Games Workshop has released a great many games over the last 40 years, many dozens of which have been set in the various Warhammer universes.
There are far too many to list them all, but to celebrate the ruby anniversary, we’re taking a trip down memory lane for a few of the most momentous. We’ll be sticking to games that aren’t currently in print – starting, of course, with the first game to bear the illustrious Warhammer name.
Warhammer Fantasy Battles (1983, 1984, and 1987)
The game that launched it all first appeared in the summer of 1983 – that’s almost exactly 40 years ago – as three black-and-white volumes in a white box that marked the first appearance of a Chaos Warrior smacking a skeleton with a warhammer.This box contained rules for a “Mass Combat Fantasy Role-Playing Game”, and while the game was rudimentary compared with later Warhammer rules, it already offered many of the hallmarks we still see today – including Bowskill, Attack Strength, Morale, and the redoubtable D6. There were humans, elves, dwarves, goblins, orcs, undead, lizardmen and Chaos (among other familiar staples).
These first rules mixed RPG ideas with wargame mechanics, and were quickly updated and condensed into a second edition that kept the bulk of the rules and ironed out most of the inconsistencies. It was then expanded into a third edition that focused on army lists. It would grow into something huge and fabulous, eventually receiving eight editions and – soon – a spiritual revival in the form of Warhammer: The Old World.
Space Hulk (1989, 1996, 2009, 2014)
Terminators, as we’ve seen this year, are an enduring image of Warhammer. But while these up-armoured Space Marines are found on a wide swathe of battlefields, once upon a time their metier was more the Genestealer-infested confines of the space hulks that roamed the galaxy.
This was an intense game of exploration in cramped corridors, where your squad could at any moment become swarmed by alien horrors as auspex blips resolved into broods of razor-clawed assault organisms. Tactical Dreadnought armour is not quite as tough as you’d like in these conditions…
Mighty Empires (1990, 2007)
Part strategic overlay for Warhammer Fantasy Battles, and part board game in its own right, Mighty Empires might be one of the more unusual Warhammer games. It came with beautiful hexagons building out entire continents of woods, rivers, mountains, fortresses, cities, and the rest, allowing those who had the space and inclination to play all-consuming campaigns with groups of dedicated friends. There’s still something stirring about the rows of plastic tokens representing entire fleets, armies, and monsters.
Space Fleet/Battlefleet Gothic (1991, 1999)
Battlefleet Gothic is probably the smallest-scale miniatures game we’ve ever produced, reducing miles-long interstellar battleships down to miniatures sitting between just 2cm and 10cm. The combat was similarly colossal, flinging munitions designed to level cities and firing lance batteries with the power to turn continents to glass. The Imperial (Space Marines, Imperial Navy, and Adeptus Mechanicus) and Chaos fleets received the bulk of the miniatures, but Orks, Aeldari, T’au, Tyranids, and Necrons all got in on the space combat action. Even the Leagues of Votann showed up – technically. They were called Demiurg at the time.
But BFG was not the first Warhammer game in space – that honour falls to Space Fleet, a spiritual if not especially mechanical precursor. Perhaps the oddest thing about this version was the 3x3 grid printed on the inside of the box lid, onto which you threw dice to determine whether you hit or missed…
Battle For Armageddon/Horus Heresy/Doom of the Eldar (1992, 1993, 1993)
Not every Warhammer game has involved miniatures. In fact, there was a whole Wargames Series published in the early 90s which used counters to fight key battles that would come to define lore for decades to come. The first two of these titles are fairly self-explanatory, while the third deals with the Tyranid attack on the craftworld of Iyanden. Where else could the Adeptus Arbites (stats 3-6-1) rub shoulders with the Emperor himself (x2-x2-3)?
Gorkamorka (1997)
Gorkamorka is a bit like Necromunda with orks. It’s a ramshackle game of shootas, dakka, and kustom jobz, with an inspired attitude to rules. Your trukks could carry as many boyz as you cared to fit in them, but if any fell off as you moved them, they counted as falling off in the game. The art and style came to redefine everything orky for the new millennium.
Warmaster (2000)
Warmaster was an all-too brief foray into epic-scale fantasy – a high-level game of commanding regiments of tiny spearmen, cavalry, monsters, and artillery battles. Most of the races in Warhammer Fantasy Battles received at least some miniatures – cast in tiny, detailed metal, while there were complete armies for some. Even Araby received a range of miniatures all its own.
Man O’War (1993)
As the name suggests, in this game the races of the Old World took to the seas in flotillas of idiosyncratic ships. But this being Warhammer, these fleets were completely over the top – spinning scythes, giant sea beasts, cannons near enough the size of the ship that carried them – and crewed by wizards, daemons, and squadrons of flying monsters, with ramming and boarding aplenty.
Mordheim (1999)
Mordheim is a historical game of sorts, set 500 or so years before the ‘current’ date of Warhammer Fantasy Battle, in Imperial year 1999, and featuring frothing religious fanatics all scrabbling around for scraps of precious, lethal warpstone in the bowels of a destroyed Imperial city. Mordheim took all the weirdest parts of the Empire to shadowy and screwy extremes, exploring a city gone mad in the wake of an apocalypse. The treasure hunting warbands included the Sisters of Sigmar, Carnival of Chaos, Witch Hunters, and the Skaven of Clan Eshin – with even weirder rosters appearing in the pages of Town Cryer, Mordheim’s dedicated magazine.
Inquisitor (2001)
The Warhammer curate’s egg to end them all, Inquisitor was a detailed skirmish game set in the 41st Millennium featuring warring factions of the Emperor’s Holy Ordos. Two things made it unique – firstly, it used a d100 system, giving it true percentage statistics and extreme granularity. Secondly, it was at 54mm scale – twice the size of Warhammer 40,000! A series of incredible models were produced, as well as lashings of exquisitely baroque lore, and a Space Marine character whose abilities so far outshone any mortal henchman that he would often simply wipe an entire enemy warband off the board in a turn or two. As is fitting.
There have been many more Warhammer games than these over the years – from Dragon Masters, in which High Elves fought over Ulthuan, to Tyranid Attack, in which a band of Space Marine Scouts foolishly board a luridly coloured hive ship.
We could honestly go on forever – if this has interested you, sound off with your own reminiscences of these old classics on Twitter and Facebook!