Old Stuff Day- Blogging Necromancy

I saw this post from Confessions of a 40k addict pop up last week in my blogroll and was intrigued as to what it alluded to. After checking it out, I found out that March 2nd is Old Stuff Day- a holiday started at Warhammer 39999 (another great blog you should check out) where you get to highlight some of your older content that perhaps you felt did not get much attention first time round.

 

Now, as the blog is soon coming up to its first year birthday (Yay!), it might be a bit cheeky to highlight some of my older work as "Old Stuff", but I thought I would join in anyway. I'll be checking out what other bloggers are posting tomorrow and hopefully sharing some links with you on more interesting, older content.

Armoured Fury- the Evolution of Vehicles in 40k

Not too long ago, I wrote an editorial on the evolution of formations in 40k. What started as a small opinion piece quickly ballooned into a longer article that garnered some interest and a lot of comments and differing opinions. I enjoyed the experience so much, that I decided to create some more articles on the evolution of various different parts of 40k.

 

Today, I want to look at the evolution of the rules for vehicles in the warhammer universe. Vehicles are an iconic part of the 40k setting; it would be hard to imagine the battlefield without the Leman Russ, trundling along to support the stalwart Imperial Guard or the sleek, deadly skimmers of the Eldar race. The rules for vehicles have seen a lot of changes since their first introduction in Rogue Trader many, many years ago.

Obviously, there is a ton of material to look at in the rules for vehicles and I am not going to look over the minutia of all the rules there have been. Instead, I want to look at general trends in the vehicle rules for each edition. These will focus on vehicles in the movement phase, shooting phase, the assault phase and how vehicles are damaged.

I will be focusing on tanks as one of the most common vehicle types. The rules for skimmers and other vehicles will be mentioned where appropriate, but I will not be looking at walkers as these are a very different entity. In the next article in the series, I will take an in depth look at the evolution of the rules for transport vehicles, as these have seen such big changes over the last 5 editions of the game.

Astra Militarum Army (Picture heavy)

I blame Dan Abnett.

 

I was re-reading the Gaunt's Ghosts series of novels (a series that I would highly recommend) and his description of the battles of the Imperial Guard were so fantastic that it made me want to collect an Imperial Guard army (back when they were still the Imperial Guard).

My guard army in full.

I hit ebay to pick up the beginnings of an army and one of my first purchases was the Gaunt's Ghosts squad and some Tanith troopers. When I started the army, these were no longer available from GW directly, so I probably paid more than I should have for them, but I had to own the models that got me collecting them in the first place. My initial plan was to use them as the command squad for my army; Gaunt as the commander and his unit as the command squad. In games these days they tend to be used as a veterans squad with sniper rifles. I would love to have collected an entire Tanith First and Only army, but my modelling skills are insufficient to kit out an entire guard army with camo cloaks.

Fondly remembering White Dwarf

You’ve probably been hearing it for years and it is all over the internet; White Dwarf used to be so much better, why don’t they have proper articles?, it’s just a glorified sales magazine now......

Call it nostalgia, call it random internet complaining, but I really miss the good old days of White Dwarf. When I first started in this hobby back in high school, one of the highlights of the month was waiting for the new White Dwarf to be released. On a Friday, I would get off the school bus a few stops early to go to the newsagents and buy a copy- it was worth the extra walk home. I would then spend the whole weekend poring over my copy, carefully reading and re-reading every article, checking out the battle report(s) for tactical hints and tips, looking for terrain ideas to add to my slowly expanding collection. To a young hobby-er, just starting to get into the game, it was bliss!

My first issue was White Dwarf 210, way back in May 1997, and I had (and still have) a complete collection of issues spanning several years (maybe even a decade). I don’t know when I stopped buying it on a regular basis, but I think I kept it up for a good while despite reading very little of the content for a long run of issues towards the end.

You never forget your first Ork.......