It’s a new year, it’s 1988 in White Dwarf land, I must remember that when using the inflation calculator. This issue: Ultra-Marines, Zoats in space, creating plastic moulds, adverts for Live Action Role Play equipment and horrified reactions to the Flexidisk giveaway. I wonder how long it will take for them to drop the hyphen.
The first article is about the process of creating plastic Games Workshop miniatures. Apparently when they first inquired about creating the RTB01 space marines they were told it couldn’t be done. There were a lot of plans at this time, including plans for an all plastic blood bowl stadium. Interestingly at this point they believed that half the models they made were used for games and the other half just went to collectors. They have now revisited that figure as an excuse to get around publishing points values for the figures they produce with Age of Sigmar. With 12 Games Workshop stores open at this point the expansion is beginning.
Skipping past the mandatory Thrud decapitations we get an advert for the Balgorg greater season with sword and axe. No trying to disguise what they were going for that time.
A Warhammer Fantasy battle scenario comes next, again it needs a games master to assist with it.
There is an advert for chapter approved which calls the chapters Ultramarines, Whitescars and Spacewolves (sc).
On the book has what looks like LARP equipment in show along with rules for them in WFRP.
Next the first ever Index Astartes featuring the Ultra-marines, it’s still a work in progress, some names and places will go through significant changes for instance Marneus Calgar loses all arms and legs in a skirmish with Hive Fleet Perseus and no longer works in the field, those roles are taken over by Cha Lee the Lieutenant Commander, who has Christo Columbine, a mutant, as his master of the ships.
There are three, one page adventures for Call of Cthulhu and there is a tournament report for Warhammer Fantasy battle. It gets several pages despite the tournament being only 6 players large, it even stretched on to two days to fight all three battles. Each player then received a copy of Warhammer 40k and a box of space marines. No really.
Talking of 40k the next releases are a Space Ork command set and some Space Zoats who despite being a slave race are apparently “trusted and respected by their Tyranid masters”. I suppose that’s ok then. The tag line is “Zoats in space. Nothing can stand in their way”. Nothing except their Tyranid masters I guess.
Next Illuminations featuring the work of Ian Millar which you should check out of you’re into retro gaming, if you like his work also buy The Art of Ian Miller for more great work.
Chapter approved is about the imperial dating system and the Shuriken Pistol. Not sure why they went together in this article, maybe it’s Eldar next month.
Eavy metal covers some basic modelling advice when using Milliput or Greenstuff if you prefer the GW alternative name. It could have done with some work in progress pictures to go with it but this is early days. Next is Blanchitsu where John Blanche answers readers painting questions with another picture of him on a motorbike.
We wrap up with 9 pages of the final part to the Stormbringer adventure and the readers mail which has more reaction to the Flexidisk giveaway.
This is of interest to you in 2016 if:
- You want to see the beginning of the end for RPG articles in White Dwarf, they only got 11 pages.
- More proto background for 40k
- You want to read about the plans for plastic miniatures back in the day.
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That Cha Lee character is accompanied by a Pete Knifton illustration depicting him as Asian. It’s a gross racial slur (“Charlie”). Awful stuff.
Oooo, I missed that. I bet that’s not going up on Warhammer plus