Re-examined by Marc Farrimond

On a sweltering hot Saturday morning, in the middle of a dry and humid summer. Thousands of gamers made their eager way to London to the Royal Horticultural Hall to take part in the biggest event in the years gaming calendar ; Games Day. The year was 1987 and this was the last time the event would be held in such a way. Hundreds of different traders filled the large hall and everything seem to be covered from Live Roleplaying to the fledgling computer industry, as well as games giants from around the globe. After this year the event would become Games Workshop Only as the companies domination on the market became almost absolute.

I was one of those many gamers who piled into the over-crowed hall that day, and like a good deal many of my compatriots I was there to have a good time, but also to spend.

Rumours had been floating around my local Games Workshop (Manchester) that GW where going to hit the consumer with something big at Games Day, yet were keeping a very tight lip on just what it was going to be. We arrived very early that morning, having caught the 4am train from our home town and we were among the first through the door.

Not bothering to stop and look at all the stalls one at a time, me and my 5 friends decided to walk right over to the Games Workshop section which was by now starting to attract a crowd. Once there total shock set in when we saw the companies latest weapon; Warhammer 40,000 Rouge Trader!

That was that. I blew almost £500 that day on both 40K and the miniatures that had been released along side it (including the multi pose plastic Marines), with my friends spending around the same amount and one doubling our total. By lunchtime we were sat eating our sandwiches in a corner and reading through the rules of the large blue book we had all bought. In a fit of inspiration I decided to get as many of the Games Workshop design team to sign my copy for me (which I still have, and no you cant have it) and spent almost an hour and half talking to Bryan Ansell and Rick Priestly (both of whom I already knew to talk too) about the new system and the plans for the future.

That was another lifetime ago and another game away. Its now the middle of 1998 and here I sit one cold and wet morning in front of my computer writing this retrospective of Rouge Trader for Gamers Web. So what was it like way back then?

Warhammer 40,000: Rouge Trader was first released in the form of a single hardbound book. Weighing in at 272 pages with almost 30 of those in full colour. The game itself was split into easy to read sections and each section gave examples on a variety of topics for the game. From the very moment I saw the cover painting of John Sibbiks Last Stand of the Crimson Fists I was hooked. The layout of the book was very good for the time and lots of black and white illustrations filled the pages with examples of how things should look in play and a brief history of the Warhammer 40,000 universe and many races that dwelled in it. During a seminar at the launch Rick Priestly coined the phrase 40K by use of an abbreviation and the name seems to have stuck ever since.

The background for the game was rich and varied but was by no means completely new! Most of the core rules and races had appeared in an earlier game written by Ansell and Priestly some years earlier; Laserburn. A simple set of rules Laserburn didn't seem to have the impact needed to sell in vast quantities as it was a small A5 booklet in black and white and looked as if it had been photocopied, but the system was good and introduced us to the Space Marines, Orks and Redemptionists (who were to appear in many other GW titles).

One of the main points of the Rouge Trader rules was the Roleplaying feel that it had compared to the 2^nd edition. The book is laid out in a very similar manor to that of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and it was long expected that Games Workshop would eventually expand on the system and turn it into a full blown RPG, but this never happened and looks quite unlikely in the near future.

The original game is in many aspects far superior to its predecessor but was not without its own flaws.

Psykers and vehicles seemed to cause the most problems among gamers everywhere with thousands of letters and phone calls going to the Games Workshop design studio over the four years or so between the two editions. Psykers and the powers that they wield would cause many problems with gamers and for many its far too complex a matter to pour through the numerous issues of White Dwarf that one really needed to use them to their full extent. Eventually the rules were clarified in White Dwarf and compiled in a new compilation book called Warhammer 40,000 Compendium. Army lists for the Eldar and rules for Terminators appeared here along with Genestealer cults and of all things Commissar Training Corps? The points value in the rulebooks seemed to waver from race to race and it wasn't uncommon to field huge armies which cost thousands of points.

Finding something in the old rulebook was akin to hunting down the proverbial needle in a haystack. The rules seemed all over the place and the book is a quite hefty tome itself, which didn't help matters too much. Many updates and clarifications appeared from Games Workshop in White Dwarf over the years, and after a short while the original game was almost rendered obsolete. As the 40K range of miniatures grew in size and more and more rules where written it seemed that only option was a new version of the system.

Seven years after its release, the game was given a complete over-hall and a new lick of paint to keep it in line with the other games which fall in the GW stables. Now with plastic miniatures and card buildings and the rules set over three books instead of one tome and also losing the Rouge Trader from the title. Some saw this as the end of Warhammer 40,000 as it stood, with many die hard fans of Rouge Trader shunning the system and sticking with the older version. But Games Workshop pressed on and Warhammer 40,000 is now one of the best selling combat games of all time, with literally millions of copies being sold world wide over the past five years. The new rules, backed up in White Dwarf introduced many new gamers to the hobby and the changes to the new system were vast.

The races and their histories have changed over the course of the games life span. When Rouge Trader was first released Genestealers where nothing more than random creatures that could be added to games to spice them up. Further releases from GW such as Space Hulk drew more on the Mythos and expanded the background making the Genestealers one of the most feared and popular of all the races in 40K. The history of the entire game has also gone through its own changes and become something of a cult since 1987 with hundreds of sites on the Internet now dedicated to the game and many sites dedicated to entire Space Marine Chapters or the Eldar race. Several of the races that appeared in the origanl system no longer exist in the 2^nd edition of the game (Slann, Zoats and Jokearo chief among them) and the demise of these races was something of a shock to die hard fans!

The 2^nd edition of Warhammer 40,000 is now on its way out, due to be replaced later on this year with a more streamlined edition that will iron out some of the flaws in the last version of the game. Whole new races and creatures are being created and perhaps Warhammer 40,000 may still retain its crown as the king of all science fiction table top games, but with many other companies now bringing out systems that rival Games Workshops only time will tell.

Marc Farrimond