40K RETRO: Adeptus Titanicus Launch – Welcome to 1988
With Adeptus Titanicus about to launch – it’s time to turn the clock back 30 years and look at the White Dwarf rollout of the original. Fasten your seat belt – the time machine is set to 1988!
Adeptus Titanicus was Launched in White Dwarf 108, from December 1988. Boy look at that cover price! The boxed game was a young Jervis Johnson’s first game design and the box came loaded with tons of stuff:
Look at that awesome John Blanche artwork!
The original game came with 6 plastic Warlord titans, a bunch of styrofoam buildings, rulers, dice, rulebook and a ton of tokens.
Back to The White Dwarf rollout… The game got its obligatory splash 2-page spread and that soon to abandoned “3D-Roleplay” logo. What was that about?
Look at that fantastic black and white artwork – formative stuff for 30 years back!
Next up we got a 2 page spread of ‘Eavy Metal showing off some paint schemes for the new plastic Warlords, all painted and bannered up in a variety of Collegio schemes:
Even back then, the Death Heads (Legio Mortis) were the big villains, Fire Wasps were the good guys.
Here we see even more paint schemes and a full illustration of where and what type of banners festoon a titan. This is THE original chart where it was all worked out – and remains in effect to this day. We also get the start of a 2 pages of test on exactly how to assemble and paint your warlords, both loyalist and traitor. Lots of detail in here on things like kill and rank markings and the like.
Next we get the sample banner and titan Legion examples. Let me tell you that back in those days there weren’t color copiers around. So gamers would photocopy these on black and white copiers, cut them out and color paint over them. I know – MADNESS! It was all stone knives and bearskins back in the 80s (not to mention Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher).
Last but not least at the very end of the White Dwarf we get the introduction of the new Reaver Titan, the SAME MONTH Adeptus Titanicus shipped. Note it’s fetching camo carapace! Also don’t even think of not ordering your Adeptus Titanicus Ring Binders, and some Chaos Dwarf Swivel Guns…
~ Next time we’ll see just how fast GW expanded Adeptus Titanicus into EPIC once it hit the shelves.
