Chimps In Space

September 1987 saw the launch of Warhammer 40k, and along with it the first real mention (beyond notes that it was coming and preview adverts) of the game in White Dwarf. Fittingly the back cover of the most recent issue of Dwarf is the same as this one, that iconic picture of marines fighting Orks from the cover of the Rogue Trader rulebook. In the hundreds of issues that have followed a lot has changed, most noticeably as they both sit on my desk being the physical size of the magazine as the older format was slightly wider and slightly more taller than today.Book re

Coming in at 96 pages for £1.25 that gives us a price per page of about 1.3p per page. Today the magazine costs £4.50 and has 134 pages for a PPP of about 3.4p. Totally meaningless statistics there, but it’s interesting to note that the magazine is actually longer now, albeit with slightly smaller pages.

Moving away from cost the other thing that people always comment about is the number of adverts in the magazine. It turns out that back in the 80s adverts were just as important with 29 full pages of adverts (including the unnumbered inside and outside cover pages). That’s hard to compare with today’s magazine because it’s all an advert now, but was it really any different back then? The first advert was for Skaven, then for Games Workshop mail order, then Orcs and it’s not until page 13 until we get to a non-GW advert (Virgin games centres, which are long since defunct). Two pages later is an advert for some obscure new D&D setting called the Forgotten Realms. By the end we are at 5 full page ads and 5 pages with multiple companies, the rest being adverts with Games Workshop logos on somewhere because they either made or distributed the games, and even that isn’t 100% reliable. I’m making that about 29% of the pages are adverts (for the purpose of this I’m excluding classified ads and things like Games Day promos, and including the covers. The front cover is never considered an advert).

I suspect that number will be useful in the future, but I really are going to have to figure out a way to classify what is an advert in the later issues.

Next is the important thing: content. Was the magazine useful and interesting at the time? To start with the caption above the name was “Games Workshop’s Roleplaying Monthly”, which isn’t a big change from now (Games Workshop’s Monthly Magazine currently) but the use of roleplaying is quite interesting. This is indeed a magazine about roleplaying more than wargaming, and it has the following articles:

Open Box

Three pages of new releases for things like D&D and Talisman. In fact of the 7 items listed 4 are from Games Workshop and the last 3 are D&D from TSR. Pop quiz time: Who do you think the distributor for TSR was in the UK at the time? That’s right, Games Workshop so they had a financial stake in all of the games reviewed.

Awesome Lives

A page of what’s going on with Games Workshop and to a lesser extent the hobby. Interesting information in a time where there was no World Wide Web to get news, and even more interesting today as a historical piece.

Critical Mass

Book Review column by Hugo award winning David Langford (he’s won 28. Beat that). Not all of the books are remembered nowadays but another interesting slice of history none the less.

Getting Away From Most Of It

An AD&D adventure. Who was it that distributed D&D again? I’m counting this as GW content.

Vance’s Evocation of Arcane Delight

A fascinating 6 page article on the role of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth stories and how they relate to AD&D. There’s no secret that most of D&D was lifted from other sources, and this is a good piece on where the magic came from.

Warhammer 40,000

Nine pages introducing us to 40k, and so the journey begins. Very picture heavy, with good effect for the time. Don’t forget that there were very few 40k miniatures released at that point and nobody had any idea about all of the backstory. It’s all changed a lot since then, but it had to start somewhere.

Back then 40k was considered to be in the same universe as Fantasy Battle, which is no longer true. All in all it’s a very fluffy piece that introduces the game and is followed by three pages of adverts for nearly the entire 40k range at that time.

All This And Azaroth Too

A report on the first Golden Demon Awards. Somewhat let down by the quality of the printing, but it’s clear that the quality of painting has moved on a lot in the last 25 years.

Eureka

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay adventure.

Letters From A Foreign Land

Adventure compatible with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Call of Cthulhu and MERP.

Bounden To The See Of Rome

Religion in Port Royale for the game Blood Royale, which is a mostly forgotten Games Workshop game.

‘Eavy Metal

Very in depth article for the time on painting. Covers such heights as shading, highlighting and basing. An interesting point is that the pictures have the product number next to them in case you fancy buying some.

The News

News about GW shops.

Lone Trooper 

Solitaire rules for the Rogue Trooper board game. Not to be confused with Rogue Trader of course.

All The Lonely People

Campaign characters for Judge Dread

Illuminations

Black and white drawings. Marines, Orks, Eldar and a Sister of Battle.

Sound Familiar

Familiars for RPGs. Factual (ish) piece (as factual as magic gets) disguised as game content.

Letters

Back then GW used to let people comment on the magazine. It doesn’t contain anything of note though.

New 40k Releases

• Warhammer 40,000 (£14.95). Interestingly they don’t say Rogue Trader.
• “Imperial Space Marines” (£9.95) with their iconic beaky plastic kit. You got an amazing 30 models in this kit.
• Space Ork Raiders (£9.95) the original box of 17 metal models (duplicate models).
• Metal Imperial Space Marines (£2.50 for 3) Range of 11.
• Space Orks (£2.50 for 4) Range of 16, seem to be different than the box set.
• Space Pirates (£2.50 for 5). Range of 8. Not Citadel Miniatures, but Iron Claw.