terrific set of rules." Overall, Brown though this game "accomplishes handily what it sets out to do. [...] All the elements are there — monsters, magic, heroic characters — the works. I've never seen as complete a rules set as this one." He concluded, "Can I recommend buying it? Well, yes I can, since I have an interest in all types of gaming. If you’re a science-fiction gamer and that's it, Warhammer Fantasy Battle probably isn't for you. However, if you get the chance to look through it, you might change your mind." In the February 1989 edition of Dragon (Issue 142), Ken Rolston gave the third edition high praise, saying, "If you’re serious about fantasy tabletop gaming, Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WFB) is probably your only choice. Rolston liked the "fast-paced" rules system and developed fantasy background, and his only reservations were about presentation: "The text is dense and wordy. The wealth of diagrams is good, but their captions aren’t always clear. The abundance of photos, illustrations, and paintings is often visually stimulating, but many of these graphics are of marginal or negligible relevance to the accompanying text. The black-and-white photographic reproduction is surprisingly poor." He concluded with a strong recommendation: "The fantasy campaign setting is simply super. The series of revised editions, supplements, and magazine support articles indicates that Games Workshop is interested in and capable of catering to the gamer’s appetite for new features, refined editions, and elaborated fantasy campaign materials." 4th edition (1992) and 5th edition (1996) The fourth and fifth editions of the game, released in October 1992 and October 1996, respectively, were similar to each other but quite different from the third. The fifth edition in particular became known pejoratively as "Herohammer" because of the imbalance between the very powerful heroes, monsters and wizards in the game and blocks of troops which existed effectively as cannon fodder. Both editions of the game were sold as box sets containing not only the rulebooks and a variety of other play aids but also sufficient plastic miniatures to be able to play the game "out of the box". The rules underwent a re-write compared to the 3rd Edition. A completely re-worked magic system was produced which was available as a boxed expansion set. Rather than selecting spells they were drawn at random and the magic phase was based on the play of these cards, making magic a bit