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I will be building it up to a complete collection over time, yes.

Very much a case of taking my time though. For stuff like Deathblow! I think I’ll just go digital.

Also, I’ve now a cracking excuse to buy random boxes of stuff to populate a dungeon. Which frankly is something I don’t understand the recent Quests not including.

Make that inclusion, and people not otherwise interested in collecting a full army for AoS, or WHFB, now have a reason to buy an armies worth of random boxed sets. Or indeed more.

Mmmmmmm.




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Now, if someone could point me to digital copies of the characters, expansions, articles and Deathblow!, that’d be fab.

I don’t normally stand with piracy, but the second hand prices are ludicrous, and here don’t directly benefit the game’s creator company.

Though my eventual populating of dungeons certainly will.


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Uh oh….had the Roleplay Book out earlier, and now can’t find it.

Stuff Goblins had best return it toot bloody sweet, or there’ll be no more socks for a month!

I don't care a lick about the game itself, but the swarm models, Minotaurs, and a few of those characters are damn near perfect.

Treated myself to a copy of Inquisitor

So much novel background in that rulebook. And I’d argue to the point it’s the origin of modern 40K Background Detail.


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Oop, and a copy of BFG Armada.

And a copy of Warhammer Armies Dogs of War. And the collected, soft back, Liber Chaotica.

But that’s me for the time being, unless a non-insanely priced Titan Legions crops up, when I’ll consider it.

Sounds great, Mad Doc, but why bother with all those copies when you could just buy the real thing?

(boom tish )

Anyway ...

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Inquisitor

So much novel background in that rulebook. And I’d argue to the point it’s the origin of modern 40K Background Detail.

Probably not what you mean, but in terms of Studio tabletop visuals, I often think of Inquisitor as ground zero for the over-gothification of 40K. Before then the official terrain and models had more of a frontier-planet feeling. The gothic elements were present but fairly low-key and mixed in with other science fiction imagery. After Inquisitor, though, there seemed to be more focus on urban settings for 40K battles too, and the skulls, scrolls, candles and grime started to get a bit out of control (as seen in the 4th ed purity-seal-plastered Marines and Cities of Death building kits).


Dogs of War is a brilliant book just for browsing. Almost Discwordlian in its flavour. Though it's a shame some of the most interesting and quirky regiments only came out as White Dwarf articles later rather than being included in the book itself.


And now for something completely different ... Can anyone help with a little mystery?

Years ago when searching for the 4th ed WFB Undead army book, someone online offered to sell me an extra-special cool edition that included the new Undead special characters from the Circle of Blood campaign pack: the Red Duke and friends. He then changed his mind and decided to keep it before we got as far as requesting photos. (It took several other false leads and dead ends before I managed to track down an Undead book, making me feel like a proper necromancer searching for an elusive forbidden tome.)

Was he pulling my leg, or was there actually an updated revision to the original Undead book with the CoB characters included? If it ever existed it would have come out in early to mid 5th ed WFB, after CoB but before Vampire Counts.

They did make various minor updates to the army books from time to time--correcting a few points values in reprints (or at least they said they would), or changing the advertisement pages in the back--but I don't know if anything that extreme ever happened.

Zenithfleet wrote:


And now for something completely different ... Can anyone help with a little mystery?

Years ago when searching for the 4th ed WFB Undead army book, someone online offered to sell me an extra-special cool edition that included the new Undead special characters from the Circle of Blood campaign pack: the Red Duke and friends. He then changed his mind and decided to keep it before we got as far as requesting photos. (It took several other false leads and dead ends before I managed to track down an Undead book, making me feel like a proper necromancer searching for an elusive forbidden tome.)

Was he pulling my leg, or was there actually an updated revision to the original Undead book with the CoB characters included? If it ever existed it would have come out in early to mid 5th ed WFB, after CoB but before Vampire Counts.

They did make various minor updates to the army books from time to time--correcting a few points values in reprints (or at least they said they would), or changing the advertisement pages in the back--but I don't know if anything that extreme ever happened.

If it did, I have no recollection of it existing. And as someone who was playing Undead in 5th, it’s something that would have come to my attention. Not to say it didn’t happen, but I don’t think so.

I do have parts on the CoB rules tucked in the covers of my Undead book, so that kinda counts?

It might be worth scanning WDs from the time, it may have been a limited release thing that never made it to the states?

Edit:
Quick check has the CoB pages copyright 1997, and the 5th VC army book is ’99. So if there was a re-issue, it would be in that timeframe. Probably closer to the start, as if they knew a new book was coming out, they would not update the old.

Edit2:
As it happens, I have the Aug 97 WD (211) on the shelf, where the CoB characters are introduced and showcased. In the articles covering the new undead stuff there is no mention of a new army book. Again, this is not proof that it doesn’t exist. I just can’t find any signs.

 Nevelon wrote:


If it did, I have no recollection of it existing. And as someone who was playing Undead in 5th, it’s something that would have come to my attention. Not to say it didn’t happen, but I don’t think so.

I do have parts on the CoB rules tucked in the covers of my Undead book, so that kinda counts?

It might be worth scanning WDs from the time, it may have been a limited release thing that never made it to the states?

Edit:
Quick check has the CoB pages copyright 1997, and the 5th VC army book is ’99. So if there was a re-issue, it would be in that timeframe. Probably closer to the start, as if they knew a new book was coming out, they would not update the old.

Edit2:
As it happens, I have the Aug 97 WD (211) on the shelf, where the CoB characters are introduced and showcased. In the articles covering the new undead stuff there is no mention of a new army book. Again, this is not proof that it doesn’t exist. I just can’t find any signs.

Thanks for the info. I have all the old (UK/Aus) White Dwarfs from that period but don't remember ever seeing anything about a reissue of the Undead book with revisions.

It's possible that when the seller said his Undead book had the CoB characters in it, he meant something similar to what you're describing, with the physical pages from the separate campaign pack folded up or tucked into the back cover. As I recall, his communication style was of the 'hastily texting from phone' sort, so it would have been easy for me to misconstrue what he meant. But I distinctly remember him calling his Undead book a 'cool one' as if it were a special edition.

In other old-edition news, for the first and probably last time, I have assembled two of the card Battle Bunkers from early 2nd ed 40K. The one in a White Dwarf article with the fourth starter scenario, and the back of the Battles book compilation.

Can't say I like them much. They're awfully flimsy and fiddly. Not a patch on the later card buildings in White Dwarf.

I own two resin Conflix bunkers that were clearly 'inspired by' that design, but what surprised me was that the original Battle Bunkers have a sloped front wall but nearly vertical side and back walls. From photos, I'd always thought they were evenly sloped on all sides and apparently the Conflix designer thought so too.

Also got to play the first two scenarios from the starter box, which pit a few Gretchin and Orks against a few Tactical Marines, in an attempt to relearn the 2nd ed rules after a gap of [insert scary number of years]. To my surprise my opponent happened to have a half-complete set of the original cardboard ruined corners, in un-folded mint condition no less.

Amusingly I obsessively tried the hiding rules in the first scenario with the Gretchin mobs and managed to score a tie ... and then completely forgot about the rules in the second, leading to my Ork mobs getting thoroughly shot up for zero victory points. One mob shrugged off two frag missile hits with no more than a few laughs at the lone Ork ejected into the stratosphere by each explosion, but the moment they took bolter fire they rolled a 12 for their break test and ran to the other side of the planet.

We then retried the second scenario with a lone Dreadnaught in place of the Ork mobs just so I could get a handle on the vehicle rules. First time using a datafax in donkey's. The Dread charged at the Marines' position, copped two krak missiles that bounced off harmlessly, lost its power klaw to a third missile, missed with all its guns and then slammed headlong into the building. With a metallic roar it fumbled twice and got lightly bopped on the head by a Tactical Marine, failing to achieve anything. I was just happy it didn't blow up on the first turn.

One thing the scenarios hammered home was the extreme importance of cover in 2nd ed 40K, also known as the art of How Not to be Seen. It amuses me no end that being harder to hit makes a missile launcher more likely to explode but a heavy bolter less likely to jam.

Now to try the bigger third and fourth scenarios ...

Zenithfleet wrote:
In other old-edition news, for the first and probably last time, I have assembled two of the card Battle Bunkers from early 2nd ed 40K. The one in a White Dwarf article with the fourth starter scenario, and the back of the Battles book compilation.

Can't say I like them much. They're awfully flimsy and fiddly. Not a patch on the later card buildings in White Dwarf.

Yeah, back in the day I looked at those and decided they were too much work for too little return, and used them as a template to make my own out of foamcore instead.

 insaniak wrote:

Zenithfleet wrote:
In other old-edition news, for the first and probably last time, I have assembled two of the card Battle Bunkers from early 2nd ed 40K. The one in a White Dwarf article with the fourth starter scenario, and the back of the Battles book compilation.

Can't say I like them much. They're awfully flimsy and fiddly. Not a patch on the later card buildings in White Dwarf.

Yeah, back in the day I looked at those and decided they were too much work for too little return, and used them as a template to make my own out of foamcore instead.

I didn't find them too much of a hassle in terms of time. It was fairly quick to score and cut everything out. The two issues I had were a) the 'card' in the Battles book is more like thick paper, all floppy, and b) the platform on top has almost no glue contact point with the walls. It just sits on top of the wall edges, with no foldable tabs to hold it in place. Even with superglue the top keeps popping off if you sneeze in its general direction. Very strange design.

I haven't used them in a game yet, but we did get to try starter scenario 3 from the 2nd ed box (the one where you use all the Orks, Gretchin and Marines, plus a Dreadnought). Basic stuff but it's helping us to unlearn all the later-edition assumptions we're used to. I didn't have enough Grots but my opponent dug up ten of the old monopose Gretchin on sprue and assembled them just before the battle. They'd been waiting for this their whole lives ...

The Orks won, just barely, 3 victory points to 2. It was mainly thanks to the Marine player having abysmal luck with his dice rolls. I've never seen so many frag and krak missiles roll 1s to hit. One of the few times a missile launcher did hit something was when it fired into a combat between the Ork Dreadnaught and a doomed Tactical Marine. Of course, it hit the Marine instead of the Dread and deleted him.

The Dread itself chopped up most of a combat squad, then tried to make it into the Marines' deployment zone for a big fat victory point bonus. At the last minute the Marine player remembered he could throw krak grenades in 2nd ed and pelted it with three. Two bounced off the armour but the third destroyed the lascannon arm. Then the very last krak missile of the game penetrated the body and electrocuted the Gretchin pilot. It didn't kill him, but it did send him on a frothing rampage ... in the wrong direction. He wasted his last vital movement phase picking a fight with a piece of cardboard ruin. Now that's the 2nd ed silliness I'm here for.

Oh, and a single Gretchin caught fire and ran around panicking for a while. Ah, the good old days.

My one shining moment of actually effective tactics was to get three mobs all aiming at one battered Marine combat squad, to concentrate firepower. It proved to be just enough to kill them all. The reasonably effective shooting skills of Orks and Grots in 2nd ed continue to surprise me. The Gretchin are like cowardly Guardsmen!

Three points of confusion with the 2nd ed rules held us up. Some of it had to do with the emphasis on individual models in 2nd ed, whereas later editions tend to treat squads as blobs/units.

1. When a squad fires, do its own models block the line of fire of models behind them? We think so, but we're so used to 3rd ed and onwards (where you ignore your own squads' models) that we kept placing our minis in carelessly bunched-up formations, only to find hardly anyone could shoot.

2. If only some members of a squad are engaged in close combat, what happens to the other models on their next turn? (We had the aforementioned Dread fighting one or two members of a combat squad at a time, while the other Marines just stood around nearby watching the show.) We presumed they can just do whatever. Everyone can declare a charge and join in the close combat, or they can shoot at some other target because models in HtH can be ignored, or even move away ignoring coherency (on the assumption that guy fighting the Dread is going to die...)

3. This one really stumped us: Close combat weapons get a bonus armour penetration die depending on their Strength, or the Strength of the attacker. Usually this is taken into account on the summary charts. For instance, the power fist has an extra D20 armour penetration because it's strength 8, and this is included in the summary chart. But what about krak grenades? They're strength 6, so the bonus die should be D12. But on the summary charts it's 6+2D6. Is that a typo for D12, or is the bonus die missing from the summary and it's supposed to be 6+2D6+D12?

Zenithfleet wrote:

1. When a squad fires, do its own models block the line of fire of models behind them? We think so, but we're so used to 3rd ed and onwards (where you ignore your own squads' models) that we kept placing our minis in carelessly bunched-up formations, only to find hardly anyone could shoot.

Yes, by the rulebook, all models block LOS.

2. If only some members of a squad are engaged in close combat, what happens to the other models on their next turn? (We had the aforementioned Dread fighting one or two members of a combat squad at a time, while the other Marines just stood around nearby watching the show.) We presumed they can just do whatever. Everyone can declare a charge and join in the close combat, or they can shoot at some other target because models in HtH can be ignored, or even move away ignoring coherency (on the assumption that guy fighting the Dread is going to die...)

Yes, models not engaged in the combat could just wander off and do what they wanted, although if the combat ended and their squadmates survived, then they would need to all move back into coherency again ASAP.

Some groups house ruled this one to require unengaged squad mates to pile in when they could, while others preferred the freedom of not having to pile into a hopeless fight. Note though that this did also allow for an exploit where you could tie up an enemy model by engaging it with a model that couldn't hurt or be hurt by it (or was unlikely to, at least) and then running away with the rest of the squad.

3. This one really stumped us: Close combat weapons get a bonus armour penetration die depending on their Strength, or the Strength of the attacker. Usually this is taken into account on the summary charts. For instance, the power fist has an extra D20 armour penetration because it's strength 8, and this is included in the summary chart. But what about krak grenades? They're strength 6, so the bonus die should be D12. But on the summary charts it's 6+2D6. Is that a typo for D12, or is the bonus die missing from the summary and it's supposed to be 6+2D6+D12?

Krak grenades are special in that they can be used as both a ranged and close combat weapon. The armour pen in the summary is correct for a thrown grenade. By the rules they should indeed get the extra when used in close combat... I had thought that was covered in an FAQ somewhere, but can't find it at the moment, so might have made that up.

Zenithfleet wrote:

And now for something completely different ... Can anyone help with a little mystery?

The Undead book did indeed get a reprint in 98 which included the Circle of Blood special characters. It also changed many of the colour pages to show the repainted studio army, the same as was shown in WD211, and the list of army books at the end was obviously updated with all the 5th edition offerings.

On the grenade bonus dice in HTH? I dimly remember the FAQ, explaining it represented the opportunity to be more precise in HTH, basically your dudes putting the grenades in places the enemy really doesn’t want a grenade, such as up/down exhausts, on engine grills, in your track workings etc. All those necessary weak points in a vehicle’s design.

Thanks insaniak for the rules replies.

That's a good point about the krak grenades possibly having a different armour penetration value when thrown vs when used in hand-to-hand. We didn't think of that. Ironically it was the thrown grenades that successfully damaged the Dreadnought, not the ones placed in combat.

Cebalrai wrote:

Zenithfleet wrote:

And now for something completely different ... Can anyone help with a little mystery?

The Undead book did indeed get a reprint in 98 which included the Circle of Blood special characters. It also changed many of the colour pages to show the repainted studio army, the same as was shown in WD211, and the list of army books at the end was obviously updated with all the 5th edition offerings.

Gasp! Stop press!

Undead generals, arise from your graves and heed this revelation!

Of course I have to say: pics or it didn't happen ...

Zenithfleet wrote:

Of course I have to say: pics or it didn't happen ...

If you've access to Facebook I can direct you to posts that highlight all the changed pages but for some simple proof here's the first page of the 98 edition book. Note the fine print in the box.

I don't think I've ever seen the 97 reprint though, now that I think about it...

Anyway, I had a look through it again and the 98 edition do actually make some functional changes from the first. Namely, the spell commentaries in the later no longer talks about the possibility of using the raise dead spells to create cavalry, chariots or catapults. Hence I still go with the original book.

Edit: Throwing in the Circle of Blood characters as well for good measure. Aside from the spell commentary the rest of the changes are cosmetical.

Cebalrai wrote:

Zenithfleet wrote:

Of course I have to say: pics or it didn't happen ...

If you've access to Facebook I can direct you to posts that highlight all the changed pages but for some simple proof here's the first page of the 98 edition book. Note the fine print in the box.

I don't think I've ever seen the 97 reprint though, now that I think about it...

Anyway, I had a look through it again and the 98 edition do actually make some functional changes from the first. Namely, the spell commentaries in the later no longer talks about the possibility of using the raise dead spells to create cavalry, chariots or catapults. Hence I still go with the original book.

Edit: Throwing in the Circle of Blood characters as well for good measure. Aside from the spell commentary the rest of the changes are cosmetical.

Bah! Obvious trickery produced by the unholy magic of Photoshop! I won't be convinced until you send me a free copy!

Seriously though, I don't know whether to thank you for posting, or curse you for making me aware of a gap in a WFB army book collection I thought was complete. It really is like trying to track down varying versions of an eldritch grimoire ...

It does help to explain why they went to the effort of repainting the whole Studio Undead army in late 4th / early 5th, if they had a plan to update the colour photo pages in the army book.

Now I can't help wondering if they did anything similar for the other campaign packs. Was there a revised Dwarf army book with the Grudge of Drong characters? I doubt it since there were so many campaign packs, but then why did only the Undead book get special treatment? Maybe it was all about the photos, and the special characters were just a case of "throw it in since we're redoing the book anyway".

(Mine is the 1994 version, not the mysterious 1997 with corrections, so I can't help with that.)


All this Undead talk brings me to the next (possible) mystery, which is:

Why was the Vampire Counts army book in 5th ed so slim and poorly proofread, and why did most of the background material for the Bloodlines end up in White Dwarf magazine instead of being published in the army book where it belonged? (It ended up in the 6th ed book but for some reason wasn't in the original.) And what on earth was all that Ushoran / Wsoran confusion about?

Of course the GW answer may be something along the lines of "no time, busy getting 6th edition ready, had two hours' sleep last night, leave me alone" ...

Zenithfleet wrote:

Bah! Obvious trickery produced by the unholy magic of Photoshop! I won't be convinced until you send me a free copy!

It feels like the 98 edition of the book is more rare but I've seen it pop up in ebay listings and other places. If there isn't already a picture you can usually just ask for a clear view of the backside cover of the book where it'll say either 1994 or 1998 (or 1997, I suppose) in the bottom box. That's how I found mine.

The only other books I know that got reprints with changes were Dark Elves and Empire. I don't know the dates but the elves got their repeater bolt throwers raised from 50 to 100 points (to match the high elves, presumably) and the empire changed Volkmar's 6'' leadership immunity bubble to only effect himself, for the generous compromise of great cannons going from 100 to 95 points. There could definitely be other reprints floating around out there, waiting to ruin any complete collection.

And yeah, the VC book for 5th edition is a little weird. Some fun rules in it but released just months before 6th edition came with a full replacement. GW was still GW even back then, after all.

Cebalrai wrote:
It feels like the 98 edition of the book is more rare but I've seen it pop up in ebay listings and other places. If there isn't already a picture you can usually just ask for a clear view of the backside cover of the book where it'll say either 1994 or 1998 (or 1997, I suppose) in the bottom box. That's how I found mine.

Good tip. Thanks.

I would guess the 1998 version is rarer simply because it wasn't available for very long, whereas the 1994 original had been around since, er, 1994.

Cebalrai wrote:
The only other books I know that got reprints with changes were Dark Elves and Empire. I don't know the dates but the elves got their repeater bolt throwers raised from 50 to 100 points (to match the high elves, presumably) and the empire changed Volkmar's 6'' leadership immunity bubble to only effect himself, for the generous compromise of great cannons going from 100 to 95 points. There could definitely be other reprints floating around out there, waiting to ruin any complete collection.

Huh, that's interesting. Turns out I've got the revised Empire book. It has the 95-point great cannons, and Volkmar's psychology/leadership rule only refers to the Grand Theogonist himself. The inside front cover says 1996 (but the back cover still says 1992).

I knew it was sold at a later date because the advertisements pages in the back (pages 82-3) show the 5th edition WFB box set, plus all the army books released up to that point such as Wood Elves, but none of the 5th ed books. I hadn't realised that some rules had been tweaked, though.

There's also a 'Collecting the Empire Army' section after the ads (page 85 onward), which shows you how to build up a 1000 pt sample army, with black and white photos of metal and plastic models ranked up. It's similar to the one in the back of the Lizardmen, revamped High Elves and Realm of Chaos books, which were all 5th ed. The page with the sample army list has a 1996 copyright disclaimer at the bottom. This section also has an article at the end by Jake Thornton called 'The Empire Army' (a page and a half long). This whole section isn't listed on the contents page. Was it absent from the older version of the book? I'd assume so, since it seems to be an early 5th ed trend.

My Dark Elf book has the 50 point bolt throwers, but I do recall reading in White Dwarf that they intended to update them to 100 points with a reprint at some point.

Did another visit to Warhammer World yesterday, as I had nothing better to do and it had the Event Only models on sale.

After a quick shop to snaffle the goodies, and a filling brekkie in Bugman’s (the bacon was excellent!) I decided that yes indeed I did want to pay £8.50 to go round the museum. Again.

And that is an experience that, given the opportunity, I think every Oldhammer Fan will enjoy.

Sure, many of the displays are thoroughly modern, but done in the style of Oldhammer. Lots of kitbashing, lots of scratch build. Things us mere mortals most likely have neither the time, space nor pockets to ever hope to replicate on our own. And they of course show the hobby off in the best light as a result.

But more than that? They’ve not just models we might fondly remember from yesteryear, but some of the dioramas that I dare say provided extreme inspiration in us.

Remember the first ever Golden Demon Open Category winner, the Thunderbolt Fighter in hanger? That’s there (albeit available for Free Drooling Over in the main gaming hall). How about Mike McVey’s works? Got his Durthu vs Undead, that Warhammer Quest one. Not to mention his Horus vs Emperor, Biker Chaplain vs Mounted Exodite, and Azrael in his Sanctum.

The genuine, legitimate works of art that helped show the hobby was wider than just kicking your mate’s army’s heads in. The art of taking a stock model and a solid understanding of the world, then applying an astonishing amount of patience and skill to elevate the whole of thing.

My eyes are privileged to seen such venerable sights for themselves. And props to GW for maintaining that link to the past. Because they are absolutely pristine, not an iota of dust evident.

If you ever get the chance? I say take it. The price is perhaps a little high, sure. But if you’re attending an event anyway, seems more often than not a museum ticket is included in the main ticket.

Oh, and please to report even super recent developments, like Legions Imperialis are decently represented!

Seconded - I usually make a pilgrimage there every August or so, and there are loads of nostalgia hits.. the Blood Angels from WD 139 have been there, the scratchbuilt Baneblade, OG Squats, old Epic... going all the way back to the very early days, late 70s/early 80s.

I hope to see it for myself one of these days.. Me and the spouse have been planning a trip to the UK for a while now, she used to live there for a year during her study years. Not sure if Nothingham is close enough for a visit, depends on where we will end up, but sure would love to see it.

London has a decent train link to Nottingham if nothing else. Journey is around a couple of hours from memory.

Then to get to Warhammer World you can taxi, or take a pretty pleasant canal side walk.

My latest acquisition?

3rd Ed WHFB, Hardback.

Yet to sit down and read it, and have just bought a copy of Warhammer Armies to sit alongside it. Which when added to my existing Realms of Chaos and Siege gives me a complete set of that edition’s books.

Though that has given me a new perspective on early GW, and early 40K in particular.

3rd Ed Fantasy and Rogue Trader are contemporaneous, being available for largely the same space of time. Yet, Rogue Trader clearly bottles something special. As a nominal single rule set? 40K is actually three or so editions in a trenchcoat.

Where WHFB received two System Unique Books (rules and Warhammer Armies), 40K received rulebook, Waaaargh! The Orks, ‘Ere We Go, Freebooterz, Chapter Approved - The First Book Of The Astromicon, Compendium, Battle Manual and Vehicle Manual.

They of course shared both Realm of Chaos Books, and Siege (though that was more a WHFB book with some tacked on 40K Adaptations).

So I think that 40K awakened something in the audience, and GW itself.

Perhaps it was the “everything and the kitchen sink and maybe both your Grannies” approach. Not as constrained to a single inspiration (Tolkien, who kinda defined Fantasy) as WHFB, it instead begged, stole and borrowed from the burgeoning sci-fi scene of the time. Which meant the entire studio team could help colour in the initial rough patchwork.

Just marvellous stuff, and all of it deserves the Reprint Treatment.

I cherish my copy of 3rd Ed Fantasy. I've been waiting for a decent price on a copy of Armies in decent condition, so a reprint would be nice.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
3rd Ed Fantasy and Rogue Trader are contemporaneous, being available for largely the same space of time. Yet, Rogue Trader clearly bottles something special. As a nominal single rule set? 40K is actually three or so editions in a trenchcoat.

I can just barely claim to have played Rogue Trader back in the day. A friend bought it and ran a simple gunfight with beaky marines. At the time, I was heavy into operational/strategic wargames, so moving individual models around seemed very small ball.

Later on, my friend group got into 2nd ed. bigly, and Iron Rule of Gaming Groups came into play: you play what is being played, not necessarily what you want.

By strange coincidence, I happen to have those original boxed set Vader marines on the tabletop at the moment as my wife puts them through their paces after a long hiatus. (You don't know how it grieves me to gun them down with Kustom combi-weapons.)

Anyhow, 40k's success was the happy result of multiple trends. It came out in the trough after Star Wars was finished (if only that were still true!) and Aliens had provided the Ur-text for Space Marines to go on a bug hunt. GW had gotten into plastics, making introductory boxed sets super-cheap, so the entry cost was ridiculously low.

And of course there was the creative frisson of the staff, borrowing freely from Judge Dredd, a wealth of Chaos from Fantasy, Space Elves and so on.

The scale was also somewhat unique, small enough for range to matter, but more like Army Men than 15mm historicals.

GW was at peak creativity, and encouraged kit-bashing to flesh out their incomplete model range, which was nice.

That is why I have pitched my proverbial tent in the 1990s, collecting all things 40k from that era, even the WDs. It is my happy place.

In a supreme twist of irony, I also have a big chunk of 5th ed. WHFB, in part because the resale value was close to zero when 6th ed came out, and that was what I used as a reference to build out Conqueror: Fields of Victory. So even though I came to hate that game, it's still kicking around the house.

It does feel like the creativity behind it had been dammed up for a while.

It wears its influences on its sleeve, and there no point denying said influences. But the rapid and ongoing rules development speaks to a commitment to make the game as good as it could be, and never rest on its laurels.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Yet, Rogue Trader clearly bottles something special. As a nominal single rule set? 40K is actually three or so editions in a trenchcoat.

Where WHFB received two System Unique Books (rules and Warhammer Armies), 40K received rulebook, Waaaargh! The Orks, ‘Ere We Go, Freebooterz, Chapter Approved - The First Book Of The Astromicon, Compendium, Battle Manual and Vehicle Manual.

Hindsight really helps. The world moved slower back then. For me, if I got one thing at xmas, then if I wanted the second follow-up thing, it would have to wait until next xmas.

Rogue Trader moved so fast. There were so many updates, including stuff we didn't know about until some of those old White Dwarfs appeared on the internet. I could never afford keeping up. I had to rely on friends picking up White Dwarf, and still, they didn't grab them all.

By the time 2nd edition came out, it felt like Rogue Trader had already gone through multiple evolutions, but it was hard to see it at the time. It just felt ...fast and rapidly changing. From the limited perspective of a kid, the changes almost felt arbitrary...like, what are the rules?

 Fugazi wrote:


Hindsight really helps. The world moved slower back then. For me, if I got one thing at xmas, then if I wanted the second follow-up thing, it would have to wait until next xmas.

Rogue Trader moved so fast. There were so many updates, including stuff we didn't know about until some of those old White Dwarfs appeared on the internet. I could never afford keeping up. I had to rely on friends picking up White Dwarf, and still, they didn't grab them all.

By the time 2nd edition came out, it felt like Rogue Trader had already gone through multiple evolutions, but it was hard to see it at the time. It just felt ...fast and rapidly changing. From the limited perspective of a kid, the changes almost felt arbitrary...like, what are the rules?

The very term "2nd edition" is something of an anachronism. We call it that now, because we lump all of Rogue Trader into a single printing, but if you go back to the contemporary writing, there were two editions of Rogue Trader, and 2nd was actually considered 3rd.

But it lasted a while, and so retroactively Rogue Trader was consolidated to differentiate it from the boxed set. There is a clear line between the two in terms of marketing and aesthetics, yet the Black Codex and Wargear books hint at a lot of the old concepts and of course the artwork was duplicated. One could argue that Rogue Trader and 2nd had pretty good continuity and that the advent of 3rd edition in the fall of 1998 was really the watershed moment of the game. It fundamentally changed the mechanics and also broke the commonality between Fantasy and 40k because at that point, they became fundamentally different rules sets. Prior to that point, there were crossover opportunities, particularly for Chaos.

And then came the 3-year product cycle...

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

The very term "2nd edition" is something of an anachronism. We call it that now, because we lump all of Rogue Trader into a single printing, but if you go back to the contemporary writing, there were two editions of Rogue Trader, and 2nd was actually considered 3rd.

That was very much not the case, from my experience. It was always 2nd edition, both in how the studio referred to it, and how players did.

It may have been different in some specific game groups, but from what I recall at the time there were comparatively few 2nd ed players who had also played RT or had more than a passing familiarity with how it was different to 2nd edition. The RT die-hards stuck with RT, and those who switched were mostly those who started towards the end of the edition.

While some players in the years since have referred to RT as two separate games due to the way it evolved, it was never perceived as such at the time because it was still in the middle of that state of flux.