Issue Nr.18 has one major improvement: larger fonts. No more ruining your eyes with 8pt. Thus the issue also has fewer articles than other ones, but with 48 pages it appears to be pretty small anyway.

The first article is a review by John Foody. Generally reviews are not something to review. However he presents the various novels republished by "The Black Library", which seems to be a subdivision of GW, which is in charge of bringing some novels that were out of print back to the printer. The review is pretty critical and John certainly does not lift the novels into the sky. It is a good overview for anyone thinking whether they should buy any of these "warhammer classics". The review is rounded by some information of a monthly warhammer comic magazine and a short interview with the "Black Library's" boss: Marc Gascoigne.

The first "true" article was written by Timothy Eccles, who seems to be subscribed to open each issue. This time he tries to develop a possible future of the warhammer world. Were the different nations may develop into, what will happen to certain cults etc. The format is of course highly unusual and of course very speculative. Bringing development into warhammer is also a tricky subject, since the rulebook implies very little social and industrial development and the few changes were made through war. Although interesting to read, Timothy fails to introduce new ideas. His lines of development are more or less taken from our history. So if you do own a book from your history classes in school and the smallest amount of common sense you do not really need this article. The time-span itself makes is virtually unusable for any campaign. Timothy clearly talks about historical development, so that a hundred years are nothing, which of course makes the ideas difficult to incorporate. Although the approach is interesting, the article fails to bring surprising new information or ideas.

Another article by Timothy follows. This is the first part of a multipart article on guilds. A much more rewarding subject. The first article seems to serve as introduction and basics, so there is currently very little to actually use. It is a little disturbing that the article lacks any reference to RoS, although this is very likely to have been available to the author. So we have to see for the next issue to appropriately evaluate the article.

The next article - I do have scruples to call it an article - comes from Paul Slevin and is announced as an extended Enemy Within-Campaign. Basically the author takes the campaign and adds other adventures in between, e.g. between Power behind the thrown and Empire in Flames/Chaos, the PC should be send to Doomstones. Some of the extensions, just like the one I have just mentioned, appear to be pretty strained. The article is useless for anyone not possessing the old adventure like Lichemaster, the Restless Death or Drachenfels. For those that do, the question is whether someone really wants to send the PCs on such a tour de force. Even if you want to do this, the article gives you little information on how to connect the adventures. For getting connectors like "hire them to take cargo to XXX" I do not pay money.

The following is an interesting article by Robin Low. The subject of the article itself is a philanthropic society called "The Trust" that promotes science by giving money. The description itself is more or less good standard. One or two secrets, extensive descriptions on the place where the society has its place, the main characters etc. All quite good and interesting to read. The only flaw is that the article ignores interaction with guilds and the new colleges of magic a little bit. Nevertheless quite good. What makes this article exceptional is, unfortunately, only found in a small box. The trust wants to further science and the head is a cultist of Tzeentch. Well, that is ordinary for the regular warhammer fan. What is not ordinary in my view is that the cult is not reduced to a number of thugs, but the idea that you can do something bad for good reasons is developed. Sure a researcher may conduct illegal experiments, but what if his goal is not so despicable. In my view this is a great idea and should have detailed more thoroughly. In the hands of a good GM, this can bring a totally new perspective to the game and especially Tzeentch. Three thumbs up for this idea.

The third part of the Talabheim series is the next article. Again well above average. This time the bureaucrat centre of Talabheim is discussed, which is situated in the oddly named Blutberg district (the name hints more on the place for executions than bureaucracy). The article is somewhat overly dominated by the idea of bureaucracy and tradition. This makes the article a little bit tiring. What is worse is that the article is poorly edited. Some places change their name during the article (e.g. what was Spaltenskeller, becomes Spalteskeller later on) and again my old fried of the rape of German languages comes along. Besides persons' names some of places are just poorly chosen, but I get used to it. When the author speaks of Abteilungssteuer, however, he meant the department of taxes. The department of tax would be Steuerabteilung, Abteilungssteuer means "tax for departments". One can argue whether German names are useful or not, but when they are used they should not confuse the reader. Even though I consider the article to be quite good, the poor editing certainly ruins the picture for me. If you do not speak German, you will have less problem and probably more fun with the third part of the Talabheim series.

An adventure by John Foody follows. Set near the Talabec river it is basically a bandit hunt. The well-known plot of bandits hiding in the forest that need to be found is spiced up with a valuable, although very unusual, halfling artefact and some connections with the bandits. The general plat sounds like a lot of fun. No chaos, no exaggerated NPCs. However the plot remains sketchy and very artificial. The begins from the place, which looks a lot like generated for this adventure (which it of course is, but this should not be visible), and ends with the events, that remain colourless. The basic idea promised some fun, but the adventure needs a lot of rework before I could recommend it unconditionally. Which is a pity, since it has the potential to be fun and may be something of surprise when the PCs find the stolen artefact.
As with all Warpstone, this issue is finished with a short story (well, in fact with the letters to the editor, but I will not review them). This story was written by Krpoun (this is not a misspelling and I wonder how it is pronounced). To sum it up: battle. The story is about two people that fight. Beginning from the first and ending in the last line. Pretty cliché. Nothing else, but probably I have not noticed. If you like such stories, this may be as good as any other. If you do not, well, skip the pages.

To come back to the poor editing of the Talabheim-article. There are quite a number of such errors like Abteilungssteuer in the article and I had the impression that this issue had a substantial number of orthographical and grammatical errors and, as you may know, I am not very touchy about it.

This issue of Warpstone is not the best I have ever seen, there is plenty of room to improve. In my view there are only two reasons to buy it: to own all parts of the Talabheim series and Low's article on "The Trust". The rest is average at best. Without the "Trust" it would have deserved a rating, well below five, but I really liked the idea, therefore

(ls)