This is the first Warhammer Chronicles to do something a little bit different, and is a glimpse of things to come. In the past we've printed 'work-in-progress' army lists for the Bretonnians and Lizardmen, and the feedback we've received (both complaints and praise!) has proved most useful.

So it was that, a little while back, Warhammer creator Rick Priestley (or Mr P. as I like to call him) sat me down for a chat. We'd just finished completing the Warhammer Annual 2002, and Mr P. was saying how great it was that finally we had one place to put all those niggling rules corrections and Q&As. "So, young fella me lad," he said, "how are we going to make the best use of this?", or words to that effect. "Use the Annual to fix other broken bits?", I hesitantly suggested. "That's the fella," exclaimed Mr P, rewarding my intuition with a cup of tea.

Well, to cut the rambling (I think I've filled enough space to stop Paul Sawyer nagging me to fill my page quota), we'd like to use Warhammer Chronicles to trial run changes to the Warhammer games system itself. This may be fairly specific, like this issue's revised spell lores, or more wide ranging. Then, you lot, the unwashed Warhammer masses, if you excuse the term, can let us know how you get on with them, either via good old snail mail, through our playtest e-mail address, or just by discussing them on our Games Development message board on the website (details opposite). Now, I can't promise we'll reply individually or contribute to any web discussions, but it does get read and fed into the rat-blender that goes to make up our collective brain. Later on, if the feedback proves positive one way or another, we'll make an official amendment to the Warhammer rules in the Annual. Once the official amendments start getting out of hand, it's time to stick them all back into the rulebook and produce a new edition of Warhammer. Sounds almost like a plan, doesn't it!

Anyway, this month I present revised versions of three of the Spell Lores: Beasts, Heavens and Life. Beasts and Life don't seem to be used that much (though they look pretty useful to me), whilst we've all had the sneaking suspicion that Heavens is just a little too popular to be entirely balanced with the other lists.

The important bit - the ideas presented under any banner of 'Experimental Rules' are just that -experimental! Some of these we'll have tried out ourselves, others may be so hot off the presses we haven't even had a game with them. This means that both opponents must agree that they're okay with using these amended rules beforehand. Organisers of tournaments, clubs, etc must decide which rules they are using. As far as we're concerned the rulebook and Annual contain the 'official' rules, while these are merely our informed suggestions for improvement.