An excellent looking monster manual for WHFB, focusing on some of the setting's most enigmatic or identifiable creatures. The PDF is a beautiful, full-color book which looks great but will be a real ink/toner drain if you decide to print it. The creatures themselves are all well-done, with good descriptions and best yet story seeds which provide ideas of how to integrate them in to your game. My only criticisms of the product are that not all monsters have story seeds (likely an issue of space), nor are all fully illustrated. Otherwise this is an excellent product.

The product gives a large number of new creatures to add to a campaign and presents many interesting features and powers for them. As another review notes the "Seeds" for using monsters are also useful. The "quick template" guides for making human NPC's into dwarfs etc are also handy.

It has two flaws: significant internal duplication of content and "a step backward" on guidance previous products have about monster actions.

Regarding duplication, monsters are presented one in a "mostly narrative" section and once in a "mostly stats" section. So you have to flip back and forth to see both. Doing this you will see duplication of the text on special non-action card features and abilities such as Night Vision, Swarm features etc. (e.g., you will read twice what each of those means). Leaving aside the "divided content" approach, adding the duplication up across every creature, this amounts to considerable space being dedicated to repeating content rather than giving something new/additional.

Monster actions, up until now monsters have been published in formats where you see a group of 4 or so, which may share a very basic action and then each have specific ones. The Guide adds more possibilities so you can vary creatures (not every Gor Beastman is the same etc.). However what it doesn't do is give any advice on staring points and how many core actions each creature has. Monster actions are listed completely sepearately. There are lots and lots (great!) and they have traits indicating which monsters they go with - so you must review them and determine which ones to give a monster from scratch. There is no "basic starting point allocation of what actions a Vampire gets" that lets you quickly "run with it". This could have been provided as a quick index of actions, using the space instead allocated to duplicating the existing content.

So in all, worth the $15.00 but you will have to work harder to make use of the content than I think you should have to work.

Every fantasy setting has an obligatory Monster Manual, Creature Guide, Catalogue or similar, so it is no surprise that Warhammer Fantasy needs one. Given the decades of development that has seen the miniatures range expand for GW, there is certainly no end of creatures to select - but the authors have assembled a discerning list. All the major races are covered, and ancillary beasts are listed with their 'parent' races (ie you'll find Squigs under the entry for Greenskins). The descriptions of the creatures are quite well-done, and engaging even for a veteran of the wargame. The value-add however, lies in the Story Seeds. For many (but alas, not all) of the monsters a selection of Story Seeds are provided, to kickstart your imagination or give examples of how and where they might be encountered. My only negative comment here is that there doesn't seem to be a pattern to which races/monsters have these seeds and which don't. There were a few omissions which I felt odd - but this is a matter of personal taste. I'd highly recommend this to WHFRPG players, but also recommend it to anyone looking to spice up their fantasy game.