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See, if they dumped Cadians and remastered these into a new kit, I'd have real difficulty not buying some, even with no intention of every making an army.
With the game two years old GW began to invest in larger models and even plastic vehicle kits. Which of course meant a need for rules to cover both.
Dreadnoughts and Eldar Warwalkers were among the first.
You'll notice the Orks don't get much in this book, that's because Orks got their own two hard covers 'Ere We go and Freebooterz. I don't have them and really I'm not that interested, maybe someone else can take up that challenge?
"The Dreadnought is the ultimate form of personal armour. Inside his giant armoured suit, the wearer - or more correctly pilot - controls the Dreadnought's movement, armament and defences."
Yep, the first iteration of dreads saw them as pilot, either physically or by mental links rather than interred corpses. That, I think, was a 2nd edition idea.
"The most enduring types are the Imperial Battle Armour classes, Contemptor, Deredea and Furibundus, whimsically known by the troops as Chuck, Eddy and Fury."
Ah for the days when Marines enjoyed some whimsy during their 15 minutes of free time a day.
The rules... well... look... No one can say I don't like GW games, and the early days of 40k. But the rules... well... they were certainly words written on paper. No one can say otherwise.
So true
Spoiler:
So instead let's look at the 2 page full colour spread.
Wow.
That's certainly a lot of um... color huh. My sympathy to anyone who copied the robot color schemes.
Eagle eyed readers might notice the Traitor Slaanesh robot in the middle. Chaos did not appear at all in the RT book and only slips in a few times here, a dead Chaos marine in the IG art, stuff like that. Like Orks they got their own 2 volume HC set which I really did like and have written up here:
To this day two of my favorite gaming books of all time.
Sprinkled throughout are more thoughts of the day and other wisdom.
I like to paste this one on my desk whenever I'm job-hunting.
The Rhino was, I think, the first plastic vehicle kit (maybe tied with the Ork battlewagon?) and get's extensive rules and fluff.
This one cracks me up, it looks all realistic and everything... Until you realize it had a tracked vehicle as the example. Which can turn in place...
2 pages of full-colour Rhino goodness. For Marines, Guard and Squats. I am SHOCKED Forge World has not yet made an ambulance variant for the Rhino.
It also has this tidbit...
"Camouflage is the colour of fear... I have no need to hide from my foes... I have no fear of death. My colours I wear openly, they proclaim louder than any words, 'I am proud to live - I am proud to die' - Commander Carab Culln, Red Scorpions"
Marines in cameo sort of disappeared after this book, it became more the Guard's signature, and I just love the reasoning.
Bike and trikes also got expanded rules as vehicles.
Dont even remind me, my squat bike/trike army made me both mad and happy at the same time.
IIRC they were OK for troops but basically deathtraps for characters, exploding and killing the rider.
Spoiler:
And some rules for craters
And of course the obligatory unique template, in this case for the Thudd Gun.
Y'know how models today will have a special rule with a meaningless name like 'Nerves of Steel' or 'Fists of Fury' or 'Awesome Mustache"? Well the Rogue Trader version was counters and templates... so many templates... And they didn't even print them on card, it was always photocopy and cut out... At least in 2nd edition if you needed a 'Foot of Gork' template you'd get a color card to punch out.
Ah, more dying marines.
Rounding out the vehicles, we have the Imperial Robots.
I love the original art for them and really like the one from Blackstone fortress
Spoiler:
Nice models, but the rules...
All the fun of computer programing, but with counters.
So many counters.
So come back tomorrow, or later tonight, or in 3 days, when I'll be talking about modeling and the army lists.
I miss the imperial robots, and was probably one of the only ones who enjoyed setting up the programs (but of course, I also did/do computer programming...).
See, if they dumped Cadians and remastered these into a new kit, I'd have real difficulty not buying some, even with no intention of every making an army.
Yeah, there's no question they're a very faithful reproduction, but they don't quite scratch the itch. I'd want something where the aesthetic was updated, but with the spirit of these guys.
We find comfort among those who agree with us - growth among those who don't. - Frank Howard Clark
The wise man doubts often, and changes his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubts not; he knows all things but his own ignorance.
The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense!” Professor Brian Cox
Pour one out for the OOP units:
* Imperial Guard Power Armor
* Imperial Guard Jetbikes
* Imperial Guard Rhinos
* Imperial Guard Land Raider
It's missing the Imperial Guard Beastmen and Human Bombs, though.
Still, there's an Enginseer and Egg-walker, so that's good stuff!
Beastmen are there, to the left of the Ogryn's banner. As for OOP Imperial guard power armour, that's a tech-priest.
Thanks - I couldn't quite find the Beastmen in the Dakka picture. There's a T3 PA dude (assume to be a Colonel), but there's also a proper Tech-Priest Enginseer.
Which one are you referring to? The only ones that look like power armour are the tech-priests with power axes in front of the Rhnio (the one who looks like a mk 5 Marine and the one in robes further to the right).
And we're back with the pages that actually got me into modelling, the 'Eavy Metal section.
The theme is how to make the most of your plastic marines by cross breeding them with other 40k kits, Fantasy, Dr Who (!!) and even... TOY AND MODELS!
To this day it is my lodestar for how modelling should be done.
Let me do a close up of the marines in the corner.
Per the text box these were by Dave Andrews and include a forward observer with an aircraft propeller on his back. Another gets Judge Dredd's bike or a Dalek's body. The missile launcher/bazooka is made from sprue bits.
The new land raider kit gets its color page here (and not in the Land Raider article?) with an IG variant in there.
Rhinos get 2 pages of modelling ideas, covering them with tank bits and other modifications. If you never built one (it's been 15 years since they were in production!!) these were fun kits. To save tooling costs they used the same sprue for the sides, top and bottom but still included small extras like ammo boxes, smoke launchers, antennas and a choice of hatches. I loved them to death and covered mine in boxes, bedrolls and other stowage.
John Blanche shows off some of his ideas including a raised cupola that would be used 10 years later for the Battle Sisters.
This led to the most (in)famous of the Rogue Trader scratch builds.
Spoilered to protect the delicate eyes of women and young children.
Spoiler:
The Grav Assault was the Imperium's hover tank and made from a deodorant bottle, 2 spoons (turret and cockpit) and whatever Zoids and tank bits were lying around.
Honestly, not half bad.
And once that door was open...
Zoids, military models, hardware supplies, it all became fair game.
For a while anyway.
The book also had the obligatory painting articles
Although interesting how that Apache(?) plastic kit conversion, manages to look a bit like the Aliens dropship, and certainly miles better than the Storm Hawk and Storm Raven, despite being a kit-bash and 30+ years old!
Also thanks for reminding how awesome the old Zoids models and graphic novels used to be!
"Camouflage is the colour of fear... I have no need to hide from my foes... I have no fear of death. My colours I wear openly, they proclaim louder than any words, 'I am proud to live - I am proud to die' - Commander Carab Culln, Red Scorpions"
Marines in cameo sort of disappeared after this book, it became more the Guard's signature, and I just love the reasoning.
...in context, with the whole quote and pic of said quote - good times indeed!
Ah, just slightly before my time but roughly that era we remember when anything went in the hobby. Nobody questioned the official status of your models and just were there to have a fun time. Happy days.
But that picture of the Ultramarine - toilet paper at the ready - cannot be unseen...
"Camouflage is the colour of fear... I have no need to hide from my foes... I have no fear of death. My colours I wear openly, they proclaim louder than any words, 'I am proud to live - I am proud to die' - Commander Carab Culln, Red Scorpions"
Marines in cameo sort of disappeared after this book, it became more the Guard's signature, and I just love the reasoning.
Ah ha... Commander Culln of the chapter with the camo land raiders...
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/01/10 21:39:24
Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!
AndrewGPaul wrote: I started playing 40k in late 1st edition, but I didn't get this book until much later, on a nostalgia collecting kick.
I suppose in a way, the current 8th edition army list layouts - with each unit being in its own box - harks back to these army lists. Although without so many random rolls.
Same for me! I started in mid-2nd edition, when you could still buy Squats and Tyranid Attack, Space Hulk, and Battlemasters were how I heard about GW games.
"By this point I'm convinced 100% that every single race in the 40k universe have somehow tapped into the ork ability to just have their tech work because they think it should."
"Camouflage is the colour of fear... I have no need to hide from my foes... I have no fear of death. My colours I wear openly, they proclaim louder than any words, 'I am proud to live - I am proud to die' - Commander Carab Culln, Red Scorpions"
Marines in cameo sort of disappeared after this book, it became more the Guard's signature, and I just love the reasoning.
...in context, with the whole quote and pic of said quote - good times indeed!
Ironically, on page 117 there is a picture of a Red Scorpion Land Raider - in a camo pattern. We always had a laugh imagining old Carab Cullin having a massive conniption over that one.
EDIT: Drat, ninja'd.
And, just for you, KK...
Spoiler:
Painted circa 1990.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/01/11 02:35:06
And we're back for the final chapter, the army lists!
Rogue Trader has incredible fluff but very little in the way of how you were supposed to actually use the models and units in a game. There was a strange points system, random weapon and equipment charts and a general 'your GM will figure it out' kind of thing.
Needless to say Marines were first.
Lovely.
Chapter Approved (1988) had some lists for White Scars, Rogue Traders and pirates but they were never referred to again.
So this was the first time the standard marine army list appeared with its triad of Tactical, Assault and Devestator Marines, along with the optional extras like Terminators and Dreadnaughts.
I don't have a run of WD from that time but I think it might also be the first time Librarians (another joke like Chaplains) appeared as a unit rather than just marines who randomly rolled up psychic powers.
While Space Wolves and White Scars had lists in Chapter Approved this was meant to be an omnibus list for all chapters.
Yeah. That lasted like, 4 years.
No scouts though, not sure when they showed up. Space Crusade?
While the Marine list has been fairly stable until 8th, the Guard list was wildly different.
Sure there were usual platoon squads with their 6+ saves (5+ against explosions!)
They're even required to be organized into platoons with an officer for every few squads, a structure that was kept right up to 8th edition.
Along with the now standard 10 men with 1 sarge, 1 heavy and 1 special.
Commissars were free, and you got a random number of them.
But there were some neat things now lost to history. Rhinos and Land Raiders were already mentioned, but there were also Beastmen squads.
And assault squads with jump packs.
From this picture I always figured the standard marine pack was a jump pack. Live and learn.
Penal Legions and Human Bombs were still a thing.
And Thudd Guns, I just love the ragged tech priests/servitors and the guy with an extra... battery? hard drive? waste disposal unit? tethered to him.
And then there was the cheesiest weapon ever offered anyone - the Auxiliary Grenade Launcher.
A one-shot grenade launcher? What's so cheesy about that?
Well look at the list of grenades available.
Alex, I'll take 10 vortex grenades for 250 points thank you.
The Squat list is unfortunately rather dull.
There's some attention paid to their technical skills.
To the point that the Imperium sends tech priests to observe them.
Along with Commissar advisors.
And some neat art.
But not much in the way of cool and interesting units.
The Living Ancestor, an aged squat who had developed psy powers is kind of cool.
And their trikes got the obligatory template.
But their main troop entry is just Squats, you can give them las guns, heavy bolters, or double pistols and that's about it. Which is weird since everyone else's troops got broken down into assault, heavy and rifleman units.
Still, compared to the Marines, whose art seemed to show them dying horribly squats looked pretty good.
They would really shine in Epic where units like the Land Train, Leviathan, Goliath Mega Cannon and Overlord Airship (Dwarfs in Zeppelins? There's an idea worth using!) made them the big stuff army, rather than RT where they really do seem like short IG.
Come back next time for the last entry, the enigmatic Ninja-Jedi-Acrobat-Assassin-Clown-Posse!
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/01/11 17:24:38
I remember thinking that having the whole 10-man squad heavy bolters was pretty cool. And trikes! Trikes are the coolest!
In my own GW retail days I remember hearing that the design crew dropped squats because they couldn't think of a decent 'theme' for them, and all they had was 'bikers in space'.
Well, FYI, bikers in space was awesome! (Or maybe I'm just easily impressed).
MarkNorfolk wrote: the design crew dropped squats because they couldn't think of a decent 'theme' for them, and all they had was 'bikers in space'.
GW explained it was worse than that: a joke army consisting of midget children on kiddie trikes.
Jervis Johnson, Head Fanatic wrote:
I know I shouldn't get drawn on this... but... can't... resist
Seriously, a couple of points just so you can have an informed debate based on the real reasons that Squats are no longer available. Be warned, it is going to be hard reading for people that like the Squat background.
First of all, Squats were not dropped because they were not selling well. There were then, and are now, plenty of other figure ranges that sell in the sort of % quantities that the Squats pulled down, especially when you look across all of the ranges produced by GW rather than just those for 40K.
No, the reason that the Squats were dropped was because the creatives in the Studio (people like me, Rick, Andy C, Gav etc) felt that we had failed to do the Dwarf 'archetype' justice in its 40K incarnation. From the name of the race (Squats - what were we thinking?!?!) through to the short bikers motif, we had managed to turn what was a proud and noble race in Warhammer and the other literary forms where the archetype exists, into a joke race in 40K. We only fully realized what we had done when we were working on the 2nd edition of 40K. Try as we might, we just couldn't work up much enthusiasm for the Squats. The mistake we made then (deeply regretted since) was to leave them in the background and the 'get you by' army list book that appeared. With hindsight, we should have dropped the Squats back then, and saved ourselves a lot of grief later on.
Anyway, the Squats made it into 2nd edition, and since we were doing army books for each of the races, we started to try and figure out what to do with them. Unfortunately we just couldn't figure out a way to update them and get them to work that we felt was good enough. The 'art' of working on an army as a designer is to find the thing that you think is cool and exciting about an army, and work it up into a strong theme. This 'muse' didn't strike any of us, and so, rather than bring out a second-rate product simply re-hashing the old background, we kept doing other army books instead, with stuff we did feel inspired by.
Now, while this was all going on for 40K, we were actually doing some rather good stuff for the Squats in Epic. On this scale there was a natural tendency to focus on the big 'hand-made' war machines the Squat artisans produced, and this created an army with a feel that was very different to the biker hordes in 40K. However, this tended to reinforce the problems we saw in the Squat background rather than alleviate them, underlining what we should have done with the Squats in 40K.
In the end (and it took years to really get to the roots of the problem) this led to a realisation that we were going to have to drop the Squats in their 'Squat' form from the 40K background. There was little point having a major race that we weren't willing to make an army book for, and their inclusion in the background meant that people kept asking us when we'd do a Squat Codex. Instead we decided that we'd write the Squats out of the background by saying that their Homworlds had been devoured by a Tyranid Hivefleet. This would give us the option in the future to return to making a race based on the Squat archetype for 40K. This race was given the name of Demiurg, and a certain amount of preliminary work was done to get a 'feel' for what the race would be like. At present the only hint of the Demiurg in 40K is the Demiurg spaceship for BFG. However, we do have this race 'in our back pocket' as a possible new race for 40K, or an interesting character model in Inquisitor, or whatever. So far the Demiurg have lost out to other projects, and it may be that their time never actually comes, as they will have to win through on their merits, not simply because we once made some Squat models in the past. At present, I have to say that it is more likely that they don't make the cut than do, as there is a certain prejudice these days to simply taking races from Warhammer and cross them over to 40K like we did in the early days, so it may be that the Squats/Demiurg end up remaining a footnote in the history of the 40K galaxy. Only time will tell...
I'll finish off by saying that whatever we decide to do 'officially', there is nothing stopping players with Squat armies from using them, either in Epic or 40k for that matter. There is no GW 'rule' against using old Citadel Miniatures, as long as you use them with existing army lists and in a way that won't cause confusion for other players. I recommend taking a positive stand by saying "Have you seen these cool old models? They're called the Squats and GW used to make them back in the late eighties/early nineties. I love 'em, so I count them as Imperial Guard and use them with the current rules..." Put like this I can't imagine that anyone would stop you from using your army.
Best regards,
Jervis Johnson Head Fanatic
Why GW couldn't keep Squats as a mockery of all things serious Dorf, when Orks are another joke army, I don't understand. It's not like Space Dorfs were ever going to be good like Space Elfs...
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/01/11 19:14:22
The Rhino was, I think, the first plastic vehicle kit (maybe tied with the Ork battlewagon?) and get's extensive rules and fluff.
I'm pretty sure the Rhino was the second plastic kit for 40K, Marine preceding the actual Rogue Trader book. I used to have the original metal "Bad Year" Ork buggy 'til I sacrificed it to eBay. And all those annoying plastic and metal troop kits...
Also, this is where I started to leave 40K...the first time.
I like how the points system used pretty big numbers to permit a great granularity for points costs and many shades of grey. And yet it still used half points to give a squat a bolter instead of a lasguns
Please excuse any spelling errors. I use a tablet frequently and software keyboards are a pain!
...and that we had separate stats for Intellect (?), Cool and Willpower...but models all seemed to have the same score for the three stats, so it really could have just been...one stat!
-- $k 
-- 9k 
-- 6k 
-- 4k 
-- 
Ultramarines, 3rd Co. and friends, 16k+ 
4k 
2k Points
Competition Index
224th Astra Legion (main army)
628th Praetorian Guard Cohort (wife's army)
827th Auxilia Cohort (ad mech fun)
825th Foderati Cohort (in the beginning army)
1212th Foederati Cohort - Jokaero (cause I like apes with guns) 
Cadre Coronal Afterglow w1;d0;l0 
[1,800] Chaos Knights | 
[1,250] Thousand Sons | 
