Origins and History
The Warhammer Armies Project is a hobby project of mine that I do in my spare time. It originally started in early 2010 when I worked on a collaborative forum project for an updated Dogs of War army book for 7th edition. This then expanded to other army books with Araby, Kislev, Cathay, Nippon, Norsca, Albion and Amazons released in the first year, and was followed by Halflings, Hobgoblins, Kingdoms of Ind and Pirates of Sartosa. After this I also decided to update Chaos Dwarfs and Bretonnia to 8th edition since Games-Workshop never did. Hence the name "Warhammer Armies Project" – it was a project to create army books for Warhammer, nothing more.
In 2015, Games-Workshop ended the Warhammer World by literally blowing it up in the End Times. At that point I did not play Warhammer Fantasy very actively myself (having previously been playing almost every week), but I still loved the setting and enjoyed compiling all rules, lore and art I could find into one large tome for people to read and play as they wished. As a result, I decided to update the main rules of 8th edition into a 9th edition, fixing the most glaring issues I had with the game and create the game I would have wanted to play myself. A lot of people saddened by the loss of the Warhammer World clearly had the same feeling, and the Warhammer Armies Project grew from just a collection of fan-made army books for 8th edition into a whole new game, actively updated for many years.
In 2023 Games-Workshop requested that I was to remove all official lore and art from the books, so I did. Since then, I've been actively working at updating the books in a rules-only format. While the loss of art and lore is a bit disappointing, this has meant that I've been able to get updates out at a much faster rate, which results in bugs and balance issues being adjusted much quicker than before. Realistically, it would not have been possible to keep updating the older books forever anyway as real life is taking up more and more time, so it might have been for the best anyway.
Rules Design
The Warhammer Armies Project started out making army books complete with lore and art for those factions never really explored in much detail by Games-Workshop. As a bit of an amateur history buff, I decided to base these armies on the real-world nations that they were clearly inspired by, along with what little material Games-Workshop had written for them. This in turn led to armies that were mostly historical in nature, with bits of regional fantasy and mythology sprinkled in. When making these books, I also attempted to include nearly all suitable historical options used by their real-life counterparts to let players build their armies from that. The main idea has always been to have pseudo-historical armies with fantasy elements rather than fantasy armies with some historical elements.
When I started to update the "official" Warhammer armies, I went through all editions of the game in an attempt to include everything that I felt fitting into the army books. This meant that regardless of if you had models from 3rd edition or the End Times (or even Age of Sigmar in some instances), you would be able to field your models in the Warhammer Armies Project. The books have not been created to make the most balanced game system it could be, but rather be the most comprehensive - and then balanced from there.
An important factor is WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") - this means that the equipment on the models should correspond with their equipment in-game. This has been an integral part of Games-Workshop's games for many years, and it's still something I like to adhere to. As a result, I expanded the armour selection with medium armour as an in-between between models with just a breastplate and full armour, and included several new weapon types to boot. Whenever I create rules for a unit, I look at the official historical models from Games-Workshop, fitting third party models, lore as well as art and try to ensure the unit can choose equipment that matches that. A few concessions are made to ensure the models still fit with the more modern lore; hence a few units and weapon options that would not fit their modern versions, or that would be mechanically redundant, have been left out.
Another thing is consistency, and having the rules and units
follow a systematic pattern. This means that if a rule or unit works a certain way, you can expect the same principles to apply to
similar versions of it between all books in a logical fashion. This in turn makes it easier to understand why a certain mechanic behaves the way it does, rather than having a ton of exceptions everywhere. For the same reason, I try to streamline the rules where possible, and dislike including special rules just for the sake for having special rules. Instead, special rules are included in order to give a unit a specific role when needed, and/or to keep consistency with other similar units.
When it comes to the main rules, I was never particularly enamored with a lot of the 8th edition rules, particularly due to long charge ranges, steadfast, overpowered magic, weak shooting and monsters galore. As such, I attempted to remedy these things with the Warhammer Armies Project 9th edition. As a result, infantry charges are slowed down, steadfast has become more limited, magic has been toned down with less powerful spells, shooting has been made more viable and monsters are rarer. Overall, this has resulted in a game that places more focus on careful maneuvering and flanking rather than just building the biggest unit possible and attempt to steamroll the opposition, or throwing all available dice into a single game-ending spell.
The Future
I plan on supporting the Warhammer Armies Project in whatever capacity I can, so people who want to can enjoy the game for many more years to come. You can look forward to many smaller updates in the future to fix bugs, address balance issues and probably some more units and items. Time willing, I'm also planning on adding expansions to give even more options to players in the years to come.
Thanks for reading.
