Despite being one of the most obvious ideas in all of tabletop gaming, for some reason it has been decades since the last Warcraft miniature wargame was in production. It's a gap that hobbyists are only too eager to fill with fan rules - and the latest attempt is being made using the Star Wars Legion ruleset.
For the uninitiated, Star Wars Legion uses a similar size of models to the better known Warhammer 40,000, but has a very different rules system. While the meat of any army is made up of grunts, heroes have an outsize influence, both with their imposing statlines - Darth Vader being the ultimate melee blender unit in the game - and with unique Command cards, which can dramatically change your battle plan. It's a game where infantry win the battles, but the personalities of your heroes shape how your army plays.
Which feels pretty spot on for Warcraft, right? So when I saw in the r/SWLegion subreddit that the epically named Karl Edmund Gustafson the Fifth was working on a project to bring Warcraft into Star Wars Legion, I asked him what his plans were.
"I've only been working on this for about a week now!", he says. The inspiration came from "a long string of 'what ifs', starting from 'I wonder if I could make Lego Warcraft buildings' that eventually, somehow, led me into wanting to be able to play with the Warcraft factions on the tabletop".
His goals are modest, "just to have a decent amount of units per Warcraft 3's main factions - a few named commanders, operatives, and the like". He plays mostly online, and he's weighing up making his own models in Blender, or possibly to 3D print. He may not have to - the Warcraft spinoff Warcraft Rumble has a set of STLs for a wide range of characters that are free for non-commercial purposes.
Gustafson is laying out the rules cards using the Tabletop Admiral web tool, which lets Patreon subscribers create custom Star Wars Legion unit cards. At the moment there are "only a few cards that need finishing" in the Alliance - though the points values are extremely provisional. He says it's "probably the Horde" next - "I already have a few ideas for them as a faction, though I've been writing out ideas for both the Night Elves and the Scourge".
It's early days for this fan project, but however it shakes out, it's good to see the DIY spirit alive and well. If you're working on a creative wargaming project, why not share it in the Wargamer Discord community? We have a dedicated self promo channel, which is always a great place to find interesting new things.
Want to try out Star Wars Legion? You should - it's good enough that we snuck it onto our guide to the best Star Wars board games, despite clearly not being a board game. The new Star Wars Legion starter sets are the place to start. For other rules systems to use with Warcraft models, check out our recommendations of fantasy wargames.