SOVL: Fantasy Warfare is a turn-based strategy game with a visual style ripped straight from the battle report section of White Dwarf magazine, circa the mid 1990s. In this fantasy wargame, troop formations are represented by simple rectangles, decorated with flag colors and iconography, just as they were in classic Warhammer battle reports that older millennials and younger gen-Xers will remember from our glory days.
SOVL was released in 2023, and we’re frankly surprised no-one thought to make a turn-based game using this design style before. While many of the best Warhammer fantasy games, notably the Total War Games, put you in command of big rectangular regiments just like in tabletop Warhammer: The Old World, they’re at the far opposite end when it comes to graphical presentation.
We love the screen-smashing visual effects of Total War: Warhammer III as much as the next nerd, but there’s something to be said for simplicity and clarity. It’s all about the tactics, after all. Not to mention that SOVL should run on a pocket calculator.
The game is free on Steam, with paid DLC for additional factions. Those are very similar to the Warhammer: The Old World factions – Ratkin look a lot like Skaven, Deepwood Guardians look a lot like Wood Elves – so it’s clear what inspired the gameplay.
We’ve booted it up and accidentally played a mission against the AI when we should have been writing, and the gameplay is similarly inspired by the Warhammer: The Old World rules.
Units are unwieldy, lumbering formations that need to pivot to maneuver around battlefield obstacles. Damage is dealt via digital dice rolls, while melee combats involve both the exchange of blows and the chance to break enemy morale.
Both the author and editor Alex Evans yelped “We’ve got to play this” when colleague Matt Bassil brought SOVL to our attention in the morning news meeting, so there’s a non-zero chance you’ll hear more about it in future.
Of course, now that there’s a game like this for retro Warhammer fantasy battle reports, who’s going to make one for Warhammer 40k? ’90s 40k batreps used fantastic line-drawn representations of the larger units from each of the Warhammer 40k factions, particularly the vehicles. We’d love to play a game that lets us push legally-distinct Space Marines tanks around a goblin green battlefield.
If you, like us, are easily floored by nostalgia, check out our feature on kit-bashed retro Warhammer 40k action figures custom-crafted by Riot Games Senior Narrative manager Tammy Nicholls – they’re remarkable.