I’ve got a medium-size collection of gaming books, old D&D, some of the older White Wolf stuff dealing with the effete, paederast blood-suckers, loads of the obligatory Warhammer Fantasy/Battle/40K books, almost everything published for Exalted (of course) and quit a few random books here and there bunged from musty used bookstores I couldn’t pass up at the time. Many of these books are impressive in their binding and artwork and design, some are pretty hefty collections of paper, especially the 2nd Edition Exalted books– however, nothing could have prepared me for the sheer size and gleaming glory of the Warhammer 8th edition hardcover. I’d even seen it and handled it in stores before, but you forget you see, you forget just how huge it is. Clocking in at over 500 pages literally packed with full-color images throughout–it can easily be deemed the Armageddon of miniature war-game books. I contrast it to my first miniature wargame rule set from the late 70’s: Swords and Spells and it’s staggering reminder of how far we’ve come in the hobby– that a company that sells toy soldiers and some books to a tiny portion of the planet’s population could pull together the cash to write, design and publish something so massive it cannot even be used as crapper reading without a crapper reading stand– it’s just that friggin’ huge.
And so officially begins my descent yet another miniature gaming obsession that will produce probably less than 20 painted miniatures and 2-3 actual games in the next year. Sad but probably true.