Into The Archives - My Early White Dwarf Reads (Part One)

So in the "Great Sort of '16" aka me-sorting-out-some-stuff-while-decorating-the-spare-room I came across the few White Dwarf magazines I kept.

In hindsight I do wish I hadn't given years and years worth of WD's to the recycling bank as so many of the articles would have been worth keeping.

Anyway the ones I did keep were the very first ones I bought, plus a few even older ones I picked up early on (in those days GW stores would have old magazines they had left on the shelf for people to buy). I thought I'd have a browse through and show what made me keep hold of them...

White Dwarf #124

Ah, #124, my first ever White Dwarf. I paid £1.50 for this way back in March 1990. So it's just past its 26th birthday. I should have bought it a cake.

Artwork on the cover, oh how I miss thee.

For this issue we have a Dark Future piece by Les Edwards. Love the guys missing tooth and almost Aquilla like tattoo.

The contents is a real mixed bag of articles. We have Chaos Warbands from Realm of Chaos, a Dark Future campaign (part one), Eldar concept artwork, Epic rules for Imperial Guard and Orks, Ork rules and background for 40k and Chaos Beastmen. Plus we have pages from 'Eavy Metal and news pages spread throughout.

Realm Of Chaos...Chaos Warbands

God I loved this article 26 years ago, and frankly I still do. It lays out in a novel way how two Chaos Warbands, one Nurgle and one Tzentch, grew and prospered in the Chaos Wastes.

We also get to see the two warbands in model form painted by the 'Eavy Metal team.

I still want to put together a Chaos Warband...

Dead Man's Curve - Dark Future. 

I so need to put together that set I picked up off eBay. I only played it a few time the first time around but it was a great little game with plenty of articles in White Dwarf to expand the game and setting (along with a few novels which I'm happy to say I have on the shelf).

This article brings in campaigns, we aren't talking a few pages here, we are talking about an in depth article with lots of information.


Eldar - What can I say? I love the sketches of Jes Goodwin and I spent far too long staring at these pages, I devoured each and every sketch and re-read all the annotation. I get the same buzz nowadays when going to a Forge World event and looking through Mark Bedford and his fellow designers sketch books. This is the time when the Eldar gained their Aspect Warriors.








I mean, he even sketches out the warpaint the warrior would paint on their faces - even though you would never see this on a model due to them always wearing a helmet.



Well this is a nicely timed example of an 'Eavy Metal page from an early White Dwarf..

Epic Imperial Guard and Orks.

Two articles giving new rules for both factions in Space Marine - the expansion to Adeptus Titanicus adding infantry and tanks as well as new forces to the walking God Machines of Man.

Guard with Jump Packs!

Gibletgrinda!

Ork Vehicles, Artillery and Weirdboyz.

Cyboars!

Orks were so much fun back in their earlier incarnations. It meant dealing with a shed load of tables and many random things, but damn were they fun.

Minders 'protectin' a Weirdboy

While the first article was mainly rules the second is packed full of background material which again did wonders at catching my interesting in the madness of the Greenskins. This Weirdboy article actually came from the 'Waaargh the Orks' book which was being worked on by the Studio at the time. Can you see them doing that nowadays? Giving us a glimpse of something to come.



Beastmen.

Probably my favourite article in the issue, actually it's one of my favourites ever articles and one of the big reasons White Dwarf pulled me into the hobby fully with no chance of escape. It warped my 13 year old mind and help shape it into the dark void it is. The black and white artwork and the dark tales it told of Beastmen warbands in the forests of the Old World meant I read and re-read the article for weeks to come.

It brought to the world pages of background material before moving onto rules for creating Beastmen warbands (I still love the random nature of creating the warbands).

One day I will build myself a Warband and crush the other forest dwellers under my cloven foot...

So that was White Dwarf #124.

Hopefully you liked this little distraction, especially as I'll be covering another one of the early issues which got its hooks into me next week.