Man O' War (game)

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This article is about the war game. For other uses, see Man O' War.

Man O' War Raging Sea Battles in the World of Warhammer

Manufacturer	Games Workshop
Designer	Nigel Stillman, Bill King, Andy Jones,
Publisher	Games Workshop
Years active	1993 -
Players	2+

Random chance

Man O' War (sometimes also written as "Manowar") is a now out-of-print table top war game by Games Workshop. The game was set in the same realm of Warhammer Fantasy as used for the Warhammer Fantasy Battle and included most of the factions from that setting.

The game name coming from "Man of war", it dealt with the sea battles of the Warhammer world; each player controlling a fleet of model ships. The game typically used a small number of models with from half a dozen to a dozen models per player. with each model having a corresponding template to record damage, crew levels, and outbreaks of fire, among other bookkeeping activities. In this regard, the game mechanics proved some limiting factors.

Ships were split into three categories. Ships of the Line (squadrons of 3), Men O'War (large, single vessels) and Independents (smaller, but still singular, vessels). By the time the supplements had been published Man O'War supported the following fleets:

The Empire
Bretonnians
Orcs
Dark Elves
Dwarfs
High Elves
Chaos Plaguefleets (Slaanesh, Khorne, Nurgle, and Tzeentch)
Norse
Chaos Dwarfs
Skaven
Pirate fleets of Sartosa

The boxed game included a number of plastic models (rowed galleys), sufficient to learn the basics of play in scenarios between "pirates" and "the Empire", but the other ships in the Empire's fleet and those for the other races were white metal models. These came in small boxes rather than blister packs. Each box had the metal parts for the model ship (or ships - smaller ships came three to a box) and printed sails and flags with plastic masts (as applicable). These miniatures are now considered "out of print". The boxed game contained land features in the form of printed card shapes as well as the printed templates.

[edit] Supplements

Two boxed supplements were published Plaguefleet and Sea of Blood

Plaguefleet included the cards and rules necessary to field the fleets of the forces of Chaos; ships for followers the 4 Chaos gods (Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch and Nurgle), Skaven and Chaos Dwarf ships.

Sea of Blood added only one more fleet that of the Norse but expanded the setting with rules and cards for "Sea Monsters" that could included with any fleet and Fliers adding an aerial dimension to battles. Rules for another two types of Empire ship, a Dwarf "Dreadnought" and shore forts were included.

Following the release of these supplements a series of articles which provided additional rules for Man O'War were published in issues the Citadel Journal. Number 6 (of the 2nd series) provided rules for an Undead fleet though no miniatures were ever modeled by Citadel.

[edit] Fleets

The Bretonnian fleet was modeled on ships of the 17th century while the Empire tended more towards the look of earlier time (the inverse of their land armies). The Empire had ships with both oars and sails with the exception of the "Great-Ship" which was sail only. The Empire also had ships that carried single large cannon or mortars. The Empire's flying units were Griffin riders.

Dwarf ships were steam powered ironclads, they also had submarines and balloons. High Elf ships were fast maneuverable sail powered ships. By comparison Dark Elves mainly used great sea creatures as the basis for their "ships" - their largest ship, the "Black Ark" could house several monster-ships within for protection.

[edit] See also

Battlefleet Gothic - a game with similar mechanics set it Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 universe.
All at Sea - the official naval ruleset of Games Workshop's The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game.

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