Thursday, 3 April 2008

Warhammer 25 Years

This year Warhammer is 25 years old. Warhammer was first published in 1983 by Citadel, to give people a ruleset to use all their fantasy miniatures. Up to that point, fantasy miniature wargaming was not a mainstream genre, although fantasy roleplaying was hugely popular -- hence the collections of fantasy miniatures people were building up.

One of the anniversary products is a fascimile edition of the original ruleset. It was sold in a box, and contained 3 booklets. Actually, it was also one of my first fantasy games, so I have some fond memories of that first edition. When reading the booklets again after so many years, I can almost again feel the same sense of discovery I had back in 1983.

Anyway, I have long dropped out of Warhammer (stopped when 4th edition was published), and these days I don't particularly like the philosophy of the GW rules, but I do recognize the huge influence Warhammer and GW had on the development of miniature wargaming and the gaming hobby in general.