Warfront Designer’s Diary: Introducing a New Fantasy Wargame That Fits in Your Pocket

Warfront is the culmination of a lot of hard work and a little bit of ADHD. It is a brand new boxed war game and ongoing fantasy franchise. Instead of miniature figures players take control of an army printed on a deck of cards, with the artwork composed to resemble a classic rank & flank unit. Each unit has stats, abilities, and a points cost so while the game is simplified and streamlined it holds onto all the elements that we, as wargamers, love.

If you want to build a gun-line you can! If you want a full cavalry army you certainly can! Each faction has a unique army wide ability and particular strengths and weaknesses but you can build your army in any playstyle!

“Warfront is played on a roughly 24 by 36 inch battlefield and, with two players, can be fought in less than 45 minutes. It also fits in your pocket so it’s the perfect lunch time or travel game.”

Now that I’ve wet your whistle, let’s take a quick trip down memory lane…

Humble Beginnings

It was on a school trip to a heritage museum in 1998 that I first laid eyes on what would turn out to be a lifelong hobby and passion. Nestled between the replica Roman coins and gemstones were boxes of Warhammer Fantasy. I picked up a box of chaos dwarfs, clearly even at a young age I had impeccable taste.

Fast forward 25 years, the hotly anticipated release of Warhammer The Old World is rapidly approaching and, as I mused over the recent increase in scalpers and the very real chance I would miss out on a release box, an idea began to take shape.

What if I could just buy a proxy army but instead of plastic models the units would be printed on a deck of playing cards. A Google search uncovered that whilst not a novel idea (see ONUS! Or Battleground: Fantasy Warfare) there wasn’t a dedicated proxy card product out there.

With a bit of trial and error and some calculations, I found that if I reduced the base sizes by three-quarters, I could quite neatly fit a unit of 20 to 30 models onto a single standard-sized playing card. Larger models were more of a challenge but with some imagination, they could also work. I may be onto something here, I thought. However, as with most projects, the more you iterate the more you deviate. And, as I adapted additional units, I began to realize that I had an overwhelming urge. The kind of urge that keeps tapping you on the shoulder until finally, it smacks you over the head. I realized that I had a golden opportunity, an opportunity to do something I had dreamt about for years. I could create my own fantasy war game.

“Warfront isn’t designed to compete with the miniature hobby, I still buy and paint tons of models. Its purpose is to get dice rolling more often and with more people. It has been designed to help build a bridge for those that are put off by models but want to war game. And it’s the perfect entry point to introduce a friend or family member.”

At a crossroads, I now had a decision to make, stick with the safety net of a proxy product for a popular franchise or take the leap, and create my own fantasy adventure. Clearly the latter prevailed, and truthfully it wasn’t a very long deliberation.

In earnest, I began creating lore, crafting the setting and characters, setting the stage for the conflict to come, and many more conflicts down the road. And so, Warfront was born. My own personal tribute to the fantasy wargames that I continue to love and treasure.

The catalyst for the journey months prior had been a concern about the availability of products and the hole that had seemingly been dug by Games Workshop, caused by their release practices. And that theme has held true throughout the development of Warfront, a pushback against the endless releases and FOMO, an inexpensive wargaming alternative whilst the cost of living, never mind gaming, spirals beyond control. A yearning to play more games, particularly with my fiancé who won’t touch the complexity of most miniature games with a ten-foot pole. A drive for simplicity without sacrificing depth or strategy. All these concepts are at the core of what Warfront is; a rules-light strategy-heavy budget-friendly fantasy wargame.

In a box of Warfront, you get two opposing armies. This first iteration contains the Righteous Zenith Guard, your classic shiny good guys decked in gold armour and sporting an array of complex, solar-powered weaponry (did somebody say lasers?). And encroaching into Zenithia are the vast and terrible forces of the Corrupted Legion, a rabble of savage tribes, fearsome beasts, and worse… Who will prevail in this bloody conflict?

The Story So Far

“The Kingdom of Zenithia is a bastion of light in an otherwise markedly dingy world. Following the victory by the great alliance of the humans, elves, and dwarves nearly 400 years ago, Zenithia took up the Northwestern territories of the newly formed Treatylands.

They built an immense golden city upon the fossils of savage settlements. The once numerous tribes driven North across the treacherous Umbral Spine mountains and into the Veiled Steppes by the advancing allied armies.

The kingdom soon became a technological powerhouse, further augmenting their
already powerful military capabilities. Their solar engineers learning to harness the power of the sun’s rays with ever more advanced machines and weaponry.

And not a moment too soon, as like a waxing tide, the displaced tribes began to surge back into the golden kingdom with worrying frequency. Alas, with a newly bolstered military, the Zenith Guard pushed back all invaders, securing their lands and bringing peace to the region.

Many years have passed and perhaps the kingdom has become complacent. For a threat, the likes of which has not been seen since the great war, has amassed in the Northern lands and is marching South with terrible intent.

The brave men and women of the Zenith Guard must gather their courage and face this threat head-on!

In the savage and inhospitable Veiled Steppes, reside many scattered and feuding tribes. Only the most ruthless survive in such a place, constantly under threat from neighbouring tribes and all manner of twisted beasts.

The land itself is cast into perpetual shade by the towering mountain range to the South. So massive is this wall of rocks and ice that it is almost completely impassible save for a single mountain pass.

For hundreds of years, any daring warriors that made the journey were soon caught and despatched by the vigilant Zenith Guard.

Now, united under the burning eye banner of Belzen the Corrupter, a thousand tribes are moving with the same goal. To breach the pass and claim fertile grounds beyond the mountains. Accompanied by a menagerie of terrible beasts, monsters and worse, this legion of corrupted warriors marches South.”

The impending conflict will reach its apex in the Northwestern region, but the Treatylands are managed under the shared rule of the human, elven and dwarven
alliance, each with their own territories. As the war for Zenithia sparks, allied forces are diverted as more threats begin to present themselves. On the Southern coast an almighty armada of pirate rats has made landing. Led by the ruinous Screech Blacktooth, a cruel captain of unmatched power. Once a rather unremarkable upstart, Screech was quickly beaten, and his ship sunk to the bottom of the ocean along with his crew. Only Screech survived, returning from the black abyss with an otherworldly destiny. Bestowed with dark abyssal powers of unknown origin, Screech quickly brought his rival captains to heel and formed the first Pi-rat armada.

Upon making land, the fleet of ships has been promptly dismantled and fashioned into ramshackle artillery and weapons platforms. Why a pirate captain would destroy his own fleet is, yet a mystery.

In response, the Elven Kingdom of Thalor dispatches their ariel defence force, the
Seaward Talons. The young, and newly promoted, Commander Calandir utilises unconventional and unproven tactics, favouring the speed and manoeuvrability of the native sea eagles to strike with brutal results. And with a point to prove will he underestimate the tactical skill of the invading Pi-rat Captain?

To the west, Princess Kara has defied her father’s orders and led an elite attack force deep into Goblorc Underkhan territory with the intention to root out the infestation. The Stoneshaper Dwarves are elemental masters of stone, rock, and earth. Using runic powers, the Stoneshapers can alter the properties of stone at will to make it flow like water or be as light as cloth. For the last decade Princess Kara has led innovation in military application, and it is with these prototype inventions that she sets off into hostile lands.

Beneath the ground, in the endless network of tunnels that worm within the Hollow Plains, reside the subterranean territories of the Goblorc Underkhans. Once this land was free of these pests, and a much safer place for it. Since the Goblorcs were driven from the Eastern lands some 200 years ago they have spread into every crevice and hole. Upon arriving on the plains, they found that the dominant fauna were a variety of mole-like species filling every biological niche imaginable. There are slow-moving herbivorous moles, predatory pack-moles that hunt like wolves, and even gigantic behemoles weighing close to 10 tonnes. Quickly these animals were subjugated by the Goblorcs and have become formidable mounts and beasts of burden, ridden whilst on raids and set loose to wreak havoc behind enemy lines.

Making constant incursions into the grand Stoneshaper halls and tunnels beneath the mountains, the innumerable Goblorcs have drawn the fiery wrath of youth that may lead to their ruin.

Each of these three conflicts make up the Treatylands Saga, the first planned saga in the great Warfront adventure. Each army is compatible with all past and future releases, and with many more sagas in development Warfront is poised to be an expansive and thematically rich war game that belies its simplicity.

Design Pillars

“There are currently three ways to play Warfront: ‘Clash’, ‘Area Control’ & ‘Survival’ – each with their own challenges and win conditions. And, we have created various army building formats including a ‘Draft’ format where players draw units at random and must try to succeed no matter what army they end up with!”

How best can I emulate and respect my favourite wargames whilst creating something unique and specific to the card format I had arrived at? Two design tenets I kept in mind were simplicity & strategy.

Strategy is the easier of the two to explain so let’s start with Simplicity. I’ll give you an example, wounds! In Warfront wounds are tracked through statuses and each unit has the same four statuses. They start as ‘Resolute’, degrade to ‘Shaken’ upon losing a wound, then to ‘Damaged’ and finally to ‘Broken’. A ‘Resolute’ unit has full wounds whilst a ‘Broken’ unit will be removed from the battlefield at the end of the phase.

With this simplification not only is the condition of each unit easier to track (using our handy status-tracker cards included) but it also opens opportunities to have units and abilities interact in different ways depending on a given status.

Right so that’s wounds nailed, what’s next? Saving throws?

In Warfront a unit rolls a dice in response to every ‘hit’ and must roll below its defence value. An expendable unit of barbarians, poorly armoured and not particularly interested in self-preservation, has a defence value of two and so will fail its defence roll two thirds of the time. A resilient unit like the Steam Crawler, a
walking tank, has a defence value of four and so will statistically lose one wound for every three hits.

It is with this defence value that we can represent inherent toughness, durable armour, natural evasiveness, or sheer numbers without the need to overcomplicate. Yes, there is less granularity but we’re here for a good time not a long time!

And similar time-saving simplifications have been made across the board, hooray!

Before you go clutching those pearls, I need to tell you about glory. The glory of separating an opponent’s head from his shoulders with one swing of your axe, the glory of a perfectly loosed arrow into an eye socket or the glory of a perfect death, one that will be spoken about for generations!

In Warfront, glory is king. Whenever you roll a natural six in shooting, attacking or defending you will collect one glory point. Each point can be spent to activate the abilities of your units! This resource management system means that decision-making is key, and abilities can be clutch. It also means that you need to carefully manage your actions to ensure you have enough points available to pull off that fancy manoeuvre or cast that devastating spell. Sometimes you might need to charge into combat and sacrifice a unit just to generate the glory points to then blast an enemy unit off the objective.

So, there you have it: simplification plus strategy. And we needed an art style to fit. A fun, quirky style with bags of character. Shout out to André (@alkmerlin) who has brought these units to life and is an absolute joy to work with. His enthusiasm and passion for the project has blown me away and he deserves all the kudos.

Our future plans are ambitious. We expect to release the first Saga, that’s three releases and six factions, in 2025. These future releases introduce new types of terrain with different interactions. There will be persistent spell cards that can be interacted with on the battlefield and give powerful effects. And we are working on powerful artifacts and renowned weapons for your leaders to wield.

Beyond that, we have the second saga in development already. Eagle-eyed followers might have an idea where that adventure will take us.

We’re really striving to make sure that Warfront becomes your next favourite fantasy game.

Our first release will come to Kickstarter in November 2024, we’ll see you there adventurer…