Battle Masters

Battle Masters is a miniature wargame created by the toy company Milton Bradley in collaboration with British miniatures publisher Games Workshop, first released in 1992. Designed by Stephen Baker, who later created the well known game Heroscape, Battle Masters is built for exactly two players and a typical game takes about sixty minutes to complete. It is aimed at players aged nine and up and shares its setting with Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy Battle line, pitting the forces of the human Empire against the followers of Chaos across a battlefield of plastic miniatures, but it trades Warhammer's detailed rules for a far simpler card driven system intended to introduce younger or newer players to tabletop battle games. Each side commands a roster of troop types with their own strengths, and players use a deck of order cards to activate units, resolve combat and attempt special maneuvers, with the game ending once one side's forces are broken. Battle Masters served as an accessible entry point into the miniature wargaming hobby during the early 1990s and introduced many younger players to the wider Warhammer setting.