A History of Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader in 5 Less Obvious Objects - Part One

And in part one of five - and not the obvious things such as 40K Rogue Trader itself, RTB01, Realm of Chaos etc - instead we look at a miniature titled C43 Trader (Rogue)

This is the first of a five part series inspired by a Grognard Files podcast episode that looked at the history of the RPG company (and former collaborator with games Workshop) Chaosium. They sat down to chat with company boss Rick Meints;

We set him the challenge of finding five items from the archive that represent the development of the company over fifty years. What products are the milestones of progress in the history of Chaosium?

It is a great episode and well worth a listen. One of the things that makes is to special is that Rick does not pick the obvious things - the first edition of RuneQuest or Call of Cthulhu etc - but goes for ‘out of the box’ thinking and it is a lot of fun!

The series of ‘A History of Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader in 5 Less Obvious Objects’ can be found here.

So I decided to do the same thing, but focused on the Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader years. Also I’m not going for the obvious things - the release of 40K Rogue Trader itself, RTB01, Realm of Chaos etc - I also wanted to come at it from a different angle.

So here we go!

One: C43 Trader (Rogue)

(Image - A miniature of a spaceship called ‘C43 Trader Rogue’ from Citadel Miniatures. Photo by me. )

So back in 1981 White Dwarf 26 (Aug/Sept - below) had a small write-up in the gaming news about a bunch of companies doing new miniatures such as Citadel’s official miniatures for the Traveller RPG but also mentioned was a company called QT Models and a new range of spaceships under the title ‘Star Hounds’. These would, by 1985, become part of Citadel’s range of models and become re-named as C43 Spaceships and feature in the January 1985 flyer but just titled as ‘Spaceships’. These were sold in the following year, via the summer 1986 flyer, some would get new names and one of these became ‘C43 Trader (Rogue).

Originally when a ‘Star Hound’ this ship had been named in the QT range as ‘SH2 Eagle interceptor’. WD 23 would illustrate the original news of the range’s release with the SH3 Kestrel Interceptor Trainer.

(Image - White Dwarf 26, page 27 clipping titled ‘Alien Invasion’)

Why is this of note? The Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader story has threads of narrative that are woven in what was finally released. One of these threads is something Citadel had advertised originally in the First Citadel Compendium published in October of ‘83, an SF Role Play System, ‘Rogue Trader’ by one Rick Priestley.

(Image - 4 years before Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader, another title, Rogue Trader, was advertised in the First Citadel Journal, October 1983, pg.32)

So here’s a section from the book (draft) that covers some of this story:

While, as noted the game was internally known as Rogue Trader, as release approached another naming issue appeared. The name ‘Rogue Trader’ sounded too close to ‘Rogue Trooper’, a 2000AD comic character that GW had licenced from the publisher and was producing titles with its name. Indeed in April 1987, 5 months before 40K Rogue Trader would be published, WD issue 89 covered the new Rogue Trooper board game in Open Box. The following issue, WD 90, had provided new cards for the game. Not only that but the 40K Rogue Trader in development was a very different beast to Rick's original ship combat game concept. So Bryan suggested adding numbers to ‘Rogue Trader’ as a nod to the older Combat 3000 game. He suggested Warhammer 4000 but Rick wanted it to feel much further into the future, so added a zero. Rick noted that 40,000 years in the future is, "...sufficiently distant for it to become divorced. ... I wanted just to place 40K into a future that was so distant that you avoided any obvious political references back to our society." (from interview for the book)

This arrived at the name ‘Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader’, and history was about to be made.

History was indeed made on 9th October 1987 at Games Day when Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader was launched!

What is in the list of your 5 Rogue Trader objects? Do le me know!?

Also, thanks for reading!

PS. A few links of note:

• GW announced the ‘Miniatures of the Year’ for 2025 and there’s some amazing ones in there!

• Chapter Approved: Book of the Astronomican (1988) - Codex Compliant video is well worth a watch!

• Arbitor Ian did a great fun video on what Primarch might come back next? Take a watch!

• You can hear my talk on Chaos and Warhammer here.

Note! There is more about this project here. The direct chat for this project is here. You can comment here or find me on BlueSky.

Also note! This book project is a personal one and not affiliated with any company that, in my day job, I work with or partner with.