Why do so many gamers insist on “everything was better back in the day” when most things where just simpler and maybe even “dumber”? Why do we tend to glorify the past so much in our hobby?

Pretty much every pre- 90s historic game was far more complex and interesting than what we have now. Even GW games were more detailed and intricate with the exception of a handful of introductory games that were very specifically meant to be just that, HeroQuest and Space Crusade being prime examples.

All those games a great, I have 3 of that list bought when they were new.

But none of them are worth current prices. Good games, but all show their age now. For instance, man o war is still enjoyable, but there are several ship games that are better available today, the mantic one for instance, and they don’t cost silly money.

Probably the only exception is epic, which stands head and shoulders above most other rulesets, and the fantasy version, warmaster, is probably the best ruleset that GW has ever produced, if you ignore the historical games stuff they did for a short while.

As to why they are expensive?

People who grew up with them are now in our 40s and 50s, and thanks to pandemics and so on have had more free time to fill.

from here on I’m going to decide that all comments are referring to GW, as that seems to be the grounding here.

As far as  the ebay prices, that’s just people paying what they think it is worth to them, could be nostalgia, it could be that they expect to sell them on for more later.

As far as the simplification of better games, WFB, 40K, and the like goes that is very simple. These games were fantastic but limited the amount of money GW could make. If you only needed 15 space marines and a predator to play a full fulfilling and interesting game then it was a cul de sac for GW emptying your wallet.

As they simplified the games they lowered point costs and increased the amount of miniatures required to play. In some cases the only difference in new books was points cuts

I still own and loved everyone of those games and would add Warmaster, Battlefleet Gothic and Mordheim. The reality is that GW doesn’t do fun anymore, they do profits.  Every player is just revenue. They don’t want free content creators or anyone doing anything they can’t control. They don’t listen and they can’t handle dissension. They don’t want fans or your love, they want revenue. They will fall again like they did a few years ago. Another X-Wing will come, and when it does, GW won’t know what to do, just like they didn’t last time. They’ll just have to wait and hope their challenger screws up like X-Wing did.

Yeah, I was lucky and picked most of these up again about 12 years ago or so.

My last heroquest project it was cheaper to 3D print what I wanted to replicate than try and buy it – (Yes i went 15mm but it would have been pretty much the same if I’d stayed at the original scale)

I remember around 95/96 most the GW specialist games ended up in The Works for £10 each. Where upon I picked up 3rd Ed Talisman and two of the expansions for around £30. I also bought Blood Bowl and Space Hulk for a tenner each.

I no longer have them as I left all of them at my parents house when I went abroad in 99 to work.  My brother took them and still has them

As for rules systems being better – Epic Armageddon is, without a doubt, one of the best combined arms rulesets I’ve ever played, with an amazing integration with aircraft and their missions; Epic 40,000 allowed for 2-300 vehicles to duke it out to conclusion in a couple of hours, something which no other game does well, to this day, whereas the Warmaster system was so good as to have adaptations to 28mm, to WWII and Post-WWII warfare, as well as ancients and medieval times.