A slightly thinner issue this time, coming in at only 84 pages for £1.25 (1.4pence per page!) and a whopping 31% of the pages being adverts, which is the highest so far.
Time for the contents!
Marginalia
Replacing Open Box from last month is a new feature that is the same idea, but more openly just about Games Workshop products. This consists of an interesting history of Rogue Trader’s development, which apparently took five years because Fantasy Battle got in the way. An interesting couple of pages of history that is as relevant as ever this year.
Other games mentioned are Chaos Marauders, a 2-4 player fantasy board game and Death Zone, the first supplement for Blood Bowl.
Finally there’s mention of Land of Ninja, a RuneQuest supplement about Ninjas (I bet you didn’t expect that from the name) and Paranoia II, the second edition of that game.
Stop Press
News from the industry. Eric Goldberg and Greg Costikyan had left West End Games, TSR was releasing a bazillion books and, well, you get the idea.
Critical Mass
David Langford on the latest books.
A Rough Night At The Three Feathers
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay adventure.
To Live And Die In Mega-City One
As you would expect from the name it’s a Judge Dread adventure.
Situations Vacant
Jobs for Call of Cthulhu. It’s too dangerous to read as it may release an ancient evil I suspect.
Happy Hour
Some counters and rules to expand Block Mania. The counters are on normal paper and in colour. Cutting them out would just destroy a picture and not the rules for those counters as I first thought when I saw it.
Skirmish in Rynn’s World
40k content! It follows on from Battle at the Farm in the 40k rulebook, and like that scenario I don’t remember it being very fun at all. I really should play them both again using the original rules…
Rynn’s World in the Rynnstar system was the home planet of the Crimson Fists until Orks decided they quite liked the look of it. These orks, the Orkish Empire of Charadon, were lead by the Warlord Snagrod. In the invasion the Crimson Fists were wiped out in a magazine explosion in their base except for two groups. This follows the second group as the first was covered in Battle at the Farm.
There’s also some pages from the rulebook to support it.
‘Eavy Metal
Putting together the plastic marine box. A very obsolete piece, but useful at the time.
The Coliseum
Some Runequest rules that didn’t make the cut from the Runequest rulebook. Gladiatorial combat, which sounds fun.
Blood Bowl Bloody Blood Bowl
Chainsaws and traps for Blood Bowl.
New 40k Releases
- RT03 – Range of 12 Space Dwarves. £2.50 for 5.
- RT04 – Range of 12 Space Elves, sold at £2.50 for 4.
All in all it’s a reasonable edition. The first bit of real content for 40k and the stunties make their appearance. Space Elves aren’t yet Eldar, but the models have that look even at the start.
The 40k content is still a bit low compared to nowadays, and the Fantasy Battle content is even less, which is odd considering that the game had been around for a long time at that stage. The new scenario was probably enough to make it a must buy at the time though, but the history was also interesting.
