Fantasy Warlords

Fimm McCool

Fimm McCool

Lord
Got a copy of these rules thrown in with some GW bits. Loving the Gary Chalk art, anyone know if the game is worth learning?
 
I played it a fair bit when it came out in the early 90's and used to enjoy it. There were complaints about the percentile system being to formulaic but I never found it a problem. I think the reason I stopped was simply a lack of support. The rules for war machines, proper undead and sieges just never came out. I wasn't overly enamored with the army lists either, when wood elves are restricted to something like 25% missile troops I'm going to have a problem using most of my collection. Still ignoring the lists is easy enough. I keep meaning to play some more games with it.

There was a really nice scenario in I think the second Red Giant with a Baron cheating on payments to some mercenaries. There were captive to free and random events including units for the GM to use. I may even have a spare copy.
 
Wonder if there are any fan supplements around, sounds like the kind of thing that could have been successful had the timing been better.
 
Love the book, the illustrations and the background world is very interesting.
But the game tanked on release, I remember the GMI review, where it was played alongside Fantasy Warriors, and the reviewers slated it, overly complicated rules and just 'not fun' iirc.
I think there were also issues with the miniatures range that was supposed to tie in with it.
I've never tried playing it I must admit, but I do take it out every so often to look at the pictures.
 
There is only one book so unless you have a butchered copy you do have the background.

I'd say the game was sort of complicated to learn, certainly to design costed armies but once you get playing it's fine.

I there is a fan Yahoo group with extra rules on it but I found it to be a direction I wouldn't personally have taken the game.

I love the miniatures, many still available from alternative Armies but yes I understand the miniatures didn't come through as expected. The game tanked because it was up against the release of 4th ed WHFB and all the GW stores.
 
Erny":2l5nfla3 said:
There is only one book so unless you have a butchered copy you do have the background.
Click to expand...

Yay! I haven't looked at it properly, just flicked through the artwork, which I love. Wikipedia said there were two books, a rules and background volume. Shows how reliable WP is!
 
The wiki page is mostly looked after by the same guy that runs the Yahoo group and is quite accurate. The book has 2 parts, titled book 1 and book 2, not two separate books!

I've never really given it enough time to say whether it's any good or not as a system. As a general rule I don't like games that tie worlds to systems, so would no doubt have similar issues to Erny with the Army list.

After the Lone Wolf Boardgame KS gets delivered, might give it a FW a go with Chalks paper minis.
 
We played it a few times when it came out, it was fun, and fairly easy to learn, had some interesting rules ideas, from memory, like ammunition for archers. but it didn't grab any of us massively, so we went back to WFB3 fairly quickly.

In short, ok, but not groundbreaking in any way. 6/10, could do better.
 
I haven't played the system as I bought the book for the artwork. There's lots of good info about the system on the Wikipedia page and supplements we could've got had the game been successful.

Gary did an interview for one of the members of The Warhammer Forum a few years ago about his artwork and he answered my submitted question which was a general "Can you tell us about your experiences of Fantasy Warlord." which he summed it up as stressful, financially very costly and that they'd completely misunderstood the way the fantasy war games market was going at that point.

Had it been released in the 80's I think it would've had more of a chance, ditto Fantasy Warriors, but in the early 90's the Fantasy market was pretty much WHFB or nothing.
 
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