Warmachine:Prime Nice drawings and the first piece that sucked me into the iron kingdoms.

Confrontation 3 Best pictures of models in a rulebook so far.

Warmachine: Superiority Down to the troops - that was a nice change.

One left, so I choose the Warhammer O&G Army Book. My first army and my entry in the whole hobby. And the covers were always eye candy.

Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader my first miniature game book purchase. Pretty much everything you needed, great fun.

Rag’Narok v.1 again, a beautiful book. Very clear illustrations of combat and formations, etc. Really liked the orders system.

Forces of Warmachine: Pirates of the Broken Coast This is my favourite of all the Warmachine/Hordes books.

Cadwallon: Players Handbook great production values, excellent art, great background. A joy to read.

That’s 5, but I have to add two more:

Hordes Primal and Warmachine Prime Remix Both are great games and great looking books.

Cadwallon Secrets Vol 1.: Most of the Rackham rulebooks are stunning to look at, but this has great artwork and enough information to make an adventure detailed and interesting - without nailing down every single denizen of each part of the city, or boxing the GM into doing things in only one way.

Flames of War 2ed.: While the game itself (IMO) has very little to do with WWII tactics (aside from the models being period-correct), the rulebook and attendant supplements are well thought out in terms of layout, color, and photography. Nice eye candy.

Dirtside II: Having a hardcopy of the book is great for thumbing through and coming up with your own conjectural units, scenario designs, and game mods. Great for players that like to tinker within game frameworks.

SFB: Just reading through the ship development histories and scenario introductions is entertaining - even if you don’t play the game! Lots of thought went into the background materials presented (not to mention the game rules as well…).

Battle Fleet Gothic

I could just stare for hours at the artwork of the ships - in fact while looking back at this book while thinking of my list I was hypnotized for a few minutes ;)

Warmachine - Apotheosis

This was the first Warmachine book that just blew me over the top. I play the protectorate and the artwork is just amazing for them in this book.

AT-43 - Therian Army Book

This book had some great artwork, minis and fluff. All very original.

Car Wars - Uncle Al’s Guides

Looking back now I realize that Car Wars was the first table top game (i.e. not RPG) that I played and probably most of the people around my age. The uncle al’s guides were a great way to really spice up the humour in the game instead of a boring list of equipment.

Warhammmer 40k 2nd Ed - Codex Chaos

This codex really sucked me into 40k. There are some great art pieces and language in it. I also think it happened to be the best chaos codex there has been. So many options and it made chaos marines distinctly different from imperial marines. Every chaos codex since has been only a shadow of this one, and after so many years they’ve only come up with a handful of different units.

-Tim

Warhammer Ancient Battles (”WAB”) Chariot Wars, WAB Beyond the Golden Gate and WAB Age of Arthur. The WAB series are generally of a very high quality. These three in particular IMHO are superb and are excellent examples of what all companies should aspire to in creating wargaming rulebooks.

General de Brigade - Excellent Nappie rulebook…good production values, well written and explained rules, not too much in the way of eye candy, but somehow well illustrated none the less.

Hordes Evolution - I’m surprised this one isn’t on more lists above. It’s qualitatively superior to Hordes - Primal in a number of ways. The campaign system included in the rear could be the best I’ve ever seen in any gaming system. I guess what happened is that most people are referencing the basic rules as included in Primal in their decision to tout that one over Evolution.

Warmachine Apotheosis - I saw this one included in a submission above. I have the collector’s edition. It is superb.

WFB 4th edition - Skaven Armybook - One of the best wargaming supplements ever put out by GW. Just absolutely fantastic fluff, and excellent synthesis between that fluff and the rules the supplement includes. Made me want to play Skaven in every game system.

WH40K 2nd edition Space Wolves Codex and WH40K 3rd edition Sisters of Battle Codex - these two were qualitatively superior efforts by GW in its 40K library. The battle report and the fluff by Bill King in the Space Wolves Codex and the rules for the characters and the Wolf Guard were all excellent. The Sisters of Battle Codex was an enthralling read.

Rackham’s Ragnarok book and the accompanying Aarklash source book (as included by Dr. Mercury above). Exquisite. It’s difficult to see how the production values of these books can ever be surpassed.

2. Slaves to Darkness- Artwork alone is work the price of admission

3. Lost and the Damned- Ditto

4. Hordes Primal- Rules, layout, artwork…

5. Warhammer Armies- Army lists for nearly every army in one book!

Hordes Primal - This is the face of modern gaming books. From the clean rules section to the iconic artwork, this book is the gold standard now for me.

Warmachine Prime: The old black and white was just the feel to get me to change systems.

Mordheim - It reminded me of Rogue Trader but a fantasy bend with a smooth layout.

2 Ed Vampire the Masquerade - The artwork really setup the systems theme.

2) Gurps Viking - my favorite of the Gurps supplementals, has as much interesting knowledge about Vikings packed in as many historical books on them

3) DMG 1st edition - never got to use it much but it has some fantastic details and extras for any fantasy game

4) Dark Heresy - fantastic book just dripping with fluff, havent played it yet but the rules look good for doing a 40k universe game

5) DMG supplementals, the blue books for 2nd edition, nothing spectacular but alot of nuggets of useful info hidden away in here

Hordes Evolution: This book currently sets the bar for design IMO, it all looks lick-ably good and I can find what I need in it very quickly. Only downside is that the cover illustration is a bit of a let down.

Hell Dorado: Awesome illustrations that capture the subject matter perfectly. Not for the faint hearted, especially page 69 (IIRC).

Confrontation 3rd edition: The first rule book that really wowed me with the design. I’m convinced that without this book Hordes Evolution (and many other recent books) wouldn’t look half as good, a true inspiration.

Tannhauser: It’s only a short book, but again the design is perfect for the subject matter.

Infinity: Almost gives the impression you’re reading from a computer terminal. Would be higher but font issues and occasional “overly-busy” elements drag it down for me.

Great point Stormwolf

I hadn’t considered these for this little exercise but these were the way into the whole fantasy Sci-fi genre for me too. Swiftly followed by AD&D and then GW stuff (and all the little publishers that used to advertise in WD).

The Fighting Fantasy system is so simple it’s genius - an excellent introduction into the whole genre. I actually dug my books out of the loft a while ago and have loved playing them since - despite my mind being ‘tuned in’ on how to beat them now that I’m (much) older I still love the pure escapism they deliver.

W40K Rogue Trader Compendium (The Red Book)
Back in the 90s and today, this was my must thumbed through book, lots of character, fluff and packed with additional rules for the main game, puts all modern codices to shame.

Kryomek - Rulebook
Super fluff, nice rules, super artwork. I have this and Hivestone and they are really good as a sort of super-cyberpunk setting with aliens. Very much Aliens inspired, but how can this be a bad thing.

W40K Rogue Trader Compilation (The Yellow Book)
Again back in the 90s very well used by me, all sorts of nifty stuff for the Eldar and Genestealers too, a must have for any RT player. Still a great read.

Full Thrust II - GZG
Simple rules but evocative of the whole sci-fi space combat setting, still prefer this one over the 2.5 versions, although the artwork and fluff is superb in these.

Fighting Fantasy Game Books - Steve Jackson & Ian Livingstone
This is where it all started for me, when I was Ten or Eleven. Like all of them but my three favourites are Citadel of Chaos, Forest of Doom and Space Assassin. The books where YOU are the hero.

Ogre/GEV board game booklet.
Just miisses out on my top 5. Nice set of simple yet very nice rules, that produce a superb tactical game and the short story contained within is quite chilling coming from the viewpoint of stopping an Ogre attack.

BattleTech - FASA.
This also just misses my top 5, because the clunky rules (like `em for small games) do not quite live up to the fluff generated by the countless novels written for this game.

I have become a recent convert to the The WarEngine rules at the moment but will have to see how they pan out.

SW

Coming a bit more up to date and getting to more TTG I loved the first The Lord of the Rings SBG ruleset - the Fellowship of the Ring one that came out in 2001. That rekindled my love for the hobby after an absence of 11 years and totally suckered me into frothing over the delicious photoart. At the height of LotR fevour it completely swept me away!

After that it would be coming to games I currently play, and here nostalgia plays no part and we are talking about overall impression (”gorgeousness”) I guess.

That would make the Infinity rulebook number 4, and Warmachine: Apotheosis number 5.

Of course, if playability were the prime criterion the order would be different, but I’m looking at it from the perspective of which books I would be most sorry to lose if there was a fire.