About the Game

Fantasy Warlord is a game created in 1990 by Gary Chalk and Ian Bailey.

Gary Chalk is best known for his work on the Talisman board game, produced by Games Workshop in 1983, and the hugely popular Lone Wolf series of fantasy gamebooks, written by Joe Dever. Following their departure from Games Workshop, Gary and Ian produced their own miniatures wargame, Fantasy Warlord, to rival Games Workshop's Warhammer. Unfortunately Fantasy Warlord ran only for two years (source: Gary Chalk Interview).

Fantasy Warlord is a fantasy miniatures game released in 1990 by Folio Works. It was written by Ian Bailey and Gary Chalk who also did the illustrations.

The game was designed and published by two ex-Games Workshop employees who disagreed with the much more commercial direction that company was taking. It was supposed to rival the Warhammer Fantasy Battle game that Games Workshop published. 

Fantasy Warlord featured some unusual game mechanics such as simultaneous movement, an original command and control system (units are organised into brigades commanded by characters) and fog of war rules. It also featured balanced magic and troop choice systems. However the balance within the combat system reduced the opportunity to generate dramatic victories. 

Much like Warhammer, the game had its own fantasy world, called Vortimax, in which the battles were imagined to take place. There was also a related range of Fantasy Warlord miniatures cast by Alternative Armies, and a magazine called Red Giant.

The game went out of print 18 months after first publication. Some supplements were expected, such as Armies of Vortimax (expected in 1992) Besieged or Fantasy Warlord Command Pack, but none were released. Only two issues of Red Giant magazine were released. Folio Works Ltd. was dissolved on February 1993 (source: Wikipedia).

Thirty-five years after their creation by Ian Bailey and Gary Chalk, we wanted to give these rules a new lease of life.

To achieve this, several changes had to be made. First of all, the game is now more generic and is played outside of the Vortimax universe. For example, the races are now more typical of the usual heroic fantasy universes (there are no longer Eastern Goblins, but Cave Goblins — a more fitting name for these Goblinoids that lurk in the mountains and caves near human settlements).

The alignment system has also been standardised: Light becomes Good, Equilibrium becomes Neutral and Dark becomes Evil. Evil also encompasses the notion of chaos in the wargame sense. 

To address criticisms of the rules, Fantasy Warlord has been equipped with a web application capable of resolving all situations, including combat, shooting, morale tests, command tests and movement. We also thought that an interface allowing you to create your units, monsters, characters, and finally your armies, would save you precious time. 

As well as making the game more fluid, the application enables you to concentrate on what makes this wargame so powerful: simulation. Simultaneous movements and actions, a realistic command system and a fog of war. We hope that this tool has enhanced the rules of Fantasy Warlord. 

Of course, we also intend to develop the game's rules by offering new races of creatures to deploy on the battlefield, including monsters, animals, war machines, and even objects and spells.

Fantasy Warlord is designed to be compatible with all current and past 25/30 mm scale miniature ranges. However, with a few adjustments, the rules can also be used for 10/15 mm scale miniatures.