ENCAPSULATE 1993
Matthew Vernall explores modern gaming one year at a time, this month: 1993
Words by Matthew Vernall
1993
Nineteen ninety three. A special year for me, as it’s when I came into existence, but also a big year for pop culture. Bill Clinton became President of the United States, Meatloaf would do almost anything for love and Barney the Dinosaur danced onto the small screen (TVs, not phones). A lot of massively influential games and properties also went mainstream this year, check out our highlights here.
WARHAMMER 40,000 SECOND EDITION
The Grim Darkness of the 41st Millennium finally started to take shape with this rangewide update. Lots of rules had been printed across magazines and boxed releases before this release, which set out to cement the foundations of the game’s mechanics and lore.
Second Edition pivoted the game to a much more traditional wargame. Gone were the roleplaying game aspects, with small squads and lots of different polyhedral dice. Now everything was centered around using d6s, forces looked a lot more like actual armies, with compilations for all of an army’s rules and miniatures (known as “codexes”) being published for each faction, weaponry is standardized to make playing games easier to read and independent characters are established as iconic figureheads for your force.