasteel!

[@YossarianVanDriver]

Stuff like this does really help contextualise elements that nowadays seem just intrinsically part of 40k, but when they were initially put in fit into a broader "nerds hopped up on Dune" milieu.

[@Thoughtsmith]

Please keep showing us random semi-related stuff. It's always fascinating.

[@bloodrunsclear]

There are few things more adorable than early Space Marines

[@echsecutioner]

You guys are awesome! I don't even really care about these weird obscure pre-warhammer games, but your content is just so engaging, I love it!

[@doc_eyebrow]

20:32 thanks for my new ringtone guys

[@crisisdevil9499]

Snipe looks well, that makes me happy

[@redhood1060]

This show a pie and a can of Diet Coke. It is a good day.

[@apocrypha5363]

What type of pie?

[@redhood1060]

@@apocrypha5363 pie flavoured. No is chicken

[@apocrypha5363]

@@redhood1060 nice! :D

[@AndrewMcColl]

That's it. Every time someone mentions the Emperor of Mankind, I'm going to respond with "who, Jonathon?"

[@ArbitorIan]

MEN (or stationary jet scooters) Those are the options.

[@CocoHutzpah]

With all the tables and modifiers, I can't imagine playing this game with more than 3 or 4 models. It would take forever remembering everything with 10 or 12 MEN in my group.

[@Spongemonkey26]

I read it as "the game gameworkshop had before gamesworkshop had a game." Like the how much wood could a woodchuck chuck... lol

[@AAhmou]

9:02 That laser pistol makes an appearance as Archaeotech in Blackstone Fortress (the board game).

[@richardb1816]

So glad I found this channel, so informative about the deep company and in-universe lore, and super friendly and warm atmosphere to each video! Definitely something valuable in the community, keep up the awesome work!! ❤️

[@TheZombiemofo]

Me thinks a running gag of finding a way of shoehorning the imperial marine model into every video is required. 😆

[@Bluecho4]

This game, Laserburn, and old school D&D reinforce in my mind that Game Design is a skill, and possibly a Science (or at least an Art). There are many ways to lay out the rules for a game, but some are less helpful than others. My rule of thumb is that if you're printing while matrices into your rules that players must check every two minutes, maybe you should rethink the game design to NOT include a matrix. Any player who isn't already very used to looking up huge tables like this is going to go cross-eyed. This is true of both children and most adults. This is why D&D eventually dropped their to-hit charts and went with THAC0, and then later dropped THAC0 in favor of a simple "roll higher to hit" style of Ascending Armor Class. Basically, a lot of 70s-80s tabletop game design could use an editor to cut down on needless complexity, and just enforce basic consistency. Simulationism is one thing, but most games of this era made even that granularity more complicated than required.

[@obnoxiouspriest]

Living for the BBBBBBLLLLAAAAHHH phase right now....

[@faithkerns1626]

The Soviets invading Iran and NATO launching nukes is likely a reference to Threads, a movie with the same backstory. Its a good movie but horrifying.

[@darkfalc007]

Omggg I love Snipe’s eyeshadow in this video

[@BR-bn1mz]

Great to see another video from you two Totally killing that hair style and the matching colours with eachother is adorable

[@NathanielGarr0_96]

16:40 the model of the boltgun is literally a Gyrojet Rocket Pistole, so the Bolger is directly inspired by this weird pice of 70s weapontechnology

[@roganzar]

The Shooting Matrix table nearly broke me.

[@AllPossibleDogs]

the thing about the solar power satellites actually *isnt* science fiction! its a real concept known as "space-based solar power" and its basically big solar panels in space which then transmit the electricity down in the form of microwaves or lasers to ground-based receivers. and if youre wondering what the advantages are, solar panels in space would generate more power (about 1.5x to 2x), they'd generate that power for a greater portion of the day (depending on orbit), you can rewire the power grid as need demands by aiming the satellites at different receivers

[@aidanfarnan4683]

I do love these old 70's and 80's games that are just a little bit more convaluted than they need to bee, but that have a lot of charm.

[@LOBricksAndSecrets]

Future episode from Snipe and Wib: "Chess, the true precursor to 40k?"

[@biteme9593]

as a long time suffer from 'droopy gun' I'd like to thank your channel for dealing so sensitively with the topic

[@Rob-nq6br]

I have a lovely little collection of the Spacefarers miniatures, now pressed into Rogue Trader as an actual playable game.

[@manofaction1807]

Great find! Spacefarers falls in there with Laser Burn, and Heritage's Galacta 25. A couple of D6's, and you have a game!!

[@theRx]

*bopping along to the cheery outro music not expecting a Snipe Mouth Sound jumpscare*

[@wargamer234]

Are these MEN here in the room with us?

[@danesorensen1775]

I keep coming back to Heavy Metal... That aesthetic when all space sci-fi was generic and interchangeable, with the resulting worlds all feeling infinite and endless. I wish I could've been there for that.

[@redspy6018]

The ‘men’ thing is still somehow better than the home brew D&D supplement I found which had an entire page at the beginning justifying its use of he/him pronouns including a line that said something like “Centuries of use have rendered this pronoun gender neutral” going on the explain how grammatically horrific constructs like ‘his/her’ and ‘theirs’ were.

[@dashiellgillingham4579]

Such rants often contain the bizarre subtext that actual men don't exist in this language and that will never not be funny to me.

[@219Hexagons]

i actually really love the whole modifiers changing the matrix you roll on thing. i'd hate to use it in anything more than a skirmish game, but i do like it all the same.

[@mjdoombreed]

BLAH BBLLAAHH BBBLLLAAAHHH BBBBLLLLAAAAHHHH BBBBBLLLLLAAAAAHHHHH What an incredible set of charts

[@Quick-Silver206]

Rules like these make me realize using imagination is often more fun.

[@andersingram]

love these vids about early gw obscurities, add them up and you really feel like you start to get a picture of how stuff came together ...

[@TheBigAristotle1]

Lookin good, Snipe!!! So glad you're on the mend

[@Flamekebab]

Is that the same Dave Morris that wrote Heart of Ice in the '90s? I created a Twine adaptation of that game!

[@lordofuzkulak8308]

Regarding the 1cm=1m means the minis would scale to 2.5m tall thing; unless I'm mistaken, at this time, and for some time after, it was common for games to differentiate between 'figure scale' and 'ground scale', so figures would be disproportionately big compared to in game distances. As I understand it, this was largely used to explain why ranges for weapons were unrealistically short and why battlefields were vastly smaller than real life ones and why a six turn game would be able to represent a battle that lasts the better part of a day rather than maybe an hour like it would if everything was the same scale as the minis. I think its also related somewhat to how some people will look at a unit of, say, twenty goblin minis, and say it represents several hundred goblins.

[@jonathandamattamoreira6324]

Another great vídeo!! The work you two make is simply amazing!!

[@harbl99]

1:53 -- Is that some 'strong resemblance to but legally distinct from' Paul Darrow likeness? I think it is.

[@online-me5jr]

Fantastic video. Love your work!

[@pnutz_2]

the bolt gun actually looks like the IRL gyrojet pistol

[@Attilargh]

Love these forays into weird other games! It'd be neat to see you guys play some weirder miniatures games on video.

[@maxbrandt6]

@13:00 So that's were that robot priest comes from! I've recently painted up that old figure!

[@mus_cetiner]

Love you both. Good to see another Codex Compliant.

[@GelatinousStube]

Me looking at the shooting matrix table: BBBBLLLLLLAAAAAAHHHH!

[@CarlosRuiz-zw5lr]

We're just normal men. We're just innocent men.

[@dalek4463]

As an *AGGRESSIVELY GENDERED MAN* I enjoyed this video :>

[@micheal4526]

For as annoying as it is, they probably intentionally swapped directions for ranged and melee combat modifiers to make the two different in a little more than distance

[@ChampionOfSkyrim]

Snipe and Wib should do a codex compliant on some of the old adventures for various games GW used to publish in white dwarf.

[@connor9024]

I feel like if I ever fall into a terry davis level of madness, these heavily table based war games are the ones I’d play on an excel spreadsheet with chat gpt armed with a random number generator

[@majortom7186]

Laserburn I know well, but Spacefarers was before my time. The cross-inspiration between these minis and the 15mm Laserburn stuff seems strong.

[@bosshogg8273]

Rest assured, I enjoyed seeing him in this video.

[@taytonclait]

HAIR IS BACK!!!

[@kshadehyaena]

That hand flamer is just a spicy squirt gun, isn't it?

[@PrincessHaily]

I really like these videos on old GW systems I've never heard of. Its way more interesting to me seeing where everything started, rather than the popular stuff that there's already a lot of folk talking about!

[@eldritchmorgasm4018]

There was something called "Havok", which came out in the 90s, and died pretty quickly. It's more like toys quality-wise, but still nice. I think I still have a set, somewhere...

[@matthewrumpke1125]

Great vid as always, thanks!

[@thomasrobertson4213]

My partner… “what the fuck is ff9, it looks like a pig crossed with a rock”

[@whulfri8890]

Man, it was a nice episode indeed.

[@AFnord]

Quite like those old models. Sure, their faces might look a bit off, as faces tended to do in that era, but particularly the helmeted ones have aged remarkably well. And the flipped tables and other such oddities... I don't know why companies kept doing that, but when reading rules for early 80's games, be they wargames or tabletop RPGs, it seems to be pretty par for the course. Why so many companies and designers just collectively decided that this was the right thing to do I'll never understand.

[@OrakelofDeath]

Okay, this was interesting and all, but what about the one question everyone needs to know about: Can we play with the Miniatures at Warhammer World?

[@87Kyrosan]

You know, my only take away is that wargamers back in the 80s must have been much more intelligent and vastly more patient than they are today. If this is the ruleset for 'kids,' I am fascinated at what a game tailored for adults would look like.

[@voland6846]

_The Campaign for North Africa_

[@aimmoth13]

Very good research and interesting piece of history!

[@lurkinggrey7492]

Danggit, between this, laserburn, space crusade, I don’t have the money for all this

[@jaysunbodaysun3302]

Hey! Here's an idea: Get learned on WH Fantasy and do those great codex compliant for those codexes....BECAUSE YOU GUYS ROCK!!!! DO IT!!! YOU GOTS SKILL!! SKILL!!