A new issue of dragon, and this one featuring another one of Denis Beauvais’ famous chess paintings, the last one in a series which has been occasionally gracing Dragon covers for some years now (notice that in the corner the painting is dated to 1984). Beauvais himself serves as the model for the manspreading black king.

As has been the case in the last few Dragon issues, this one is also themed, in this case the theme is competitions in (A)D&D, so we get articles on gladiatorial combat (where the illustration has a questionable symbol in the gladiator’s shield looking just like a neonazi black sun, which I won’t share here because I’d like to keep my account), as well as jousting and archery competitions. 

This new idea of concentrating themed articles in one issue is pretty helpful for readers, helping them have some idea of the specific contents of each issue, instead of everything just being spread around willy nilly. All in all a good issue of Dragon with plenty of information if you want to give your players some games within the game.