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Hola Dakkanauts, as my 2,000th post I wanted to do a retro review of one of my favorite 40k books of all time: the WH40k Compilation from Rogue Trader.

I'll be posting in multiple posts because there's a lot to go through, however it's definitely worth it!
The book is famous for containing the rules that ultimately changed Space Marines into what they are today-originally in RT they were T3, and in this book they were changed to T4.
It also contains rules for GK terminators, the Eldar, Commissar Training squads, and Genestealer cults.

Let's start off with the cover!
As you can see, it's the Blood Angels (with a gold, Dante esque figure very prominent) fighting off a horde of genestealers. This cover is sick and evokes the original RT Crimson fist cover.


"these elite warriors can hope to fight Greater Daemons...that is, until we come out with Dreadknight armor! trolololo"


One of my favorite stories of all time. Chubb has to be the worst name of all time, and he has a terrible ending to boot!


Note that each Grey Knight Terminator is a level 4 psyker-this is the most powerful psyker in the game, and you have a squad of 5 of them! This is offset by their ridiculous cost of 1200 points, which is 50 points less than an RT Bloodthirster. For reference, in RT a squad of 10 Grey Knights in powered armor was 260 points. Yep.


FATALITY! One of the coolest pictures involving Terminators ever.


Traitor Terminators. Note that unlike the heavily mutated troops of the Realms of Chaos books, these Terminators have remained pure which is kind of weird but shows how important their unit is to them. The Chaos Captain Terminator model is sick and I've always wanted to pick one up. PM me if you're looking to sell one. (serious)


By the way, you can tell that they put no thought into balancing these items, especially the Lightning claws.


Next time: Commissar Training Squads, new Space Marine rules, the original Leman Russ, and the Eldar!

I would just like to point out to the Ward haters the description of the Liber Daemonica.

Battle Rituals.
"No rituals have ever been mentioned! EVER!"

WHAT NOW!

Nice review so far, and I agree that cover is one of the coolest pieces of 40k art. To a kid of 12 or so it practically begged to be picked up off the shelf, it was wondrously evocative.

Agreed that the balance was woefully out of kilter, although it fitted in with the time as RT was far more like D&D (at least at the beginning) and required you to either have a 3rd party to watch over you or actually moderate yourself in choice of army list, a concept that is sadly alien to a lot of modern gamers these days (not to say that most people didn't go completely overboard with some options sometimes, and make games which were almost completely pointless because they were so one-sided, although they were still a lot of fun! )

I remember the switch to T4 marines actually caused quite a hoo-haa at the time, even without the internet community back then. I remember someone commenting in a store, and getting a round of affirmative nods and grunts in reply, when he said about GW "always favoring marines!" Some things never change

Looking forward to the next part

Now for Part 2! By the way, if a mod could move this to Dakka Discussions I would really appreciate it. : )
Anyway!
First, we have the Commissar training squads. You have a Commissar leading a bunch of Cadets into the thick of battle. It's okay though, they all have Refractor fields. It's too bad that despite that billion units added to the IG codex, that this unit didn't make it. inb4 "oh it's not in the fluff anymore!". There are also rules for determining if any of the cadets have made it to commissar rank after the battle which is pretty cool.


The preface for the Imperial Space Marine rules is about a 5 page long story describing the marks of Space Marine armor, from Mark 1 techno barbarian to the current Mark VII armor.


There are some really sweet pictures regarding the marks of Imperial Space Marine armor.


Also, included is my favorite picture of the Emperor to date. The quality is a little bad from the scanning but you know what's going on.


We also get a short story on Leman Russ and his doings, and also a picture of him. He also has the honor of being the only Primarch with a model. I'll dig up the link later, or maybe one of the older members would like to upload it.


Finally, we get to the meat of the book. This is the infamous page that forever pumped the Imperial Space Marines to insane levels. To the bottom right hand corner is one of my favorite ISM pictures so it's all good.
Personally, I'm questioning why this was necessary. Most of the pictures in RT have Marines dying so they're not THAT tough. Plus they already had Powered Armor, which was the best armor in the game until Terminator armor came around. Ah well, it is what it is and the rest is history! However, powered armor would not be made into a 3+ save until 2nd edition.


Further history is made with the addition of overwatch. You're already starting to see the transitions to 2nd edition already.


That will finish up this part, I didn't realize how much I'd scanned so I will leave the Eldar to their own section so they don't take away from anything here.

With that being said, coming up next- Part 3: The Eldar!

Most amazing... need MOARRRR

Wanted to BUMP this so more people could see this. I'm really busy with schoolwork but the Eldar will be uploaded in a day or two.