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Fantasy Rules! (note the exclamation point - an important part of the game, that is) 1st edition was an interesting set when I picked it up a few years back. It came bundled loosely in a vinyl magazine bag. In it were sheets detailing the rules for allowing nearly everything fantastical in a wargame. Yes, nearly everything. Dwarves, elves, undead, spirits, elementals, humans, barbarians, demigods and much, much, MUCH more. It was impressive; I was amazed at how many army lists they crammed in there. It introduced a very neat concept in the "Morale Clock"; and generally had rules that were easy to use for a large variety of battles.

Fantasy Rules! 2nd Edition, I am pleased to say, has outdone that game in million ways.

For starters, the presentation has greatly improved. Instead of the loose sheets, the book comes spiral bound with a full-color cover of a deep sea beast attacking a ship, with a man on a flying carpet looking rather distressed about it.(We'll get back to that in a second) Inside the book, there are actually PICTURES of gameplay; diagrams for examples, and a beautiful organized ruleset.

Okay, let's get back to that deep-sea beast for a second. A feature I have no recollection of in FR! 1st Edition is the wide array of places that FR! 2nd can be played. On land, on sea, underwater, underground, in the air. Where doesn't matter; so long as the forces can both affect one another (undersea forces fighting land-dwellers is a bit of challenge), the rules are there to support it.

That is perhaps the most interesting thing about the FR! 2nd rules. They are simple, but incredibly flexible. The core rules actually only take up 25 pages of the book - the rest of made of up tons of options for letting you use whatever army you want, with whatever options they might require. Want to run a historical Hittite army? Great! Want to see how well it goes against Undead? Easily playable in FR! 2nd.

The game is likewise easy in it's scaling. It works fine for either 15mm or 25mm (and up, given the sizing of modern miniatures) miniatures. It goes by a special unit basing, but this is easy to adapt for miniatures based for other games. The overall scale of the game is very epic, so that the basing of miniatures is to represent units. The life and death of the single trooper are of little consequence in FR! 2nd. Even characters - generals, wizards, witch hunters, assassins and the like - are doomed if caught without a unit.

The movement system is fairly standard. Units can wheel, charge, move obliquely and so forth.

Combat is not quite like you would expect. Since this is an epic scaled game, FR! 2nd doesn't track losses. The amount of their losses is relatively to the quality of the unit itself. Therefore, units that lose combat become demoralized - representing both their loss of troops and the damage to their morale. (Truly powerful combats can destroy units outright, but this is relatively rare) Demoralized units perform less well then their more stable counterparts, and can become double demoralized. Then, finally, destroyed. FR! 2nd uses the D10 to resolve all missile fire, combat and checks.

The beauty of FR! 2nd is the elegance of it's gameplay, and of the morale clock. Basically, each army starts out with their morale clocks at 10. As the game progresses, and armies take losses, the clock is reduced to reflect the fighting spirit of the army slipping away. As you get closer to zero, negative effects start in. Being able to activate fewer units. Less magic. Finally, when an army hits 4, one quarter of their army becomes demoralized. They've just entered the danger zone.

But enough about the gameplay. That's the easy stuff. The hardest part about FR! 2nd is…which army to play? The book gives lists for over 50 types of army, including, but hardly limited to: Amphibian, Celts, Chaos, Druids, Gnomes, Reef Dwellers, Pirates, Norse, Gnome…and a ton more. Some of the army lists are fairly simple, like the Dark Elves, or as detailed and complex as the Inca. Players are whole-heartedly invited to modify the lists to suit their flavor of army.

The units themselves boil down to a fairly basic bunch, but are still given a lot of options to give them character and more dynamic ability. There are rules for just about whatever devious players can think of - including those marvels of fantasy science, contraptions built by crazed inventors that could possibly win the battle in a single stroke or just as easily run rampant through the ranks of their own side. And, the game has a very through design system that will let players create units to suit themselves. This looks like one area that could through a wrench the works, but so long as players are generally the agreeable sort they won't have many problems with it.

No fantasy system would be complete without magic, and FR! 2nd certainly comes through on that count. Moreso than many other game systems, FR! 2nd shows the wide range of magics - from shamanic ritual magic to the usual wizened mage and even diabolical necromancers. There are also rules for summoning things like Elementals and Spirits. (Both of which can be bad news for opposing armies, let me tell you!!) Magic works out to be a bidding war between the players - player one spends the magic points to cast a spell, player two attempts to dispel, then both players have to wager in magic points to see if the spell goes off or is dispelled. In the end, this means that a player has to balance their spell points carefully - they might use all of them on offensive spells, and leave nothing for dispelling, or they might dispel everything thrown at them and never get a spell off themselves.

The look of FR! 2nd is much improved from the 1st edition. The spiral bound ensures it will survive more games with its pages intact. The layout of the book is quite nice, although the placement of the index (on the flipside of the table of contents) had me scratching my head for a bit. The miniature pictures in the book are very helpful for the examples, and the few pieces of art help the mood of the game.

Overall, I would say that this is an excellent game for people looking for a new challenge. The ability to use whatever fantasy miniatures (and oddball ones, even!) you own is a big plus, and the game has so many options that even the most experienced players will find some new tricks and ideas in it's pages. I'd say this is a real winner.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Fantasy Rules! 2nd Edition
Author: Chip Harrison and Curtis Wright Category: Miniatures Wargame Company/Publisher: Chipco Line: Fantasy Rules! Cost: $29.95 Page count: 139 Capsule Review by Robert E. Allen III on 05/28/99. Genre tags: Fantasy Historical Asian/Far_East	Fantasy Rules! (note the exclamation point - an important part of the game, that is) 1st edition was an interesting set when I picked it up a few years back. It came bundled loosely in a vinyl magazine bag. In it were sheets detailing the rules for allowing nearly everything fantastical in a wargame. Yes, nearly everything. Dwarves, elves, undead, spirits, elementals, humans, barbarians, demigods and much, much, MUCH more. It was impressive; I was amazed at how many army lists they crammed in there. It introduced a very neat concept in the "Morale Clock"; and generally had rules that were easy to use for a large variety of battles. Fantasy Rules! 2nd Edition, I am pleased to say, has outdone that game in million ways. For starters, the presentation has greatly improved. Instead of the loose sheets, the book comes spiral bound with a full-color cover of a deep sea beast attacking a ship, with a man on a flying carpet looking rather distressed about it.(We'll get back to that in a second) Inside the book, there are actually PICTURES of gameplay; diagrams for examples, and a beautiful organized ruleset. Okay, let's get back to that deep-sea beast for a second. A feature I have no recollection of in FR! 1st Edition is the wide array of places that FR! 2nd can be played. On land, on sea, underwater, underground, in the air. Where doesn't matter; so long as the forces can both affect one another (undersea forces fighting land-dwellers is a bit of challenge), the rules are there to support it. That is perhaps the most interesting thing about the FR! 2nd rules. They are simple, but incredibly flexible. The core rules actually only take up 25 pages of the book - the rest of made of up tons of options for letting you use whatever army you want, with whatever options they might require. Want to run a historical Hittite army? Great! Want to see how well it goes against Undead? Easily playable in FR! 2nd. The game is likewise easy in it's scaling. It works fine for either 15mm or 25mm (and up, given the sizing of modern miniatures) miniatures. It goes by a special unit basing, but this is easy to adapt for miniatures based for other games. The overall scale of the game is very epic, so that the basing of miniatures is to represent units. The life and death of the single trooper are of little consequence in FR! 2nd. Even characters - generals, wizards, witch hunters, assassins and the like - are doomed if caught without a unit. The movement system is fairly standard. Units can wheel, charge, move obliquely and so forth. Combat is not quite like you would expect. Since this is an epic scaled game, FR! 2nd doesn't track losses. The amount of their losses is relatively to the quality of the unit itself. Therefore, units that lose combat become demoralized - representing both their loss of troops and the damage to their morale. (Truly powerful combats can destroy units outright, but this is relatively rare) Demoralized units perform less well then their more stable counterparts, and can become double demoralized. Then, finally, destroyed. FR! 2nd uses the D10 to resolve all missile fire, combat and checks. The beauty of FR! 2nd is the elegance of it's gameplay, and of the morale clock. Basically, each army starts out with their morale clocks at 10. As the game progresses, and armies take losses, the clock is reduced to reflect the fighting spirit of the army slipping away. As you get closer to zero, negative effects start in. Being able to activate fewer units. Less magic. Finally, when an army hits 4, one quarter of their army becomes demoralized. They've just entered the danger zone. But enough about the gameplay. That's the easy stuff. The hardest part about FR! 2nd is…which army to play? The book gives lists for over 50 types of army, including, but hardly limited to: Amphibian, Celts, Chaos, Druids, Gnomes, Reef Dwellers, Pirates, Norse, Gnome…and a ton more. Some of the army lists are fairly simple, like the Dark Elves, or as detailed and complex as the Inca. Players are whole-heartedly invited to modify the lists to suit their flavor of army. The units themselves boil down to a fairly basic bunch, but are still given a lot of options to give them character and more dynamic ability. There are rules for just about whatever devious players can think of - including those marvels of fantasy science, contraptions built by crazed inventors that could possibly win the battle in a single stroke or just as easily run rampant through the ranks of their own side. And, the game has a very through design system that will let players create units to suit themselves. This looks like one area that could through a wrench the works, but so long as players are generally the agreeable sort they won't have many problems with it. No fantasy system would be complete without magic, and FR! 2nd certainly comes through on that count. Moreso than many other game systems, FR! 2nd shows the wide range of magics - from shamanic ritual magic to the usual wizened mage and even diabolical necromancers. There are also rules for summoning things like Elementals and Spirits. (Both of which can be bad news for opposing armies, let me tell you!!) Magic works out to be a bidding war between the players - player one spends the magic points to cast a spell, player two attempts to dispel, then both players have to wager in magic points to see if the spell goes off or is dispelled. In the end, this means that a player has to balance their spell points carefully - they might use all of them on offensive spells, and leave nothing for dispelling, or they might dispel everything thrown at them and never get a spell off themselves. The look of FR! 2nd is much improved from the 1st edition. The spiral bound ensures it will survive more games with its pages intact. The layout of the book is quite nice, although the placement of the index (on the flipside of the table of contents) had me scratching my head for a bit. The miniature pictures in the book are very helpful for the examples, and the few pieces of art help the mood of the game. Overall, I would say that this is an excellent game for people looking for a new challenge. The ability to use whatever fantasy miniatures (and oddball ones, even!) you own is a big plus, and the game has so many options that even the most experienced players will find some new tricks and ideas in it's pages. I'd say this is a real winner. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)