I'm a big fan of the Warmaster game from Games Workshop and I was pleased to hear that GW was coming out with their first ever annual for the game. With that disclaimer made, I really can't recommend picking it up--unless you are required by local law to own every Games Workshop product produced. It's not that the Annual is a poorly done book or not without merit, it's just that if you're into the game, you probably have most of the book in your possession already.
To quote GW's latest press release: "The Annual is 104 pages based on the developmental articles published in Warmaster Magazine - but substantially reworked and updated as regular readers will soon discover. As such it combines several 'best of' articles with an official game update, three new official armies (Lizardmen, Bretonnians and Kislevites) and one new trial army (Vampire Counts)."
For the uninitiated, Warmaster is a fantasy miniatures wargame set in the Warhammer world but in a smaller scale than the more popular 25mm Warhammer Fantasy Battles. Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs and Goblins and a host of others duke it out for supremacy in 10mm scale; that means the average soldier in the game is around 10mm tall (about 25mm equal an inch).
Players purchase metal miniatures to represent their forces, paint them appropriately and deploy them on a miniature battlefield set on the tabletop. The emphasis of the game is on "HUGE" armies battling it out. The smaller scale allows you to fill the table with literally dozens of regiments.
The new annual is admittedly little different from the other annual compilations that GW puts out for their other lines including Warhammer (fantasy) and Warhammer 40k (sci-fi). GW makes no bones about this fact as the annuals serve to gather the best articles of the year into one compact volume. This has its good and bad sides.
Like the other GW annuals, Warmaster Annual 2002 allows Warmaster players the option of buying all of the best articles for the year together in one place. No looking for this magazine or that in your collection during a game--since the best articles are supposed to be right there with you. You also probably don't have to sweat it if you couldn't get a copy of the individual magazine issue that contained this or that item since, again, the best stuff is supposed to be in the Annual.
These are all admittedly good points for grabbing the book. Additionally, the production values for the book are, as usual for GW, very high. Lots of model pictures and great art and articles for the game system. The game is a ton of fun and the articles in Warmaster magazine help add more options for players with each issue. Terrain building, model conversions, new army lists (see below), fiction and rules clarifications are all good reasons to get hold of the articles in the first place.
Now for the other side of the coin. GW in its generosity already puts many of its more pivotal articles (especially army lists--the rules necessary for fielding new armies such as the lizardmen, dark elves, etc.) up on its website in PDF format--after a respectful waiting period so that those who buy the magazine get the stuff sooner. And as I have already noted, these articles are obviously also available as originally published in Warmaster magazine.
So....if you already have access to the articles (either by net or by paying for the individual magazine issues), there really isn't a heck of a lot of incentive for coughing up $24.99 for the annual.
Warmaster magazine (and any other GW magazine for that matter) and the Annual serve only one purpose: to sell you more miniatures. New army lists, in particular, are developed so that players will purchase new armies and/or new unit types in order to be more competitive on the tabletop battlefield.
Sure there are some articles that aren't available for free download or that have been revised from the magazine, but I'm betting that they're not the ones that most Warmaster fans will lose much sleep over in the first place. I say buy it if you're a completist but otherwise save your money for more models.
For the money that you would spend on this thick, soft cover compilation, you could add three complete regiments to any Warmaster army. And you'll want to have as many regiments as possible if you're playing this game.
By the way, the site for downloading Warmaster articles is:
http://games-workshop.com/Warhammerworld/warmaster/default.htm
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