Warhammer Fantasy Battle

Where SAN saves are automatically passed while your flag still stands. Where a single greenskin can beat Chaos Undivided at it's strongest. Where Liches can order around Chaos Gods like bitches. Where American football takes precedence over ONLYWAR. This is Warhammer Fantasy.

Warhammer Fantasy is a traditional Fantasy world created in the days when metal hair was all the rage and Dungeons and Dragon was still a new and strange concept. A somewhat darker take on the age-old Fantasy set forth by earlier writers such as Tolkien where the forces of man are almost constantly on the defense, Fantasy is a place where MEN are MEN, and ELVES are MEN, and DWARFS are MEN-MEN, (and Skaven is Man-Things. The entire world is constantly saturated in ancient and warping magic to the point that giant skulls are natural formations in rock, flora sometimes grows eyeballs and genitals, nobody stays dead, and the whole planet is some part of the Old Ones' last-minute emergency anti-Chaos plan, so Daemons can enter the material world easier but are also a lot weaker there.

It's also got many more dead-hard, beardy Vikings killing, raping, and pillaging.

As for actual tabletop performance, some argue WHFB requires more tactical skill from the player; however, this is probably because it's not as widely discussed and is more often played by an older audience that was introduced to the setting during the glory-years of the fantasy genre. The game certainly does require more memorization (or reference at least) of rules, although listbuilding factors in less than actual field tactics in comparison to other games (see Tarpit). Psychology is a major factor in Fantasy as few battles (barring Undead on Undead slapfests or Daemon infighting) will progress without something fleeing or even disintegrating due to a failed Leadership roll. Fantasy puts more models on the field, but most of them are rank and file redshirts. Perhaps most blessedly, Fantasy lacks the $400+ models other gaming systems do. If you want an Apocalypse level battle, you bring a fucking sea of 1 hit point soldiers lead by one single model so fucking badass that Kenshiro bows in respect as it passes him.

Magic is a big deal in the game, and has it's own phase during each turn. Other than gentlemanly games between you and your opponent, you ARE taking a spellcaster even if their only job is to fuck up the enemy's magic phase (some armies in fact require a spellcaster in the army, both of them Undead armies requiring someone to keep the corpse feet-plodding). Models may gain positive effects, or more likely negative ones during the battle so notes may need to be taken beyond just Victory Points. You have to know the ins and outs of your troops, and you'd be better served knowing your enemy's rulebook as well since things don't change much in their roles in the battle. Planning is everything, but ultimately the field of battle is chaotic and thus you'll need to be able to adapt to win (Nurgle and Tzeentch enjoy the gameplay aspect of Fantasy in different ways).

As far as models go, Fantasy is a bit liberated. With no rules requiring measuring from a gun, or an exact model footprint, you instead rely on the plastic base as an indicator of who you're fighting and if you can be hit. This means that the only requirement is to have a little plastic square or rectangle base in the correct size. What is actually ON that base doesn't matter, unless you play at a GW shop in which case the only requirement is that they made whatever is on that base. Want to play one faction, but you only own another? So long as your opponent isn't a dick you can just use your army as the army you want to play now. Fantasy has it literally stated in the rulebooks that it's a big world (same basic geography as ours, but scaled up to a ridiculous size of a planet) and thus there's plenty of unexplored places where anything is possible. So when you field your first army as your second, you can provide a legitimate fluff explanation (Vampire Dwarfs, Lawful Good Chaos Gods, redneck Elves, Undead who are not soulless killing machines but instead have simply had their invitation to your opponent's army to a Wednesday teatime rejected for the last fucking time, and so on). Unit fillers are a popular option for people making a new army in Fantasy. Instead of buying 60+ foot soldiers for the army of your choice, you can buy some extra bases and glue them together (for example a 3 by 2 grouping of 6 bases) then put something on top of them (a balsa-wood cart, an older model from another edition that was removed, an army specific thing like a hole in the ground that appears to be where the Skaven are coming out from or a statue of a hero for Empire) and stick it in the middle of the group. Boom, instantly you have to buy 4-8 less troops. As for those "GW-made at GW shops" rules? Clip sprues, make a fence, glue it to a base. Voila, instant unit filler.

Fantasy models DO have to fit close together unlike models in other games, so they tend to be a bit less wild with poses (some see this as a plus). Big models tend to have a lot of detail, and almost no armies share models so there's quite a bit of variation on the field. Also there's generally less spikes everywhere, actual exposed breasts on some models, and FAR more skulls (Khorne and Slaanesh both approve!).

Those guys who made the Total War games have said that they'll make computer games based on it. Feel free to have a nerdgasm. Similarly, Blood Bowl was a specialist game set in an alternate universe where American football replaced war and has a vidya and a sequel, while the other specialist game Mordheim which was a skirmish game will also be getting a game.

In A World Of War

Warhammer is about peasants living in shit, dying in shit, and the thousands of perils that befall them. Which are 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 maybe a uniform which comes with a cheap piece of armor that couldn't stop an untipped arrow. Thusly equipped, he is expected to go toe-to-toe with a Daemon. Or a 9-foot-tall daemonically enhanced steel/daemon/*insert Chaotic thing* metal clad super Viking. Or a giant, many of which prefer to stuff opponents down their pants or boil you/mash you/stick you in a stew. Or a battle-trained whatsit-a-saurus. Or a rat-man armed with a flame thrower and a machine gun. Or a half man/half goat eight-foot-tall killing and raping machine. Or... well, let's just say nothing nice ever comes out of the Chaos Wastes. The one good thing for humanity is that the various factions and races have enough sense to set aside their differences to avoid total annihilation, and succeed at this with stunning regularity. Of course, once the threat of turning into some Daemon's bitch passes, the various races get right back to smacking the living shit out of each other.

Setting

Warhammer is, in most places, set in a period reminiscent early Renaissance Europe, only much, much worse. If you know anything about history, you'll know that's saying something. Nearly everything has some kind of historical analogy, at least within the human nations. Everywhere is a shit place to live for one reason or another. But unlike a certain other setting, this has a lot more to do with being subject to multiple clashing interests in the backstory, rather than thematic contrivances that are often poorly explained or barely touched upon.

The Empire

The Empire is the most powerful human nation. It's basically a fantasy version of the Holy Roman Empire, meaning its warriors are very angry Germans wielding swords, muskets, and bibles, as well as having steam tanks and magic. It is ruled by a mortal Emperor (who is succeeded upon death, meaning there's no need for a corrupt council to do anything more than annoy him). He is elected from amongst the ranks of the Elector Counts, who govern the different provinces of the Empire and wield badass swords called Runefangs which represent their office (when a Runefang is lost, there's one less member of the council). They are the closest WHFB has to a "main character" faction. All good-aligned races usually converge around the Empire when shit hits the fan, and all Chaos-aligned races make a beeline praying for Slaanesh to guide their cocks into an un-lubed Kraut's cannonhole.

The first Emperor was a guy named Sigmar. He was fucking hardcore. After becoming the head of his tribe, he made friends with the Dwarfs by saving their king by killing greenskins (all before he became an adult even). After that, the Dwarfs and Germans hung out a lot which resulted in Germans getting all the same advances Dwarfs make and pushing it even further because Dwarfs reserved about new things. Sigmar then brought the Polish and some Russians into his clan, and founded The Empire. Sigmar got involved in a war down in Egypt's analogue in the setting, Nehekhara, against the Undead which resulted in Sigmar making the decision that if he were ever being kept alive artificially he wanted the plug pulled. Eventually, Sigmar got bored with politics and pulled a walkout, heading eastwards to fight some new beasties...and was promptly never heard from again. For some reason, people began worshiping him as a god and now he is the main god in the Empire. However, the more reasonable conclusion is that he's long dead and Ulric, the number two god of the Empire and the god that Sigmar worshiped in life, handles the prayers of the Sigmarite priests. Although the Empire was, in large part, the inspiration for the Imperium in 40k, there are some major differences. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, the other races (like Dwarfs and High Elves) are not only accepted but considered trusted allies. Additionally, though kept on a tight leash, magic is largely accepted (thanks to the Colleges of Magic the Elves set up, so wizards don't accidentally summon daemons every five seconds), and the Empire is fully polytheistic (although worshiping gods that own property in the Realm of Chaos is still a big no-no, despite Witch Hunters doing it (he's a Chaos God of Order though, so it's alright)), although Sigmar is the patron deity of the Empire and generally given the most respect. Second is Morr, who provides the mortal races of the world with a legit Chaos-free afterlife. Also, all forms of Undeath are heretical, which is totally encouraged in the Imperium. Finally, the Empire isn't totally shit and, if you can get a good job, you can actually live a pretty good life. They're even advancing pretty fast and, if it weren't for the constant Chaos and undead invasions, they'd probably be advancing into an Industrial Revolution right about now. The Empire also counts the allied nation of Kislev among it's forces as they supply it with cannons, and it supplies them with more cannon fodder. Kislev is mostly Russia during the era of Catherine the Great with a pinch of Poland mixed in, and consists of shoeless shirtless vodka swilling peasants armed with rocks being lead by bear cavalry and their ice-wizard queen to defend the frost-covered land that never smiles. Kislevites are a bit more open-minded than Imperials, what with gender equality. At the same time they are more prone to mutation due to living where the winds from the Warp Gates blows, and more than once each mother and father will have to bludgeon their newborn tentacle monster to death with the ancestral family throwing-rock. The primary Kislevite battle tactic is to assemble against Khornate Daemonhosts or Chaos Viking hordes that outnumber them 100-1 all while standing barefoot in the snow armed only with rocks AND FUCKING WIN THE BATTLE. Halflings from the Moot are considered members of the Empire, although they contribute little other than food (particularly since the newer editions removed all Halfling fieldable models from the game).

The current Emprah is a guy named Karl Franz. He's pretty awesome too, he actually has a political and militaristic stance and he gets shit done. He rides a giant fucking griffon that eats people and owns the one fucking dragon in the entire damn Empire that doesn't act like a taxi for some batshit insane wizard or elf. It eats people as well. He's got a fancy suit of ornate gilded armor, cool bling, and a hammer (again, THE Warhammer). Not a fool to be messed with.

Generally speaking, the forces of the Empire consist of cannons, Landsknechts with halberds, cannons, Landsknechts with claymores, cannons, musketmen, cannons, wizards, cannons, crossbowmen, cannons, pikemen, cannons, Russians, cannons, steamtanks, cannons, knights, cannons, inquisitors, cannons, and mortars. Plus nuns with guns and rioting peasants.

The Emperor has to put up with a lot of bullshit: Vampires, Daemons, Orcs, Skaven, Mummies, Beastmen, Elves, 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 almost every time that the Emprah seat becames vacant. Its continued success in managing to keep from falling apart is as much of a mystery as Dwarfs finding the Humans of The Empire to be worthy of respect (maybe because Games Workshop has a hard-on for Imperialism. Ironic, since the company originated from Britain).

Bretonnia

The other major "good" Human realm. Knights, chivalry, all that King Arthur bullshit, all while being Frenchmen, with the addition of worshiping a Lovecraftian goddess in the guise of a sexy chick with a magic chalice that's manipulated by baby-eating forest elves to get the Bretonnians to do their bidding (the Brets don't know that last part though!). The peasants in Bretonnia somehow have it worse than the worst off of the worse off peasants in the Empire since at least a peasant in The Empire has held a piece of currency at some point in their life. Its pretty much medieval France, only worse--and these are the guys that invented the guillotine! They have a lot of knights, the lowest of which are Knight Errants who have done all of jack and shit since they got their armor, then Realm Knights, then Questing Knights who seek the blessing of the Lady Lake, and finally Grail Knights before whom the Lady appeared and let them drink from her magic chalice.

Peasants are almost completely useless both in crunch and fluff other than as archers or cannon fodder, except for the peasant monks that are in fact carrying a dead and skeletal Grail Knight knight as if he's alive. But, since they're more French than they are English, this does kinda make sense... Small numbers of Bretonnian women are considered blessed by the Lady enough to wield magic, but in truth most of them just have fey blood.

Bretonnian culture is based on High Elf culture, since the Franks hid from marauding Daemons while the world was in it's very first apocalypse scenario within the ruins of High Elf colonies, and flipping through ancient tomes Elf childrens books depicting High Elf Silver Helms (AKA elfknights) killing Orcs and saving princesses inspired them to put on a cosplay that never ended. Bretonnians used to be on the verge of conquering The Empire in older editions of the game, but that plot was dropped when The Empire was put front and center as the posterboys of the game. 40k fans may be able to relate.

Bretonnian nobles are bred from superior stock from the rest of the Human race, and are attractive even by Elf standards. Completion of their training and their missions allows them to further enhance themselves with magic, making their bodies resistant to poison and mutation and all around tougher. Their faith is so powerful they're literally able to will bullets into being less damaging to them than arrows, and to perform reality-defying feats simply because they think they can. For all of you neglecting faggots, it's still Bretonnia, not Brettonia.

Bretonnia is one of the more neglected armies in the game, once again proving the tradition that any faction that makes frequent use of the Fleur-de-lis is on GW's back burner.

Other human nations, which are too far off/non-white to warrant an army book include Araby (Middle East) which has enslaved Genies and thanks to the Skaven fights almost non-stop with Bretonnians to keep both weak, Ind (India) which has Beastmen and Daemons who live like uncorrupted mortals, Nippon (Japan) which taught Skaven how to be ninjas and otherwise is so reclusive we know nothing about them, Cathay (China) which has magical robot terracotta warriors and non-Chaos spellcasters who are actively stealing power directly from the Chaos Gods (especially Tzeentch) and are lead by their supreme dragon Emprah, Tilea (Italy/Greece) which is a large number of kingdoms that ally with other civilizations in the world like an army of mercenaries that can range from Warforged to Greek Hoplites using flying machines, Estalia (Spain) which produces Conquistadors and the world's supply of human murderhobos, and Albion which is the British Isles back in Celtic days where tribal shamans and intelligent rock giants protect High Elf waystones and Old One artifacts from just about every faction in the game. Plus Amazons, who were a group of viking women who said "fuck this shit" to worshiping Chaos and instead sailed to South America to worship snakes. So, yeah... paying token tribute to minorities and other cultures with generic names and generic treatments is something that transcends all planes of existence.

Then you've got your elves. They come in three flavors: High, Dark, and Wood.

High Elves

The "good guys" of WHFB. Although as a group they're dickish in the extreme like you'd expect, many of them are quite bro-tier and the reason the race is diminishing is because they overtax themselves to save the world every time they can from everyone they can. They have the strongest navy in the world, wear red/white/blue, bring giant eagles to battle, are snobby, the average citizen can't even name the leader of their closest ally, they send in their marines to unwinnable conflicts, they saved the collective ass of the Old World twice, their leader is democratically elected...

Many 40k fans mistakenly confuse the Eldar lore with Elf lore. This is a major mistake, as Eldar are characterized as ultra-dick failures while no faction has a bigger ass-kicking and ass-saving record than the High Elves.

High Elves defeated the first Chaos invasion into the world (unknown to themselves that they had distant magical help from the Lizardmen) and every invasion since. They established a network of Waystones which pull the excess magic (which Daemons use to manifest) into Ulthuan and shoot it back into the Warp. High Elves taught the Empire magic, and save the ass of Bretonnia every time it gets invaded by something they can't beat. They patrol the world oceans in giant magical aircraft carriers that launch dragons, and wreck the shit of anyone trying to launch a Black Crusade. They single-handedly keep the world from being swallowed into the Warp and all the good factions respect them for it (even if that's the ONLY thing Dwarfs respect about them).

The Everqueen of the High Elves and the hereditary ruler (who co-rules with her democratically elected male counterpart, the Phoenix King), is a being of IMMENSE magical power whose soul is made up of the combined souls of all her mothers leading back to the first Everqueen, who was the second daughter of Isha. The souls themselves reside with Isha, and as a whole they make up the Everqueen entity. Chaos is afraid of her (read that again: Chaos Gods in 40k see the God Emprah as their greatest enemy and an equal. They're actually afraid of the mortal Everqueen of the elves), and she can cleanse anything the Chaos Gods can corrupt. Her only weaknesses are that sadness saps her energy (you do NOT want to piss her off though) and the fact she's mortal means her daughter has to be protected.

High Elves are ethnically divided into ten major groups by region. Some are such pricks who treat even other High Elves like Eldar treat the Mon'keigh, some are fatalistic jackasses with the personality of a secret service agent, some are revenge-obsessed sociopaths who make the Inquisition look like Lawful Good Paladins. Some are nutty professors wizards, some are hippies murderhobo Bards who are willing to make love AND war as the situation requires, and some look at Humans like white boys in the suburbs look at gangbangers in the inner city. In addition, High Elves have districts within major trade cities in all the good factions.

High Elves would rather walk willingly into Slaanesh's open mouth than do anything beneficial to a Dark Elf and vice versa, running a contrast to Eldar/Dark Eldar relations. When they die, High Elves are first nabbed by their patron god if said god liked them enough. Next, they can corpse-run to a Waystone (giant magical structures set up all over the world by their race to weaken Chaos and keep Daemons from manifesting) where they get to chill and manifest semi-solid bodies (which they will usually use to pick off troops from any evil races that wander by). Then, there's an evil goddess who got punished by Asuryan for trying to rape him while he was asleep and gets back at his rejection by taking High Elf souls (she doesn't care about any other Elf subraces) to torture like it's Christian hell. Final thing that can happen is Slaanesh manages to snatch them from the material plane and either eats them or turns them into Daemonettes (yes, in Fantasy he still does this). All of Slaanesh's Greater Daemons are elves who in one way or another wound up in his employ (from N'kari who was an insipid noblewoman who wanted to be the center of attention, to Dechala who was virgin sacrificed by her parents to Slaanesh for mercy and came back as a pissed off Medusa with an army of Daemonettes to butcher them). While Eldar must use soulstones to keep their soul safe, High Elves use them only to guard them in combat against Daemons and those who worship them. Otherwise, their only use is to link to the Waystone network and provide GPS navigation for the elves.

Ulthuan is like paradise (for the most part, there's Chaos corrupted areas and random encounter tables of course) and elves will fuck, sing and enjoy the splendors of life without fear of taint as they must give themselves willingly to Chaos to be corrupted. The Cult of Pleasure, Slaanesh's Elf cult, takes root like Chaos cults in the Imperium and have to be purged by the High Elf Inquisition who are kung fu Elves in light armor who have swords as tall as their body but don't look weaboo.

Eldar are all-powerful psykers, although humanity has potential to make stronger psykers than the average Eldar. High Elves on the other hand are constantly bathed in magical energy, more so than the rest of the world, but you have to actually LEARN to be a psyker wizard. Since High Elves have public education and being a wizard is a great job, there's more Elf wizards than human ones (in fact, the fact you have to LEARN to be a wizard means that the only humans who can come close to badass Elf Loremasters are prodigies of Mary Sue proportions). Of course, one of the 10 High Elf ethnic groups have the old fashioned "every Elf is also a level 1 wizard" feature, but that's just them.

Eldar have a multitude of different styles of combat and war, and a multitude of different philosophies related to them. High Elves have three basic flavours of badass warriors: stoic summabitch priests who shrug off cannonballs to the face, guy with giant axe who wrestles monsters then goes for an ale, and Witch Hunters with giant swords

High Elves are, to the very last, soldiers. Every poet is also a Spearmanelf, every baker is also a wizard, and every secretary loads giant bolt throwers. They passed the point of desperation tens of thousands of years ago, putting High Elves in the position of Israelis.

Dark Elves

Similar to Dark Eldar, but interestingly Dark Elves manage to maintain the awesomeness and jack it up to a new level while still at the same time being made of the kind of fail you'd expect from a fantasy Dark Elf race. How do they do this you might ask? Dark Eldar are in it for the joy of raping, while at the same time being just as terrified of Slaanesh as the rest of the Eldar and using the misery of their victims to protect themselves; Dark Elves JUST DON'T GIVE A FUCK.

Their entire culture is built around "if you died, you were too fucking weak/stupid to stay alive". They have no protections for their souls because none of them admit they could die because that would mean admitting you are possibly less awesome than you tell everyone you are (because they'll kill you for lulz if you don't pretend to be more awesome than they're pretending to be). When Dark Elves die, they go straight to Slaanesh (well sometimes, they can also go to a nasty Elf Goddess if they're really lucky). Which is okay, because DARK ELVES FUCKING WORSHIP SLAANESH (only in Secret - in public they worship Khaine the lord of murder, and other distasteful Elf Gods).

Their queen Morathi is Slaanesh's high priestess. She's also been fucking her son since he was old enough to have his hips move by themselves. Oh, and that son? Grew up to fuck up the world almost as bad as Daemons did the first time they invaded the material plane, and is the settings resident Darth Vader/Sauron/Lich King/Darkseid/Doctor Doom etc. (Well, he's actually one of two, the other one is Nagash). Oh, and that son/mother couple have been plotting to kill each other and take over control of the Dark Elves for thousands of years, with each gambit resulting in mass Dark Elf casualties and a "kiss and make up" moment from the two. Morathi is the single oldest living being in the setting (some of the Slann are arguably as old if not older, plus Drachenfels if you consider him canon, but whatever), and it's all because she bathes in Daemonette jizz (literally, Dark Elves like to summon Daemonettes to parties, with said parties having low survival rates and Morathi keeps Daemon servants with her at all times) and the blood of newborn elves.

Fun fact: each year the craziest of the crazy, the Witch Elves who worship Khaine, have a ten day holiday called "Death Night" where they just rampage through Dark Elf cities and kill whoever they want, unless said person can buy their lives in double digit amounts of slaves.

The Dark Elves raid the entire fucking world, constantly. They're the pirates that piss everyone off. They've managed to steal a Slann by lobotomizing it, then they turned it into fireworks (massive Dark Elf casualties). They plan safaris into the Chaos Wastes to shoot Norsemen and bring them home to be stuffed and turned into trophies.

As long as they've existed, Dark Elves have been at a war of genocide with the High Elves. Every battle the Dark Elves suffer massive casualties, as Malekith is fighting the war mostly for the sake of pride and sends his men at fortresses that have never fallen because he wants to be the one to make them fall (he'll do this every year for thousands of years without learning a damn thing).

How can Dark Elves do all this, and not suffer the whole "dying race" thing the High Elves (who still have the fertility goddess on their side) do? Simple: they are. They just don't give a fuck. No reason to bitch and piss and moan about your civilization dying, just condense the population of the regions into bigger metropolises. More participants in Daemonette orgies! But somehow, Dark Elves DO manage to replenish their population pretty good. Every time they attack High Elves or The Empire they suffer MASSIVE casualties in comparison to their enemies, and still go back to full strength in a few months. It's possible that Dark Elves have truly discovered the secret to asexual reproduction, becoming one true gender either with or without breasts and proving what we've been saying for years about their kind. Or maybe they're using Slaanesh to open portals to 40k and raid Dark Eldar for slaves. WHO KNOWS! (So, basically their Melnibonean expies)

On to an even crazier group of elves!

Wood Elves

During the heyday of the High Elves, before Chaos first invaded the world, the High Elves had established colonies in Warhammer France. Generations passed, and these elves knew little to nothing of the homeland save for what news traders brought them. When Daemons first invaded they were left to their own devices for defense, but utilizing the primitive stone-age humans were able to hold their own. Shortly after, architects were sent to establish Waystones in their lands and rekindle ties. Once again however, they were abandoned to their fates when Dark Elves first started the big never-ending civil war, then after a short period of being in touch with the homeland again were subject to the brutality of the Dwarfs after the Phoenix King of the time went full retard and pissed the Dwarfs off (of course, Dwarfs neither know the difference in ethnicities nor cared as it was all just knife-ears and keebs to them). After being told to evacuate and leave everything behind to go home and fight the war against the Dark Elves, the colonists burned their draft cards and fled to the sentient forest to become Wood Elves.

They then turned into a pack of insane dicks.

So that forest they fled to is Athel Loren. Athel Loren is, in theory, a bastion of life and anti-Chaos in the world. In practice, is a giant forest that plays by it's own rules and is fucking expanding to the point it's theoretically possible it can overtake the rest of the world. Parts of it are Chaos corrupted or dead, and those are probably the LEAST dangerous places to explore. It is a forest full of unmentionable terrors of all shapes and sizes who will FUCKING VIOLATE YOU AND EAT YOU live there. But they're not evil. They're made that way/too dumb to understand alignment/a natural force of destruction, not a malicious one. So they're horrible and evil but their actual alignment is nicely True Neutral.

The actual elves live in the parts of Athel Loren in Bretonnia. Said forest existed way before the coming of Daemons & Aenarion, being much, much, MUCH larger than today, which in turn means that Bretonnia is actually living on what was once said forest. They smoke weed, have /ss/ and /ll/ and /sm/ with kidnapped Bretonnian noble children, hunt humans like animals using giant hunting dogs every summer when their king awakens from his winter sleep after they tie a Bretonnian maiden to a tree naked and shoot her full of arrows. They also manipulate the Bretonnian nobles into becoming more superior elf-like humans by manipulating an entity so ancient and unknowable that even THEY have no idea what she is. Said entity appears before humans that are badass and gives them geneseed cider to drink, which turns them into living Superman.

Culturally, the Asrai are a mix of High and Dark Elves with a mix of batshit insane dark evil with noblebright altruism. Some do random shit like decide to hold impromptu celebrations and plays because of a smell on the wind and re-enact battles that may or may not have actually happened but with actual killing. During the performance, they are literally holding their entrails in with their hands while giggling and teasing the dead, dying, and still up and killing for forgetting their lines because they're fucking crazy like that. When they have festivals, some elves will have a dance contest with invited humans. Sort of like Dance-Dance Evolution. The bets are usually on how long the human will last, before he/she becomes too... tired to continue. Some Elves invite you to peacefully feast and drink and have fun in their woody halls. In exchange they feed you to Daemons and monsters when you fall asleep. Seriously, Wood Elves are fucking scary.

Their king became the avatar of Kurnous and reincarnates (via virgin sacrifice) every year (during which he usually kills the shit out of Bretonnians because 'why the fuck not?'), while their queen claims to be the REAL avatar of Isha and uses prophesy and scrying to figure out what's going on in the rest of the world. For some context: Alarielle, the Everqueen of the High Elves, is the God Emprahss of Elfkind. Chaos Gods are scared of her, she can look Slaanesh in the eye and cause Slaanesh to blink. Alarielle is fucking scared of the Wood Elves, and notices that her Wood Elf counterpart, Ariel, is changing into something far more feral than the world has ever known and that the rest of the Asrai are too.

Wood Elves have a different view on the world than the other two races; while High Elves see themselves as masters of the world's fate and see the future as a great battle between good and evil and Dark Elves see the world as their playground with no regard for who came before or who comes after, the Wood Elves believe that fate has already decided. They believe that Chaos is coming, and in the end thanks to the manipulations of Ariel the entire rest of the world other than Athel Loren will be swallowed into the Warp, leaving the Wood Elves as the ultimate winners of the world conflicts when they alone inhabit the material plane. As such, their fluff is quite grim and full of determinism and in-universe the Wood Elves are more or less Eldar. They also claim that the elf gods have already staged the final battle against Chaos, lost it, and are slowly being consumed by Chaos until they will fade away forever. Since this is not mentioned within the fluff of the other two races it can be assumed this is the Wood Elf perspective rather than the outright canon.

But that's just the Wood Elves. The rest of the "Wood Elves" army? Treekin. Not Treebeard (who will tell you a story while he smooshes Orcs), not Old Man Willow (who hates you and will put you to sleep forever), and not the kind of Dryads who get raped by Satyrs (but actually enjoy it because that's how Greeks think rape works). No, these are like Hills Have Eyes tree people. Some of them march to war with the Wood Elves because they recognize kindred spirits. Some rampage against all non-tree life in the forest. Some of them are so batshit insane that they attack everything, constantly in giant tree battles where the splinters grow into new Dryads and Treekin who then jump straight into the fray like hard-skinned Orks. That ain't Chaos corruption either, it's their natural state. Regardless of sanity, ALL Athel Loren Treekin are infested with angry chittering forest spirits that will eat you like flying pirahnas. Elves who die in the forest can become angry bitter trees that don't remember anything, unless you're raped by hermaphrodite daemons who then kill you when they get bored, so yes, you fucking come back to life by inhabiting a dead tree, so you can fucking show those fucking skanks HOW IT FEELS WHEN THE FUCKING FAVOR IS RETURNED! WITH SPLINTERS!! FUCK!!! They also decorate themselves with entrails and skeletons like a decorator crab. Oh, and the leader of these insane fucking scary tree people? Drycha. Insane forest treegirl. Drycha is crazy, by any standards of crazy. She's a tree woman with acorn nipples that dribble syrup. She's perhaps one of the most terrifying beings in the setting, and that's saying a lot. Luckily, (if you're not Asrai) she's mostly against the Wood Elves since she thinks they're the ones responsible for everything going wrong with the world (Get out of my swamp you kids!). 8e introduced a male counterpart, Durthu, who is similar to Drycha except that he only hates Dwarfs while being bitter against everyone else. He wields a giant amber sword forged by an elf, and is implied to have been the one who saved an infant Everqueen in Ulthuan thousands of years ago.

Athel Loren doesn't expand naturally. It's suddenly appeared on islands in the sea. When you wander into those forests looking for coconuts, you suddenly find yourself in the midst of a forest from hell somewhere around Alsace-Lorraine, with Drycha and a hundred or so Dryads decorated in greenskin, Dwarf, Elf, and Human bodies all staring down at you. Athel Loren has worldroots connected to many different forest around the world. Which means you will never be safe, my little porcupine butts

tl:dr Wood Elves live in Athel Loren which is between Bretonnia and The Empire, which is both alive, and akin to a forest in Soviet Russia - where forest cuts down you! The Elves are crazy insane rapists, and the tree people are fucking xenomorphs. You're either a tool to them that will be destroyed when you are no longer useful, or are a plaything for their amusement.

Dwarfs

Same old cliche Dwarfs (as used in Warhammer Fantasy, as the term "Dwarves" is rarely used) in a lot of ways, with some fun twists. The Dwarfs have this thing about holding grudges forever. In fact one of their most sacred artifacts is the "Book of Grudges" which is a GIANT golden book which is inked in blood and lists every slight, however small, against the Dwaarfish race. (Misspell Dwarfish will ya? THAT'S GOING IN THE BOOK LADDIE!) Dwarfs are required by their gods to avenge even the slightest insult in blood; a story in old Warhammer comics involves two Dwarf Thanes being about to lead the last of their clans (consisting of women and children only at this point) against each other while greenskins are about to breach the fortress walls. The two Thanes, in the middle of a battle, realize they no longer know what the original feud was about and make peace...only for their gods to crush both under a giant statue, causing the clans to wipe each other out and the greenskins to take over. Another story involves Dwarfs building an impenetrable fortress for a human king. After receiving their payment, they found they were a few coins short (the dwarfs thought they were scammed, in reality there was just a counting error). The Dwarfish response was to muster the full strength of their nation to invade, slaughter every man woman and child inside, and raze every last stone into powder.

So not only does the race tend towards Lawful Stupid, they are punished divinely for not acting in the Lawful Stupid way.

Dwarf pre-Chaos history involved the entire race united as one giant clan, producing master works from their GIANT fortress that spanned half the mountains of Europe and Asia. After Chaos invaded, they simply shut their walls and waited the whole thing out. After the High Elves defeated Chaos the first time, they befriended the Dwarfs and swore to be best friends forever. Then after the first battles of the Elf civil war, the newly-separated Dark Elves manipulated the two races into war with each other (taking advantage both of the High Elf arrogance that rears its head ever other generation, and of the fact Dwarfs are absolute racist fuckheads who take the actions of a single individual as the standard for the whole race (the Warhammer Dwarf word for "inferior" is actually their word for "human")). So Dwarfs were pissed at Elves right up until the modern day, where they started to realize Elves come in different flavors than just "Keeb Scum". Not long after this, the Lizardmen attempted to enact a prophesy from the Old Ones that they believed would weaken Chaos. Instead, it caused giant earthquakes which wiped out most of the Dwarf race and turned their fuck-huge city into thousands of thousands of small fortresses isolated from each other by giant cave-ins. This was followed by Orcs and Goblins getting underground, and taking many fortresses from which they now wage war against the entire Dwarfish race. More recently (from the Dwarf perspective) they befriended humanity after Sigmar Heldenhammer saved one of their Thanes. The hammer from which the Warhammer games derive their name was forged, and given to Sigmar as a symbol of eternal friendship between the two groups (thankfully now the Dwarfs can tell apart evil from good, and know not to blame the Empire for the actions of the rape-vikings). Dwarfs taught the Empire about machines and technology, leading to the current state of the Empire.

Currently, Dwarfs are constantly fighting a losing war against Skaven and Night Goblins (and just Greenskins in general) for control of the deep craves, tunnels, passages and mines below the surface of the world. Without the Dwarfs keeping things that dwell down in the dark at bay, the lands of men would be overrun from beneath; though the 8th Edition book sees them becoming a Rape-Train against Hordes, and in the fluff the High Elves attacked WAAAGH!s that have raged without stop since the fall of the Dwarf Fortresses from behind and destroyed them while the current Dwarf High King has mustered a fuckhuge army to end those that remain.

In canon, Dwarfs fight very different hold to hold, with some being the classic hammer+axe Dwarf warriors with others (those you'll almost always see on the tabletop) fighting as Napoleonic armies with more cannons than most armies have horses.

What else is there to say about Dwarfs? Gyrocopters and death cults. There is nothing that isn't improved through the addition of flying machines and death cults. The dwarfs have zero magic. No, scratch that, they have even less than zero magic. It tends to fuck up when they're around, and everyone can use magic but them. Not that this stopped Dwarfs though. They just grabbed magic by the balls, put its balls on the anvil, and hammered it into runic items. Because they're stubborn like that. As a result, Dwarfs have the best magic items bar none. They also compensate for their lack of magic by building giant fucking machines instead. Flamethrowers, helicopters, organ guns, and pretty much any other variant of carnage that can be moshed together with enough steam, alcohol, and gunpowder. They build them smaller but they build them better, and they're all fueled by alcohol. The traditional Dwarfs don't like the Engineers and their machines that much, and anything that hasn't been in the blueprint stage for a thousand years before a prototype stage was even thought about is borderline heretical technology (not that they will refuse to use it, they'll just bitch about it worse than even a real life Scotsman would). The death cults are crazy naked dwarfs that have in some way shamed themselves or broken an oath, and as a result they shave their beard and dye their hair into a red mohawk and go on a quest to die an honorable death (so Repentia/Penitent Engines for any 40k players reading this).

There are also evil dwarfs called Chaos Dwarves. They used to be an interesting and unique faction that resembled an even more grimdark ancient Babylon, their corrupting magic slowly turning their evil sorcerers to stone (dorfs ain't meant to magic it up) while creating Daemonic machines that would make Chaos Space Marines drool. Then they became like normal dwarfs, but dressed in black. Then Forge World made them back into their first, awesome thing again - half-Baylonian, half-stripped down industrialist assholes a la Isengard.

Their favorite pastimes are drinkin', fightin' and wearing silly hats for no adequately explained reason.

Next up: Chaos! (As if you didn't see this coming).

Warriors of Chaos

Back in the day, there was only one Chaos army. Since then they have been split into Warriors of Chaos, Beastmen, and Daemons of Chaos. The Warriors are Nordic (literally, they are called the Norse in the canon). Beardy, berserking Vikings/Pan-Tang rip-offs clad in Unholy Chaos Plate and blessed with the Marks of the Chaos Gods personify this faction, and basically granted Warhammer Fantasy it's popularity back in the 80's/90's. The Warriors of Chaos represent a multitude of tribes and clans, in varying cultures and degrees of civilization (mostly being Scandinavians and Mongols however) all of whom live in the giant North Pole around the Warp Gate there, which is basically an Eye of Terror. Mostly, they revere the Chaos Gods as their masters although they have different pantheons (sometimes to be able to avoid saying the name of the Chaos Gods directly to avoid getting sudden attention and turning into..one of "those things", sometimes of other Chaos Gods, and rarely of ascended mortals like Bel'akor). Warriors make up the primary bad guys of the setting, and raid the fuck out of the world for shits and giggles. Games Workshop loves to throw them constantly into almost every canon, to the point anything major involving someone who ISN'T Chaos is a huge fucking deal.

Unlike in 40k where Chaos Space Marines actually get shit done possibly fucked up 12 times under the same leader, Warriors have gone through multiple Everchosens who keep getting killed by reincarnations of Sigmar keep getting killed in various ways (sometimes even by Daemons) and are replaced in the hopes that the next one will get it right (and one even went "fuck this shit" and went to non-Chaos Valhalla on the eve of his victory). Despite this, they look no less awesome for it, and the current one managed to beat and cripple his good counterpart before losing the war thanks to Ork shenanigans.

Daemons of Chaos

As in 40k, but as mentioned before are much weaker. Khorne mostly just watches his servants fight each other and sometimes other factions when that shit gets boring. Loves trapping his champions in time loops where they kill their older selves. Nurgle loves Isha from afar, who may be unaware he even exists. He maintains a circus (a literal circus, with tents and candy and performers and clowns) which travels through the Old World, bringing in plagues and taking in followers. Tzeentch doesn't do jack shit. EVER. He doesn't own a monopoly on bird iconography as that's mostly owned by mortal gods like Morr and Morai-heg. The Chinese siphon magic from him, without retaliation. His champions are mostly stuck being the spellcasting bitch to whatever Everchosen or other god's champion didn't take a wizard in their army list. As a result, he likes to spread rumors like "all magic is me!" and "everything is going according to plan" despite everyone calling bullshit and his prophesies actually being wrong most of the time. Slaanesh spends most of his time corrupting individuals in the Empire and High Elves for shits and giggles, as well as watching his champions wander the world and do stupid shit like it's a giant reality show. He likes to try to nab elf souls like his 40k counterpart, but instead of mindlessly eating them he makes quite a few of them Daemonettes. He also has a permanent scar, no matter what shape he takes, because Khaine fucked him up good.

There's a multitude of other gods as well, including multiple Chaos Gods of Order. To those who claim that makes no sense, remember that Chaos is pure potential, not contradictory pants-on-head retardedness that you can't comprehend (although it certainly becomes that often enough). One of them blesses Witch Hunters and other forms of Inquisitors in their fights against everything Chaos (so like Malice, but without malice). Another is a Snow White figure, being locked in a glass coffin in stasis by Tzeentch and dropped in the mortal world because he's terrified of her.

Daemons themselves tend to be fucked over royally as they can be perma-killed in Fantasy in various ways, and are VERY prone to being used as the power source for magical artifacts and weapons.

Beastmen

Representing the non-Skaven Chaos mutants of the world, Beastmen are a group of pagan style animal mutants living in Athel Loren. Originally they began as a small band of survivor children who had been abandoned in the forest and left to die by their parents when they exhibited mutation, their numbers grew and grew until they outnumbered mankind. Beastmen HATE civilization. Anything that looks like it was made intentionally is broken, anything that can't be broken is tied to a stick and used as a weapon to kill the fuck out of more civilizationfags. Although Beastmen tend to come in specific flavors (Satyr, Minotaur, and Dire animals) they mutate even further into grotesque and scarred utterly evil monsters when they attract the attention of the Chaos Gods. Which they spend most of their time seeking to do in various ways, despite the fact that Chaos rarely if ever tosses them even a minor blessing.

So all in all, they're a race of furry Cultistchans.

Three odd points in fluff relate to Beastmen; in one old story from White Dwarf, a human father spends time teaching his son how to survive in the forest using navigation, tracking, and fighting. Said son is revealed to be a mutant that the father is taking to the Beastmen, who accept him immediately. In another, Beastmen females are mentioned as existing (previously, the fact the only references were to males leading people to assume they breed through rape exclusively) and as being "extremely docile". Finally, in most Beastmen fluff it is mentioned time and time again how shit factors in heavily to their culture (literal fecal matter), and Beastmen smear EVERYTHING in it. So while most fluff portrays them as monstrously evil and unsexy as possible, there's still bait for furfags!

Lizardmen

The arch-enemies of Chaos. When the Old Ones first arrived on the world from nobody knows where, they created spawning pools that continually pump out Lizardmen. The first type were the Slann, who were Old Ones in miniature although greatly less intelligent (still LEAGUES above even elves though). The Slann were extremely magically gifted beings, and were the assistants to the Old Ones. They resemble grotesque and fat toad creatures who ride floating stone chairs like upright Jabba the Hutts. The second type, the Saurus, were their muscle. Saurus have few thoughts beyond what they were created to do, and mostly exist as soldiers and guards. Finally, Skinks were made. Skinks are small iguana-like humanoids who serve the Slann as assistants. They also created the kroxigor. Kroxigor are large crocodile-like creatures designed for heavy lifting.

They live in the jungle and are heavily based off the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas. If that offends you, you're playing the wrong game.

They have, and seek out, thousands of writings from the Old Ones inscribed on golden tablets which the Slann spend most of their time pouring over in an attempt to discover what the next move against Chaos should be. However, the Slann have...difficulty in this endeavor, and are prone to interpreting "Milk, Eggs, Butter, Tampons" as "Destroy the Dwarfs, Make Party Hats For Amazons, Do the Dinosaur".

They have the most powerful wizards and one of the most powerful fighting units, including Stargate-style magitech that they use as altars which shoot lasers.

Some could argue that they're furfag bait 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, and have no genders as they walk out of magic spawning pools as adults.

In the modern canon, most of the Slann are dead and they can no longer be spawned as their pools were destroyed by Daemons. Not 'undead' Slann, just dead (barring that one skeleton Slann, but he doesn't really count as his body is 100% dead despite his spirit just refusing to leave it).

Oh, and if you haven't figured it out by now they are dinosaur men that ride dinosaurs such as T-rexes and Ceratopsians. Who would of guessed.

Tomb Kings

The undead people from the ancient civilsation of Nehekhara (Egypt). How ancient? Back when The Empire still lived in grass huts and considered the bow and arrow an innovative new weapon, Bretonnia didn't exist, and Elves were still one race and were only then achieving the level of technology they've spent most of their history stuck at.

Nehekhara had all the best aspects of ancient Egypt and some Middle-eastern civilizations\; they had many things such as golems, light systems, chariots and even hot-air balloons! Most of their history was spent like Greek Polii, with each city being a kingdom ruled by one monarch (usually, but not always, male). Said kingdoms warred with each other constantly. Then, one day, a badass was born. Settra managed to unite the entirety of Nehekhara under his rule, but became obsessed with death. He commanded his priests discover immortality, and although they failed in this they figured out ways to preserve the body with the soul within and the flesh un-damaged. They entombed him this way for storage until they discovered a way to give their kings living flesh of gold.

The cities immediately become independent again, warring with each other but now building fuckhuge tomb cities to house all dead Nehekharans in suspended animation that were larger than their living cities. Eventually, Nehekhara produced Nagash, the Warhammer Fantasy answer to Sauron, who killed his brother and became fantastically evil until the cities united against him and forced him into the desert. After deciding that dying was for suckers and turning into a skeleton, he found that centuries has passed and some little punk ass upstarts calling themselves "vampires" had read his diary. He told them to make themselves useful and keep the humans away while he tried to figure out a way to make the whole world into undead skeleton slaves in one spell. Then shortly after, humans defeated his army and entered his sanctum; he unleashed what he had of his spell, killing EVERYTHING in Nehekhara before he was beaten. This awakened the entombed kings, who were fucking PISSED to find their had disintegrated. But on the plus side, they were still "alive" and Tomb Kings cannot perma-die so they had obtained the immortality aspect at the very least. They also had the people who had died in their time period as servants still, who despite still having souls lost much of their sapience (as the degree to which they survived depended greatly on how well they were preserved) so many of them (but FAR from all) became semi-mindless robot-like skeletons animated only by the order of their King. So immediately all the Tomb Kings went back to war, but this time in a far worse way; every child who had EVER lived was now alive again, with thousands of generations of spoiled manchildren fighting for a single fucking throne in a single fucking city, as well as being pissed about later TK's looting the tombs of their ancestors for their own ones. The priests of all the generations realized shit was going nowhere fast (as nobody can perma-die) and awakened Settra. Settra immediately slapped everyone's collective shit, and although everyone swears allegiance to him they still fight like punks constantly. Generally speaking, all Tomb Kings (other than Queen Khalida, who HATES vampires) give no fucks, shits, or damns about the outside world. Mostly.

Now they're armies of skeletons (on foot, horse or chariot) led by Egyptian mummies! With Anubis warriors and BONE SCORPIONS! Their artillery are MUTHA FUCKEN SKULL CATAPULTS! If you take a shot every time you see a Khopesh or read the word in relation to Tomb Kings, you'll pass out drunk before you're done. Plus their elites ride around on GIANT STONE LOLCATS that breath fire and crush stuff. They even have GIANT GOD STATUES that shoot DEATH LASERS from their eyes and give their gods a live-action feed of what's going on in the world. Some Tomb Kings even have skull-covered rip-offs of the Ark of the Covenant holding the souls of slain enemies that they use to kill more enemies.

So totally fucking awesome.

Vampire Counts

Vampires. But not the Twilight kind, nor the Interview kind (for the most part). Straight up Gothic Horror vampires. As in, still cool. So a long time ago, during the time of ancient Egypt (pre-Tomb King) there was an evil bisexual queen. She stole the first Necromancer/Lich's autobiography, and invented a drink that turns humans into vampires. She let her court all take a sip, then they acted like a bunch of little shits until all of Egypt united against them. They tried to ally with the NecroLich, but lost the big battle and fled to the Old World.

Those vamps all founded Bloodlines, which make up most of the race. The first group is those lead by the queen which created vampires, the Lahmians. Mostly consist of magic-using spy vampiresses (and some of their gay friends) who are controlling the world like Illuminati. The second are the Hills Have Eyes/The Descent vampires, who after years of being the whipping boys of fate as well as getting tortured and fucked over by every human and other vampire they met, turned into the vampire equivalent of ghouls. They as a result mostly hang out with ghouls. They are the Strigoi. The saner ones behave a lot like Nosferatu. The next are lawful evil/neutral badass vampire knights who ride around looking for a challenge, and fight anyone they think is worth fighting. They are the Blood Dragons. Next is the Necrarchs, who mostly look like Nosferatu vampires. They are the mad scientist Bloodline, spending centuries trying to come up with new kinds of Flesh Golems and similar atrocities to create. Mostly end up as sidekicks to the other Bloodlines. Finally, the true Dracula Bloodline; the von Carsteins. Only appearing in recent history, Vlad von Carstein and his wife Isabella von Carstein attempted to get elected as Emperor of the Empire through political manipulation, and having failed that, attempted to take over by force. After the two were beaten, one of their turned "sons" Konrad von Carstein tried to destroy the Empire, but lost in an embarrassing way since he was fucking insane and dumb as a rock. Finally, Mannfred von Carstein took control of the Bloodline and repeatedly has tried to destroy the Empire. Although Manny keeps losing, he's dedicated himself to Nagash and has finally started getting to be a bigger threat to the world. As a result of this, the von Carsteins have become the posterboy army for the Vampire Counts, who are the villains when Chaos isn't.

All of the Bloodlines can raise hordes of undead, and use shit like Zombies, Ray Harryhausen Skeletons, and Ghouls as soldiers. They also bring along ghosts, and giant fucking bat monsters of different kinds. Also, bats are EVERY-FUCKING-WHERE, and not the kind that scare you when you open the closet, then fly of into the night - think piranhas with wings and a fucking attitude (which vary in size from the size of your hand to the size of a car). Creepy as all fuck. No Anne Rice, Angel bullshit, these guys are fucking evil. They're not about to save you from being hit by a car to creep into your room at night, they're most likely the one draining your loved ones of their blood and tossing the corpses out the window while their zombie driver runs you down with it.

So, our conclusion is that Vampire Counts are fucking badass. According to an ongoing poll in /tg/ Warhammer Fantasy Generals, Vampire Counts come in as the #1 most played army.

Skaven

Technologically advanced rat people. Created when one of Nurgle's Greater Daemons decided to become a proper Chaos God and mutated a group of humans. He has spent most of his time since hiding in Nurgle's garden in a nest, and sometimes popping into the mortal world to eat a few of his servants. Again, no furry shit here. These guys are ugly, fucking foul creatures who keep their women folk, otherwise known as "their bloated, scab-ridden, nipple-covered, maggot-like baby factories" locked away for the sole purpose of mass-reproducing thousands upon thousands of future vermin-men. The leaders of the species are a motley bunch, composed of batshit crazy scientists, ninja-like assassins, and bio-terrorists. Everything else is either slave cannon fodder or a mutant abomination. They love their hordes almost as much as they love their World War 1/2 style tech that's powered by pure Chaos energy. Also, puns. Fucktons of puns come with these guys, they love their puns. They're all addicted to warpstone, which is pretty much a combination of dark magic, radioactive waste and cocaine. They made a nuke once, but it failed to detonate and now it sits under the biggest city in the Empire. Most of their schemes (they love scheming!) involved taking down the humans and conquering the world. They keep the races of the world fighting to keep anyone from becoming too powerful, and they consider it rude and perverse to NOT backstab someone (regardless of whether it fucks they themself over later or not). They're like a cross between Pinky and the Brain, the rats from Redwall, & the rats from NIMH, (but with flame throwers, tesla coils, thousands of minions, and no arsing about on the subject). Also, WEAPONIZED HAMSTER WHEELS. Skaven love screeching things as loud as they can, and they say verbs (or just plain words they like) twice. Since they respect no other race as worthy of life, they call other races "things". Example: "MOVEMOVE, WE MARCH! ONWARDS TO KILLKILL THE MANTHINGS AND THE DWARFTHINGS!"

Orcs and Goblins

You've all seen the Orks and Gretchin of Warhammer 40,000. Orcs and Goblins are much the same, except here the goblins represent a full half of the army (arguably the more Orky half, as Warhammer Fantasy Orcs are kind of bland in comparison to their SPESS counterparts). Or perhaps we should say that the Orks are much the same as the Orcs, since it was the Orcs who came first. Now add trolls and giants and occasionally ogres into the mix as well. Except here they have Night Goblin Fanatics popping out of the ranks, which could cause your deathstar unit to panic off the table if it wasn't for the cavalry driving them out first. Because you took light cavalry, right?

There's not much to say other than that. They spend most of their time trying to wipe out Dwarfs. High Elves are trying to wipe them out, Lizardmen were tasked with wiping them out by the Old Ones, Tomb Kings hunt them for sport, Strigoi vampires fucking HATE them since they caused their fall from grace, Warriors of Chaos dedicated to Khorne know no shame greater than being beaten by them, Gork and Mork are totally real beings who beat the shit out of Khorne once, and there's goblins who worship Spiders in Athel Loren.

Ogre Kingdoms

FUCKHUEG sumo wrestler-types with katanas, frying pans strapped to their gullets and a mean streak as big as their enormously fat asses. Will eat ANYTHING, including the chef, the table, the plates and the fucking bundle of forks. They ride large beasts resembling mammoths and saber-tooth tigers. They think with their stomachs, which shows how fucking intelligent they are, plus their shaman-cooks use a very specific "gut magic", that mostly consists of shoving all kinds of inedible stuff down their own throats. Each and every one of the fuckers is obsessed with stuffing his face full 'o your innards. Heck, they even worship a giant, fuck-off sky mouth. Ogres are often considered to be a "neutral" army and can end up fighting for any side since they hire themselves out as mercenaries to whoever can pay them in piles of food.

The last race created by the Old Ones, the one that could have actually beaten and destroyed Chaos, they were left unfinished (mostly mentally) in an environment that couldn't support them. As a result, they spread all over the world and now work for and with (and against) every single faction in the game. Along with the Skaven, the fact Ogres fight everywhere are what enforces the status quo of the canon.

Tabletop

Gameplay

Warhammer is a tabletop wargame where two or more players compete against each other with "armies" of 20 mm - 50 mm heroic scale miniatures. 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. If you're Games Workshop's bitch-boy and have no imagination of your own you will buy the ridiculously overpriced Citadel Realm of Battle tabletop and have a scenery collection made of boring plastic pieces bought entirely from GW, but REAL players make their own gaming tables (saving a fuck-ton of money in the process). Games Workshop used to encourage this until they sold their souls for money.

Gameplay 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. The winner is often determined by victory points; earning a number equal to the value of enemy units killed. Special objectives can add or subtract from this total based on predefined goals, usually holding parts of the battlefield or killing powerful units (such as the enemy general).

Magic

Perhaps the thing that separates Warhammer Fantasy from 40k the most, aside from the obvious, is the use of magic. Each army (with the exception of the dwarves) has at least one unit that can use magic, often in the form of an independent wizard. When magic units are present on the battlefield, they're given their own turn separate from the shooting, moving and melee phases to cast their spells. There are several kinds of magic but most magicians are able to use only a single form.

• Dark Magic, used by Dark Elves, Wood Elves, Beastmen, and sorcerers of Chaos.
• High Magic, used by the Slann, Wood Elves and the High Elves.
• Nehekharan Incantations, Used exclusively by Tomb Kings Liche Priests and High Liche Priests (and Settra)
• Light: Wind of Hysh, Lore of Light. Basically healing and shit, plus doing extra damage to daemons and undead.
• Gold: Wind of Chamon, Lore of Metal and Alchemy. Basically armour buffs and debuffs, with their offensive spells doing more damage the higher your armour save is. Problem, Knights?
• Jade: Wind of Ghyran, Lore of Life. Basically lots and lots of buffs, making your own units harder to kill. They look like hippies, but don't tell them that, they'll fucking murder you.
• Celestial: Wind of Azyr, Lore of the Heavens. Lets people tell the future and stuff, plus they can summon lightning and meteorites that really hurt flying units.
• Grey: Wind of Ulgu, Lore of Shadows. Basically misdirection and illusions, relying on Leadership tests. They can also teleport every time they use a spell.
• Amethyst: Wind of Shysh, Lore of Death. Basically the Lore of Fire, except more killy and shorter-ranged.
• Bright: Wind of Aqshy. Lore of Fire. Basically the ammunition of the Fire obsessed psychopaths known as the Bright Wizards.
• Amber: Wind of Ghur, Lore of Beasts. Basically a Radagast rip off. WHO IS RADAGAST?!?!? RTFM!!!
• Daemon Magic: Used by... well, daemons. Broken into three categories - one for each of the gods that give a shit about lasers - Slaaneshi [Indulgent, relies on enemy Ld], Nurglite [decay, revolves around enemy S/T scores], and Tzeentchian [OMG FIRES]. Khorne is too awesome for magic; he'd much rather crush skulls with his bare thighs HANDS and anything less makes you dangerously unmanly and at the absolute least bicurious.
• Necromancy: Used exclusively by Vampires and Necromancers, as the name "Lore of the Vampires" would suggest.
• Spells of Plague and Ruin: used exclusively by the Grey Seers of the Skaven.
• Gut Magic: Also known as the Lore of the Great Maw. Used exclusively by the Ogre Butchers.
• Waaagh Magic: Used exclusively by Orcs and Goblins. Comes in Big and Little flavors. Has a very high chance of making the user's head asplode.
• Athel Loren Magic: Used exclusively by Wood Elves. Moves forests, or move folks through forests.
• Ice/Winter Magic: Used exclusively by the Tzar of Russi- er, Kislev. GW released a set of spells for it, that can be used by any army and get bonuses or penalties based on whether your models have snow on the bases and what the weather outside is like.
• Lizard Magic: Used by lizardmen, it has only one spell, called "Fuck you, I'm an Aztec dinosaur, therefore awesome."
• Hashut Magic: Used exclusively by the Chaos Dwarfs, the Lore of Hashut consists primarily of buffing spells that work well with the ungodly amount of flaming weaponry that the Chaos Dwarfs have access to.

Warhammer Magic is powerful, very powerful. A lone unit can wipe out half the opposing army with the right spell at the right time. Magic can also misfire, badly. This adds an element of unpredictability to its use, making it much more dangerous to the user and therefore, much less broken.

GW also recently released an expansion to WFB with a bigger focus on magic, called Storm of Magic. Which turns magic from regular broken into DOUBLE TRIPLE BROKEN, but misfiring will fuck your mage up in 12 different ways, and then Khorne will throw giant brass kull at him/her.

Significant Personage Of Warhammer

• Sigmar Heldenhammer: Born some random tribesman, Conan Sigmar united the squabbling human tribes in what would become known as the Empire and killed a ton of Orcs. saved some random ass dwarf After this, the Dwarf High King gifted him Ghal Maraz, a super-duper powerful warhammer also the dwarfs helped him defend Black Fire Pass from a massive WAAAGH! . He was the first Emperor of the Empire, but he got bored and disappeared on a journey to find something interesting to do. The Empire canonized him as a god, and today the Church of Sigmar is the largest and most powerful faith in the Empire (although only one among many). Some believe him to be one of the missing Primarchs, given how badass he was, but this has been disputed by newer fluff detailing his birth and family life.
• Karl Franz: This guy is the current Emperor of the Empire. He owns Ghal Maraz now, as well as the biggest motherfucking Hippogryph Gryphon, named DEATHCLAW, who he rides while assraping bitches who try to invade Imperial soil. And he has a fucking dragon. As of the end times, he is missing.
• Magnus the Pious: Greatest Emperor since Sigmar. Also one of the few who wasn't morally bankrupt.
• Volkmar the Grim: Grand Theogonist of the Empire. Quite a stern faced fellow; he was once chained up to a daemonic standard by Be'Lakor, but simply broke himself off, murdered the daemons surrounding him, and marched through the Chaos wastes to get back to the Empire. This has since been retconned. Not according to Chris Wraight's Sword of Vengeance. As reward for his sheer badassery, he gets captured by mannfred Von Carstein and is tortured until he is a mere shell of his former self. Arkhan the then black uses his body as the vessel in which Nagash returns to the world in a ritual so sickening that even Mannfred feels bad for him. Truly grimdark.
• Gotrek & Felix: Adventuring duo, have a lot of books based on them. Gotrek is a dwarf Slayer who is terrible at his job, because between his magic super-axe and insane badassery he's nigh-unkillable. Felix is some random bard who found a sword that really wants to kill dragons somewhere. Together, they fight crime look for something powerful enough to finally kill Gotrek. Gotrek tolerates Felix traveling with him because he needs someone to pen the mighty tale of his epic doom. In recent times their relation have come close to a bro-friendship and they trusts each other completely. While he's not in in for the chicks, Felix goes through them at a rate of 1-2 per two books. To put it simply if there is more than two of it Gotrek has probably killed one.
• Kurt Helborg: Captain of the Reiksguard and second to the Emperor in military terms. Also a badass moustache.
• Ar-Ulric Valgeir: The Viking leader of the Cult to Ulric, the wolf god.
• Luthor Huss: Crazy ass preacher. Awesome in the way to show the middle finger to those over-fat, political fuckwits of the Sigmar cult of the capital and take the "Fight Chaos to death" thing personally... with a huge hammer.
• Balthasar Gelt: Empire Wizard, looks like Dr. Doom. Rides a white pegasus and wears such gaudy clothing that Lady Gaga looks frumpy by comparison. Possibly Elton John without the singing voice.
• Valten: Reincarnation of Sigmar. Got ganked by a Skaven, probably Snikch, but the lack of gore makes it hard to tell. RETCONNED! Now he is very much alive, and keeping the forces of the empire from being completely buttfucked by Archaon.
• Louen Leoncour: King of Bretonnia. Believes in the Feudal system, also believes that a 300% tax rate for the peasantry promotes economic growth, also believes that knights are of infallible morality, also believes that guns are weaker than bows , also believes people of the Empire would prefer a system of governance that emphasizes crushing their hopes and dreams, also believes that a pig and 12 Bretonnian coppers (which exchanges for less than half an Empire copper on a good day) is an excessive reward for saving his nation. In the same support group for ludicrous theme naming as Canis Wolfborn.
• Lady of the Lake: Creepy cannibal spirit of Bretonnia. A fine piece of ass regardless of diet. May be an elf in disguise.
• Green Knight: Bretonnian Holy Warrior and professional ass rapist. In the end times he is Revealed to be Guilles de Breton, founder of bretonnia and basically their version of Sigmar.
• Katarin the Ice Queen: Tzarin of Kislev. Cold bitch. One of the few kislevites who hasn't been killed yet in the end times.
• Teclis: Mage of the High Elves. Pathetic weakling that drinks magic potions like an alcoholic and falls over in a breeze, although he's also one of the few non-Slann mages capable of nuking cities. Considered a Mary Sue by some but they are mistaken, his brother Tyrion is the Mary Sue. Teclis also taught the Empire how to use magic and founded their fancy colleges, being one of the few elves to realize and respect the potential of non-elves. Eldrad - dickery = Teclis. According to his cameo in the Gotrek and Felix series, most elf women are so-so towards him (being haughty bitches), but human women are wet for him. Becomes extremely grey in the End times and essentially Sacrifices his niece to Mannfred to allow Nagash to return, showing that he is very capable of eldrad levels of dickery.
• Tyrion: Teclis' twin brother and a fuckawesome warrior. May in fact be aroused by killing; it's hard to tell because he won't stop to answer questions. Also happens to be a bigger Mary Sue than Kaldor Draigo and a bigger dick than Eldrad. For instance, in 'Blood of Aenarion' he matches veteran warriors with a blade even though he's young and barely practiced himself. Women flock to his bed (including his own cousin) and everyone treats him like a hero even though he hasn't done anything heroic yet (being a descendant of one doesn't count, you have to earn it). Also has the supposed flaw of not being good at anything outside of war. "Supposed" because the flaw never affects him when it should harm him. Matt Ward, of all people, reduced his Mary Sueness a little by making him moody and giving him a short temper as early signs of Aenarion's curse.
• Orion: Consort King of the Wood Elves. Rides through Bretonnia every summer and kills everybody who runs from him.
• Thorgrimm Grudgebearer: Dwarf High King, very angry, very angry indeed. He carries a book called "The Great Book of Grudges", where EVERY single fault aganist the Dorf people (THAT'S GOIN' IN THE BOOK, LADDIE!) is noted and taken into account when the time of skullcrushing comes, hence is angriness.
• Josef Bugman: Dwarf brewer and 200% Awesome. After his brewery got burned down by some goblins he began an impossible mission to kill the tribe that decided the world didn't need anymore Bugman's XXXXX. Now he roams the world with his surviving employees and family fucking shit up.
• Lord Madzamundi: Most powerful and influential Slann alive, unnecessarily rides on a dinosaur and gets the bloated toad-alien equivalent to a raging hard-on every time he nukes a city and/or non-Lizardmen species into dust. Also leads the Lizardmen equivalent to the Klan and was one of the brilliant minds behind a plan for a redecorating of the world's volcanic system, this also resulted in the Dwarves being marginalised close to the point of extinction. And then he fapped to it.
• Venerable Lord Kroak: Most powerful and influential Slann formerly alive. Most powerful magic-user of the entire setting after the gods themselves, he has been dead for thousands of years and can't even move by himself. His corpse is taken in battle because he is made of localized nuclear explosion and levels cities pretty much every. fucking. turn. Probably the most powerful entity because even being a dead, inanimate corpse, he has killed more shit than anyone else on this list, except for maybe Nagash, even then its too close to make a call, except that he probably will kill Nagash if they meet and would just blink the guy out of existence if they had met when he was alive. He also gets bonus points for not having actually being reanimated, vampirised or any other kind of weird back from the death shit. He is straight up dead. And his rotting corpse is still more magic than the magicest anything else in the universe. In short, he's the grand toad poohbah of lizardkind, and he's on a hoverchair. Not dissimilar to a Darlek in this regard.
• Archaon: Lord of the End Time, the Ever Chosen and second most powerful warrior in the setting. Beat all four of the greatest Champions of the Empire in single fight during the Storms of Chaos Campaign But got bashed about badly by Grimgor who headbutted his teeth out of his face. Grimgot iz da best!
• Wulfrik the World-Walker: Chaos Lord, executioner of the Gods and consummate smack-talker of the Warhammer world.
• Aekold Hellbrass: Pathetic excuse for a Tzeentchian Champion.
• Arbaal the Undefeated: All mighty Champion of Khorne. Another one of the greatest warriors in the setting. Obviously, being a favored champion of the Ultimate God of War. Was with Asavar Kul when Praag was destroyed, fled the battle after he died at Russia, likely to assume Khorne ain't very happy with him. Also destroyed the gates of Praag with a single strike from his sword. (badass) Angron probably got his inspiration from this guy. Is he as fun to be around as Kharn?
• Asavar Kul: Greatest Champion of Chaos. Greatest warrior in the setting. Almost destroyed the Empire. 'Nuff said.
• Vardek CROM!: Archaon's lieutenant and King of the tribe of Asavar Kul. Was man handled by Archaon once and beat Grimgor once.
• Grimgor Ironhide: Orc Warlord, one of the most powerful warriors in the setting. Got his ass handed to him once by Archaon's lieutenant, Vardek CROM!!! Grimgor swore to prove he was the best in any case and did it beating Archaon himself in singular duel.
• Grom the Paunch: Former Goblin Warlord. Famous for being obese, no joke. Also for near DESTROYING the Empire, oh, AND Ulthuan. not bad for a Gobbo. No one knows where is he now, but it is unlikely that, whrerever he is, is alive(his wars was a hundred yeras before current era). GROM LIVES, ya' git! An' when da waaaghboz returnz, wi'll stomp da humies an el's an' orcs fo' good! WAAAA-STOMP! Where ya been? Get back to camp an' start to load rukks in da... um... "thing", ya squishy git!
• Thanquol: Skaven grey seer and archenemy of Gotrek. He does lines of warpstone powder which is to cocaine what a monster truck is to a pair of baby's first rollerskates, also he managed to escape from the prophet of Sothek, who after losing his sacrifice to his awesomic god, takes a nap(meditate, despise the fact that he is a skink). Forever.
• Snikch: Skaven ninja-assassin. Uses three scimitars at once to lop off limbs from his target, doesn't so much as assassinate people as shred them into little pieces.
• Malekith: Lord of the Dark Elves; master of Dark Magic, uses a shield that can asplode your brain from a distance, and rides a giant-ass black dragon. Still lives with his mom. Also considered a whiny emo git who costs so much no one will ever use the Malekeith on a Dragon model because they'd rather finish the game before the entropic heat death of the universe.
• Malus Darkblade: The Starscream of Warhammer.
• Gorthor the Beastlord: An Everchosen. Whipped up on the Empire for awhile before dying.
• Khazrak The One-Eye: The most cunning Beastman. Loves messing with Todbringer.
• Morghur, Master of Skulls: A creature so close to Chaos that stuff he touches becomes Spawns.
• Nagash: Supreme Lord and Creator of the Vampires. Used to get shit done and then raised it as undead to scare the shit out of everyone, now he camps in fortress, or something, things have been quiet since 5th edition. He may still be getting some shit done, since Mannfred Von Carstein is a recogniced follower/ally of him. Supposedly the stronger human wizard ever, and had an almost evenly fight with sigmar. Almost, because he still ended up having his ass wiped. But Sigmar's gone and Nagash is still rockin' it, so he probably had the last laugh on that one. In The End Times, he returns through the aid of his servants Arkhan and Mannfred, and afterwards resurrects Vlad von Carstein (much to Mannfreds chargin).
• Mannfred Von Carstein: Vampire Lord, and the only Von Carstein to even think about getting shit done. He's also part responsible of the theft of the Ring of Bupreme Badassery of Vlad and using said theft in his rise to power.
• Konrad Von Carstien: Bat-Shit crazy vampire Lord. Just snapped one day and wandered off into a forest muttering to himself, where he was promptly tackled by a dwarf and stabbed in the heart with the Elector Count of Ostland's Runefang. Total "pants-on-head" retarded vampire noob.
• Settra the Imperishable: Greatest of the Tomb Kings. Fights upon a pimped out chariot and casts like a Liche High Priest. He has been toned down in the newest version of the game he now cast like a chump at a level 1
• Khalida: Freaky mummy-chick blessed with the powers of a snake. Still hot.
• Overtyrant Tradelord Greasus Tribestealer Drakecrush Hoardmaster Goldtooth the Shockingly Obese: A huge motherfucker that weighs more then a pile of corpses made from giants. He loves eating almost as much as he loves killing. His name is also really, really long. Ogres are impressed by his name and he probably gets a shitload of tail. But he's a huge lardass who costs 565 points and makes ogres more awesome and enemy units pant-shittingly stupid.
• Golgfag Maneater: An Ogre mercenary, notorious for doing pretty much everything. Example: your mom.

Links

• Song for Warhammer Fantasy
• Warhammer Lexicanum (It is badly in need of more articles)
• Warhammer Fantasy Battles Tactics