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Kid_Kyoto wrote:So far everyone was born when this issue came out?

Gosh we're a bunch of old foogies here.

Born? I was 25 and already fed up with WHFB's half-assed rules when 40K came out. I didn't play 1st edition at all.

We never called it Rogue Trader in Britain.

I still have a bunch of the figures though including a significant number of the boxed set beakies. It was a damn good deal at the time. Price inflation had already set in bigtime for metal figures. 30 plastics with loads of bitz for £10 was excellent. No-one had done polystyrene wargame figures before and they were superbly convertable and poseable.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:So far everyone was born when this issue came out?

Gosh we're a bunch of old foogies here.

It's a might scary world when being older than 20 garners you the title of 'old foogie'.

Granted I was too young to even read this magazine, and it'd be almost a decade later before I'd even heard of GW, but I was still born.

And I thought I was being radical when I set the minimum age for being 'old' at 35!

35 is the prime of life!

It is the point where one's physical powers have not ebbed and are balanced by a goodly degree of knowledge and experience.

September of 87 I was fresh out of High School, and just got back from Infantry boot camp. Walked into my local hobby shop and they had this new thing called Warhammer 40k. I bought the book, a bunch of orks and a bunch of space marines with the pay I had from the army. Great times, great times.

I was 19 or 20 when this issue came out. I picked up WD97 and started my 40K stuff shortly thereafter.

I was one. Of course I didn't even know 40k, or these types of games existed, until I was 14.

I was 13 and I found those miniatures ridiculous. Even now, I wonder why GW is so fond of huge shoulder pads. At least they forgot the beaks.

Asmodai wrote:Well, I was 6 at the time and in a small town in rural Canada where no one had ever heard of GW, but I was still alive at the time.

I was ... OK that was me too.

Waagh_Gonads has inspired me, I think I'll keep an eye out for first rate gaming magazines from the days of yore. Everyone needs a hobby ... er ... hobbies.

born August 5th 1987.....I'm as old as 40k. yay

Kotrin wrote:I was 13 and I found those miniatures ridiculous. Even now, I wonder why GW is so fond of huge shoulder pads. At least they forgot the beaks.

I was 16 and I feel/felt the same way!


Eric

Kid_Kyoto wrote:So far everyone was born when this issue came out?

Gosh we're a bunch of old foogies here.

Who else can afford the hobby?

Kotrin wrote:I was 13 and I found those miniatures ridiculous. Even now, I wonder why GW is so fond of huge shoulder pads. At least they forgot the beaks.

Whippersnapper, if you thing GW shoulderpads are silly, be thankful you're too young to have seen Warzone.

Kotrin wrote:I was 13 and I found those miniatures ridiculous. Even now, I wonder why GW is so fond of huge shoulder pads. At least they forgot the beaks.

Hypermasculinity -- exaggeration of the male physique with its bulky pecs and wide shoulders -- is a standard component of homoerotic subtext. Look at Judge Dredd or nearly any superhero. Marshall Law "lays it bare" so to speak. American footballers, and so on.

*coughcough* Vlad pads *coughcough*

September of '87 I was 11 and while I was just starting to experiment with RPGs, I had no knowledge of minatures games, save the ads in the back of Marvel comics.

Having said that, I still remember the days when you knew whether the elf was good or bad by the size of his hat and how many spikes were on his shoulderpad, and EVERYONE had huge shoulderpads.

And no knocking Warzone. It's rude to speak ill of the dearly departed :(

Well for the record I was 14 and saw the ads in Dragon Magazine (RIP) and even the minis at Forbidden Planet (the one on Broadway and 12th street, Noo Yawk City!).

I didn't get anything until years later when I was in college and we got heavily into epic Space Marine.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Kotrin wrote:I was 13 and I found those miniatures ridiculous. Even now, I wonder why GW is so fond of huge shoulder pads. At least they forgot the beaks.

Hypermasculinity -- exaggeration of the male physique with its bulky pecs and wide shoulders -- is a standard component of homoerotic subtext. Look at Judge Dredd or nearly any superhero. Marshall Law "lays it bare" so to speak. American footballers, and so on.

While shoulders are important, pecs and lats are emphasized for masculinity. I think the masculine chest armor of the cadians, including the sixpack, looks manlier.

But while the shoulders are ridiculous, let's not forget the hydroencephaly that every model suffers from.

I was five and likely playing with GI Joes and Legos - cementing my future love of wargames and terrain building. I didn't get into Fantasy for another 6 years and then started 40k a few years later.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

I was 18 in 1987, just finishing high school. Had a part time job, and played Dungeons and Dragons mostly (ok, a LOT). I remember seeing these minis (probably a couple years after the launch), and thinking they were too expensive - compared to Ral Partha and Grenadier RPG minis.

Some things don't change :-) Fortunately, now I have disposeable income, so I don't worry about price. Have only been in 40k for about 10-11 years now... I got there just at the end of 2nd ed.

Love the old backstory, though, the writing in RT and even the 2nd ed codexes just feels more "fun". Like the authors were enjoying making stuff up, and the tone was perfect... nowadays.....

stonefox wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

Kotrin wrote:I was 13 and I found those miniatures ridiculous. Even now, I wonder why GW is so fond of huge shoulder pads. At least they forgot the beaks.

Hypermasculinity -- exaggeration of the male physique with its bulky pecs and wide shoulders -- is a standard component of homoerotic subtext. Look at Judge Dredd or nearly any superhero. Marshall Law "lays it bare" so to speak. American footballers, and so on.

While shoulders are important, pecs and lats are emphasized for masculinity. I think the masculine chest armor of the cadians, including the sixpack, looks manlier.

But while the shoulders are ridiculous, let's not forget the hydroencephaly that every model suffers from.

Is hydroencephaly what Eldar have that makes them wear big helmets (of a certain "imperial" colour?)

syr8766 wrote:And no knocking Warzone. It's rude to speak ill of the dearly departed :(

Warzone is still cool, I picked up a couple blisters of their space orcs while I was visiting my brother to use with LatD ...

... oh wait ...

I was 17 at the time & bought/played pretty much everything that came out on the market & that time... especially RPGs or alternatives to board games.

Let see, my fav's at the time were Champions, Villains & Vigilantes, AD&D, Car Wars, Ogre (already a classic)... etc. A couple years from then I'd get my first ownership of the cool 'space minis game' by buying Space Hulk, until then I only played 'Rogue Trader' in the hobby shop with guys who could afford non-rpg minis. I mean we played AD&D & superhero games all the time so we had to have every monster & possible encounter there was... no room or money left for 'extra' minis that didn't fit with the fantasy or Superhero genre!

Those were fun times in gaming, seemed like something new was being released every couple of weeks!

(more favs from that time in my life... Risk, the Gamemaster series games, World in Flames, anything Avalon Hill... ok too many more!)

Kilkrazy wrote:35 is the prime of life!

It is the point where one's physical powers have not ebbed and are balanced by a goodly degree of knowledge and experience.

I'm going to try to keep that in mind in the next few years. I was 10 around the time that came out, and I missed 1st ed by about a year or two when I started, I think in 94. I know second edition hadn't been out too terribly long, and many of my blood angels were rogue trader, particularly the bikes ( I don't think they were redone until fairly recently, right?). When I was playing, in fact, every marine player who had a land raider had the old one, and at the time they weren't selling the kit anymore, therefore you had to convert if you wanted one.

It is rather odd I think how people my age obsess about age. I think we do it more than our parents, and certainly more than our grandparents, when every indication seems to be that we'll live longer, healthier, more active lives than them ( at least if obesity doesnt get you). Of course, I could just be projecting my own insecurities on someone else, but I don't think so.

Incidentally, one of the first things that attracted me to the GW imagery was the powered armor, with its oversized gauntlets, shoulders, and other components. I suppose I need to make some changes to my personals add, eh?

At the time I think my favorite hobby, aside from eating and pooing, was throwing my mum's vases to the floor. Nine years later I got into 40k.
How I wish I had a couple (10+) boxes of RTB01 Beakie Marines.

Deadshane1 wrote:I remember my friends not wanting to pick up Rogue Trader because we were all too busy playing Star Fleet Battles and Battletech. I bought the rulebook at about this time anyway.

That's about where my friends and I were at the same time. I didn't start playing 40k 'til right before 2nd came out. In fact, we didn't realize that the big box of stuff was a new edition at first. We thought it was just a good deal for models with condensed rules, and kept getting confused looking for charts that didn't exist in 2nd.

I was 12 at the time and this was right before I got into 40k. I started playing at the tail end of Rogue Trader.

Capt K

Awesome gold White Dwarfs, I've been keeping my eye out for them as a friend loves the old copies and i like gazing into the past of the beginnings of warhammer, the oldes one I've managed to get is issue 31, does anyone have the hallowed 1st issue? I wonder what it holds within it's tome like pages.......

Destrado wrote:How I wish I had a couple (10+) boxes of RTB01 Beakie Marines.

Nah. Seriously, you don't. I bought a bunch at the time and for when it was, they were certainly the coolest thing on the block. At some point I wound up selling them. Then back around 4 years ago, I bought a guy's Blood Angel army that included a bunch of RTB01s...man, I tried every which way I could think of to try to update them and make them fit with the new marines...But they just looked weedy and apelike with that hunched pose. You know all those folks doing true-scale marines? These guys were the anti-true-scale marines. Instead of being larger than today's marines, they were smaller. Ugly and plain buggers compared to today's models.

The RTB01 Beakies are smaller because they weren't S4 T4.

RTB01 Beakies would make great stand-ins for Sisters, tho.

Looking at this older material (I was two when this was published) I really feel like progress has been made in some ways, but often at the cost of originality in the background. There wasn't enough pathos in the marines and other characters it seems back then, but now they just seem like card-board cutouts, with no interesting personal conflicts.

It is funny to look at this stuff now though: I got into the hobby right at the very tail end of 3rd, and all this stuff seems about as modern as pinball machines and polyester suits.The old-school artwork, the strong fantasy connections, all of it shows how much more hard-core the old fan base must have been. Maybe I'm just being daft, but it seems like this was very much an era when the hobby was totally underground, and while it isn't mainstream by any means now, at least people know about it, through the video games and novels and such.


Edit-- Ground Crew? That will teach me to not post in a year...