In this second installment of the Bag Full of Guns series, we take a look at weapons coming from the Soviet Union and latterly Russia, some of the more unusual items stemming from innovative research rather than the more mundane Russian weapons to be found in the core Spycraft 2.0 rulebook.

The idea is that weapon designers were seeking to achieve the twin goals of penetrating power and silence in weapons designed for use in a range of situations including underwater! There's a new weapon quality Submersible to reflect this, which allows firearms with this quality limited effectiveness when submerged, a situation in which most regular firearms are useless: even if they will fire the bullet is so slowed by water resistance that it is very little threat.

The first weapon is not strictly speaking a firearm at all, it's a ballistic knife which looks like a regular combat knife only you can 'fire' the blade using a strong spring in the handle. It has limited range and apparently is woefully inaccurate (not to mention leaving you empty-handed!) so I'm not sure what use it is. Surprise factor, maybe?

Next up, a couple of small holdout pistols including one specifically designed to be silent. Using a sub-sonic round and various engineering tricks to minimise the sound of the mechanism when firing it is pretty quiet. These are followed by several service pistols and revolvers for handgunners who need a bit more stopping power. This collection includes a bizarre-sounding underwater pistol, the Tsniitochmach SPP-1M Underwater Pistol. From the description it looks quite weird... and it actually exists so you can find pictures of it (alas, there isn't an illustration here). It uses a hydrodynamic effect called supercavitation to enable its projectile to travel further than a regular one would when underwater.

A collection of sub-machine guns, assault rifles and semi-automatic rifles follows. Again, however weird they sound, most were actually made and even worked! Each weapon is given a fairly detailed description and there are full game statistics in a big chart at the back.

If your game includes Russian agents they may have used some of these (or at least heard of them) but the real fun will probably come when your characters mount a raid underwater and the defenders pop up with these odd-looking firearms that actually shoot reasonably effectively underwater!

A good supplement if you already have a D20 compatible guide to modern firearms. My main complaint is that some obvious weapons are missing (the AN-94 comes to mind). The booklet is also a bit sparse on illustrations, which help to make weapons I've never seen myself more concrete. Still, this is a good product and well worth the price.

This Bag Full of Guns supplement contains a wider variety of weapon types, including pistols/revolver, SMG, rifles, and a ballistic knife. In addition, the Soviet flavor adds some regional utility for certain missions, NPCs, and PCs.

The new "Submersible" quality is introduced, and several of the weapons are designed for special applications (many are silenced).

For the price, this is an excellent purchase for someone who wants to introduce Soviet weaponry or is looking for special application weapons or for a player that is looking to flesh out a Soviet or Eastern European character. For anyone else it is still a very good purchase.

Another great PDF from Crafty. It covers some of the odds and ends of modern Russian weapons - I was glad to find the various suppressed weapons and specialty calibers in it. The only thing I felt was missing would be the AN-94 Abakan assault rifle, but compared to the gear in this one I guess it's a bit too mundane.