Yes, it was a twofer. I bought two gun books at the same time, so sue me. This is the second volume of the Big Bang series of gun books, and not quite as large as the first. I won't fault it there, since the big chunk of rules in the front doesn't exist in this edition. While the first book was rather broad based, this one focuses on the "Second American-Iraqi War", otherwise known as the Operation: Iraqi Freedom.

In this one, the "rules" section consists of some scary, detailed background information and game rules for a sampling of chemical and biological weapons developed by the Iraqi government. This section was apparently spurred into existence over the author's annoyance that the nerve agent sarin is detailed in D20 modern as a poison affecting consitution. I do have to agree, though, I don't see how the D20 modern authors decided nerves had more to do the CON than DEX...

Anyway, that aside, let's get to the guns! As with the first book, there are plenty of details about all sorts of modern military weapons, about 80 or so of them covered this time around. However, they didn't focus on just guns. There's plenty of detail on military heavy weapons, too, and I'm not talking about just machine guns! There are all kinds of rocket launchers and anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons detailed as well, and I'm thoroughly shocked at the details provided. Let me give you an example. From other RPGs, I thought a Soviet RPG-7 fired a rocket that could punch a hole in a little armor and cause some surrounding collateral damage to soft targets. I get to the RPG-7 details in this book, and a whole new world was opened up for me! I got details for 12 different kinds of rockets fired by the RPG-7 system! And not just armor-piercing ones, either! They even make thermobaric warheads for the thing (also known as Fuel Air Explosives, the kind of bomb we know as the US Air Force's "Daisycutter") Think that's good? They did the same thing for the M-203 grenade launcher, providing the details on 14 different grenades that can be used with it! If I wasn't impressed with the first book in the series, I sure the heck am now.

All in all, this book is equal to the first contentwise, mainly thanks to the focus on special munitions for many of the weapons presented. However, the book has a heavy feeling of being rushed, but I think that is actually forgivable, considering there was less than 3 weeks of warfare to provide the impetus to produce this book for timely sales. I can only hope that they will revise the book at a later date and run it through the "free update" system provided at RPGnow, the retailer through which the books are available. I don't know about you, but I look forward to the next volume of this series!