What could be more SF than robots and how they have evolved in 40K is a great example of the strength of the game from its Rogue Trader days to now. Taking a look at that here!
Mostly Tyranid-themed content in this issue; the cover might have been the giveaway there! However, there are also some very pretty Eldar and Blood Angels models. The Death Company article is a reprint (with modern stats, I suppose) from issue 168. The idea that content from less than three years earlier would be inaccessible and effectively lost to the general public is kind of wild today.
There were a few news items and articles related to the Epic scale games in this issue. Love the colours of those Command Tanks, as well as the zany idea of packing three disparate unit types into one blister. Don’t know if I’ve ever seen the metal flags in the wild, so maybe they did!’t sell hugely well.
Perhaps my favourite element is the hand-painted backdrops used to set the scene in the Battle Report (no spoilers!). A proper hive city!
As part of the W.A.R.P. hobby challenge, I’m going to be going back through one old issue of White Dwarf each month. Here’s the first of a series of posts going through a particularly well-preserved copy of the Australian edition from August 1995. Although I was well into the hobby by the mid 90s, this magazine was one I picked up second-hand only quite recently!
In these photos we see some of the non-article content: front and back covers, table of contents, select news items and a staggering amount of weekly and one-off events being advertised. What a time to be alive!
Reading back over these sections left me wondering if Andrew Smith is still in the hobby (what a haul!) and if there was anything Mike McVey couldn’t do…
Maybe not the most thrilling part of the magazine for some, but the hobby challenge is to read an issue cover to cover, so here we are. I think the catalogue pages are an important part of the experience.
Newer hobbyists may not be familiar with how metal minis used to be parted out and sold. Often the only instructions available were these pages in the back of whichever random magazine happened to feature them! Basically you’d rip open a blister pack, tumble out all the parts, and figure out what seemed to go where. These listing pages were also useful when trying to collect every variant of a figure (as they were packed in random assortments — luckily you could peer into the clear plastic blister to see what you were getting).
Special bonus content at the end (images 10–14): my second-hand copy of this magazine was in such great condition that it still came with a small insert booklet. Seems to be a comprehensive list of all local outlets at the time (note that there were very few actual GW stores in our country back then) as well as a fairly extensive catalogue of products available. Ah, those 1995 prices…
Do you often find yourself looking through back issues of White Dwarf magazine? Does the retro-nostalgic look of old metal sculpts hit you right in the feels? Perhaps you’ve been collecting miniatures for a while now, but want to impose a bit of structure on your efforts to make sure projects come to completion. You might enjoy seeing what other folks are up to, or maybe you’re in need of inspiration. It could also be that you just like a challenge!
If any of the above apply to you, consider getting involved with the new OldWorldhammer monthly challenge, W.A.R.P.
Each month there will be four simple goals to aspire to. You can aim for as many as you like. Share what you get up to throughout the month and see if you can surprise yourself by hitting all four targets!
The four monthly goals are:
White Dwarfer — read an old issue of the magazine, cover to cover. It’s not just about the articles. The adverts! The prices! The catalogue pages! Glorious.
Artificer — make or paint something, inspired by what you’ve read or seen. It can be a sculpt, a kitbash, a freehand design, a full figure or even a unit. Take your pick, just try to finish something by the end of the month.
Roller of Dice — play a game that draws upon decades past. Solo, head-to-head or co-op. And yes, more than one player can tick off this part of the challenge all at once! The game can be anything that floats your boat. A new ruleset inspired by those that came before is fair play. Old editions, or a classic scenario? All good. It could even be a game that’s gone, but far from forgotten…
Paragon — a personal quest you choose to embark on. Anything not covered by the previous categories belongs here. Writing your own retro-inspired ruleset, or a piece of fiction that continues on where an old battle report left off. Taking out an old collection so they can be photographed and shown to the world. Documenting a bit of history before it passes into the mists of time. Representing old rulesets at a convention or helping someone else get into the hobby. These are all valuable goals, well worthy of recognition. Set your own challenge goal (privately or publicly) and when you achieve it, be sure to let us know!
Comment below if you have questions, think this sounds like a good idea, or want to discuss your own progress. You’re welcome to share updates as individual posts — I doubt we’ll need to confine these to a megathread or anything of the sort — but you can report back in any format you feel comfortable with (text, images, video, etc.).
Slowly painting up the metal re-release of these Bretonnian spearmen (plus a couple of ring-ins to make up the unit size). Today was shield day, apparently! Made up the designs as I went along — hopefully the muted colours and simple themes will blend in well enough with some more historically accurate figures, depending on which game system we’re playing in any given week.
Do you often find yourself looking through back issues of White Dwarf magazine? Does the retro-nostalgic look of old metal sculpts hit you right in the feels? Perhaps you’ve been collecting miniatures for a while now, but want to impose a bit of structure on your efforts to make sure projects come to completion. You might enjoy seeing what other folks are up to, or maybe you’re in need of inspiration. It could also be that you just like a challenge!
If any of the above apply to you, consider getting involved with the new OldWorldhammer monthly challenge, W.A.R.P.
Each month there will be four simple goals to aspire to. You can aim for as many as you like. Share what you get up to throughout the month and see if you can surprise yourself by hitting all four targets!
The four monthly goals are:
White Dwarfer — read an old issue of the magazine, cover to cover. It’s not just about the articles. The adverts! The prices! The catalogue pages! Glorious.
Artificer — make or paint something, inspired by what you’ve read or seen. It can be a sculpt, a kitbash, a freehand design, a full figure or even a unit. Take your pick, just try to finish something by the end of the month.
Roller of Dice — play a game that draws upon decades past. Solo, head-to-head or co-op. And yes, more than one player can tick off this part of the challenge all at once! The game can be anything that floats your boat. A new ruleset inspired by those that came before is fair play. Old editions, or a classic scenario? All good. It could even be a game that’s gone, but far from forgotten…
Paragon — a personal quest you choose to embark on. Anything not covered by the previous categories belongs here. Writing your own retro-inspired ruleset, or a piece of fiction that continues on where an old battle report left off. Taking out an old collection so they can be photographed and shown to the world. Documenting a bit of history before it passes into the mists of time. Representing old rulesets at a convention or helping someone else get into the hobby. These are all valuable goals, well worthy of recognition. Set your own challenge goal (privately or publicly) and when you achieve it, be sure to let us know!
Comment below if you have questions, think this sounds like a good idea, or want to discuss your own progress. You’re welcome to share updates as individual posts — I doubt we’ll need to confine these to a megathread or anything of the sort — but you can report back in any format you feel comfortable with (text, images, video, etc.).
Raw WIPs today. Haven’t the time right now to finish this batch, but I’m about ready to call the bones done.
Not sure what’s got me itching to paint undead again — might be the recent passing of John Blanche, as morbid as that sounds now that I type it out? Seeing his diorama of a column of the risen dead besieging a Dwarf fortress (nowadays on display at Warhammer World) was always very influential, second only behind poring over the box art for the set some of these minis came in (see last pic!).
I guess the Skeleton Horde / Skeleton Army may well have been the first plastic box sets I ever owned. Always wanted a full army in that pre-Tomb Kings style (armoured cavalry, wights and ghosts and skeletal reapers and mummies, archers on foot and in chariots, Carrion and Screaming Skull catapults, etc.), and it feels odd now I’m so close to that goal.
So anyway, here’s what’s on the workbench. I’ll post an update when I get them done, and in the meantime I suppose I’ll have to dig out some of my crappy amateur photographs of that classic Blanche diorama!