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Today we have a special Valentine's Edition of Retro Reviews, with an indepth discussion of Where Space Marines Come From.

So get ready for some hawt, hawt reproductive action!

But first things first...



Gotta love that cover, back in the old days you'd never see marines in clean armor striding forward to victory. you'd see them covered in muck, surrounded, outnumbered, getting cut to peices. Man ever since they went up to T4 they've been so darn dull.

Anyway we're at 20 years to the day, this came out Feb 1988! If you weren't born when this was out pipe up and say so, it's a rule.

this issue has the answer to a question that's still plaguing many of us today.


So if you're wondering where your FAQ is, the answer is they're still working through the backlog of Rogue Trader questions. Just just be patient and your questions will be addressed in the order they were recieved.

New models include Chaos Thugs

Why can't we have these guys in plastic instead of the Conan mauraders. I mean really, these guys manage to look bad-ass and like pathetic losers at the same time!

And we have Centaurs

Another good bunch. They look beastial and scary, tons better than the latest versions of Beastitaurs or whatever they're called.

We also get an ork buggy

Yeah. And you thought the 10 year old Gorkamorka buggy was bad.

Space Pirates

I wonder about Vaal the Asharian, obviously some sort of alien race. is there an Asharian army list somewhere, next to Codex Squats? Were they going to be the next big thing? Were they killed off the Hurd? We may never know.

And then the Imperial Army

Note the beastman

Female trooper Bush


I miss the old 2000AD looking guard, that should have been the first plastic regiment.
Oh wait, it was Now if only they'd kept it in production.

And the Devestators box set

Just the thing if you happened to play Marines, Squats and Guard
Say what you will at least the days of putting Ork Stompers and Marine Dreads on the same sprue are over.

Join us next time for WHERE DO SPACE MARINES COME FROM?

i wasnt born when this came out. how great are those imperial army mini's???? they're fantasic!!! and the space pirates. wow.

10 YO gorkamorka buggy? do you mean those flat bed trukks or the 'red' 4 wheel buggy, I'm sure that's more than 10 years old now! It been around for forever (at elast util you go back and find that old one).

And the whole mole stuff, moters, tunneling tanks, they should bring them back, or rather the rules and let people convert them. It would be cheaper than buying a kit for it!

covenant you should know that GW wont release rules without minis, (or they will, but then just pull it after a while leaving alot of people very unhappy)

covenant84 wrote:10 YO gorkamorka buggy? do you mean those flat bed trukks or the 'red' 4 wheel buggy, I'm sure that's more than 10 years old now! It been around for forever (at elast util you go back and find that old one).

And the whole mole stuff, moters, tunneling tanks, they should bring them back, or rather the rules and let people convert them. It would be cheaper than buying a kit for it!

(They'd have to let the Squats back)

Yes, the original Imperial Army were a lot better for general SF than the modern stuff, because there wasn't a load of eagles to clean off everything.

The plastics were awesome for converting and posing.

Fabulous. I remember assembling that Land Speeder and how those parts never fit together right...lol. Being 13 and pissed off that I had to putty models was something that I will never forget.

Capt K

I have that Ork buggy, though the gun is slightly different. It's not a bad looking model, just ridiculously small.

I have that Speeder, but without a flag.

Awesome - I've played with (and probably still own) most of those miniatures. I don't have the Marine speeder though, just the Guard one.

I love how each of the IG troopers had names back then....like IG troopers deserve names...HAH!

so where is the rest of the review? I want to see the stuff on the Mentor Chapter.

Capt K

& we're back!

As with a lot of the old school White Dwarfs issue 98 still has articles for other games, in this case a dwarf warband called...

the Iron Warriors?



The really odd thing is that I read the whole article and for the life of me have no idea which game they are for. Stormbringer? Runequest? It's not WHF RPG. Guys? Editing?

Anyway, now for one of our headliners, the Mentor Legion!

40k's success is largely based on its ability to take familiar archetypes and put a new spin on them. Space Wolves are vikings in Space. Ultramarines are Roman legions in space. Orks are orcs in space.

Also there are the cool symbols, skulls, wolves, skulls, eagles, skulls and skulls.

So what about the Mighty Mentor Legion?


Teachers.
In space.
Whose symbol is...
An Owl.



That being said, I love them. they're the high tech R&D marines, equipped with vortex missiles, time shifters, targeting webs and other cutting edge magic-tech.

The time shifter is neat, all it does is allow them to move faster. Yeah, we could give them jump packs but why use a jump pack when you can warp time and space itself!

Join us next time for Making a Space Marine!

Those Imperial Army figs would make bad-ass Last Chancers. And I rather like the stahlhelm on the gunner for the Ork Buggy. Confirms my belief that Freeks were consciously based on the Rat Fink caricatures.

Thanks, Kyoto!

& we're back with the final installment covering White Dwarf 98.

Today we all know where Marines come from:
1 - John Blanche scrawls a concept sketch on a napkin
2 - The nearest intern adds greenstuff to a Jes Goodwin plastic marine until it sort of kind of looks like the sketch.
3 - GW slaps on a $17 price tag and goes back to bathing in it's money bin.

But back then things were different.

Seriously speaking, the fluff in the making of a Space Marine has barely altered over the decades but it's still worth looking at.



This might be the first time the Emperor had a speaking role in Warhammer 40k. It also has what I think is the first reference to the great crusade.



Note: "These new warriors were organized into their own special units called 'chapters'. Those chapters created at the time of the first crusade were known as Chapters of the First Founding. There were originally twenty of these, but only 7 survive in the 41st millennium."

Since later fluff had 20 primarchs, 2 missing legions, 9 loyalist and 9 traitor we have to wonder who were the 7 originally meant to be the First Founding Chapters. We already know the Ultramarines are out. According to the fluff in WD 97 the original UMs fell to chaos and the current ones are a replacement legion.

We also see the mysterious scientists responsible for the creation of the Space Marines...



Apparently are the same people who acted as gunners on the Death Star.

We round out the issue with some 'eavy metal models.

The original Slaan


More Squats


and what might by the first chaos marine conversions!


Wow just taking plastic marines and adding spikes, hard to believe GW was ever that lazy

Join us next time as we warp ahead into the 90s for some Orky action!

Wizard's Keep in Muncie IN (made famous as "The Game Pit" in Knights of the Dinner Table) still had a PILE of those old buggies, plus all kinds of good stuff, back in 2002. Knowing the way gaming stores are, they probably still have piles of old-skool action worth checking out.

See? A Chaos Marine is simply a spiky Marine. Let no one argue otherwise!

The 'Iron Warriors' are for Runequest. I think I used them in a game once.

The runes are RuneQuest runes. Griffin Island is a famous classic RuneQuest campaign.

Kilkrazy wrote:The runes are RuneQuest runes. Griffin Island is a famous classic RuneQuest campaign.

this must be some use of the word 'famous' I was not previously familiar with.

^ This is a wonderful thing. I need my photoshop STAT

- Salvage

In fairness, the CSM in the top left had his hand replaced by a combat blade, so they did a little more than just 'add spikes'. /sarcasm off/

This is getting off-topic, but iirc some of the fluff even in second edition had a different take on the Heresy. iirc, it was hinted that the two missing legions were completely wiped out in the Istvaan dropsite massacres. Also, wasn't the role of the Dark Angels Legion 'unknown' and it wasn't clear if they sided with Horus or the Imperium (as opposed to just part of the chapter going with Chaos)?

Anyway, 40k Fluff has been modified many times, and I'm sure it will be again.

Yeah, remember how the Starchild, Sensei, and Malaal were kinda brushed under the rug somewhere in there?

IIRC the 20 founding legions and their primarchs were not properly listed until 2nd edition.

Can anyone confirm?

I know the 4 chaos Primarchs showed up in Space Marine (I may get to taht issue of WD soon) but was there a list of the rest?

As for the missing legions I think they were always 'all records purged'.

Boss_Salvage wrote:

^ This is a wonderful thing. I need my photoshop STAT

- Salvage

There's a better source image in the photodump forum if you click on it.

And does anyone have a picture of the WD where they show people applying green stuff to plastic marines to make the 'new' plastic chaos marines?

The missing legions were always "all records purged" but I think there were hints in second edition that they might have been wiped out at Istvaan. Or at least, there was speculation by someone (an Inquisitor probably) that the two legions were wiped out in the Heresy and had all records purged as a result.

Female Trooper Bush....Gertrude the Yak? Who came up with the names?

I have a store I go to at least once a year that has most of the old WD mags and they look at me funny when I load up each time. I am not alone at least. Haven't quite made this far back in issues but I am working on it.

Oh, and I was 17 when this came out.

You're correct, though, in that the First Founding legions weren't listed until 2nd Ed. In 1st Ed, they talked about 20 First Founding legions and talked about the 2 missing legions, but they didn't actually list the First Founding legions until 2nd.

Gods I miss those days......

30 Marines to a box....
Thudd guns
Termites
Squats
Zoats
Jokareo...

and in my personal version of spot the names :
In the Imperial Guard models we have Emerson, Lake and Palmer, + Lee, Leifson and Peart: ELP and Rush respectively. Any other names in there?