Heyhey, here’s another review/battle report. Today we’re taking a closer look at Warhammer Renaissance, a fan-made re-make of Warhammers of the 90s.

A few days ago I watched a video in which Rick Priestley talked about Warhammer, editions 4, 5 and 6. In this, he claimed that he considered Warhammer Fantasy’s 4th edition to be as good as it gets, 5th edition being barely different. And even from 5th to 6th there were very few changes  as to the core rules. We all know why and how GW handle their rules sets like they do. But for the players, there is no such economic pressure to change stuff. Instead, they can go back to the Warhammer they like, and see how to fix it to make it even better.

Warhammer Renaissance, thought up and written by Balder Asmussen, has a clear mission, as stated on the back of the book:

It’s a complete re-do of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, a mix of 4th and 5th edition (which basically means: re-do of 4th edition), with some bits of 6th strewn in for playability. The magic system is very much based on Warhammer 4th edition’s. There are a few significant changes though:

• The Magic Phase is cleaned up a little.
• Regiments with a musician are allowed to pivot before or after their move and thus are much more maneuverable.
• Models in the second rank are allowed to carry out a single attack if the unit is engaged to the front.
• Slain models are replaced with models from ranks behind them, allowing them to ‘attack back’ as per their initiative. (ie. the “Step Up” rule).
• Armies must spend at least 50% of their points on regiments rather than at least 25%.

Most of these main changes were made to make regiments more viable in relation to characters. Which is what made these rules appealing to me first and foremost. The rules are for free (and always will be) and are considered finished, with only Q&As/small erratas to follow and updates on the army lists.

 

The Books

Warhammer Renaissance consists of two books: The rule book and the Army Compendium.

The rule book a 145 page PDF, mostly printer-friendly, with some colour headlines, some lovely colour and b/w illustrations (by Mafu Street and others) and some diagrams.

There is a very useful and detailled table of contents with interactive hyperlinks in the front (no index in the back, but the table of contents got you covered for most things), followed by 7 pages in which the author gives us some background info on his Warhammer career, a small history of Warhammer Fantasy Battles and why and how he approaches this project. Then we got 77 pages of game rules. You can see that this is a fully developed rule book and a lot of playtesting went into it. Rules are laid out clearly and from what I saw cover any situation you’re likely to run into. Everything is covered: setting up a game, movement, shooting, melee, magic, right down to details such as fighting in buildings and so on, as well as some optional rule variants. The last 50 pages cover every spell from every school of magic.

 

The army compendium contains all the army lists used in Warhammer Renaissance and the rules for building an army.

All the army lists have been re-done, points values have been adjusted. Which is another major point that appeals to me about these rules, because the original 4th edition army books have been quite all over the place when it comes to ‘balance’. The lists also contain options which refer to 3rd edition units or some even later stuff – very interesting.

You’ll see some surprising entries, such as a separate army list for the Halflings of the Moot or the Norse. Then we got the Slann Empire, based on the 2nd and 3rd edition iteration of the Slann as opposed to the 5th edition versions from the Lizardmen army. Chaos feature various routes to choose from (under 2000 points you have to opt for either a Chaos Warriors, Beastmen or Chaos Demons army, from 2000 points on you may mix units). Undead are split up in Vampire Counts, Khemri and of course Classic Undead. As you can see, pretty much everything is taken care of.

 

What do I need to play?

Apart from the free-to-download books, you will need the regular Warhammer stuff: six-sided dice, figures, terrain, 6′ by 4′ worth of gaming table (6′ by 8′ is recommended), but smaller will work at a pinch. Artillery and scatter dice and a few templates from Warhammer Fantasy.

 

The Game

The Armies

Dark Elves

I wanted to give these rules a try, but before I subject friends to me endlessly scrolling through a PDF I prefer to run a solo test game. You know my Dark Elves.

From those I put together a 1000 points force:

Hero on Dark Pegasus (heavy armour, shield, lance) – General

19 Warriors with light armour, shields, spears

12 Warriors with light armour, repeating crossbows

16 Witch Elves with light armour, poison, Banner of Missile Protection – Frenzy

5 Cold One Knights with heavy armour, lance, shield – Fear, Stupidity

5 Dark Riders with light armour, repeating crossbows, spears – Vanguard, Skirmish

997 Points

 

Problem is that I needed opposition for a solo game. I got a tiny contingent of Beastmen, but not enough for a full army. Also, I prefer a good army to go against the evil dark elves.

 

Empire

Many years ago I got a lot of Empire troops from a friendly man who quit the hobby. Also, for a little while I thought of doing an Empire army. When I saw the later plastic state troops I swiftly decided to get a bunch of the late 5th edition figures, because I just preferred them and still do. Turns out, it was quite a bunch, and a good bunch too, including a regiment of metal-plastic hybrid crossbowmen and handgunners each. Mostly 6th edition figures, some of the aforementioned late 5th edition plastics and hybrid kits. The dream would be all-metal 4th edition armies of course, but that’s a mere pipe dream. So I painted a bunch of what I got to get a 1000 points army together.

Mostly troops from Ostland, handgunners from the neighboring Hochland.

Hero on Warhorse with barding, full plate armour, shield, Gromril Blade, Talisman of Luck – General

Hero with Hochland Long Rifle

18 Spearmen with light armour, shields, spears

12 Crossbowmen with crossbows. – Detachment to the Spearmen

20 Greatswords with light armour, two-handed weapons and the Carroburg Standard

13 Handgunners with flails. No, muskets of course. Good to see you paying attention.  – Detachment to the Greatswords

6 Knights of the White Wolf on warhorses with barding, full plate armour, two-handed weapons, White Wolf Standard

1 Mortar

998 Points

 

The Scenario

I really dig the way the whole pre-game stuff works in Warhammer Renaissance. There are 10 objectives to choose from or randomly determine and very basic rules for terrain placement. Well, mostly hill placement, because hills are important. Then both sides roll off to see who gets to choose the side. The other player gets a +1 to later determine who gets to go first.

Before that though, both players sketch out their deployment in secret ob a piece of paper. The sketches are revealed simultaneously and figures are set up. That is an ingenious move on the author’s part, because it’s much faster and much more fun than coming up with a deployment scheme in front of your opponent.

For my solo game, I rolled “Take the Tower” as an objective. One of the deployment zones features a hill. The Dark Elves won the roll-off to see who gets to choose the side they would deploy on to deny the Empire the very useful hill.

Both armies deployed. The game would last for 5 turns, at the end of turn#5 players roll to see if a 6th turn would be played. Clever. The side who has a regiment of rank and file troops closest to the tower wins the objective.

Deployment

The Dark Elves, from left to right: Repeating Crossbow Warriors, Cold One Knights, Witch Elves, Spear Warriors, Hero on Dark Pegasus, and the Dark Riders in skirmish formation cover the flank.

The Empire army deploys as such: Knights of the White Wolf (the general is along for the ride), Handgunners next to their parent unit of Greatswords, Mortar in the centre, Spearmen and their detachment of Crossbowmen (including the Hero with Hochland Long Rifle). They win the roll-off for going first in turn#1.

 

Turn 1

…including the Dark Riders’ vanguard move!

The whole army advances towards the enemy. The crossbow men just turn a little to get a shot at the Dark Riders. Thus, their parent unit hangs back a little as not to leave their detachment behind.

Handgunners and crossbowmen moved and thus can not fire in the shooting phase, but the mighty mortar takes aim at the witch elves to ruin their hair-dos.

Side note: Being 90% Dark Elf and 10% Beastman, I never fired a war machine that doesn’t go “twoing” before. So my guess was just a bit off. Yup, Warhammer Renaissance does the whole guessing thing, the rule book is very keen to explain how to measure things without measuring too much as not to take away the element of guessing artillery and charge ranges.

The Dark Elves’ first turn starts with the Cold One Knights declaring a charge against the Knights of the White Wolf. The heavily armoured knights take the charge.

Much to their surprise, the Dark Elf nobles on their (luckily well-behaved) Cold Ones are undeterred by the terror-inducing White Wolf Standard. Quite the opposite, the knights, even with the general among their ranks, fail their fear test, granting a -2 to hit on the first melee phase.

The infantry (spearmen and Witch Elves) advance while the army’s general takes off into the skies…

The Dark Riders don’t move an inch. They plan to take out the clumsy humans in a stand-off with superior skill and volume of fire.

They take out two of the state troops.

The oh so important first melee phase goes horribly for the Cold One Knights. They aren’t able to penetrate the enemy’s armour, in return (and despite their fear!) the knights clobber down two of the Dark Elven nobles.

 

But they stay in the fight. Without the charge bonus though, it would take quite a LOT of luck to stand against the human knights.

 

Turn 2

Empire troops don’t move much at all; the Dark Elves are coming at them with all they got anyway.

The Empire’s shooting phase commences with the mortar. They take another shot at the Witch Elves, but the grenade deviates and lands on the roof of the tower!

Luckily the building remains undamaged. Next, the Crossbowmen at the flank, led by the Engineer with his highly experimental weapon, take shots at the Dark Riders. One of them is shot out of his saddle.

The Hochland Long Rifle rolls a 1 to hit (a stunt the engineer would achieve surprisingly often over the course of this game!), but luckily I couldn’t find any rules of these experimental weapons blowing up on bad rolls.

The Hochland handgunners fare better against the Witch Elves. Thanks to the Banner of Missile Protection, only three of the venomous vixens fall to enemy fire.

The melee phase produces horrifying results for the Dark Elves. A cold One manages to mangle one of the knights, but in turn the Dark Elves lose two of their own.

…but the lonely champion stands his ground.

Time for the Dark Elves to do some damage themselves!

Seeing no other useful course of action, the crossbow elves rush to the aid of the Cold One Knight…

The Witch Elves charge at the Greatswords. As charge reaction, their detachment of handgunners open up at the Witches again, killing one.

Distracted by this attack, they fail to notice the dark shadow swooping upon them from high up – the Dark Elf Hero charges the handgunners in concert with the Witch Elves charging the Greatswords.

Meanwhile, the Spear Elves take the tower and unfurl their black banner at the top of the building.

The shooting phase is uneventful. The Dark Riders take out another crossbowman. The melee phase sees more stuff happening: The Dark Elf general, despite being somewhat soberingly un-killy, drives the Hochland handgunners off  and towards the table edge. In a rare display of luck, they manage to out-run the dark pegasus and are not run down.

I also would have taken the Witch Elves as being deadlier: Throwing roughly 300 attacks towards the Greatswords, the frenzied furies manage to take out 6 enemies whilst losing three of their own. The humans certainly got the numbers advantage on their side, but surely the would soon succumb to elven bat-guano craziness. For now though they hold their ground, thanks to their magic Carroburg Standard.

The crossbow elves bounce off the Empire’s finest, but stay in the fight.

   

 

Turn 3

The Empire’s mortar crew witness the Hochland handgunners being chased by a big, winged horse, panic and flee. However, the Hochlanders rally right before the edge of the table and are dead set on showing the snooty elven noble what’s what.

Another uneventful shooting phase. The crossbowmen slowly gain the upper hand against the superior dark elven Dark Riders troops, who are reduced to two riders, but hold.

In a shocking display of terrible dice rolling, the Witch Elves lose their round of close combat, break, and are run down by the remaining Greatswords! So long, murderous maidens.

The crossbow elves are finally beaten by the Knights of the White Wolf. The surviving few run away, but are ridden down by the heavy cavalry. At least they act as a stop-gap so the Cold One Knights champion can take off.

 

The Dark Elves dramatically run out of options.

The Dark Riders, reduced to two models, finally give up the plan of outgunning the human crossbowmen and move to their flank.

The Dark Elves general charges the Hochland handgunners once more. With the enemy right in their face and their backs to the wall, all they can do is take the charge. Another hand of unlucky dice for the Dark Elves. Not only do the empire’s troops not take a single casualty, one of them manages to hit the elven noble in the face with the butt of his crude handgun. The indignity!

 

Turn 4

With most problems taken care of, the Empire’s units turn to take care of the troops in the tower. The remaining Greatswords however turn on the spot towards the Dark Elves general.

The struggle between Dark Elf general and Empire handgunners continues. Finally he manages to shoo the pesky humans away and for the insolance of having scarred his beautiful face, the general follows them off the table to ride them down personally.

 

By now the Dark Elves are condemned to try to be as much as an annoyance as they can be, so the spearmen can hold on to the tower.

The general on his trusty dark pegasus returns from off-table. The Dark Riders once again ride along the crossbowmen’s lines, peppering them with bolts and taking out two more, but the Ostland crossbowmen stand firm.

 

Turn 5

The Empire’s turn commences with the Knights of the White Wolf moving right up to the tower, making ready to dismount and charge in as heavily armoured shock troops.

Even the Greatswords turn towards the tower now, being largely unimpressed with the Dark Elves general’s performance so far.

Dark Elf time!  Seeing an opportunity, the Dark Elves general once more charges. This time into the back of the Greatswords!

Victory over the handgunners must have rejuvinated him. He cuts down three enemy troopers, but the few who get to turn around finally slay him.

Luckily, this doesn’t bother the spear elves in the tower much, who hunker down in the tower…

A dice roll to see if a 6th turn is being played…. yup!

 

Turn 6

Even the heavy oaken door gives way under the relentless blows of great warhammers and the Empire general leads the charge into the tower. A bloody and chaotic melee ensues, but only few elves are felled. But now the knights gained a foothold in the tower and combat can begin in earnest.

Turn 6, Dark Elves turn. The very last phases of the game.

Wild melee within the tower, the dark elves put up a dogged defence against the heavily armoured knights and slay two of them, while four Dark Elf Warriors fall.

The Dark Elf Warriors pass their break test and hold on to the objective.

 

Victory Points

The total points cost of slain and fleeing units is counted, the objective is worth 50% of the total points cost of the armies (1000 points).

Dark Elves: 697
Empire: 691

It’s a Dark Elves Vict- no, wait, it’s a Draw! 

 

Conclusions

Phew. That went pretty bad for the Dark Elves, but they managed to hold on to that objective.

Right from the first charge I remembered that armour is a bit of a problem for Dark Elves.

They got their lovely stats and their sexy looks and all, but in the end getting bonked on the head by S 4(!) knights with greathammers will do damage. Funnily enough, I always regarded the Knights of the White Wolf als the ‘lesser’ imperial knights because they got a worse armour save than other knights, but against Dark Elves, these are the perfect weapon. They’ll hit last anyway, so why not make it a proper hit with two-handed weapons. Funnily enough, the Witch Elves probably would have fared better than the Cold One Knights against them. The Dark Elves had some bad luck with dice rolling, but okay. I was surprised with how well the state troops dealt with the Dark Elves general. And they probably would have done so even more easily, because for large parts of the game I actually forgot to apply the rule that models in the second rank may attack as well.

 

Warhammer Renaissance

Judging from this game, Warhammer Renaissance works. It’s not aimed at tournament play, but I guess it’ll work as well for that purpose as 4th or 5th editions did for sure. What instantly drew me to these rules was how the focus of this ‘herohammer’-based game was shifted to regiments, as mentioned above. Most of all though I was intrigued because I’m of the firm belief that the best thing that can happen to GW rules sets is GW abandoning them and passionate fans with a vision taking over. It worked for Epic, for Mortheim, for BloodBowl, for Necromunda, etc.

A Word on The Old World

Yup, The Old World popped up recently. Which is great. A highly intriguing product, because to me it came out of left field and apparently GW approached it very, very, very carefully, not quite knowing whom this would be advertised to. I followed the articles put up on Warhammer Community, a bunch of bits seemed cool.

Then they published stat lines for Questing Knights, featuring a litany of special rules, and I lost interest. Apart from the aforementioned fact that I simply don’t trust GW with wargames rules. And there is no reason to use them if one doesn’t trust them. Also, I’m tremendously cheap, and didn’t want to shell out EUR 90,00 to EUR 130,00 for rulebooks, army books etc. (without Dark Elves!) if there are eight other editions of Warhammer out there. In his author’s notes, Mr.Asmussen mentions his fondness of TOW as a Warhammer rules set, and that the gaming experiences of it and Warhammer Renaissance are different.

 

Is Warhammer Renaissance worth trying?

Of course this isn’t a universal recommendation for Warhammer Renaissance. There are far more elegant, faster rules out there. Guessing ranges is not something I would endure in a new rules set, neither is the insanity of individual basing and casualty removal in a battle game. These rules though don’t aim to be modern wargames rules, they aim to make Warhammer better for people who like(d) Warhammer.

The whole layout of the book is clean and simple, the focus is not on ‘production value’. The author states that (probably for legal reason) this is on purpose, so it can not be confused with an official GW product. I’m all for that. ‘Production value’, beyond the point of clear readability, always is to the detriment of the actual value of the thing and just marketing faff. This isn’t a product, it’s a neat thing by fans for fans. And it can’t ever be commodified, which is of actual value. As mentioned above, all the rules are available for free on the Warhammer Renaissance Facebook group, or can be downloaded here:

WARHAMMER RENAISSANCE RULE BOOK 2025

WARHAMMER RENAISSANCE ARMY COMPENDIUM 2025

The rules are considered done and thus “safe to print” by the author, the army compendium is planned to get an annual update.

 

So yeah, I enjoyed my test game of Warhammer Renaissance. Never thought I’d ever do a Warhammer army for myself any more, but those rules got me kinda enthusiastic.

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed the article and the photos!