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I'm jumping on Kid Kyoto's bandwagon here, with something that will no doubt amuse an interest some of you.


Whoa! That guy's shield has a huge mouth on it! That's c-c-c-crazy!

This book was published in 1986. For reference, the first and second edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles was released in 1983 and '84, respectively, and the first edition of Warhammer 40K would not be released until 1987. The book is an introduction to role-playing games and fantasy wargames, focusing on the miniatures aspect of things. It basically contains an overview of everything that Games Workshop and Citadel Miniatures were working on around 1985-6. It contains everything you would expect to see in the various "hobby guides" that GW publishes to this day (conversion and painting tips) a brief history of hobby gaming, various product shots, sketches, an lots and lots of miniatures.


Blood Bath at Orc's drift was, I believe, a campaign pack for WHFB 2nd edition. The cardboard buildings were combined with some others from around the same time and later reprinted in Warhammer Townscape. You can see these buildings in all sorts of GW photos from around this time.


Deep space mercenaries?!? This'll never catch on!
(The very first Space Marine miniatures.)


John Blanche, before his "red period." The book contains several full-page paintings like this, mostly by Blanche.


The book contains quite a few production sketches, mostly by Jes Goodwin and John Blanche. The Blanche pieces were very detailed pen and ink drawings, which wouldn't reproduce well, but Goodwin's were sketchier and seem like they wouldn't lose to much to the scanning process.


Goodwin's original Skaven. Most of the minis were, unfortunately, photographed against a black backdrop, which made them a bit difficult to see properly.


I love this minotaur's gut! Clearly this is before the 'Eavy Metal Team's "red period," too. I'd call this the "brown period," actually, based on the pictures in this book. A lotta brown guys. Heck, even the orks are brown!


This is labeled as a "mutant" in this book, though it is called a "dominator" in a catalogue. You can see that it is very similar to the earliest Tyranid and Zoat models. It's a sort of proto-nid.

The book weighs in at 127 pages, and it's almost all devoted to GW/Citadel. If you're interested in the early history of Warhammer and such, this is a good one to get, if you can track it down. Feel free to ask any questions you'd like about this book; I'm happy to talk about it.

Very cool, although I wished the photos were bigger and whiter in the backgrounds. Them ancient space marines are something.

Yeah, I have a couple of those original (1985) marines. They're quite nicely-posed, and have a lot of good detail on them. They're a lot better than some of the later (1987) marines.

wow wish I had that one. Would definatly be something. Thanks for showing!

Wow thanks! Love this stuff!

That minotaur is great!

Nice! Were did you get the book? and how light is your wallet now

I think I have that Skaven Grey seer, I would love the guy with the scroll though.

I always wonder about the "shoveling" pose that the marines are doing. It's not a bad pose, but why are ALL the models doing it?

those marine poses are amazing! i love them! god if only they looked more like that now, instead of that stupid side-slide with gun against chest nonsense.

That painting style on the Minotaur and his chums is excellent! As nice as anything you see today really. And the basing is neat too.

I wonder why 'Eavy Metal went through that whole "primary colours" phase in the 90's? For me that was the "decade that taste forgot" when it came to Citadel. I much prefer the more muted and realistic shades and styles that are popular again nowadays.

Does anyone know who took the design decision that the more primary colours you got on a model when you were painting it, the better? Given this kind of output, it looks like a kind of retrograde step to me.

Hmm.. why'd they change from the hex bases? they look kinda cool & different.

Clthomps wrote:Nice! Were did you get the book? and how light is your wallet now

I work at one of the largest used book stores in the world (Powell's). I'm like a spider in the middle of a web, a web designed for catching books! I simply waited, and the book came to me. With my substantial employee discount, I paid a mere US$6.50.

BigToof wrote:I always wonder about the "shoveling" pose that the marines are doing. It's not a bad pose, but why are ALL the models doing it?

It's only one sculpt. The one with a different head is probably a conversion. There were a few other marines released later in 1985, but I guess they came out too late to make it into the book or something.

Necros wrote:Hmm.. why'd they change from the hex bases? they look kinda cool & different.

I'm not sure. Some of the early 40K minis were packaged with hex bases. One of my Squats has a hex base. I guess the round base was considered to be more appropriate for the more free-form, British-style wargaming, as opposed to the American grid/hex map style, so they eventually standardized things around the round base. It took them years and years to finally come out with large round bases, though.

Oh yes powell's the largest book store.
Not at bridge town today pariah.
I didn't want to take off my chains.

I never owned the book when it first came out but I bought it a few months back when I was in my "Must Buy Books on Painting GW Minis" phase. A very good book with little of the advice being out of date but all of the models are! Back in the day, you could choose which kind of base you got with the minis if ordered direct, hex, square, round and a few others.

Thank you for taking the time to post this. Very much enjoyed the Blanche color painting of a "Sister of Sigmar."

used book seller huh, what a sweet job!

Anywhoo off topic, I have a 1st ed. Hobbit sitting around, any Idea how much I can sell it off for? I was thinking of waiting till the hobbit movie comes out and then dropping it off on ebay.



*edit* I forgot to mention its missing its dust jacket

If it's a true first impression, it's worth thousands of dollars. I'm not a big expert on Tolkien (western philosophy is more my line) but that one's worth quite a bit. There were only about 1500 copies of the first printing.