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Posts Tagged ‘White Dwarf’

The first few defining moments for 40k

23 Mar

As I’ve been going along through White Dwarf I’ve been noticing defining moments that really changed 40k into what it is today. It’s quite early that some of these happen, and in fact the game we know and love came around in the first few years.

White Dwarf 105 is one of the first as it’s when Space Marines existed as an army list that we would recognise today. There was a lot of fluff around them before now, but they didn’t have that solid feel of the army that they received with this issue.

White Dwarf 123 adds Orks as we know them today. They were a lot more comical, but the basics are all there. It’s also around this time that the increase in quality of the models was really ramping up, and the quality of painting in ‘Eavy Metal was doing those models justice.

White Dwarf 130 is where painting really hit a special point, and the new eldar models really benefited from this. I think this was a reason why everybody had an Eldar army back then (or at least that’s how I remember it). I have really fond memories of those Swooping Hawks… We also get the new marine sculpts, which totally blew the poor old plastics away. Bigger, more deadly looking and they still don’t look out of place with your army today. I have some in a box somewhere, I might give one a modern backpack and gun to prove it.

This is of course my view, I wonder if other feel the same way? Was the introduction of the guard in issue 109 vitally important for the game? I never thought so, but thinking about it that really did shape the Imperium. On the other hand Genestealer Cult armies from Issue 114 didn’t really shape where we are today as they’ve been expunged from history.

Anybody have any thoughts of the game up to mid 1990?

 
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Updates to my White Dwarf posts

27 Feb

I’ve been having a good long think about my White Dwarf posts and I think I should make a couple of tweaks. I’ve decided that I need more images and so am going to post pictures of each magazine with each post. This has the benefit of showing I do actually own it, and as it is going to be lower resolution and not a straight on scan I don’t feel like I’m breaking my rule about not posting scans of the magazine. Hopefully GW will agree as people on ebay do it all the time. I’m also going to add page numbers and counts for the articles so you can see how long they are.

I might even get the whole of 1st edition together for a single picture so you can see how big the pile is. That’s really not going to fit in my small lighting rig!

I’m also going to start adding pie charts of the content for a bit of colour. That way it should be easy to see what the distribution of content is really like in each issue.

Lastly I’m working on an index so you can look up any articles you may want to read yourselves (you will still need to hit ebay for the copy of course). This is mainly going to be useful for fluff research, so if you want to know that the first description of the Ultramarines was in White Dwarf 97 then it’ll be easy to find out.

These changes will be made to all the old posts as well, but there may be a few more posts before the changes start being made as I’m working with a nice comfortable buffer of pre-written posts.

If anybody has any more suggestions then I’m interested in hearing them. Just remember that I’m trying not to break any rules that may upset Games Workshop. It would be nice not to have to be scared of the company behind all this, but there you go…

 
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Posted in White Dwarf

 

25 Years of 40K

30 Jan

When think back over the last twenty something years there isn’t a game I can think of that I am still interested in except 40k. This year it turns 25 and although I started playing a year or two after launch I think I just managed to miss the initial lack of models and managed to start when things were truly interesting. I still have a fondness for the old Rhino and Land Raider that colours my view of Marines even to today.

The thing that I remember most from back then was White Dwarf, and how I would read each issue again and again. I remember the plans for the whirlwind and vindicator coming along as simple conversions for the Rhino. I remember plans to make a baneblade from plastic card. I remember being taught how to build cottages from foam board and balsa wood. I basically just remember it all being great!

Compare it with today and everybody is saying how bad White Dwarf is, and how it is just a catalogue that is designed to sell the latest, greatest model. The battle reports are designed to get you excited about that months releases, and the modeling articles are all so basic that there’s no point in us reading them.

The question is this: is that true? Was White Dwarf ever better? Was it ever worse than now?

Well this is something I can answer as I have a rather large collection of issues, so I’ll run through the entire run and say what was covered, give some opinions and most

importantly what was released that month so I can put together some kind of history.

So join me next post in September 1987 with the release of some new game called Warhammer 40k and a magazine that doesn’t look very much like what we have today at all.

 
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Posted in 40k, White Dwarf