What do you get a tank for its birthday? A new set of treads? One of those aftershave gift packs only with turret polish and armor wax? To celebrate the anniversary of Warhammer 40,000’s Land Raider, Games Workshop gave it what basically amounts to an episode of This is Your Life dedicated to an imaginary Panzer.
The Land Raider is 25 years old, at least in its current form. As Games Workshop points out, the original version goes all the way back to the first edition of Warhammer 40,000 in 1987, though at that point it was a miniature scratch-built entirely from spare parts by sculptor/artist/painter Dave Andrews with tracks made out of the tops of pens.
It was available for sale a year later—one of Games Workshop’s first plastic kits in an age of lead. That kit was a bit titchy compared to the current MkIII version though, which was first released 25 years ago in 2000. This was the biggest plastic kit available at the time, “at least a third larger than its ancestor” according to GW, with doors that opened so you could get a look at the interior and try to figure out how 10 space marines could be rammed in there.
While beloved as a centrepiece for your tabletop army or mob of clicked-and-dragged units in Dawn of War, the Land Raider is more controversial among 40K loreheads. As detailed in the Horus Heresy novels, the Land Raider and the hovercar Land Speeder weren’t so named because they’re vehicles for traveling over the ground. They’re actually both named after a tech-priest called Arkhan Land.
This makes the kind of people who read 40K novels roll their eyes out of their heads, but I adore these daft details. It’s not a new addition, going at least as far back as a 1990 article in GW’s in-house magazine White Dwarf, and it makes sense to me. I mean, I don’t catch a Land Train to the city to avoid all the Land Car traffic. And the fact there are nitpicky cultists in the Imperium 10,000 years later still insisting the tank should technically be called “Land’s Raider” is the kind of batshit deep lore nonsense that keeps 40K from feeling too oppressive.
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