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For all the old-timers out there, I was wondering about the early days of Games Workshop and 40k. I started playing in 2000, but from what I have been told, back in the day when GW was a start-up company 40k had about 20 infantry kits and the old-school plastic Rhino. Someone was telling me that in a few White Dwarf Publications they made suggestions on using off-the-shelf scale models and ZOIDS to fill the gaps in their model line. I was just wondering what models were suggested at the time, or what people commonly used.

 cuda1179 wrote:
For all the old-timers out there, I was wondering about the early days of Games Workshop and 40k. I started playing in 2000, but from what I have been told, back in the day when GW was a start-up company 40k had about 20 infantry kits and the old-school plastic Rhino. Someone was telling me that in a few White Dwarf Publications they made suggestions on using off-the-shelf scale models and ZOIDS to fill the gaps in their model line. I was just wondering what models were suggested at the time, or what people commonly used.

I've got PDF's of a lot of the older ones, they used to have stuff for things like D&D and the like in there (D&D was the core of WD for several years actually), it was a genuine general tabletop hobby magazine, and for their early stuff they'd absolutely feature other companies stuff, I just don't have any in front of me to check out right this moment.

The old white dwarfs ( as in the ones before I started ) sort of looked similar to the other wargaming / rpg magazines that where published at the time. You might also want to take a look the annarchive to get the complete picture of the gaming culture.

I have got some of my original ones i bought back in 1988 or so!

This might alo interest you http://www.solegends.com/citadel/index.htm

I've got lots of originals from around #30 through to about #150. It thins out then and stops around 200

I've got maybe 20 of them from the mid-to-late 90's. Yes it was very common back then for GW to encourage kit-bashing, and a lot of codex entries did not have models - some not until just recently (so about 20 years).

There were various articles on converting your tanks using normal Tamiya tank kits, WW1 British tanks for Land Raiders, etc. If you go really far back you'll run into the famous deodorant tank (hover tank w/ a chassis made from a old deodorant bottle).

Conversions were much bigger when Necromunda came out - as well as the Chaos Codex, allowing for heaps of conversions (the Chaos Codex actually had images marked wtih a small Chaos asterisk to denote a model which was converted). There was a Terminator Champion equipped with legs from an Epic Warhound Titan, etc.

GW was a hugely different company than it is now (though they're getting back to being cool). They became a soulless corporation in the late 90's...and that really turned off a lot of gamers as it proceeded. Better for them financially but the geeky spark left wholesale.

This is why Oldhammer is a thing - a huge population of guys in their 30's-50's who still enjoy gaming from the 80's-90's before it went bad. Happily, a lot of them are cautiously optimistic with the recent turnaround of attitude by GW. So that's a plus for GW.

I think the oldest one I had was #72 from the 80s.

I didn't start getting it regularly until the #90s issues.

There were articles on converting models (existing kits, or using their own kits once they had them). The first whirlwind and vindicator models were both conversions of rhinos using templates printed in the magazine.

The oldest WD's I own are the ones who came just after the Bretonnia - Lizardmen set, but those aren't the ones you are looking for.

Id have to dig them out but i have some issues in the 50's i picked up in the bargain bin at a shop about 15 years ago. Was some interesting stuff to say the least, back when they supported necromunda and gorkamorka, pre mordheim even. they had epic games as battle reports as well as battlefleet gothic etc.