Hey, welcome to the world of Warhammer Fantasy!
So, looking for some old school slaughter, huh?
Warhammer Fantasy and army builder... hmmm...
Depends on what edition you want to play.
Like in
40k or
AoS, there have been several editions.
1st/2nd E were more linked to roleplay, so not even quite massed battle. I don't know if there are armybuilders for that in any way. Very 80's.
3rd edition is the first edition with actual massed battle rules, very clunky from nowadays view. Also, you need a referee to play
All of the above is generally referred to as "Oldhammer".
You can have a look at the stuff from back then in the inet, but I would not recommend it as a starting point for a new player used to modern days wargaming
4th/5th Edition Warhammer is referred to as the "
Herohammer" era.
The armies were quite small usually, units were usually 10-20 models large, and a strong emphasis was placed on mighty character models, usually equipped with a heap of magic items that were often wacky, unbalanced, and very random
Army books (Similar to
40k 'Dexes) from back then were released from the early nineties (4th Edition rules) until the late nineties (5th Edition rules). Some armies got no new army books in 5th but had to use their old 4th E armybooks until the end of 5 E.
The rule changes were minor I guess (never played 4th actually, but only 5th), but the newer armybooks tended to be more versatile and more powerful than the old armybooks, A lot of the options in the armybooks never had actual models released back then, especially mounts for character models were pretty generic (you could put an Orc Warboss on a Emperor Dragon for example). You will need some certain expansions like the magic set to play this edition.
There are fanmade rulesets who adapted 5th edition in order to make it more balanced.
One is called
"Warhammer Rennaisance"
and "
Flail of Skulls Edition".
I am not sure if there is an army builder tool for these (probably there is!!), but a good place to look / ask for that would be the "Crown of Command" Discord. Friendly people into 90's
GW systems there, very willing to help. Also, there is a Webzine
Called "Herohammer Fanzine" where you can have a look at typical Warhammer Fantasy (and
40k!) armies of that era. Really a good read, in the vein of old White Dwarfs.
Here's a link
https://herohammer-fanzine.com/#fanzine
After Herohammer, there was a trend of getting more competitive games and the improvements in plastic model moulds and production led to
GW being able to supply a wider range of plastic regiment kits.
This is basically the start of "modern" Warhammer Fantasy, rule wise a quantum leap.
Focus went away from heroes and monsters to actual units and a different army selection system (slot system with Lords Heroes, Core, Special and Rare units).
6th and 7th edition are quite similar and like in the nineties, some armies never got an army book in 7th and used their army book from 6th through both editions. This is usually referred to as the
"Middlehammer" era.
It was the heyday of
GW sales wise for Warhammer Fantasy.
As the years went by, the army books in General got stronger than the one before and because of that, army books of 6th E tend to be better balanced in terms of power level than their 7E counterparts. The 7 E rulebook (at least for me) is rather a updated version of 6th with mostly minor changes.There ARE some, but it's not a totally different game. Some things have been streamlined, that's why I personally prefer 7th E rulebook to 6th E.
Rules and army books of that time are still easy to come by today. Minis of course it depends.
There are different army builder tools for this.
I would recommend the "Warhammer Fantasy Battle 6th edition" group or the "Middlehammer" group on facebook to get infos on a working army builder tool. I know for sure there is one for 6th edition.
There are also a lot of fanmade expansions, the one I prefer is Warhammer CE, its a mix of 6th and 7th E plus older units and newer units plus some extra armies like Arabia, Norsca,... With an excellent army creator tool.
https://online.armycreator.de/
You can also use this tool for 9th Age (another fan made system based on 8th edition
WHF).
Then the latest official release of
GW for Warhammer Fantasy was 8th edition.
Quite different, a lot of basic stuff was changed. Everything bigger, units, magic spells, guessing was removed. Many new big monsters. A lot of the range is still available at
GW / usable for
AoS also if you don't mind sqare bases.
There are of course a lot of army builder tools for this, but I am not following it, so if you're more into "modern" Warhammer Fantasy, some other guy here can maybe help you!