The many universes of the varied role playing games have led to
proliferation of detailed supplements to provide the gamer with background
information on the lands traversed by the player characters. This need for
source material quickly found an audience in the miniature figure wargames
with each new rule set being published with supplemental material. For a
fantasy or science fiction wargame rules set centered in a world (or worlds)
different from our own, these source books provide a means of enhancing the
game by giving a colorful background and purpose for the battles fought on
the table top.

I have had little or no experience with the Warzone system prior to
receiving several items for review. Now, I’m seriously rubbing my chin and
contemplating making an investment in the system, as my wife despairs. In
truth, I have little patience with BSMSs (Big Shoulderpad Miniature
Systems), but there’s a depth to the Warzone milieu that I find jaunty and
stylish.

Venus: Bauhaus Forces of War is the first supplement to the Warzone second
edition rules. As the title states, this supplement provides the details on
the planet Venus in the Warzone universe and of the Corporation of Bauhaus,
one of the five major corporations. Venus is a terraformed, jungle planet
cursed with a day of rotation longer than its yearly orbit around the Sun
leading to a Venus day that is 117 Earth days long. Bauhaus, whose roots
harken to an imperial Germany, is the dominant corporation of Venus.
Through this supplement, players will find a rich new world to fight over
and detailed information on the armed forces of Bauhaus.

Okay, so what do you get for your hard-earned shekels? The book contains
nearly 100 pages of information. After a brief introduction, the book gives
30 pages of maps and short graphic vignettes, which introduce the six
campaigns covered in the book. These vignettes provide campaign maps and
visual glimpses into the continual fighting on the jungle world. Next come
detailed sections on Venus, the Bauhaus Corporation, and the four ruling
Duke Electors. The six Venusian campaigns are outlined, allowing for combat
between Bauhaus and any of the other four Corporations or the forces of the
Dark Legion. Several new rules for Warzone follow. Among these are rules
for night fighting, including concealment, tracer rounds and flares, and for
the hazardous jungle, which can be as deadly as the enemy. The final third
of the book deals with the Bauhaus Armed forces, giving information on
various troop types, special units, heroes, weapons, vehicles, and a
thousand point army list for each of the four Duke Electors. The book also
includes two pages of punch out templates and counters for use with the new
rules. My only gripe with the book is the total lack of a table of contents
or index, making it hard to quickly locate specific information.

The supplement is visually striking with illustrations or photographs of
Warzone miniatures on every page. The graphics portray the terrain of Venus
and spark the imagination. Photo vignettes of miniatures offer inspiration
and ideas for jungle terrain for the game table. The visuals distinctly
evoke the Target Games style. In the army section, each troop type is
illustrated at least once and those types with miniatures available have
photos of the figures. The different uniforms and camouflage patterns along
with the differences in helmet types are clearly shown.

The Verdict

My overall impression is that Target has a winner. The background material
is rich and allows the reader to easily imagine the savage fighting in the
dark jungles of Venus. The Bauhaus troop types and army lists provide a
variety of units, which can be tailored for fighting on any part of the
planet and will forma basis for Bauhaus forces elsewhere in the solar
system. The supplement covers the subject and I await reading the next one
on Mars and the forces of the Capitol Corporation.

Wow, it’s been a long week. The site went up on Wednesday and is doing great. I want to thank all of you for visiting and sending me your comments. The vast majority of them were quite positive and it’s nice to know that all my work has paid off. But this is an editorial, right? I’m supposed to give my opinion about something, something that is either controversial or interesting, something that causes people to think. Okay, he goes:

I don’t like Games Workshop. I know that’s not the most original statement in the world. It’s probably one that’s said countless times every day by gamers all around the world. Forget Wizards of the Coast, Games Workshop is our evil empire. Great, so I’m stating the obvious, saying something that became ingrained a long time ago. What’s making me bring it up now? Some of you may read the newsgroups and you may have seen the recent threads about GW cutting off discount stores. It seems that GW has decided that they can tell you how much you are going to sell their product for or they refuse to sell to you. Now, when you couple this with the fact that GW can often account for more that fifty percent of a store’s business, giving the discounter no choice but to raise his prices back to retail, you end up with something that looks a hell of a lot like price fixing. I’m no expert of business or economics, but I know that price fixing is a Bad Thing.

Two years ago, I worked shortly as a clerk in a gaming store. As part of my job, I read all the info that came from our distributors, including the GW “Official Rumors.” Very few things have scared me quite like those little pamphlets. I remember one that told owners exactly how to show GW products in their store, how to make it so that people thought GW was the best thing available right off the bat. It explained how to hook people on Warhammer 40K so quickly that they never had a chance to learn about superior games like Warzone. There was another one that explained the evils of discounting and portrayed any store that committed such a sin as the enemy in a style that reeked of the Red Scare. Now they try to fix prices. You know, if any non-gaming company pulled these types of things, they would be under investigation immediately. Just think about Microsoft. Why, then, do we put up with it?

I have always been amazed at the rabid nature of many GW fans. They love their game so much that they aren’t even willing to consider anything else. Take Warzone, for example. I happen to love the game. I’ve demoed it for several 40K players and every one of them immediately agreed that it was clearly the better product, that GW’s game was so terrible in comparison that it was almost not worth playing. Do you know how difficult it was to get these people to try Warzone in the first place, however? They laughed at it, they made fun of the figures, and they ridiculed the fact that you only needed one d20 to play (this last one continues to baffle me). It was like trying to sell a new operating system to people who can’t get enough of Windows.

One thing that everyone can agree on, even the GW thralls, is that Games Workshop is overpriced. Sure, their figures are probably the best in the industry, if you like disproportioned, statuesque, pointy-headed things. Still, when you show a GW player other figures at much lower prices and comparable quality, they just ignore you. They don’t want to be reminded that they’ve been sucked into a trap, one that requires them to purchase specific figures if they want to play (no substitutions here) and, after they’ve bought all those figures, changes the rules so they have to buy even more. How much does it cost to field a playable GW army? $300? $400? Maybe if every one of those armies were painted like the figures in White Dwarf it would be worth it. Want to know how much it costs to get a fully playable Warzone army? Less than $70. Really. And the figures (at least the newer ones) are just as nice.

It’s time for people to stop putting up with this oppressive British invasion. It’s time for us to step back and reevaluate the games we play. Is it really worth putting up with terrible rules and expensive figures just so we can continue to be screwed in the future? A revolution is needed. Let me suggest http://www.target.se as a place to start.