Osprey 3A-> In Her Majesty's Name: Heroes, Villains, and Fiends

[palaeomerus]

I ordered this on Amazon and when it arrived it was in B&W with no pictures or art. An ash can? I was annoyed and wanted to see what I was mission, so I bought the PDF. No pictures or art, B&W w/ big empty column spaces. What's up with that Osprey?

This is the first time I bought one of these little blue books and felt slapped upside muh dumb fat head.


Who took muh pictures? Give 'em back!

[wolivant]

Well... contact Osprey and give them the chance to sort it out for you or explain.

I think mine was in black and white but after playing the rules I was quite happy.. Guess its down to individual tastes and tolerances.

They may be happy to refund you, if you ask..

Wolt

[commissarmoody]

That's strange, none of mine have had that problem before. I do not have a copy of that one though so I don't know if all of this issue come like that.

[palaeomerus]

Oh, I think it's a normal print. I thought it was an early proof or ashcan at first but the PDF I bought was the same way so...I guess that's the release.

I just wonder what happened. It has a credited illustrator and one piece of color cover art and a piece of splash page art and what looks like space for a lot more art in the interior, just with no no art there.

Most of the other books do their tables in blue. This one everything is black.

It's odd.

[fred]

I have the book from a couple of years ago. It says it is a print on demand version.

It is all in black / grey scale. There are no pictures, other than the cover, just lots of text and tables. It doesn't look like any pictures are missing, there aren't any big spaces or anything.

Its essentially an army list book, and it certainly packs in plenty of lists.

[pgmason]

I know from a conversation with Craig, one of the authors that the budget for the supplements (HVF and SDRS) was much less than for the original IHMN rulebook, meaning there was basically no art budget apart from the cover.  I think they were very much an experiment to see how much of a market for supplements there was.  Note none of the other dozen or so 'blue book' Osprey games has had a supplement apart from IHMN.  Whereas for something historical like Lion Rampant they've a ton of art they can re-use from their huge back catalogue, not so much for the fantasy & SF games.

That said I still think its pretty good value - its just that we've been spoilt by the ridiculously good value represented by the Osprey Wargames line as a whole. Nobody else is publishing full colour core rulebooks for £12 after all.