Warhammer Fantasy Battle
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Imagine Warhammer 40,000. Now take away half the grimdark, turn Necrons into skeletons, and bring back the Squats. Except Warhammer was there before 40k. It still has demons, all the demons in 40k, but here instead of boltguns and chainswords humanity has to fight them with swords and muskets. Somehow, they still manage to take down Bloodthirtsters. I think we can all agree the average human in Warhammer Fantasy is much more hardcore then 40k.
Some could argue it requires more tactical skill from the player; this is probably because it's not as widely discussed and not being played by 13-year-olds.
In A World Of War
Warhammer is about peasants living in shit, dying in shit and the thousands of perils that befall them. Often covered in shit. It is not a fun place to be, though there are worse. Your average soldier of the Empire is armed with a sword, a musket and fuck-all armour. He is now expected to go toe-to-toe with a daemon. Or a giant lizardman. Or a rat person armed with a flame thrower. Or a half man/half goat eight foot tall killing machine. Or....let's just say nothing nice ever came out of the Chaos Waste. The good thing for humanity though is unlike 40k, here the various factions and races have enough sense to set aside their differences to avoid total annihilation. Once the threat of being turned into some daemons bitch passes, then they get back to smacking the living shit out of each other.
Background
Warhammer is pretty much Renaissance Europe, only much worse. If you know your history, you'll know that that is saying something. Nearly everything has some kind of historical analogy, at least within the human nations.
The Empire, the main human nation, is a lot like the Holy Roman Empire, but with steam tanks and magic thrown in. Along with pissed off ratmen called Skaven plotting to blow it up and deamons trying to eat everyone. It is ruled by an Emperor, who is elected from amongst the ranks of the Elector Counts.
The first Emperor was a guy named Sigmar. He was fucking hardcore.
The current one is a guy named Karl Franz. He's okay. Rides a giant griffin that eats people. Not a fool to be messed with.
The Emperor has to put up with a lot of bullshit. Vampires, Daemons, Orks, Skaven, Mummies, Beastmen and other humans. If you can think of it, the Empire has gone to war with it at least once. Its even gone to war with itself a couple of times. It manages to keep from falling apart, and somehow got around to finding an ally in the Dwarves.The dwarves are pretty fucking cliche but that comes later.
The other major human realm is Brettonia. Knights, chivalry, all that King Arthur bullshit, with the addition of worshiping baby-eating forest spirits. The peasants in Brettonia somehow have it worse then the peasants in the Empire. Its pretty much medieval France, only worse. If you know your history, you know that's saying something
Other human nations, which are too far off/non-white to warrant an army book include Araby, Ind, Nippon, Cathay, Kislev, Tilea and Estalia. Yeah, they put a lot of fucking imagination into that.
Then you've got your elves. They come in three flavours. High, Dark, and Wood.
High Elves used to be cool, they liked to party and were into magically fueled orgies. Until they ripped open a whole in magic. Que Chaos. Then they became dicks, and started trying to conquer the world. They didn't get far. Mostly because a civil war broke out between the fun loving elves, and the militaristic elves. The fun loving elves became the Dark Elves, and turned into a pack of dicks. The militaristic elves became High Elves, and turned into a pack of dicks. The colonials said fuck you to the High Elves, took to the forests of the rest of the world and became Wood Elves, and turned into a pack of dicks. In short, elves are dicks.
Enough about the elves! Dwarves!
They're fucking cliche, which means they're still better then elves. They've also got a few added twists. Steam tanks and death cults. There is nothing that isn't improved through the addition of tanks and death cults. The Dwarves have zero magic. Magic fucks up when they're around, and everyone uses magic but them. They compensate for their lack of magic by building giant fucking machines instead. Tanks, helicopters, giant canons. They build them bigger, they build them better. There are also evil Dwarves called Chaos Dwarves. They used to be an interesting and unique faction. Now they're just normal dwarves dressed in black.
Their favourite pastimes are building things and fighting.
Chaos: Daemons, Beastman, Guys insecure about the lengths of their dicks; all give their allegiance to Chaos. Its got the classic four gods. Slaneesh, Khorne, Nurgle and Tzeentch. They operate the same as in 40k, but without the sci-fi and twice the mutations.
Lizardmen. The arch-enemies of Chaos. Genetically engineered by aliens/gods, they were designed to destroy Chaos. They live in the jungle and are heavily based off the Aztecs, Mayans and Incans. If that offends you, you're playing the wrong game. They have the most powerful wizards and one of the most powerful fighting units. Some could argue that they're broken in the extreme. They can just fuck right off 'cause Lizardmen are awesome. And no furry shit here. They're as ugly and unappealing as real lizard people would be.
Vampire Counts. They're fucking vampires, do I need to draw you a fucking picture? There's your Dracula style Vampires (Von Carsteins), Psycho Lesbian Vampires (Lahmians) Nosferatu (Strigoi) Magic style (Necrarch) and Vlad the Impaler style (Blood Dragons). All of them can raise undead, and use zombies and shit as troops. They also use ghouls, which technically aren't undead. Just crazy skinless cannibals. Creepy as all fuck. No Anne Rice, Angel bullshit though, these guys are fucking evil.
Tomb Kings. Egyptian mummies!
Skaven. Technologically advanced rat people. Again, no furry shit here. These guys are ugly, fucking foul creatures who keep their women folk locked away for the sole purpose of breeding. They're a species composed of mad scientists, ninja-like assassins, and bio-terrorists. And puns, fuckton of puns come with these guys, they love their puns. They made a nuke once, but it failed to detonate. Most of their schemes (they love scheming!) involved taking down the Empire and conquering the world. Their Pinky and the Brain, without arsing about on the subject.
Orcs and Goblins. You've all seen 40k. Much the same, except here the goblins can fight back.
The Ogres. Massive Eastern barbarians who will do any work for gold and eat anything. A pack of fat, greedy bastards. They ride large beasts resembling mammoths and sabre-tooth tigers. They think with their stomaches, which shows how fucking intelligent they are. Ogres are often considered to be a "neutral" army and can end up fighting for any side since they hire themselves out as mercenaries.