digging through archives again, earliest i can find is
>2015-02-27
https://4chanarchives.com/board/vg/thread/95746776
by combing earliest pages and ctrl+f 'dwarf' , and
>03 Jul 2012
https://archived.moe/vg/thread/8776004
thanks to nitter > search '4chan dwarf' by date > a thread bot account @4chanvg providing a thread number and thread subject line > putting no. into thread url in archived.moe
archive.today requires combing 100s pages of 6000 urls boards.4chan.org/vg/thread/* and ctrl+f, messed up by saved links split between http and https
huh, funny that
https://archived.moe/vg/page/73997/
>thread No.1 Thu 16 Feb 2012
>moot !Ep8pui8Vw2 ## Admin
>Introducing /vg/ - Video Game Generals

tl;dr - note to same minded anons, don't take archive search function for granted;save thread numbers in filenames for saved images, start threads with link/number of last thread, end threads with link/number to next thread
wish i saw the replies for this image, don't know what the number represents