Appendix N – GW
GW games formed the bulk of my hobby experiences for ten years. I may have broadened my scope somewhat since then, and I may authentically twitch at the phrase ‘the Games Workshop hobby’, but… well, that is sort of how it was for me, for a long time. I knew other games existed, I just didn’t play them. Anyway, here are my Best Bits of GW.
Warhammer Fantasy Battle sixth edition:
- core book. Siege and Skirmish variants, deployment variants that make for an implicit narrative, restrained but potent magic, a nice tidy campaign system, and an excellent set of designer’s notes. Seventh’s was a mechanically superior set of rules revisions (based on popular house rules! I loved it!), but burdened by increasingly eccentric army book design and the lack of excellent appendices.
- Ravening Hordes. GW flirts with having all its army lists in one place and designed at the same time for the first time in years.
- Storm of Chaos. The army lists are mechanically terrible (even my beloved Sylvanians scale appallingly, being balanced only at 2000 points), but they’re an interesting collection of ideas and ten lists in one book based around a central conflict adds a good deal to the game. Less cruft, more stuff.
- The General’s Compendium. More variants! More campaign systems! More modelling tips! More of everything! In terms of ideas per page this was the best game book I ever bought.
- Warhammer Skirmish. More brilliant small-scale scenarios than you can shake a stick at.
Warhammer 40,ooo second edition:
- Black Codex army lists, the Battle for Armageddon campaign, the Mission Cards, and a multitude of cardboard terrain (which was all I owned until I started playing WFB and wanted some fantasy stuff). I think I added two characters and three vehicles and that was it for me until third edition came out, more or less…
- Warhammer 40,000 Battles. Some golden age battle reports, the bunkers and missions surrounding them (adding depth to, and in my opinion completing) the Mission Card system, and more Armageddon. Ace.
Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, first edition:
- Realms of Chaos – aesthetically superb, thematically solid, rules for all GW’s major systems. Of course they require jiggery-pokery to work, but the fact that they can work with jiggery-pokery is telling.
- Apocrypha Now – thoughtful write-ups for cheating death, non-human psychology, firearms in fantasy – also some locations and NPCs that still find themselves dropped into my games to this day (well, they would, they’re derived from Kim Newman stories!).
- Apocrypha II (Chart of Darkness) – two well-fleshed-out fantasy religions, more brilliant places and people (I still want to build Morbog and his Marauders for WFB one day), and more lovely adventures. If I ever needed a pre-made one-off adventure, it’s to this book that I’d turn.
- Marienburg: Sold Down The River – a complete, humorous and realised fantasy city, to which I still default my WFRP games to this day.
Other GW
- Warmaster. I still think it’s the best game, in terms of mechanics, that GW has ever done, and a far more sensible way to scale up your Warhammer experience that just playing huge games of WFB with oversized monster kits and a magic spinner. Shame hardly anyone plays it.
- Mordheim. The ancestor of Warhammer Skirmish, the test-bed for WFB 6′s dice-based magic system, dripping with atmosphere and little oddities. A few more terrible puns and it’d be the best bad game ever (balance can go hang).
- Necromunda. Perhaps a better scale for 40K2 as a system. More cardboard terrain, this time complex and interconnected. I never liked the human-centricness of it all but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the game.
- Waaaargh! the Orks. So much love for this book. Nothing but background, it’s funny and complete and leaves one with a feeling that okay, they’re orcs in space, but there’s still been a lot of thought put into making that concept go.
