The front cover gets a full spread of artwork this issue, no mention of what’s inside it. In other news this is January 1989, oh how fast these years go by. This year White Dwarf advertises models that I would still happily buy today.

The editorial mentions Adeptus Titanicus and the associated vehicles and miniatures that are going to be released alongside it, there is more mention of the Warhammer Comic being produced by Ian Rimmer that I’m guessing must have folded as I can’t find any reference to it elsewhere and there is a note about Ratspike the Ian Millar and John Blanche art book that looks awesome and appears to be totally out of print. This is going on my wishlist.

You can even see a picture of an early playtest version of Space Hulk and word from the 1988 Warhammer Fantasy battle championships where 20 players fought for two days to determine the winner of an actual forged Warhammer, back then players were hardcore.

Critical Mass come next, but is rapidly losing its place in a magazine sandwiched between miniature games articles and a colour photo of Adeptus Titanicus.

Jervis Johnson gives us rules for the Land Raider, Rhinos and Robots to fight alongside the giant titans in the newly released game, I’m guessing there wasn’t enough space in the rulebook and things spilled over into White Dwarf. This article features an excellent full couple of pages of story about a squadron of Land Raiders fighting a Titan in full world war 2 style, it is also backed up by painted pictures of Titans, tanks and infantry on a scratchbuilt cityscape. This is a massive improvement on how Rogue Trader was advertised with its dioramas and some individual shots of models, this time round you get a good sense of what this game is about. My only quibble is that the infantry and tanks are in block colours of either black or red but you’ve got to remember that this was before they had a full department painting up entire armies and the drop of a hat.

This is followed by this months Realm of Chaos article on Lords of Change and Great Unclean ones, its quite a short one on the rules for these models. I’m wondering if there was anything on these books that wasn’t published in White Dwarf at the time.

Next up, Goblins on pogo sticks in BloodBowl. I once got a pogo stick for Christmas, after a few bounces someone mentioned that the largest amount of check-ins to accident and emergency departments were on Christmas Days so I stopped.

There are some pretty interesting pictures of prototype terminators in the next article, giant shoulder pads and blocky faces are the distinguishing feature, they went with an accompanying prototype model shown off later.

The rest of the issue, and by that I mean most of the second half is taken up by the introduction of the Imperial Guard in Rogue Trader. This is a wealth of information for Imperial Guard players, several ideas like Beastmen and Human Bombs and even the idea of Penal Battalions have been cut out of the codex in previous generations and the uniforms have moved away from the “conscripted street gangs from Judge Dredd” style. There is a full army list at the back featuring yet again Land Raiders, Robots and support weapons but none of the other Imperial Guard specific fighting vehicles, you’ve have to wait a fair few years for them to make an appearance.

Illuminations gives us to pretty wild art including some Deamonettes attacking a giant Khornate Titan.

Next we have a weird cramped article on Orc stone throwers and Goblin wolf chariots, it has a mini story, army list entries, artwork and banner outlines but feels like its been cut down too much by all the other stuff in the magazine.

We have an advert of the mixed metal and plastic Imperial Guard set and the prototype terminator followed by a Realm of Chaos themed Eavy Metal section.

The issue is finished off with Warhounds and Reaver Titans in Adeptus Titanicus, interestingly they are just armed with the weapon that are scaled up 40k variants like Lascannons and Autocannons. Not to sound like a total nerd or anything but the colours of the Warp Runner Reaver Titan here were changed to be more sane when Forgeworld painted up their 40k scale Titans and renamed them the Legio Astorum.

The final page is a mental siege diagrams that although an interesting design looks like an impossible puzzle.

This is of interest to you because:

• This felt like the expansion to Adeptus Titanicus. the base game came with giant warlord titans, but this gave you all kinds of smaller vehicles and 2 different Titan classes on top of this.
• Imperial Guard codex version 1
• Nice background story of a Land Raider attack.
• Dark Future doesn’t get a look in, poor Dark Future.

Model kit of the month:

• Adeptus Titanicus Reaver Titan.

Here comes Adeptus Titanicus, this is unusually billed as a 3D Roleplay Hobby Game which is suppose is correct. It comes with 6 plastic Warlord Titans with multiple weapons and some cardboard scenery.

Illuminations give us some more Realm of Chaos artwork, as I’ve said before there is a tremendous amount of free content from these pair of books that has been featured in White Dwarf over the past 6 months, you can tell there are someone’s labour of love. It makes it look great. I’m going got see if I can get a copy for a review special.

There is an article on Chaos Dwarf missile troops which can be added the Realm of Chaos army list and the standard Warhamer Armies: Chaos list followed by an extract from the dubiously titled White Line Fever expansion for Dark Future.

Realm of Chaos gets another articles on the experience system for Chaos Warbands with rules for injuries and pillaging each others resources.

Next up we have an introduction to the Witch Elves of Naggaroth. Now I passed up on going into detail on the Deamonettes of Slannesh when they were released but as GW wanted to produce similar female models right afterwards I will point out the elephant in the room when it comes to retro wargaming: The fact is that scantily clad female models are regularly produced for the primarily male audience, if you find that offensive then this is the wrong hobby for you. But you would remember to cut yourself off from all high fantasy films and shows and never watch or read anything made before the 90’s. This notably includes the Return of the Jedi scene featuring Carry Fisher in a metal bikini.

This was followed up by some errata for the Warhammer Armies supplement.

Next comes rules for Chaplains and Commissars in 40k. Chaplains seems to be almost fully fleshed out however there is only a small reference to the Commissars favourite hobby of field executions in the article most of it goes unsaid which I think makes them infinitely more interesting and sinister than the gun friendly cliches that characterise their newer versions.

The Ambull returns in an WFRP adventure by Carl Sargent. In this adventure one is teleported into a mine from its original location in a 40k Deathworld. I’m not sure why they couldn’t have said that Ambulls existed in both universes but there you go. The Ambull and the Fimir would be races eventually forgotten in the mists of time.

Critical Mass returns in its old format except it’s still written by Dave Pringle who is ok but finishes every review by verbally stating that the book is 7/10.

Next we have a list of the 12 missing BloodBowl star players that never got reprinted in 3rd edition Blood Bowl (except for one article in the Citadel Journal) these include Frank N Stein and Pudgy Baconbreath. This is followed by some painted examples of the models. They aren’t that bad and certainly show an improvement on the stuff being produced 10 issues or so ago. We also get an obligatory Chaos mutant with a face for a torso.

Eavy metal show off some Warlord Titan models and colour schemes and also indicate that the game took place during the Horus Heresy, filling in some important backstory to the fledgling 40k universe. There is a painting guide (in black and white with ink sketches) and a page of awesome looking banner designs to hand off of the models. There is also an advert for the legendary Reaver class battle titan with a funky faux camo paint scheme or at least I think it’s and advert as there is no release date or price so it could be a preview.

This of interest to you in 2016 because:

• Adeptus Titanicus version 1.
• Some nice retro BloodBowl models that have disappeared in the mists of time.

Prepare your retinas here comes White Dwarf 107. It can also be used to signal for help if lost in the sea. I wonder how many acid house raves took inspiration from the front cover or the Realm of Chaos Champions of Chaos advert inside.

There is an advert for Realm of Chaos – The Lost and the Damned which features Nurgle and Tzeench and is suggested for mature readers. Given that White Dwarf at this time is written by Roleplay fanatics and had robot flow chart diagrams a few issue back I assume they mean the kind of people who take boat holidays on their pension money.

Critical Mass is replaced by First Impressions by Dave Pringle which substitutes the critical nature of the original for a more blow by blow synopsis of the books. This is great if you want to pick any of them up but boring if you are reading the article as a diversion from miniature gaming or roleplay articles.

We have a one page rules and background piece for the Harlequin Jetbike with its famous laughing prow. I once threw away my copy of it when I was clearing out a bitz box. Sad times.

There is a preview of Dark Future – White Line fever. I hope they mean road markings and not cocaine.

Did you know the first Realm of Chaos book was 5 years in the making but needed three pages of errata this issue because of some editing mistakes? Whoops.

Dark Future gets trikes, I can’t see any models to represent them here but maybe I’ve missed something.

BloodBowl gets cheerleaders, foul play, and Snotlings medics, all of which will be incorporated into its third edition in a much more streamlined ruleset.

Warhammer Fantasy Battle gets an army list for the Norse. The games designers insisted that there be rules for them in almost every edition at this time despite never producing models for them. Presumably it was the historical wargamers in the studio who wanted to see how Vikings played against Orcs or Elves.

Elements of Risk in WFRP is a way of introducing your characters to Elemental magic, the kind that summon rock monsters who can shoot their arms into the back of people’s heads.

Miniature adverts this time and we have Harlequins in blisters and below that, the classic Imperial assassin model with the combi weapon and sword on the backpack, this guy would be a nightmare in 40k second edition with the ability to turn up anywhere and throw an instant kill vortex grenade onto the top of your commanders head.

Dave Landford leaves White Dwarf while Gobbledegook gets a half page, I’m not sure I want to live in a world where this is fair.

Realm of Chaos gives us the army list for Chaos Renegades in 40k and I think the first reference to the Emperors Tarot – the preferred method of divining the future in the 40k background. The army list assumes the Chaos force is disembarking from a space hulk with all kinds of slaves, Deamons and psychics in tow, a veritable circus of madness. It also seems to allow you to generate the size of the original host and then select specific forces from that to allow you to run a campaign with the same group.

Interestingly we have the first ever battle report in White Dwarf next, it’s a charity 24 Warhammer Fantasy report fought on. 9′ by 5′ table and is backed up with sketches of each turn, I’m guessing this must have got good feedback because they would eventually become a staples of the magazine.

There is another article on Shades, the UKs best Multi User Dungeon at the time, this was a real throw back where you had to buy a dial up modem and connect to it for 25 pence a minute, or at 1988 Games Workshop prices that’s nearly a pair of Land Raiders an hour.

The letters pages gets two pages this issue with one of the letters complaining about the lack of Thrud, the editors asked for original script ideas, here’s one: Enter scene day, Thrud looks into the camera, apologies to everyone and kicks the stool out from under himself. Scene fades the black. Next week more Realm of Chaos. I think I nailed it. There are a few queries asking what Adeptus Titanicus was as last issue we only got a 1 page sketched advert for it, don’t worry you want have to wait for long.

Eavy Metal finishes us off with more Dark Future conversions and paint jobs

This is of interest to you in 2016 because:

• First Chaos army list in 40k
• It contains the first ever Warhammer battle report
• You can now play Wargames using actual balanced (probably) forces in Rogue Trader between Space Marines, Eldar and Chaos.

Significantly less phallic imagery on the front cover of this issue than the last time a Chaos Marine was on the cover, probably because it’s backed up by a Great Unclean one.

GW bumps up their retail presence to 15 stores in the UK and one in the US. Trish and Aly Morrison form Marauder miniatures and the first Games Workshop will soon launch in Scotland.

Dave Langford writes a farewell to his Critical Mass column. Like I said in my last review this is due to Dave losing interest in reviewing these sci fi and fantasy books rather than a cynical attempt by the editors to cut this article out of the magazine and replace it with more advertising as many people would think. Ultimately he will be replaced with Dave Pringle from Interzone for a few issues until the article vanishes completely.

In the mail order section we have Realm of Chaos – Slaves to Darkness – the full book and a book covering the Golden Demon winners in 1988 as touched on last issue, I hope I can pick these up from eBay and review them as well. There is also an advert for Combat Cards plastic scenic Craters for Rogue Trader and some Warhammer fantasy and Roleplay supplements. As for models, there is the box of 18 metal Harlequins for £9.99 which is a good deal if you consider that was the cost of the 20 RTB01 Space Marines when they came out.

Speaking of Harlequins, here is the army list including a section on looted vehicles and robots (using the rules from a few issues ago) which are programmed to “dance” alongside the Harlequins in performances. This sounds like a Daft Punk concert. Though the idea sounds ridiculous I get the impression they just wanted to use whatever models were lying around to play games with.

Next we are introduced to Ork Boar Boyz in a pretty detailed 5 page article on them including rules, a story a map and a glossary of Orc vocabulary.

Next up rules for armed racing in Dark Future, including a table for a power to weight ratio. If this interests you try Formula D, the board game about Formula 1 race cars that uses various different dice to simulate your gear changes.

Then, boom, out of the blue we get a one page advert of sketches for Adeptus Titanicus first edition, the game that is a precursor to Epic. I will be going into more detail about this in later reviews.

Realm of Chaos gives us some pictures of Fleshhounds and the extremely spindly Bloodletter models as well as the Daemonettes and the super creepy looking Fiends of Slannesh which looked like a human / goat / scorpion hybrid. Next there were unpainted Juggernauts of Khorne which looked like children’s toys and an all metal Eldar Jetbike with a very droopy prow.

BloodBowl pitch variants and alternate balls leads us into a preview of Warhammer Armies the supplement that allowed balanced forces to be fielded by players.

A solo adventure for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, oh the jokes I could use here about sole adventuring would cut to the bone. It actually looks pretty good with a choose your own adventure vibe and 116 possible locations to visit. I’ve long thought these kinds of adventures could be revived in the modern age, I can only think of one example in Destiny Quest who published a few huge books on the subject. You can’t knock the amount of effort that went into producing something like this

Realm of Chaos gets its second article this month with a background piece on Chaos Beastmen and their affiliation with the different gods of Chaos like Khorne and Nurgle, i imminently turned to the part where they described Slanneshi Beastmen but found only that they have pastel shades of fur. Boo.

There is a small article on the 40k craters and how to use them in games as if you needed any help, and then we are into Eavy Metal which this month is 4 pages of painted showcase models. The letters pages is the last article before 5 consecutive adverts. The Oscar Wilde Eldar Dreadnought is excellent.

This is of interest to you in 2016 because:

• Last ever Critical Mass
• Yet more Harlequins
• A Choose Your Own Adventure in the Warhammer World
• Yet more Chaos content

If you thought the paint schemes for the robots from last issue were far out, here come the Harlequins to knock them out of the water. In fact we have some pretty important things going on this issue which will have huge consequences for White Dwarf, Games Workshop and its (soon to become) main game.

Starting off with an article about the new (old) plastic Land Raider kit, there is some interesting background about their construction involving the sacrifice of a local natural predator inside its frame and implying that each tank has an accompanying engineer that is solely responsible for its upkeep. There is a picture section which I believe is the first mention of the Red Scorpions and the Raptors and also includes some machines used by Imperial Guard. As in the style at the time they all have wildly colourful camp camouflage patterns, even more weird from someone looking at these machines these days, there is a piece of background fiction around the existence of Eldar Harlequin looted Land Raiders. There is even a bonus quote from Commander Carab Culln from the Red Scorpions, Forgeworld made a model for him a while back, interestingly the price of Forgeworld has now caught up with the standard prices for Games Workshops current character lines.

Illuminations gives us some art from people like Chris Collingworth and Tony Roberts and then it’s onto the sad news that Critical Mass will wrap up in the next few issues. Dave Langford had grown jaded of the large boxes of sci-fi books he had to review and wanted to move on to something else. It’s interesting that this is entirely his decision and he isn’t being forced out as many people could believe as they will replace him with another reviewer. However the book reviews feature will disappear soon afterwards.

Realm of Chaos Slaves to Darkness just has ink illustrations this week which are followed by rules for Goblin Stone Throwers in Warhammer Fantasy and some details about Golden Demon 1988 yet no pictures of the painted models.

Chapter Approved gives us the first look at the background of the Space Marines and their organisations, fun fact: according to this article the drivers of all Space Marine vehicles are Techmarines and Techmarines appear to be outside of the normal structure of a chapter so that 1000 space marines per chapter hard cap on membership they adhere to doesn’t account for the 100+ Techmarines that drive the Rhinos, Predators and Land Raiders. There are some elaborate details of the shoulder pads of the commanders followed by a pretty graphic drawing of a Marine executing an Ork. There is still a lot of rules for randomly generating weapons which don’t really work in the scheme of a miniature game but still this is Codex Space Marines version 1 for all you nostalgia buffs out there, its brought to you by Brian Ansell, Derrick Norton and Nigel Stillman.

Bonus points if you notice the similarity between the wargear table here and the one published in Necromunda some 10 years later.

Next up its a full article on Harlequins in 40k, it’s worth remembering that the Eldar only had some basic troopers, a War Walker, some suppot weapons and a Dreadnought in their arsenal at this point in time so this added some much needed flavour into their race. The problem was that Harlequins are incredibly hard to paint. They would go out of fashion and be replaced by the more versatile and easier to paint Eldar Aspect warriors and only be revisited in 2012 I think.

The picture reminds me of David Bowie or at least the Goblin King from Labyrinth.

Next up is a WFRP article about a kidnapping followed by rules for Chaos, Chaos Dwarfs, Skaven, Dark Elf and Goblin teams for BloodBowl. In the back there is a full lineup for the Chaos All Stars team, I wonder if anyone has used that collection of players in BloodBowl? Probably not. It would make a good final boss for a Blood Bowl campaign. Once again there are proxy players in the magazine for you to photocopy and use. It’s like they didn’t want to sell you anything.

Thrud drinks all the milk.

Eavy metal paints up a lot of Dark Future miniatures. And the issue is finished up with rules for small arms and pedestrians in Dark Future as well.

This is of interest to you because:

• Space Marine codex vol 1
• The first ever Land Raider
• Harlequin codex vol 1
• Its pretty much a treasure trove for old 40k stuff and features loads of pencil and ink art sketches which are getting pretty good.

If it wasn’t for the eight pointed star of Chaos in the banner I wouldn’t have guessed that those are Chaos Knights.

On the next page GW advertises two plastic Land Raiders for £12.99, wow, I know with inflation that works out at £32.99 but the company must have really undersold the value of the kit at that time. Remember the only other armoured vehicles in 1st edition rogue trader were Rhinos, a few dreadnoughts and maybe some scouting vehicles like land speeders and Eldar War walkers so the impact a heavy tank must have had on anyone’s battles at this time must have been huge.

We continue the article on Monstrous Regiments with more shield and banner designs. There is an article on the Golden Daemon awards 1988 with the best dressed man winning the Slayer Sword

The BloodBowl Skaven team looks alright but maybe it’s because they are next to a group of 40k robots painted by a man on drugs.

After detail in the new vehicle damage rules last issue they publish the same for Bikers as a lot of the rules for turrets weren’t appropriate, this will eventually end with every single vehicles getting its own damage table on second edition.

Obviously it was too long for White dwarf to go without another article on in character role play demonology so we get a WHRP article on Ancient Spirits in Kislev (Warhammers pseudo Russian city setting) it’s a nice little flavour piece that could come in useful in a by other setting.

Next up its the famous Chapter Approved article on Imperial Robots, this had very in depth rules on constructing a robot using a number of Build Points that would give you a unique statline, then allocating Built Points towards its Power Plant which would give you its movement characteristic, giving the access to new systems like a power field or camouflage and then programming in its movement and shooting actions using cardboard counters to create a flow chart. It even includes a D100 special damage chart to simulate some crazy effects after taking fire such as treating all friendlies as enemies and vice versa. This is without a doubt one of the most complicated articles on war gaming that I’ve ever seen, while interesting to talk about and theorise the end result would either result in the unit being horribly crippled by an oversight by the creator of the program or provide no extra abilities than a human controller. The rules would go out of use, not making it knot second edition 40k and the artwork for the castellan would be created as a support unit for an Adeptus Mechanicus army.

Realm of Chaos – Slaves to Darkness gets a full colour title page this week and focuses on illustrations and painted figures which are starting to look pretty neat, the highlight is the Greater Demon of Slaneesh which looks like it’s come staging of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Eavy metal inexplicably seems to think there is a need to show a conversion to give a chaos mutant a really long neck but whatever. They even give stats for some of the conversion jobs possible just incase.

Large monsters in blood bowl, now known as Big Guys introduces Minotaurs, Ogres, trolls and Treemen along with cut out proxy models for them. Rules for the tiny Snotlings are included as well for sadists.

Thrud explores the possibility of a future Mad Max sequel featuring the aforementioned giant lump of lard in the main role, presumably this is why the films were canned for so long before the reboot.

Critical Mass leads us into a Dark Future article around an interview with an operative called Redd Harvest. It’s fairly unremarkable except that this was published in 1988 and Dark Future appears to have been set in 1995.

This is followed up by an article on how to make some of the converted rhinos from last issue, the vision hatch at the front looks too ramshackle for anything other than an Ork conversion but the enlarged turret hatch looks like it could work.

This issue ends with an advert for Dark Future and a selection of colour schemes for the robots featured.

This is of interest to you because:

• The Adeptus Mechanicus robots rules are crazy, you wouldn’t get anything like that published today by anyone ever.
• More Realm of Chaos artwork and some interesting colour schemes if you wanted a Harlequin army.