fairly coherent and complete
Well "coherent" is a matter of an opinion.
But for me it was when I went to the "Origins" convention when it was held in Los Angeles and being stationed at Fort Huachuca at the time me and several others went.
Right outside of the gaming hall GW was putting on a Demo for Space Hulk and had copies of White Dwarf 112 & White Dwarf 113 for free.
By the time the convention was over I had all of the board war games that I brought to the convention and had a copy of Space Hulk and my first 40K miniatures (the Space Marine Box and a squad of Eldar).
Six months later I was back in Korea and was getting the White Dwarf in the mail.
I looked forward to when it would come in the mail because back then it was a fantastic gaming Magazine, unlike the piece of crap it is today.
A year later I was stationed in the DC Area and very soon found the Fairfax, VA Games Workshop store.
That was in the spring of 1991.
Over the next five years I had armies for both 40K and WFB, plus Epic armies.
Dark Angels, Eldar, for 40K and those have grown to include Guardians of the Covenant, Orks & Imperial Guard.
High Elves for WFB and later came Orks & Goblins, Empire & Dwarves.
Eldar, Dark Angels & Squats for 40K Epic and later Orks & Imperial Guard.
Then GW changed for the worst and started trashing both the rules and White Dwarf.
First came Epic and they killed it off, then White Dwarf then they nerf'd the of of the Eldar.
I stop buying White Dwarf over 15 years ago and glad that I did.
GW had turned a great gaming magazine into a piece to crap paid advertisement.
Once 4th Edition 40K hit playing 40K died in my area and shorting WFB did as well.
It hasn't come back yet.
So yes it was once great but not anymore as GW is interested more in screwing over their customers and selling overprice miniatures for a game that has no balance and horrible written rules.
Every year sees a price increase and 6th Edition was barely two years old when they got rid of it for 7th Edition forcing their fanboyz to spend more money for the new set of badly written rules.
Oh and my armies?
I have all of them but they will never be used with any GW set of rules ever.