Dr. Matt Lee (mattl)

Last weekend saw the 25th anniversary of Warhammer 40k, a game I have never played and have little interest in the game in its current state. However, 25 years ago, Warhammer 40k was a very different game (then called Rogue Trader, with the Warhammer 40,000 name bolted on later) — largely compatible with Warhammer itself.

Rob Myers often talks of these days as being quite awesome, and over the summer while waiting for Mantic’s Warpath game to be released, I spent some time and energy picking some books and other info on the older versions of the game.

Rogue Trader itself is a pretty wonderful book, and very different from the way the game feels now, from the super small demos I’ve seen and played. Long out of print at this point, but it features many races that never made it into later editions of the game, or were dropped quickly after the second edition was released. Of these, my two favorites are the Squats (ie. Space Dwarves, or Dwarfs as Games Workshop calls them, and the Jokaero, a race of simians for which GW recently released a new model.

As the anniversary was coming up, I decided to pick up a Jokaero, a copy of the monthly White Dwarf catalogue/magazine and also the special 25th anniversary Space Marine model, which recreates an image from the cover of Rogue Trader. This was my first model purchase from Games Workshop in sometime, and my first non-Specialist Games purchase for a few years, as well the first time I’ve encountered their ‘Finecast’ material — also known as Failcast due to a lot of manufacturing issues.

I’m pleased to say that I found Finecast an absolute delight to work with — better than both plastic and metal, requiring very little cleanup and not hard to assemble. The price is insane, but then so was the detail.

Both models are on my desk, currently being painted.

I am keen to get them sorted soon, as immediately after LibrePlanet 2012, I will have a Mantic Corporation Army and General coming my way, and I’d like to make some efforts with them as soon as I can.