Pyramid Review

Dark Heaven: Apocalypse

Published by Reaper Miniatures

Designed by Al Pare and Ed Pugh

$34.95

The unspoken (and unnamed) target of Reaper Miniatures' Dark Heaven: Apocalypse is the Warhammer franchise of Games Workshop.

The setting is a dark fantasy world on the brink of doom: The living races (humans, dwarves, elves, orcs, etc.) have long been fighting the armies of the undead (zombies, skeletons, ghouls, ghasts, and so on). Crashing the party is the Dire-Dead, who come in the same varieties as the undead, but are different in several important ways. The undead are relatively mindless, according to the rules, and do not change or grow. The Dire-Dead are inhabitants of another plane of existence invading the Dark Heaven home world, and are considered "races" -- like the elves and dwarves and humans -- rather than monsters.

Vampires are a special case, considered to be neither living nor dead, but cursed. They have grown strong and rule several parts of the world, with elaborate plots and politics in their society.

Anyway, the Dire-Dead are coming to town, led by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, War, Plague, Famine and Pestilence. The vampires and their undead friends are offering a truce with the living in order to repel these invaders, but can anyone be trusted? A nice little novella, The 12th Journal of Johann Kruger, accompanies the boxed set and establishes the scene nicely. (Sadly, I couldn't find a credit anywhere for the author of the . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: December 18, 1998

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