Grenadier's Warrior Fanzine

 A Very Short Guide to Warrior

The whole set. Issues 1-13

Warrior ran for 13 issues between December 1992 and May 1995. Created and edited by Derek Mugridge with regular contributions from Grenadier including Doug Cowie, Nick Lund and Mark Copplestone  plus stuff from the Grenadier Display team (me included). At the time Grenadier (Doug)  was  supplying the Display team with a generous pile of new figures and paying our expenses to go to shows to demo Grenadier's games. In  case anyone is thinking 5* hotels they clearly haven't spent a weekend at Butlins in Camber Sands for Euro Gencon. However is was great fun and being given free figures certainly helps. Derek  came up with the idea of the Warrior fanzine and I was tasked with writing the first scenario.

The first issue only ran to 6 sides of A4 including a full page advert for the Fantasy Warriors Companion. All the early issues were photocopied so we had to stick to black & white pictures but later Grenadier printed them so we could get photographic quality images. 

At the time of the first issue I hadn't ever attempted to formally write anything since school. Although like many wargamers, had designed scenarios on the back of an envelope. I didn't have a computer at the time (it was 1992) and my dad managed to borrow one form work so I could type it up. Warrior was mainly  on Fantasy Warriors and Kill Zone but with the occasional foray into other areas. 

We got some positive feedback from Grenadier so carried  on and Warrior grew to a massive 20+ pages. You can see some early attempts at photoshopping painted figures onto photographed backgrounds. I remember this being a very time consuming process as we were doing with MS Paint. No fancy design packages here. 

Warrior finished when Grenadier UK closed in 1995/1996 and Derek & I went on to write Combat Zone for Hobby Games. 

I pulled together a couple of my favourite articles from the early issues. I will hopefully get round to scanning a couple of other bits later. Apologies for the quality of the scans, but proves how cheap the quality of the paper was in those days. 

First Up, an article on concept designs by Mark Copplestone.

One my Favourite Battle Reports, between some of the members of the display team. 

 And finally, I thought I would include one of Grenadier's professionally produced adverts. Which was also used  in role playing magazines of the time. 

Rob