Warhammer Fantasy Battle

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Warhammer The Game of Fantasy Battles
Warhammer Fantasy Battle 7th edition rulebook
Manufacturer	Games Workshop
Designer	Bryan Ansell, Richard Halliwell, Rick Priestley
Publisher	Games Workshop
Years active	1983 — present
Players	2+
Random chance	dice rolling
Skills required	Strategy

Warhammer: The Game of Fantasy Battles, formerly Warhammer Fantasy Battle and often abbreviated to Warhammer, is a tabletop wargame created by Games Workshop and the origin of the Warhammer Fantasy setting.

The game is played with 'regiments' of fantasy miniatures . It uses stock fantasy races such as humans, elves, dwarfs, undead, orcs, as well as less some more unusual types such as lizardmen and skaven etc. Each race has its own unique strengths and flaws. Elves, for example, have some of the most powerful archers and magicians in the game but have poor overall defense.

Since first appearing in 1983, Warhammer has been periodically updated and re-released with changes to the gaming system and army lists. The current official version is the seventh edition, released on 9 September 2006.

Contents 1 Playing the game 2 Collecting 3 The miniatures 4 The Warhammer World 5 The armies 6 Editions of the game 6.1 1st Edition 6.2 2nd Edition 6.3 3rd Edition 6.4 4th and 5th 6.5 6th and 7th 7 Spin-offs and Derivative Games 8 References 9 See also 10 External links

[edit] Playing the game

Warhammer is a competitive tabletop wargame where two or more players compete against each other with "armies" of miniatures, whilst earlier editions contained card-stock figures and counters, the newer models are plastic and White metal miniatures manufactured by Citadel Miniatures. The rules of the game have been published in a series of books, which describe how to move miniatures around the game surface and simulate combat in a balanced and fair manner. Games may be played on any appropriate surface, although the standard is a 6 ft by 4 ft tabletop decorated with model scenery in scale with the miniatures. Any individual or group of miniatures in the game is called a "unit", whether represented by a single model, or group of similar troops.

The current core game rules are supplied in a single book, with supplemental Warhammer Armies texts giving guidelines for army-specific rules. Movement about the playing surface is generally measured in inches and combat between troops or units given a random element with the use of six-sided dice. Army supplements also assign points values to each unit and option in the game, giving players the ability to play on even terms. An average game will have armies of 1,000 to 3,000 points, although smaller and larger values are quite possible.

Game play follows a turn structure in which one player completes all movement for troops, then simulates casting spells (when spell-using units are available), uses all ranged or missile weapons in the army such as bows and handguns, then any units touching fight in melee or close-combat. After finishing, the second player does the same. This repeats for a number of equal turns, generally six, although occasionally to a time limit or until no units are left on the playing surface. The winner is often determined by victory points; earning a number equal to remaining points value of their own surviving units and the value of enemy units killed. Special factors, or "objectives" can add or subtract from this total based on pre-defined goals.

Dice rolls always use traditional six-sided dice (D6), with a high result being desirable (in most cases). For example; an archer unit may be given a statistic that allows it to hit on the roll of a four or more. Various factors can change this number, reducing or raising the number needed. Mitigation of random results is a large part of the game, as well as traditional battlefield tactics.

[edit] Collecting

Whilst any fantasy miniatures can be used to play Warhammer, Games Workshop insist on players using their official figures in competitions, though in conversions (combining pieces for a better model) there are very little strict rules as long as the model is mostly Citadel.

Warhammer players commonly collect and paint one army (or more) of their choice. Armies can be built up from the available "army boxes" or "battalion sets" or slowly collected, one miniature or unit at a time, to build up a reasonable sized fighting force. Others simply collect the miniatures because they like the way they look. There is also an interesting amount of rare, old, Out Of Print Warhammer miniatures that are traded on online auction sites such as eBay.

An average Warhammer army will cost two to three-hundred US dollars at full retail value, although purchasing online or finding used miniatures can decrease this cost. Different forces will incur different costs as well, depending on the points cost of the miniatures in the game. A box of 12 Chaos warriors may cost 35 USD and will be around 360 points, while a box of 20 Skaven clanrats costs the same in currency, but is worth roughly 100 points in the game.

[edit] The miniatures

The games uses models on the 28 mm - 40 mm (approximately 1:64) scale. This is defined as being the height of a normal human. Larger creatures such as dragons can be up to 10 cm long.

Games Workshop models come unpainted and unassembled. The game encourages players to paint their armies for greater enjoyment of the game. Official tournaments require a player have a fully painted army to be able to participate and additional incentives in the form of the Golden Demon competitions.

[edit] The Warhammer World

Main article: Warhammer Fantasy (setting)

Warhammer is just one of many games set in a rich fictional universe. Warhammer is notable for its "dark and gritty" background world, which features a culture similar in appearance to Renaissance Germany crossed with Tolkien's Middle-earth.

The geography of the world strongly resembles that of Earth. This is said to be due to the actions of an ancient spacefaring race known as the Old Ones. This mysterious and powerful race visited the Warhammer World in the distant past. Establishing an outpost they set about manipulating the geography and biosphere of the planet. Assisted by their Slann servants, they moved the planet's orbit closer to its sun, and arranged the continents to fit their standard geomantic template.

The Old Ones were subsequently expelled from their colony in the aftermath of the collapse of their polar "Warp Gates". Before leaving however, they had established the Lizardman empire, and had conducted numerous genetic experiments, which had led to the races of elves, dwarfs, and men.

The elves and dwarfs eventually founded empires of their own, and were initially allies. This alliance broke down, leading to the War of the Beard between the two powers. The early elven empire later splintered, with a sect of elves secretly corrupted by Chaos taking over the northern lands of Naggaroth, while elves staying behind during the waning of elvish influence in the Old World established a realm within the forest of Athel Loren and became known as Wood Elves.

The men were the slowest to develop, but eventually formed several strong realms, able to resist both the forces of chaos and the older powers. Chief amongst these are The Empire, Bretonnia, and Cathay. Khemri, a former empire of men to the south of the Old World, has since fallen to the undead. It's long-dead armies now march to war under command of the Tomb Kings.

The forces of evil are often depicted as not a localised threat, but a general menace. The Skaven exist in an "Under Empire" in extensive tunnels beneath the other races, while the Orcs & Goblins are nomadic, and regularly attack without warning. Chaos and the Undead also routinely infiltrate the other nations, especially The Empire.

[edit] The armies

Main article: Races and nations of Warhammer Fantasy

There are a number of playable armies for Wharhammer, which are representative of one or other of the factions or races that are present in the Warhammer world setting. Over the various editions of the game the armies have been presented in collective books like Warhammer Armies for the 3rd edition or from the 5th edition onwards in individual books each one covering a separate army.

The current edition of the game has (of 2006) the following:

• Beasts of Chaos
• Bretonnia
• Dark Elves
• Dogs of War
• Dwarfs
• The Empire
• High Elves
• Hordes of Chaos
• Lizardmen
• Ogre Kingdoms
• Orcs & Goblins
• Skaven
• Tomb Kings
• Vampire Counts
• Wood Elves
• Ogres
• Chaos Dwarf

Armies which are no longer supported in the current version of Warhammer or have been absorbed by another race:

• Fimir
• Norse

[edit] Editions of the game

Throughout the seven editions of the game, the core movement, combat and shooting systems have remained generally unchanged, with only minor revisions between editions. The largest changes have been made to the magic and army composition systems.

[edit] 1st Edition

The first edition, written by Bryan Ansell, Richard Halliwell and Richard Priestly was published in 1983 and consists of a boxed set of 3 black and white books illustrated by Tony Ackland: Vol 1: Tabletop Battles, which contains the core rules, turn sequence, creature lists and features an introductory battle 'The Ziggurat of Doom'. Vol 2: Magic which explains rules for wizards of 4 different levels. Higher level wizards have access to more powerful spells. In this system, a wizard picks his spells at the start of the game, must have the correct equipment (usually Amulets), and as he casts each one it depletes a store of 'constitution' points, until at zero points he could cast no more. Vol 3: Characters introduces 'personal characteristics' statistics, rules for role-play (including character advancement through experience points and statistic gains, random encounters, equipment costs, and alignment) and has a sample campaign "The Redwake River Valley".

Very little world background is given at all and the race descriptions are kept to a minimum, and most of the background given is in describing the origins of magic items . Some notable differences to later editions are the inclusion of Night Elves (later Dark Elves), the appearance of Red Goblins - and that Citadel order codes are given.

The first edition was extended with "Forces of Fantasy" boxed set in 1984.

[edit] 2nd Edition

In 1984 the second edition was released, incorporating some of the Forces of Fantasy material, White Dwarf articles and Citadel Compedium material. Again a boxed-set of three black and white books (with colour covers). Combat explains the core rules and turn sequence, Battle Magic which largely retains the system as the 1st Edition, as well as adding specialities of Illustionists, Demonologists, Elementalists, and removing the requirements for Amulets. The centre pages are an introductory scenario "The Magnificent Sven" for which cardstock figures were also supplied in the box. The Battle Bestiary book features descriptions of the races, monsters and includes several example Army Lists and a Points System for players to develop their own open-ended armies.

Also in the Battle Bestiary is the first appearance of the Warhammer 'Known World' along with a map, and a timeline which includes the Slann, Incursions of Chaos, inter-elf wars and The Empire. Minor rules modification included rationalising all statistics to use numbers, and increasing all creatures' Strength by +1.

Campaign packs produced were Terror of the Lichemaster, Bloodbath at Orcs' Drift (1985) and Tragedy of McDeath (1986). The pack Blood on the Streets was card buildings for terrain.

In 1987 the 2nd edition rules ware expanded with the 'Ravening Hordes' Army lists which provided a more 'realistic' method of forming armies along stricter racial lines.

[edit] 3rd Edition

The Third Edition of the game was published as a single hardback book in 1987. It had the most in-depth and complex movement and manoeuvre system of any edition. Other improvements included a variety of new specialist troop types, rules for war machines and a more finely tuned system of representing heroes and wizards. It kept the same magic system and open-ended army design system as the first two editions. However, by this stage the use of army lists was very much encouraged. Army lists for this edition were published in a separate book called Warhammer Armies in 1991. The third edition is fondly remembered by many long-time fans of the game, in spite of its somewhat cumbersome rules and long play time. This is partly because it was the last edition published before Games Workshop took a more commercial approach, leading to competition from former GW employees in the briefly-published competing Fantasy Warlord.

[edit] 4th and 5th

The fourth and fifth editions of the game were similar to each other but quite different from the third. Fifth edition in particular became known pejoratively as "Herohammer" because of the imbalance between the very powerful heroes, monsters and wizards in the game and blocks of troops which existed effectively as cannon fodder. Both editions of the game were sold as box sets containing not only the rulebooks and a variety of other play aids but also sufficient plastic miniatures to be able to play the game "out of the box". The rules underwent a re-write compared to 3rd edition. A completely re-worked magic system was produced which was available as a boxed expansion set. Rather than selecting spells they were drawn at random and the magic phase was based on the play of these cards, making magic a bit like a game within a game. The magic system was further expanded by the Arcane Magic box set and the magic element of the Chaos box set.

The fourth edition was also the first edition to enforce the use of army lists in the form of "Warhammer Army" books. These books prescribed for each army a limited number of unit choices; specifying limits on the amount of points that could be spent on "characters", troops and monsters and so on. The books also included background on the particular army, illustrations and photographs showing models and have remained with the game though updated with the rules. These editions were not overly popular with older players and long-term fans, although the magic system was perceived to be well designed, and the fifth edition in particular won the Origins Award for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Miniatures Rules of 1996.

The magic system was reworked and re-released in December 1996 as a single box covering the magic for all the armies. The magic was "toned down" (WD204) with spell casting limited to the players own turn. The multiple card packs of the "Colours of Magic" system was replaced by 20 "Battle Magic" spell cards but the Colour Magic spells were in the rule book for players to use if they wanted.

Boxed campaign packs were produced, Tears of Isha for example, gave a campaign for High Elves and included a card "building" to assemble. Likewise, the Orc and Goblin themed campaign Idol of Gork included card idols of "Gork and Mork". The others were Circle of Blood, Grudge of Drong, Perilous Quest.

The fourth edition featured High Elves versus Orcs and Goblins. The fifth edition, released in 1996, re-introduced the Bretonnian forces, which had left out of the 4th edition, and re-worked the slann heavily to create the Lizardmen armies.

[edit] 6th and 7th

The sixth edition was also published as a box with soft-cover rulebook and miniatures (Orcs and Empire). The Rulebook was also available for separate sale, hard-cover in the first printing and soft-cover after that.^[1] After "Herohammer", this edition put the emphasis back on troop movement and combat: heroes and wizards are still important but are incapable of winning games in their own right. There was also an all-new magic system based on dice rolling. Most long term players feel that sixth was a more balanced edition of the game than previous incarnations^{[citation needed]}.

The current (seventh) edition rules were released on 9 September 2006. It is available in two forms: as a single hardback rulebook for established gamers and as a complete boxed set game complete with some 90 plastic miniatures (Dwarfs and Goblins), The Battle for Skull Pass supplement book and a soft-cover rulebook that has less artwork and background material than the hardback version. The smaller rulebook from the boxed set is approximately half the size of the large book both in size of the cover and page count. The "Basic Rules and "Advanced Rules" sections of both books are identical in text, layout, illustrations, credits, page numbering and ISBN. The two books have different front pieces and that larger rulebook has two extensive addition sections "The Warhammer World" (68 pages) and "The Warhammer Hobby" (56 pages) plus slightly expanded appendices.^[2]

[edit] Spin-offs and Derivative Games

The Warhammer Fantasy Battle setting led to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay in 1986.

A science fiction based wargame using similar rules was developed as Warhammer 40,000.

The first edition of Blood Bowl essentially uses the same basic system to simulate a fantasy football game.

Mordheim is a game set in the Warhammer world which concentrates on smaller-scale skirmishes between individual personalities. Conversely, Warmaster depicts collossal armies on a larger scale.

Warhammer Fantasy Battle has been adapted as computer games: the 1995 Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat, its 1998 sequel Warhammer: Dark Omen and Warhammer: Mark of Chaos.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Warhammer computer games

[edit] External links

• Official website
• Warhammer Fantasy Battle at BoardGameGeek

v • d • e Warhammer Fantasy
Major Games:	Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Warmaster, Mordheim, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Man O' War, Warhammer Ancient Battles
Nations and races:	Bretonnia, Chaos, Chaos Dwarfs, Dark Elves, Dogs of War, Dwarfs, The Empire, High Elves, Kislev, Lizardmen, Ogres, Orcs & Goblins, Skaven, Undead (Tomb Kings & Vampire Counts), Wood Elves
Places:	The Old World, Araby, Cathay, Lustria, Ulthuan, Southlands, Naggaroth, Dark Lands, Albion, Athel Loren
People:	List of major characters
More:	List of creatures in Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer Fantasy deities, Lores of Magic