First off a big thank you to all those who’ve read, commented or liked the posts. Not only is it helpful for my work, but great to see all the love for Warhammer old and new! In this newsletter I’m going to continue share and highlight some of that.
My Warped Marginalia posts (name is a riff of the White Dwarf coloumn, ‘Marginalia’ which was title of a regular column in White Dwarf during the Rogue Trader era.) are my project and nerwsletter ‘housekeeping’ posts.
First off, here are what my most popular three posts are, in order, to date:
So this kind of makes sense to me as the top one touched on a wider topic so both oldhammer and D&D, so got posted around in a number of other places. The number two and three are both filled with Warhammer history. Also pleased that the Road to Warhammer one is in there as this is the article that features direct quotes from the book, so glad to see that is getting posted around.
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One commenter on Reddit who said they worked at Citadel/GW back in the Rogue Trader era; “I worked in mail order from 89-90 before moving to the design studio at Enfield Chambers … We used to go for lunch at the Man in Space, which was a pub in Eastwood near where the old Chewton street factory was. It was also home to the infamous three pint challenge, which is why if you mail ordered anything on a Friday afternoon it was usually wrong. Sorry about that.” This seems to suggest that the ‘Slann in Space’ was a play on ‘Man in Space’ which reputedly got its name from Neil Armstrong, the first man in space. Which is pretty cool. Thanks for that!
Another Redditor noted (and thanks!) that the tavern also could be found in the Warhammer Townscape - Card Buildings For Warhammer Games book. It looks like this (thanks to eBay people for posting pictures):
(Image: Page from Warhammer Townscape - Card Buildings For Warhammer Games, source)
Another, but on Substack, suggested some links to explore the connections of the ‘ancient aliens’ posts more. Thanks for that too!
Lots of helpful comments, most about the collecting process and prices. Here’s a couple of thought of note;
So I helpfully got a comment identifying one of the miniatures I’d posted a picture of; they are C34 Carrion & Giant Bat (so not Goblins at all!)
One note is that the prices are often not so high; “Yeah, no one here or on the trading forum would buy any of those models for those prices, eBay truly is doing the devil's work here and making it look like those 'are the prices' when they simply aren't.”
Finally, quoting a small part here, but worth reading the whole thing, is great advice on collecting Oldhammer stuff;
You just have to be patient.
The best thing to do is just keep looking, daily for lots of different things at once. Don’t fixate on one model, think in terms of a model you might want a squad of for the army after the next army you build.
Adding to the list of reasons why current painting is the quality it is, one comment makes a great point: “Don't forget that there have also been a lot of improvements in photography and publishing compared to 1987. Pictures from old WDs are probably a shadow of what that miniature actually looked like. Mike McVey talked about how he changed his painting style to incorporate the now dominant tricks like 'edge highlighting' because in an era when they were literally cutting out and taping Polaroids to paper documents to prepare them for publishing, you simply could not see a lot of the subtle effects he was doing previously.”
A great comment on the post noting some of the other Eldar corsair action between Rogue Trader and now I’d missed; “You missed out on BFG's Corsair range (and art!) and Forge World's own Corsair reintroduction with the Doom of Mymeara - the eldar pirates didn't exactly vanish in the 90s as such, but came back first in space ships, and then with jetpacks like the art from RT you share :). You can also argue that in 1998/9, the introduction of the Dark Eldar was also something that paid here to the RT idea of pirates.” Thanks for that!
EArkham, who has been collecting them all, noted the total needed to get ‘em all! “There's 495 total variants, counting the unreleased thieves and hook horror, but not counting the Oriental Heroes variants that have "TSR" on the slotta tag.”
HellBellyUK noted the others in the range and the Ranger is very cool!
Antique_Historian_74 on Reddit noted; “Honestly that first Rogue Trader advert has a really heavy Traveller vibe, which I suppose explains why their sci-fi game was going to be about trade.”
Thanks for reading!
Note! There is more about this project 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.
