Some time ago I bought these on
eBay:
What you see there is almost all of
the first round of Citadel journals and compendia (everything except the very
first compendium) in excellent condition – near mint in fact.
I got them at an oddly low price
through an auction, but I guess that the otherwise ubiquitous inflation that
seems to have hit the rest of the oldhammer market hasn’t reached the old
journals yet (for brevity’s sake, I’m including the compendia under the heading
of “journal”). Considering the dedication it takes to keep paper journals safe
for this many years, I consider myself very fortunate, though I’m now facing
the problem of almost not wanting to touch them for fear of causing damage –
something I wouldn’t worry about if they were in worse shape.
There is an easy solution though.
Through the grace of Orclord over at solegends.com we can all read these old
journals right here. You could also get a Scribd-account (something I’d recommend that any
oldhammer-fan do anyway), though sometimes the scans at SoLegends are better. I
then have the opportunity to (very carefully) browse through the actual journal and take in all the really small details,
which is a great pleasure I can assure you.
Looking through the journals, I got
the idea of doing a “let’s read” – very much inspired by Orlygg “Acceptable in the 80’s”-series, which you should
absolutely read as well if you haven’t already.
The journals were published during
the days of 1st and 2nd edition WFB, and as such might be
too “retro” even for dedicated oldhammeres. However, appearing at the very
nascence of WFB they give a really unique insight into the development of the
game and associated miniatures.
They also precede my own entry into
the hobby (I was still in diapers at this point in time), so I’m reading them
with a fresh face – ready to be amazed at the wonders of a time when using
oil-paints wasn’t unheard of.
To keep these posts from getting too
long, I’ll only discuss sections of special interest (I also won’t post a
picture of each and every page), though I still urge you to read through the
entre journal.
Even then, I’ll probably end up
splitting each journal into several entries.
So, without further ado (except for
noting that I’m looking at the US-version), Let’s read: The first Citadel Compendium
First up, we have an introduction to
the compendium itself:
Here we are introduced to two very
interesting concepts. The first, and most important, was Citadel’s policy of
constantly reworking their range of figures, which meant that a particular
sculpt might go out of production at any time. The compendium merely catalogues
those sculpts which Citadel intended to keep in stock – at least until the
release of the next compendium.
I know that the limited durability
of the molds used at the time was a large part of the reason for this, but it
still seems like a strange thing in this age of near-unlimited availability of
individual sculpts. Interestingly, though I don’t follow GW all that closely
these days, it seems to me that they’ve been trying to re-implement this situation
with a string of more-or-less limited edition releases over the recent years.
The second concept is Citadel’s
reason for initially using line-drawings in their catalogues; which is that
printed photographs at the time lacked the necessary quality to fully illustrate
miniatures. As someone who still
haven’t got the faintest idea what Sigrid and Hilda from the DotR set are
actually supposed to look like (and I even own the original poster), I can sort
of get behind this idea. On the other hand, the drawings do lack a certain je ne sais quoi, so on balance I guess
I’m glad they eventually changed that policy.
Can you identify them?
At the bottom of the page is
something that I’ll probably have to make a running joke (or possibly a
drinking game) out of; the “near future” plans for the release of something
that wouldn’t be published for several years, in this case Rogue Trader (*drink). This goes hand in hand with a mention of the
Realm of Chaos supplement for WFB a
few pages later (*drink again).
Next is an
introduction to WFB.
I won’t go too much into this as 1st
edition is very much an unknown quantity to me. Most of the features described
seem to line up with later editions though.
After that we have an article with
additional rules for WFB, some of which definitely
didn’t make it into later editions (return fire, dismounting opponents),
though it also includes rules that we’d consider quite natural today, such as
firing arcs and the rule against wizards using armor.
We can also see a bit of WFRP in the
section on “personal characteristics in special situation”. The two situations
in the example, bluffing and persuading, are thing that any WFRP player will
have tried countless times and even establishes the later percentage based
tests.
Next up is the one thing I actually
knew would be in the compendium: The
Legend of Kremelo the Slann – A Warhammer scenario.
It’s a wonderfully weird idea. An
orphan slann, raised by Norse settlers in Lustria, who’s leading a raid on his
old tribe after it attacks his adoptive village. This is about as oldhammer as it
gets. Slann, Lustria, alcoholism and a scenario where you can’t be quite sure that
your allies aren’t trying to kill you (something that’ll be a recurring theme
in later scenarios).
Being someone who previously didn’t
have any real interest in Lustria, as I read more of the old stuff about it I’m increasingly saddened that Richard Halliwell’s supplement on the continent
(also mentioned in this compendium - *drink, I guess) never saw the light of
day.
After this little gem we have
something that’s become a bit of a stable in Warhammer; Goblinoid animosity.
The exact rules have changed a lot
over the different editions, but the basic concept is a familiar one. If you
are interested in the subject, Zhu has written more about it in a broader
context here.
We now get to the meat-and-potatoes
of the compendium, the models, but I think I’ll save that for next time.
End of part one…
Croaker
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