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

White Dwarf #127

The July 1990 issue presents us with a big old dragon on the front cover by Angus Fieldhouse.

Something that we had in a number of White Dwarfs were 'generic fantasy' covers. While there were many covers that were definitely Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer 40k or other GW universes (such as Dark Future) there were also a fair amount like this issue and #126 which could fit into any Fantasy art book or novel cover as they have no obvious Warhammer leanings.

This month the contents are a little thin on variety compared to the previous issues I've shown. A little Warhammer Fantasy, a smattering of 'Eavy Metal and a small appearance by some Stunties. Oh, and a little thing covering the Eldar in Warhammer 40,000.

Warhammer Fantasy Battle - Questions and Answers.

The man, the legend, Rick Priestley takes on a Q&A for Warhammer. Well before the days of 'the Internet' and the saga of FAQ's we actually had rules issues being cleared up in White Dwarf. Who'd have thought it?

Golden Demon Finals 1990.

It would be some time before I ever attended a Games Day, as such I can't say what these early events were like. Reading the article now you realise that at the time Games Day and Golden Demon were two separate events. Later on Golden Demon was subsumed within Games Day and Games Day itself changed dramatically from it's early gaming roots (as far as I believe).

In the article below you can see pictures from the day, including second down from the left a picture of the winner. Why do I mention this? Well a funny coincidence is that the 1990 winner actually picked up his second Slayer Sword at this years Golden Demon at Warhammer Fest. You can see David Soper's winning entry on his blog Sproket's Small World (which is a blog you should bookmark).

Below are some of the entries that year, oddly they didn't show the Slayer Sword winning entry. You can though see at least one picture on David Soper's blog here.

Warhammer 40,000 - Eldar

Very much the filling of this months sandwich is the article on the Eldar.

The previous White Dwarfs had been leading up to this, such as the preview of the Aspect Warrior models in issue #125 and in #124 we had the Jes Goodwin sketches.

I did love this article, it was the first big 40k piece I had read. Before now I'd only read smaller articles focusing on a specific area or unit (such as Ork Madboyz), but this was like the Warhammer Fantasy articles I had read which covered a much wider topic (such as the Beastmen race).

So the first half is the history of the Eldar race. Since these days I have read about this many times in different places, but this was the first time I had read about the Fall of the Eldar race, their psychic nature, their link with Slaanesh and the Craftworlds they inhabit amongst many other things.

We get plenty of artwork adorning the pages. Amongst them are more from Jes Goodwin's sketchbook, including the Craftworld scene above (loved that pic) and the great, iconic, Avatar image below.

The second half of the piece is the army list and rules section.

As you can see below each entry in the army list have all the rules for that entry. We also get additional tables for other things such as Exarch Warrior Powers and Warlock Runic Powers.

Overall a great read and one which started to pull me towards 40k after my initial fascination with the Warhammer World. However for a long time I had a foot firmly planted in both camps.

Space Marine - SQUATS!

Another article about Epic. Over the first four WD's I read there was a lot of Epic. It truly was one of the big three games by GW for a long time. Such a shame it got sidelined then dropped. With Forge World now taking on the mantle of Epic a hope which has been around for a number of years has been rekindled...

But anyway, for now have a look at Epic Squats! (exclamation mark not really necessary).

I must admit I never felt that the Squats were never really a well fleshed out force on the table, and also did lack something in their background story. I can't say I cried when they went the way of the Dodo.

From the army list below you can see they didn't have a huge range of options, and a fair amount was simply Imperial in nature lifted direct from the Guard and Marine lists.

Later on they did gain some race specific items, mainly large scale super heavies but over all they never reached the heights of the other forces.

Mail Order and 'Eavy Metal - a bit more Eldar.

I've not shown any pages from the Mail Order section in the previous posts, but I thought I would on this occasion as it shows the (then) new Aspect Warrior models as well as the Warlock figures. All still great sculpts in my opinion, and who wouldn't want them at those prices? A squad of five Scorpions for less than three quid...

The back cover are those same Aspect Warrior and Warlock models, but this time painted by Mike McVey. You don't tend to see many back banners on the Warriors nowadays.

And there we go. Issue #127.

Next up I may either do the next chronological issue or go further back to show one of the earlier WD's I picked up at a GW store.