Great game that spawned even better sequels.
What made this game unique is a hero that persists across all your battles. In fact even some of your units can persist and during a battle all gain experience and level up. You can upgrade your hero's stats and skills gaining strength, adding attack options, speed, charisma, intelligence, spells... the usual RPG stuff but with troop options like fear resistance and hero "area of effect" thrown in. This means you can customize the way you play massively! I can't emphasize enough how much a summoning magic hero differs from a fire mage and a brute from a charismatic leader. Combined with the different factions/races this gives the game almost infinite replayability even if the story line only has two branches.
The story is actually pretty cool too - fantasy fans will enjoy it I'm sure. If you play this game and like it then I can't recommend the sequels enough and you should probably go straight to WBC3 since it's a better version of 2 which in itself was an excellent game.
Go Warlords and here's hoping V is better than IV.