White Dwarf

I know you liked 40k. Regardless of what your feelings are now, you liked it at one point and judging by the fact you are reading this article, I’m pretty sure you really liked it.

I’ll tell you why I liked it. The answer is simple, Lord Varlak.

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White Dwarf, vol 1, Issue 111

Posted 17/09/2016 by Chilvers Industries

Turn your eyes away there are Squats on the cover. If we don’t look they will just go away. Ok, they aren’t Squats yet, they are Space Dwarfs and they come 36 miniatures strong in an all plastic box, the name Space Dwarfs will last for 27 pages until they are announced as Squats, oh well.

More changes afoot in the preview section as Games Workshop prepares to release the Space Marine Predator, Heroquest, the game that will eventually become Mighty Empires (called only Empires at this point) and the renaming of the Letters Page to Battle Lines for some reason.

Critical Mass appears this issue after taking a break last issue. For those not in the know it’s on it’s way out after many years of glory.

There was a habit at this time of naming background people and places after real world history and fantasy settings and this can be seen in the next article on Imperial Guard. Avar, Klondike, Dolgan, Temujin, Cochise, Kosaki (Cossacks), Avalon and Tokugawa get thrown around in quick order. The models aren’t great and despite being designed to fit on the bikes and jetbikes that already exist they don’t look good.

BloodBowl creates rules for actual referee models years before they would be a thing in Dreadball.

Squats arrive until with a Huge article that covered virtually every aspect of them including history, colour schemes and banners and even Chaos Squats just incase you wanted a niche version of a niche army. Unlike the Eldar Titan last issue these miniatures will not stand the test of time.

Chainfist! in Adeptus Titanicus gives rules for advanced close combats using a set of actions to pick that remind me on the current combat method in Moonstone.

There is an article on how to incorporate Wardancers in WFRP rather than the Fantasy battle article that you would expect.

Then a tactics article for Warhamer Fantasy, these are quite rare at the moment due to the lack of competitive play in the hobby at this time. The article is smaller than the following article on craters in Adeptus Titanicus.

Eavy Metal once again finishing the magazine off with more Chaos miniatures and some Adeptus Titanicus titans.

This is relevant these days because:

If squats ever become a thing again there is a whole heap of background for them
The squat banners are so bad they’re good

Model kit of the month:

Not all months can be winners

White Dwarf, vol 1, Issue 110

Posted 10/09/2016 by Chilvers Industries

As we’ve reached issue 110 and for those counting we are up to 18 GW stores including the one in New York. Add to this another 16 independent games stores stocking their products and the expansion is starting to take place.

Illuminations gives us Wayne England who will eventually be responsible for some of the best artwork of the era.

Carrying on from last issue we have an article about Ogryns in Imperial Guard armies however how when it comes to showing the models of they looks like standard Warhammer Ogres, this was because in the accompanying background only one of them gets the Bonehead intelligence augmentation and is able to use a Ripper Gun.

Just incase you’d forgotten White Dwarf advertises their other game: Warhammer Fantasy Battle, before giving the rules for Dwarf Firethrower teams.

Remember the Terminator from last issue? Well that’s old news now as there is a new Terminator model and this one comes with a Genestealer as well. This is looking like some radical modern day rapid prototyping style approach for the forthcoming Space Hulk game that is next down the pipe after Adeptus Titanicus.

Dark Future rises from the depths to produce organised play rules or as they used to be called tournament scenarios which looks like a pretty comprehensive re-write of the rules for creating vehicles.

Next up infantry in Adeptus Titanicus, or more specifically Space Marine and Imperial Guard infantry. The article has rules for infantry movement but at the time of going to press only Space Marine infantry existed as the game was set during the Horus Heresy. The pictures are excellent for this era with some cool dioramas of Titans and Space Marine forces clashing against a painted backdrop which at this time were pretty unprecedented. You can even see the standard squad types of the Marines in the stat cards with tactical, assault and devastator squads mentioned for the first time.

Remember the citadel catalogue pages that took up the last 10% of the magazine during the 90’s? Well here’s a black and white prototype of those with the amazing Eldar Phantom Titan and accompanying Dreadnoughts. It’s amazing how a lot of these metal Titans would find themselves ranking in the top 3 at almost every painting competition for the next 5 or 6 years.

Amazingly there is an article about Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay after vanishing from the magazine for a while, don’t worry, it won’t completely disappear from White Dwarf for at least a year. This article is about Morglums Marauders, a groups of Orcs that can be applied to any campaign as a kind of antagonist if the GM decides the PC’s need some to fight. Morglum Necksnapper, their leader would eventually graduate to Warhammer Fantasy Battle where he would have a miniature and a fateful death in a battle report being run down by the Reiksguard. Oh sorry, spoilers.

If the earlier pictures of the Eldar Titan lot wasn’t enough Jervis “Big Daddy” Johnson gives rules for the Eldar in Adeptus Titanicus, there are some of the prototype logos for the Eldar Craftworld and this is again capped off with another couple of dioramas like the ones from earlier in the issue.

In Eavy Metal this issue there appears to be the realisation that people want to paint up large armies worth of models rather than individuals so the first part is based on how to paint up their Imperial Guard squad and characters. The second part gets back to the business of painting up the assorted Chaos models that were produced to go with Realm of Chaos.

The issue is finished up by a page of Rogue Trader dioramas in the same style as the Adeptus Titanicus ones from earlier.

This is of interest to you in 2016 because:

The crew at White Dwarf seemed to realise that painting all their models up and displaying them in a diorama fighting each other made everything look awesome.
For a 1989 release those Reavers and Phantom Titans still look awesome
Although the rules aren’t that relevant these days you have to admire the amount of extra content Adeptus Titanicus got after release. Of course if your glass is half empty you could say it should have all of these rules in the box.

Model kit of the month:

Adeptus Titanicus Eldar Titan

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