The archery competition was in full swing when the horn sounded from the city walls.
Prince Igor looked up to see a massive shape, larger than a wagon, flying over the rooftops of his father's city. Striped yellow and black, its wings beating with a sound that made the earth vibrate. A Giant Wasp, with a tiny rider perched on its back, swooped low and hurled fire onto the wooden buildings below. Flames erupted. Panic spread through the crowds.
From the northern forests, they had come. An army of mutated creatures, the "White-Ants" with their hunched bodies and chitinous faces, giants wielding tree-trunk scythes, boar cavalry the size of horses. An invasion from beneath the poisoned earth itself, hungry and unstoppable.
This is the world of RUS, the epic Medieval Russian fantasy created by renowned illustrator Peter Dennis. It's a realm where desperate human defenders, Rus knights, Mongol horse-archers, and militia spearmen, face nightmare creatures in battles for survival. And through WoFun Games' innovative pre-printed miniatures system, you can command these armies and relive these desperate struggles on your own tabletop.
THE WORLD OF RUS: SETTING & LORE
A Kingdom Under Siege
The Principality of Rus was built on steel and timber. Founded generations ago when Norse explorers discovered rich iron ore deposits along the Great River, the city grew into a prosperous center of metalworking, renowned for producing some of the finest blades in the known world. Prince Michael ruled wisely, his people thrived, and the surrounding forests and grasslands provided everything his subjects needed.
But deep beneath the Poisonwood, that blackened, dead forest no one dared enter, something ancient stirred.
The Mutants emerged without warning. Once human themselves, these creatures had been twisted by some catastrophic event in their underground realm. Centuries of isolation and mutation had transformed them into a nightmare society: the small, hunched White-Ants who served as cannon fodder, the massive Soldier-Ants who formed disciplined phalanxes, and the grotesque giants who could crush buildings with their bare hands. They had bred, or enslaved, enormous insects and beasts: wasps the size of wagons, beetles with armor like iron, wolves and boars grown to monstrous proportions.
Desperate for food and driven by their bloated overlords, they invaded through a vast underground tunnel, emerging from the forest to devastate the principality.
Desperate Alliances
Against this horror, Prince Michael rallies every sword he can find. His son Igor, still learning the ways of war. His brother Yuri, the wild warrior. Princess Gan, his Mongol wife, leading her fierce horse-archers. Old Krupkin, the curious scholar who studies these creatures to find their weaknesses. Forest folk, city militia, Polovtsi nomads from the steppes, even crusading Teutonic Knights from the frozen north answer the call.
Why This Setting Captivates
This isn't your typical fantasy world of elves and orcs. Peter Dennis has crafted something fresh, a dark fairy tale rooted in Medieval Russian history but twisted into genuine horror. The Mutants aren't simply evil; they're starving, desperate, and utterly alien in their thinking. The humans aren't shining heroes; they're ordinary people facing extinction, making them relatable and their struggles meaningful.
It's a setting that immediately suggests campaigns, narratives, and "what if" scenarios that will keep you coming back to the tabletop.
THE STARTERPACKS AND FULLPACKS: YOUR GATEWAY TO FANTASY WARFARE
Everything You Need to Start Playing
The Fantasy StarterPacks are designed to get you into battle immediately. Whether you choose the 28mm Fantasy Starter Pack or 18mm scale version, you receive two complete armies, ready to deploy the moment you open the box. No painting. No assembly beyond pressing figures from their sprues and slotting them into bases. From package to battlefield in under 30 minutes.
Both scales contain identical force structures with 74 bases total, enough for a proper pitched battle where tactics and decision-making determine the victor, not just who brought more miniatures.
The Mutant Army: Horror from Below
Your Mutant force reflects their twisted society's hierarchy:
6 bases of Drone Raider Skirmishers - Fast, lightly armed scouts who harry the enemy with arrows and probing attacks. Expendable by design.
12 bases of Elite Spearmen - The disciplined core of your army. Heavily armored Soldier-Ants who form an unyielding wall of shields and spears.
6 bases of Open-Order Boar Cavalry - Mounted on oversized war-pigs, these riders provide mobile striking power on the flanks.
6 bases of Drone Warband - Berserker infantry pumped full of "fighting juice." They hit like a hammer but must stop to feed after victory.
6 bases of Bison Cavalry - Your devastating shock troops. Once they charge, nothing stops them, including their own riders' commands.
1 Army Commander - The overseer who drives this motley horde forward.
The Human Army: Last Line of Defense
The defenders of Rus combine professional soldiers with desperate militia:
6 bases of Militia Armoured Crossbows - Your ranged superiority. These ironworkers and craftsmen bring devastating firepower.
6 bases of Citizen Militia Unarmoured Spears - Lightly armed townsfolk who must hold the line through courage alone.
12 bases of Militia Armoured Spearmen - Better equipped citizen-soldiers forming your main battle line.
6 bases of Polovtsi Horse-Archers - Swift nomad cavalry from the steppes, perfect for harassment and flanking maneuvers.
1 Army Commander - Prince Michael (or Igor, or whichever hero you imagine) leading from the front.
Scale Up to Epic: The Fantasy Full Packs
For wargamers ready to command truly massive forces, the Fantasy Full Pack 18mm and Fantasy Full Pack 28mm represent the ultimate collection. Each contains an staggering 1,812 individual characters across 35 sprues (18mm) or 69 sprues (28mm), enough to field multiple complete armies simultaneously. These comprehensive collections include every unit from the entire Fantasy range: all the Mutant horrors (Giant Wasps, the Great Beetle, multiple Giants), expanded Human defenders, complete Crusader armies (Teutonic Knights, Knights Templar, Polish cavalry), Mongol hordes, Samurai warriors, and classic fantasy races like Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Skeletons, Wraiths, and Treemen. Both packs include the complete RUS: A Medieval Story PDF by Peter Dennis.
The Full Packs transform your tabletop into a complete fantasy wargaming system. Want to recreate the climactic final battle from the RUS story, with Crusaders, Rus militia, Mongols, and Samurai united against the Mutant invasion? You'll have every miniature needed. Prefer entirely different conflicts, Elven warriors versus Skeleton legions, or Dwarven spearmen against rampaging Treemen? The Full Pack provides flexibility to explore countless scenarios beyond the core StarterPack armies. It's an investment in years of gaming and campaign building, all ready to deploy straight from the box.
The Complete Package
Both scales include:
· Fantasy rules by Peter Dennis, available as a free PDF download from the WoFun website
· Plexiglass sprues (12 for 28mm, 6 for 18mm) with all figures pre-printed in full color
· Optional MDF bases (30x20mm, 2.5mm thick) with printed grass texture
The bases are cleverly designed: Infantry bases hold figures in 2 ranks for that classic battle-line appearance, while Cavalry bases arrange riders in formation to show depth and movement.
The WoFun Advantage
What makes these miniatures special? Each figure is CNC-cut from plexiglass and printed on both sides with Peter Dennis's extraordinarily detailed artwork. The illustrations use shading and perspective tricks that give a surprising sense of depth and three-dimensionality. No two figures look identical, different facial expressions, equipment variations, unique poses, creating armies that feel alive and characterful.
Beyond the StarterPack: The Full Fantasy Collection
The StarterPack is just the beginning. Peter Dennis's Fantasy world offers extensive expansion options:
Fantasy Full Packs provide massive armies for epic engagements. Available in both 18mm and 28mm scales, these comprehensive collections dramatically expand your forces with additional unit types and greater tactical variety.
Individual Unit Expansions let you customize your army exactly as you envision:
· Mutant Giants - Add these towering terrors to smash enemy lines
· Mutant Wolf Riders - Fast, savage flanking forces
· Forest Folk - Skilled woodsmen defending their homeland
· Teutonic Knights - Elite crusading cavalry with matching spearmen, crossbowmen, and sergeants
· Knights Templar - Legendary warrior monks with full support troops
· Polish Knights - Heavy cavalry from the Eastern kingdoms
· Fantasy Characters - Heroes, commanders, and special personalities
Each expansion pack is sold separately, allowing you to build your collection at your own pace and focus on the units that match your preferred tactics. Whether you want to field an overwhelming Mutant horde or a gleaming crusader army backed by desperate militia, the Fantasy collection provides the miniatures to bring your vision to life.
The entire Fantasy Collection is available at wofungames.com, where you can explore all available units, compare scales, and choose the perfect additions to your tabletop battles.
A regiment that would take weeks to paint from traditional miniatures? You'll have it ready in two minutes. An entire expanded army? Assembled in an evening, ready to deploy the next day.
GAME MECHANICS: ACCESSIBLE YET DEEP
The Philosophy: Easy to Learn, Challenging to Master
Peter Dennis designed these rules with a brilliant philosophy: the mechanics should be simple enough that you're thinking about the battle, not hunting through rulebooks. Yet within that simplicity lies genuine tactical depth. A complete game plays in 60-90 minutes, and you'll grasp the core mechanics within your first few turns.
The Turn Sequence
Players alternate taking complete turns. On your turn, you can move all, some, or none of your units. Then resolve any shooting. Then fight any combats that your movement created. Simple. Clean. Fast.
Movement: Position is Everything
Infantry moves 15cm (6 inches). Cavalry and mounted units move 30cm (12 inches). Flying creatures, should they appear in expanded games, move a whopping 100cm.
Units wheel from the center of their middle base at the start of movement, no stand can move farther than the unit's maximum distance. This creates realistic turning limitations without complicated geometry.
The charge move adds excitement: once per game, any unit can add a dice roll (or two dice for cavalry) to their movement distance. This bonus is in inches, or double the rolled number in centimeters. That unexpected reach can catch an enemy off-guard, but waste it on an unnecessary charge and it's gone forever.
Shooting: Firepower at Range
If your unit has a shooting value on the chart, it can shoot during your turn, but only if it didn't move (unless it's a skirmish unit, which can do both). Roll the number of dice indicated. Each result of 4, 5, or 6 causes one casualty.
Armor saves give targets a chance to shrug off hits. Roll a die for each casualty scored; a 5 or 6 cancels it. Units in cover from shooting also get this save, and armored units in cover save on 4, 5, or 6, making them frustratingly resilient.
Shooting units must aim straight ahead within a 45-degree arc. Skirmishers can shoot in any direction. You cannot shoot into ongoing combats.
Combat: Brutal and Decisive
When your unit contacts an enemy, they fight. Only one unit versus one unit, no gang-ups or multiple combats per unit. Roll your combat dice (found on the chart). Again, 4+ scores a casualty. Armor saves apply.
Here's the crucial part: fights continue turn after turn until one unit reaches its casualty limit. Multi-base units can take 12 casualties before removal. Single large models (like Giants) can take 8 casualties. Track these with small markers or paper near each unit.
The enemy fights back on their turn. This back-and-forth creates dramatic slugging matches where both sides take losses until someone breaks.
The attacker causes casualties first, giving the charging player a significant advantage, another reason to control when and where combats happen.
Morale: The Breaking Point
When a unit reaches 6 or more casualties (or takes casualties in certain special circumstances), it must test morale. Roll two dice. If the total equals or exceeds your current casualties, you pass and fight on. Roll less? The unit breaks and is removed from play.
Elite units (like Rus Knights or Mutant Soldier-Ant Spearmen) roll three dice for their test, they're much more likely to hold firm under pressure.
There's no test when you hit the casualty limit, you're simply removed. The test represents a breaking point before total destruction, giving you a chance to continue if you're tough or lucky.
Special Rules That Matter
Flank Attacks: If an enemy moves to contact your flank or rear, you can test (2 dice vs. current casualties) to turn and face them. Pass, and it's a normal fight. Fail, and you're stuck in position while the attacker rolls double their normal combat dice. Ouch.
Fighting Juice: White-Ant Warbands and Skirmishers drink their drug before the first fight. For two full combat turns, they don't test morale and continue fighting even if they exceed 12 casualties. At the end of the second turn, if they're over 12, they're removed. This makes them terrifying in the initial clash but potentially suicidal.
Evading: Skirmish units can test to evade a charge. Pass, and they scatter out of reach. Fail, and combat happens normally.
Winning the Battle
Victory is straightforward: when one side has lost half or more of their units (fled or destroyed), the other side wins. If time runs out, whoever has more units on the table claims victory.
It's brutal, decisive, and keeps games moving toward a conclusion rather than grinding into stalemates.
TACTICAL DEPTH & STRATEGY
Two Armies, Two Philosophies
Despite the simple core mechanics, the Fantasy StarterPack presents genuinely different tactical challenges depending on which side you command. Each army has distinct strengths, weaknesses, and optimal strategies that emerge naturally from the rules.
Playing the Mutant Horde
The Encirclement Doctrine
The Mutants fight according to ancient instincts, surround, overwhelm, and devour. Your deployment should reflect this aggressive philosophy:
Place your Drone Warbands and Skirmishers wide on the flanks. They're expendable, and their job is to threaten the enemy's edges, forcing them to stretch their line or refuse a flank. Once they've drunk their fighting juice and charged, they'll pin enemy units for two crucial turns, even if they're taking horrible casualties.
Your Elite Spearmen form the anvil in the center. Heavily armored and disciplined, they advance steadily while the enemy deals with threats from all sides. They won't break easily, and their armor saves keep them in the fight.
The Boar Cavalry provides your mobile reserve. Fast enough to exploit gaps, tough enough to survive the charge, they can swing to whichever flank is winning and turn a local advantage into a rout.
The Bison Gambit
Your Bison Cavalry is simultaneously your most powerful weapon and your biggest risk. That unstoppable charge, adding bonus dice and moving with terrifying speed, can shatter any defensive line. But remember: once you point them at the enemy and give the charge order, you've lost control. They go straight ahead until they hit something or charge off the table edge.
Use them against isolated units or a weakened section of line. Never charge them at refused flanks or narrow gaps, they'll miss and become useless. The best Mutant generals save this hammer blow for the perfect moment.
Managing the Hunger
Here's the cruel mathematics of playing Mutants: your Drone units MUST stop to eat after winning combat. They can't help it, they're starving. This means every tactical decision weighs short-term gain against positioning.
Will that warband be exposed after it destroys that militia unit? Can you cover them while they feast? Sometimes the answer is "yes, but it's worth it" because you've eliminated a key enemy unit. Sometimes you need to hold your berserkers back, which frustrates their nature but keeps your army mobile.
Playing the Human Defenders
Firepower and Formations
The Rus army wins through superior missile weapons and disciplined defensive positions. Your Militia Armoured Crossbows can devastate Mutant units before they close, but they need protection. Deploy them behind terrain features when possible, that cover save combined with their armor makes them frustratingly hard to kill.
Your Armoured Spearmen form the shield wall. They're not as tough as Mutant Elite Spearmen, but they're steady. Keep them in formation, overlapping with the Unarmoured Spears to create depth. If one unit breaks, the second line can hold while you counter-attack.
The Unarmoured Spears are your sacrifice pieces. Yes, that sounds harsh, but understanding their role is crucial. They delay, they plug gaps, they die heroically so your crossbows can keep shooting. Position them where they can retreat through your main line when the pressure becomes too much.
The Polovtsi Advantage
Your horse-archers are gold. They move and shoot, they evade charges, they can shoot while retreating. Use them to:
· Eliminate Drone Skirmishers before they become a problem
· Harass Mutant flanks, forcing them to react
· Hunt down weakened enemy units
· Provide flank security so your infantry can focus forward
Against the Bison Cavalry, your Polovtsi can be lifesavers. Skirmish away, draw the charge into open ground where the berserk beasts run themselves into exhaustion far from your main line.
Refusing the Encirclement
The Mutants WILL try to surround you. Don't let them. Position your army with natural anchors, table edges, terrain features, or refused flanks where you've stacked extra units. Force them to come at you from predictable angles where your crossbows can focus fire.
When one flank starts to crumble (and it will), execute a fighting retreat toward your strong flank. Create an L-shaped formation where your refused wing and main line create interlocking fire zones. The Mutants will take casualties approaching from multiple angles.
Universal Tactical Principles
Protect Your Commander
Both armies need their commander attached to key units at critical moments, that reroll can turn a fight. But if your commander dies in combat (roll a 1 at the end of any turn with casualties), you've lost a significant tactical asset. Keep them with strong units, not desperate ones.
The Charge Decision
You get ONE charge move per unit, per game. Adding that dice roll distance can reach an enemy who thought they were safe, but waste it on a short charge that would have succeeded anyway and you've thrown away a precious advantage.
The best use? Charging cavalry into an exposed flank or reaching a missile unit before it can withdraw. Infantry charges rarely need the bonus, save them for the critical moment.
Flank Testing
When someone attempts a flank attack, your unit can test to react and face them. This 2-dice test (needing to equal or exceed current casualties) rewards keeping units fresh. A unit with 2 casualties is likely to pass. A unit with 8 casualties probably fails, gets flanked, and faces double combat dice.
This creates a tempo consideration: sometimes it's better to pull a battered unit back rather than risk it becoming a liability when flankers arrive.
Advanced Considerations
Psychological Warfare
The terror rules for Giants and flying creatures add drama, but smart players can exploit them. Position your Giant where cavalry MUST test to approach your flank. Even if they pass, they've lost momentum and taken actions you dictated.
Combined Arms Coordination
The best battles happen when multiple unit types work together:
· Skirmishers flush enemies from cover
· Cavalry charges the disrupted units
· Infantry holds ground taken
· Missiles punish anyone who tries to counter-attack
Neither army can win with a single unit type. The Mutants need their Drones to fix the enemy so their Elites can kill. The Humans need their spears to protect their crossbows while cavalry secures the flanks.
Scenario Flexibility
While the rules present pitched battles, the system easily supports:
· Defend the Settlement: Humans deploy within a terrain setup representing Magnus' Village, Mutants must break through
· The Raid: Small forces, quick game, Mutants trying to capture prisoners
· Relief Force: Humans must break through to a surrounded garrison
· The Tunnel: Fighting in forest terrain where Mutants emerge from underground
The 74 bases provide enough forces for creative scenario design while keeping games manageable and decisive.
Learning Through Play
Here's the beautiful part: you don't need to memorize all this before your first game. Set up the armies, start playing, and these tactical lessons emerge naturally from the mechanics. Your Bison will charge off-table once, teaching you restraint. Your Warbands will get flanked while eating, teaching you to plan ahead. Your crossbows will win a battle almost by themselves, teaching you their value.
The rules are simple enough that you're thinking about tactics, not rule lookups. And that's exactly what Peter Dennis intended.