My, how time flies when you are having fun! Finally, here’s my quick nostalgic review of the follow up “supplements” to Warhammer 1st Edition, You can read part one here.
Forces of Fantasy, was released in 1984 a year after the main game. It continues the Warhammer 1st Edition as a sort of UK RPG equivalent to Original D&D Whitebox analogy, by expanding and the play options and rulings for the game..Except instead of being a series of booklet supplements which expand the game, which was the case with OD&D, its a box set with another set of softcover booklets. Cover art is by John Blanche, who does much of the black and white interior art.
Book 1 Forces of Fantasy sees the introduction of army lists, which greatly expand the monster listings from the base game. They ran a cut down version of these as a series of adverts in White Dwarf magazine. Here’s the one for Dwarfs.
I had a copy of this, from a friend who had picked up a bunch of early Warhammer along with a job lot of minis (which I have to this day, nearly forty years on!) who sold them on to me at pocket money prices. I poured over incesantly trying to work out what it was all about (my canny friend, who now works as an investment banker, kept hold of the base game, judging correctly it would be worth something some day). To my fiftheen year old, BX D&D/AD&D soaked brain, used to getting a one size fits all stats block, the army lists were an eyeopener. That each profile, listed the types of monster, and put it somesort of cultural context, blew my mind. And that each entry had an iconic images of humaniod, nicely laid out. A vast improvement over the plain typeset of the main rulebook.
Book 2 Fighting Fantasy Battles is a bunch of rulings that pretty much upgrade the game to Warhammer 1.5. Fixes, additions and the frame work of how to set up a battle are the meat of this book. And also a firm indicator of where Warhammer is heading in its 2nd Edtion, a fully fledged wargame. Apart from the Advanced Rules for Characterisitics – which are applicable to command group characters, who are the pcs of the RPG side of the game, perhaps the only thing that could be stretched to be RPG related, is the Regiments of Reknown, which are eight famous mercenary units from the Old World (which emerges ever so slightly more in Forces of Fantasy), with their narrative background. I’ve got one of these Bugman’s Dwarf Rangers in miniture form, which remains one of my prides and joys of my Oldhammer miniture collection from the 80s.
Book 3 Arcane Magic greatly expands the magic rules, in both terms of spells and magic items. It also introduces rules for treasure hordes, and summoned monsters (Demons, Elementals etc.).
Book of Battalions. The final book of the box set is a collection of famous armies from the Games Workshop staffers battles. This is billed as a free supplement, and the introductory text emphasises that its a bit of fun, celebrating the early battles using the rules. From a roleplaying perspective, its almost zero use, but does give lots of narrative tit bits.
Overall Forces of Fantasy is a step up in both presentation and game content. But apart from a bit of narrative fluff here and there, important fluff which sets the foundation of what the grim and perilous world of Warhammer fantasy will be like later on, there’s almost zero roleplaying content.
Which gives a good indication of how things are going to be in Warhammer 2nd Edition, which just round the corner in early 1985.
