The Warlord is a board game of nuclear conquest designed and self-published by Mike Hayes in 1974.
The Warlord is a game of conquest for 2–7 players similar to Risk, albeit with nuclear weapons.
Players vie to conquer the entire map, the last one standing being declared the winner.
The first edition (red box) contains: A turn uses the following sequence: fire missiles, build armies, move, attack.
Terrain has an effect on combat: a player attacking a mountain area may only use the numbers 1, 2 or 3.
If all armies are eliminated by a nuclear chain reaction, the game ends in a stalemate.
In 1974, Mike Hayes, a student at University of Sheffield,[1] self-published a game of nuclear war in Europe for 2–7 players packaged in a plain red box and titled The Warlord.
In 1980, Games Workshop acquired the rights from Hayes and revised the game, simplifying the rules, removing hydrogen bombs, reducing the number of players to 4, allowing radioactive areas to be cleaned, and cutting the board map in half (eliminating Eastern Europe).
[3] After Apocalypse went out of print, Mike Hayes reacquired the rights and republished his full original game, retitled Classic Warlord, in 2012.