Classic Warlord

About this board game

Classic Warlord is a territory-conquest game for 2–7 players, with a playing time of approximately 360 minutes. Your objective is to dominate the board and destroy your opponents across a full eight-section mapboard.

Army reinforcements are based on the territories you hold. Cities, industrial spaces, and agricultural spaces provide armies, while mountainous, waste, and sea spaces provide none. Alliances are allowed, but they may be broken at will, creating a constantly changing balance of power.

Combat replaces conventional dice rolling with an elegant test of cunning and bluff. The attacker secretly chooses a number on the single D6 to determine how many pieces to attack with, subject to restrictions based on terrain. The defender then attempts to guess that number.

• A correct guess causes the attacker to lose the selected number of armies.
• An incorrect guess costs the defender one piece.
• If the territory is left unoccupied, the required attacking force can advance and capture it.

Successful combat can reward players with A-bombs. Launching an A-bomb can provide an even more devastating H-bomb, while either weapon may be positioned as a deterrent or used to clear enemy territory before an advance. Nuclear damage renders affected map spaces impassable for the rest of the game.

First self-published as The Warlord in 1974 and reprinted as Warlord in 1978, the game later appeared as Apocalypse in a smaller Games Workshop edition. The 2012 Classic Warlord limited edition returns to the full game with updated rules, an FAQ booklet, counters for up to seven players, pouches, a single large D6, and the complete mapboard.