Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat

Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat is a real-time tactics game from 1995, one of the first computer games set in the Warhammer tabletop fantasy universe. It puts the player in the role of an army commander in a campaign against the hordes of the ratmen known as the Skaven, led by sinister forces tied to the Horned Rat, one of the chaos gods of this dark universe. The game combines a campaign mode, with gradual development and replenishment of the army, with real-time tactical battles fought on clear, terrain-influenced battlefields.

Unlike later real-time strategy games, the game focuses purely on tactical command of units, with no base building or resource gathering on the battlefield. The player deploys regiments of infantry, missile troops and monsters, controls their formations and morale, and must react flexibly to the opponent's tactics, as units can panic in battle and flee the field. This strong emphasis on morale and maintaining formations faithfully imitated principles well known from the tabletop version of Warhammer.

Shadow of the Horned Rat is today considered one of the first truly successful digital adaptations of the Warhammer universe and a forerunner of the genre of tactical real-time battles that was later made famous above all by series such as Total War. Although its graphics and controls reflect the mid-nineties and seem dated today, the depth of its tactical decision-making and its fidelity to the tabletop original make it a valued title among fans of both computer strategy games and tabletop Warhammer. The game also showed that a licensed tabletop universe can work on a computer even without a direct step-by-step transfer of the rules, as long as the creators remain respectful of the spirit and atmosphere of the source, which in the following years became a model for a number of other digital adaptations of tabletop strategy games.