Two OOP HLBS Giraffes of eBay for £4.39.

One Star Wars Universe booster in Canada for $25 which is about £12.

One issue of Polymancer for $6.95 which is about £3.30.

Running total is now £663.83

Polymancer is a new independent RPG magazine from Quebec. In some ways it’s a blast from the past as apart from the glossy paper and CGI cover artwork it could have come from the 1980s - articles on when to kill off PCs; on running swashbuckling games; on using dictatorships as backgrounds; on giving incidental NPCs personalities.

The main feature is a scenario based around an alternative history where World War II came to a stalemate due to the combined use of airships and nukes. The actual scenario is just another trip down the familiar ‘HQ loses contact with isolated base and sends PCs to investigate’ lane but the background is somewhat interesting. The magazine promises more background on their web site but I can’t find it. In fact the website - www.polymancerstudios.com isn’t very good at all. But with the current exchange rate the magazine itself may be worth another look.

I was going to post something about this, but Steve Flanagan said it better on the SFSFW mailing list.

Harbinger is now billing itself as “The Only Independent Miniatures Gaming Magazine” (their emphasis). How true.

Except for Ragnarok, Slingshot, Lone Warrior and all the other society magazines.

And Wargames Journal, Total Model and all the other on-line magazines.

And Ravage and Vae Victis.

And Wargames Soldiers and Strategy, the newly-Englished Dadi & Piombo, and Historical Miniature Gamer.

And Miniature Wargames and Wargames Illustrated.

And is a magazine whose avowed editorial policy is to provide a mouhpiece for medium-sized wargames companies actually “independent”, or is it just multiply-dependent?

I’ve decided that I don’t want to become one of those people who live in a set of cleared passageways between towering piles of old magazines. So I’m having a clear out. But before I chuck them all in the recycling I’m looking at flogging some of them. The piles mostly consist of:

• TV Zone
• SFX
• Wargames Illustrated
• Miniature Wargames
• Practical Wargamer
• Harbinger
• Star Trek The Magazine
• Warpstone
• Valkyrie
• Prehistoric Times

It’s really the first three that are problematic (and I’m definitely keeping all of the last three), so what’s the market in back issues of those like?

Not good it would seem.

Wargames Illustrated have released issues 1-150 on CD-ROM with 151-200 to follow soon, so there’s very little demand for back issues there.

SFX and TV Zone would seem to be the sort of thing that sci-fi collectors should go for but the evidence on eBay seems to suggest otherwise – very few bids, even on issues no longer available from the publishers’ back issue departments.

So before I waste my time listing stuff on eBay that probably won’t sell I’m making an open offer here, if any of the above takes your fancy, or if you want to ask any questions, please post a comment or send me an e-mail and let’s see if we can work something out. I’ll draw up a list of which issues I have and post it later.

“Introducing Happy, the brand new magazine devoted entirely to shopping.”

If Five put The Dead Zone on at a decent time then I wouldn’t be watching late night telly, so I wouldn’t be seeing late night telly ads, so I would still be blissfully ignorant of the existance of Happy.

The newly described South American raptor, Neuquenraptor argentinus, indicates that either the deinonychosaurs had a longer history than was thought, or that South America was not as isolated from the nothern continents. Or both. Anyway cool new dino with totally unpronouncable name.

Meanwhile, Copplestone Castings have released a Young T-Rex, which like the earlier Velociraptors seems to be heavily influenced by the Tamiya plastic kit version, and a pair of Gallimimuses.

And Jeff Valent Studios have re-released their “Raptor Like Dinosaurs” and have a very nice looking Tyrannosaur and Syntarsus available for pre-order. I’m not too taken with the Raptors which a bit cartoony and a bit Jurassic Park, but the new ones look amazing. This is the first time anyone’s done a Syntarsus in wargaming scale (or any scale as far as I know) and I was recently thinking that it was a shame that the same dozen or so genera keep on getting sculpted again and again when there are several hundred genera that have never been done. I’m not sure about the feathers though - as an early Jurassic Coelophysoid it’s a quite distant from those dinosaurs known, or even suspected, to have had feathers.

Prehistoric Times Issue 70 arrived last week. Lots of lovely pics as ever but for me the highlight was the well deserved fisking given to pterosaur crank David Peters by S. Christopher Bennett.

Finally, there’s Dino-Opoly. The complete absence of any reference to Parker Bros on or inside the box suggests that the subtle rule changes (start with $1630 rather than $1500; money from taxes, etc. go into a pot which is collected by the next player to land on Free Parking.) are a way to avoid paying any licensing fees. Sneaky.

Played one game. Lettice won.

Resubscribe to Wargames Illustrated magazine - £40

Copy of Miniatures Wargames magazine - £3.50

Rebel Storm booster - £8.99 from Croydon Forbidden Planet. The rare was Princess Leia in her slave girl costume, which is (a) Very Rare and (b) one I’ve already got. So should be able to recoup the cost of the whole packet via eBay.

Running total is now £214.78.

£45 to resubscribe to Harbinger magazine.

Running total is now £138.09.