When Games Workshop branched out into fiction it did so cautiously, with a string of short story anthologies before it committed to anything so ambitious as novels. A highlight of those anthologies were the stories about Gotrek and Felix, a duo in the sword-and-sorcery tradition, with one a homicidal maniac and the other a simple poet doomed to follow the other around recording his adventures while trying not to get killed by them.
They were a perfect encapsulation of Warhammer, grim but also a bit silly, heroic but also earthy. Eventually they'd get their own novels, but first they appeared in a compilation of short stories called Trollslayer.
Honestly, I don't think the Felix and Gotrek stories worked as well once they were expanded out to novel length. With a few exceptions, almost all of their best adventures were short stories like those collected in Trollslayer, which is why I'm interested in the special edition Games Workshop recently announced.
The hardcover book comes with a bookmark shaped like an axe, art prints including a map of the Old World and a wanted poster for the book's ostensible heroes, two coins—a gold crown from Felix's home of the Empire, and a silver dwarf coin for Gotrek—and four beer mats.
Two of those are emblazoned with designs representing Bugman's famous Trollbrew and One Finger's Tar Drop, while the other are for a generic-sounding fantasy tavern called The Sleeping Dragon and the Brodag Brewing Festival, where new dwarf beers are traditionally uncorked. (That one also says "Grungi" which I hope isn't a typo for the dwarf god "Grungni".)
This deluxe version of Trollslayer will be a limited edition, only available while stocks last, and I'm sure it won't be cheap. Its price and release date have yet to be announced, and it would be more sensible to just grab the omnibus with the first three Gotrek and Felix books in it. Will I do the sensible thing? Probably not.
