Races and nations of Warhammer Fantasy

In the fictional Warhammer Fantasy setting by Games Workshop, there are a number of different races and nations. The most important of these feature are individual armies in the Warhammer Fantasy Battle table top game.

Realms of Men

All of the featured human nations are based in the Old World.

Bretonnia

Bretonnia is based on real-world medieval France; its name is clearly derived from the French province of Britanny and it draws heavily from Arthurian legends which are associated with Medieval Brittany; for instance with The Lady and The Green Knight who both have parallels in Arthurian lais.

Brettonia was founded when the knight Giles drove the hordes of orcs and chaos out of Brettonia in the name of the Lady, the goddess the Brettonians place their faith in.

Bretonnian armies rely on powerful charges from their many heavily armed and armored knights in order to achieve victory. Bretonnian knights are arguably the best heavy cavalry in the game, along with being the most varied. Bretonnian armies can also contain cheap and expendable units of unskilled peasant longbowmen and men at arms to serve as fodder.

Warhammer

Warhammer may refer to:

Warhammer Fantasy Battle

Warhammer: The Game of Fantasy Battles (formerly Warhammer Fantasy Battle and often abbreviated to Warhammer, WFB or WHFB) is an out-of-production tabletop wargame created by Games Workshop. It is the origin of the Warhammer Fantasy setting. The game is designed for regiments of fantasy miniatures. It uses stock fantasy races such as humans (The Empire, Bretonnia, Kislev), Elves (Dark Elves, High Elves, Wood Elves), Dwarfs, Undead, Orcs and Goblins, as well as some more unusual types such as Lizardmen, Skaven and the daemonic forces of Chaos. Each race has its own unique strengths and flaws; Wood Elves, for example, have the most powerful archers in the game but have poor overall defence and Bretonnia have the strongest cavalry but weak infantry. Similarly, the High Elves are very powerful in close combat, but have weak armour, and cannot be fielded in very large numbers.

Warhammer has been periodically updated and re-released since first appearing in 1983, with changes to the gaming system and army lists. The current official version, the eighth edition, was released on 10 July 2010.

Warhammer 40,000 comics

Warhammer 40,000 comics are spin-offs and tie-ins based in the Warhammer 40,000 fictional universe. Over the years these have been published by different sources. Originally appearing in Inferno! and Warhammer Monthly (the latter renamed Warhammer Comic when it became a bimonthly publication toward the end of its run), the initial series of stories have been released as trade paperbacks by Black Library, who have also released original graphic novels and shorter prestige format comics (the latter themselves often being collected into a larger trade paperback). In 2006, Games Workshop licensed Boom! Studios to publish comic books for the franchise, which they started releasing at the end of the year.

History and background

As part of the game

The works produced by the Black Library detail the interactions of the Warhammer 40,000 armies: Chaos Space Marines, Daemonhunters, Dark Eldar, Eldar, Imperial Guard, Necrons, Orks, Space Marines, Tau, Tyranids, and the Witch Hunters. They are collaborated efforts between the authors of the Warhammer 40,000 game rules and the writers of the background.