Imperium Approved

The other day a gentleman on the Oldhammer Forum pointed out these Rogue Trader stickers on an old japanese robot kit box.

Apparently these stickers were used to promote the game during the early days of the game.

At the time Games Workshop sold model kits from third parties, encouraging to build and kitbash any kind of tank, walker or troop transport you wanted. At least some of these boxes were sold with these stickers stuck on them.

I've been painting these two squads  of  Blue Moon miniatures for the Lead Painters League:  non-Citadel miniatures for my Rogue Trading. Imperium Approved I tell ya!

Imperial Space Marines

Scientist astronauts that looked remarkably like the Prometheus crew, even though I think they were released before the film came out

In the meantime I tracked down a dodgy PDF copy of Chapter Approved, the Book of the Astronomican on google. This was the first 40K/Rogue Trader supplement. I'm still not sure why I never got the book as I did get all the other supplements at the time. Either it had a low print run or possibly I was just weirded out by the cover and inside artwork. Sure they had different standards with art direction and looking back I really love it.
Reading it now for the first time it felt like being fifteen years old again. The armylists are great because they're like more ideas for an army and not anything fixed. With a very open background that inspires to invent your own. Besides it features warbands that got completely forgotten after, like mixed human and eldar pirates, Space Wolves marines that weren't space vikings yet, orks on stolen landspeeders and insane imperial agents.
Exactly what I needed for my Rogue Trader Redux project.