Desk wars is an archive of fantasy lore that also serves as a test and explanation for the usage and balancing of the "House Rules" system for playing warhammer fantasy battles in the World that Was. House Rules tries enhance the full fantasy aesthetic and provide a backdrop of martial realism. As a game system House Rules leans much further in the direction of Dungeons & Dragons incorporated open-ended possibilities and limitless approach to war-fantasy rather than a more Magic: The Gathering oriented focus in which a closed sandbox for chess-like competition grounds the lore-tangents and role-play style decision making. House Rules tends toward epicness. The system is built almost purely from existing rulesets although many editions have been researched and the perfect amalgum has been coagulated. The core of the rules are from 3rd edition the most complicated coolest and farthest reaching of the rulesets, however as the other systems dumbed things down House Rules also is in many ways a cherry-picked simplification of the 3rd edition rulebook a (3.5 if you will). Besides complexity of rules there is another axis of gaming aesthetic which has been navigated to construct the house rules: the balance between core and heroic models. Plagued by capitalism the simplified rulesets following 3rd edition had biases based on what they were trying to sell: 5th and 6th era herohammer favors grand lords and legendary mounts while 8th edition hordehammer favors armies with large units of core infantry. House Rules blends these game directions by constructing the core of the rules from the nitty-gritty oldhammer concepts for the game rules, the army lists are taken from 8th edition books which have the powerufl core unit abilities resulting from the end times army book arms race, and this is balanced by updated the army books to contain all the hero item choices and legendary heroes that used to exist in previous versions. House Rules blends the different power biases by integrating them together rather than stripping them away.
Canon for Desk Wars overlaps and includes all the normal canon and yet incorporates a whole new environment replete with exotic fantiastical terrain rarely foudn int fantasy lore. The intrepid minatures of desk wars do battle on simple house-hold/office terrain around my desk. To the east of the World's Edge mountains is an arid hill country criss crossed with rivers and valleys, beyond that lies desk country. A large portal glows on an odd monitor shaped rock formation, it is unclear if it was originally constructed by servants of chaos or the old ones. A small mountian of stereo equipment flanks the portal. There is a keyboard lava pit, a foothills of external harddrives and idevices, swishing cordbag lakes and mousepad forested areas. The desk is also strewn with obstacles, and other small instances of dangerous or impassable terrain.