Warhammer: The Old World News & Speculation

[Catullus64]

Who else is excited for Warhammer: The Old World? GW is hardly spoiling us for information, but I'm really glad to see the Fantasy setting return in an official capacity.

I'm not actually certain if I will invest the money to buy the new models, but I was very grateful to see that even the factions not getting new models (including my beloved Dark Elves) will be getting new rules, presumably for use in unofficial games. The little information about the rules provided by the dev diaries has me hopeful, especially the altered role of magic and more detailed breaking mechanics.

Even if I don't play the game, I really hope this means a return to the setting in the form of new Black Library books. In my wildest imagination, it could even lead to a revival of fantasy-based specialist games. I'd kill for a new edition of Mordheim.

[Corsair14]

Im looking forward to it. Been trying to get the motivation to paint up my High elves that I have had sitting in a box since Blood Isle. AOS players look at me crazy when I tell them about my old orcs and goblins army that had over 400 night goblins as the core of the army.

[Eldan]

I'll give it a look, but i'm fairly meh on it. My club still regularly plays old Warhammer editions, and there doesn't actually seem to be much that's new here. They have only announced a small number of new models and a lot of re-releases of old stuff. Also kinda disappointed that they are moving the timeline a thousand years, and doing so little with that, apparently. Or at least, I'm not seeing any differences yet.

[GloatingSwine]

I'll give it a look, but i'm fairly meh on it. My club still regularly plays old Warhammer editions, and there doesn't actually seem to be much that's new here. They have only announced a small number of new models and a lot of re-releases of old stuff. Also kinda disappointed that they are moving the timeline a thousand years, and doing so little with that, apparently. Or at least, I'm not seeing any differences yet.

They're only moving the timeline ~250 years (backwards). The Old World is using the run up to Asavar Kul.

The biggest effects of that won't come until you get more detail on armies (eg. no formal Battle Wizards for Empire), and I reckon they're holding fire to see how well it actually does commercially before going in on model lines for new factions like Kislev.

[Grim Portent]

They're only moving the timeline ~250 years (backwards). The Old World is using the run up to Asavar Kul.

The biggest effects of that won't come until you get more detail on armies (eg. no formal Battle Wizards for Empire), and I reckon they're holding fire to see how well it actually does commercially before going in on model lines for new factions like Kislev.

Didn't they show concept art of some Kislev stuff a few years ago? I don't think it was TW3 related, so it might be the case that they're working on some but keeping them in the back pocket to reveal for hype purposes later on. Drop the starter box to launch the game,* then release the classic ranges the week or so after, or in piecemeal over several weeks, and then do a third release of tOW to drop Kislev.

*Bretonnians and Tomb Kings isn't it? I definitely remember them showing off that new Bretonnian nobleman, and I think the counterpart was a skeleton, but I cba to go check right now.

[Catullus64]

I'll give it a look, but i'm fairly meh on it. My club still regularly plays old Warhammer editions, and there doesn't actually seem to be much that's new here. They have only announced a small number of new models and a lot of re-releases of old stuff. Also kinda disappointed that they are moving the timeline a thousand years, and doing so little with that, apparently. Or at least, I'm not seeing any differences yet.

As regards the timeline, I assume at minimum it will mean new Special Characters for some factions, even though plenty of older WFB characters are still a possibility. Of the main factions, only Elves, Tomb Kings, and possibly Dwarfs seem like they would have a lot of the same characters be around.

I suppose the most reasonable template for what to expect would be the Horus Heresy over in 40k-land, but I can't say I've paid that much attention to that.

[snowblizz]

So GW finally realised chucking out all the old stuff and trying to recoup money by selling way fewer models of a new skirmish game in a marketplace more crowded than the pub where dumb GW management moves drink wasn't so hot.

[GloatingSwine]

As regards the timeline, I assume at minimum it will mean new Special Characters for some factions, even though plenty of older WFB characters are still a possibility. Of the main factions, only Elves, Tomb Kings, and possibly Dwarfs seem like they would have a lot of the same characters be around.

Dwarfs will have familiar characters but they'll need new models. This is the period where Thorgrim was doing all the stuff that later won him the seat as High King, so he'll almost certainly be around with a new model.

I expect Settra will probably get a new model as well because he's become a lot more of a meme than he was back then (probably why Tomb Kings are in the base set, TBH).

And yeah, there'll probably be models or new models for Magnus the Pious, Louen Orcslayer, maybe the Three Emperors, and possibly some kind of hedge wizards for the Empire because the Colleges of Magic don't exist yet. Eventually Asavar Kul will get a model.

If it really takes off that's when they'll think about doing Kislev and Cathay ranges.

[Eldan]

As regards the timeline, I assume at minimum it will mean new Special Characters for some factions, even though plenty of older WFB characters are still a possibility. Of the main factions, only Elves, Tomb Kings, and possibly Dwarfs seem like they would have a lot of the same characters be around.

I suppose the most reasonable template for what to expect would be the Horus Heresy over in 40k-land, but I can't say I've paid that much attention to that.

They have pretty extensively previewed what models are going to be around. So far, they have shown a few generic no-name heroes for Bretonians and Tomb Kings (but very nice looking ones!) and they are re-issuing most of the old boxes otherwise. So most likely no new rank-and-file troops.

I meant it more as changing army composition and so on. (A thousand years was poetic). It's a timeline change of several hundred years, technolgy should be different. If I'm remembering correctly, humans shouldn't have gunpowder yet. And certainly no steam tanks. The colleges of Magic don't exist yet.

But I'm not seeing any evidence that they are changing any of that. I'll bet anything that if they get around to the Empire, they'll have muskets and cannons, because that's their image and people have those models/GW is re-releasing them.

[GloatingSwine]

I meant it more as changing army composition and so on. (A thousand years was poetic). It's a timeline change of several hundred years, technolgy should be different. If I'm remembering correctly, humans shouldn't have gunpowder yet. And certainly no steam tanks. The colleges of Magic don't exist yet.


The Steam Tanks are 250 years old at this point (made by Leonardo di Miragliano 500 years before the "main" time of WHFB). They might even have more of them left. And the Empire has had gunpowder for longer than that (they were already using early cannons against Gorbad Ironclaw's waaagh that destroyed Solland 600 years before Great War Against Chaos (which is the capstone to the Old World timeframe).

The Colleges of Magic don't exist yet because they're established after the Great War against Chaos, so Empire wizards will be wild rare and dangerous. Volans should be knocking about though.

[Grim Portent]

Yeah, steam tanks are less a wonder of progressing technology and more the masterpieces of a man who was basically a wizard but with machines. At no point can the Empire make more of them, they are entirely reliant on fixing the ones they have.

As for gunpowder, at the time of the Great War Against Chaos the Empire has had it properly for a bit over 300 years, having been given it in 1991 IC, and the dwarves for over 2000 years, possibly 4000. The only gunpowder weapons I might expect the empire not to have are their repeaters, and that's more because of the mechanism to rotate the revolver mechanism they use than anything gunpowder related.

Really the Empire doesn't change over time so much as location, with some regional variation in theming and soldiers, at least unless you want to go back really far to their germanic barbarian phase. This time period is after they've already fought all three Vampire Wars, Mordheim is set before this game, and in that it's basically identical to the Empire in the end of the timeline.

[Destro_Yersul]

I just want some new TK infantry. The old ones are based on the old skeleton box, and are super out of scale from the way GW does skeletons now.

[Eldan]

It's unlikely. So far they have showed a lot of images of old out of print units and all the new stuff was characters.

[Catullus64]

It's unlikely. So far they have showed a lot of images of old out of print units and all the new stuff was characters.

True, but the dev diary from July was pretty explicit that they were also playing older editions a lot to figure out the feel of the game, so the images of old models don't necessarily mean that lots of new ones aren't in the offing.

[Destro_Yersul]

It's unlikely. So far they have showed a lot of images of old out of print units and all the new stuff was characters.

They also showed a bunch of in-progress renders of weaponry and stuff. I would find it weird if they did all of that for like two characters, and reprinted the janky old skeletons. Especially since they'll be in the launch box as core infantry.

[Grim Portent]

GW being GW, I presume they will be updating the range but in pieces.

So initial release will be a few new leader models and the old range, then bit by bit dropping 2-3 new units for some factions at a time. So TK will probably have old skeletons for a while, then get new skeletons when GW fits them into their release schedule. Redoing every kit that needs it all at once isn't their normal business model, even when they revamp a faction they usually still miss some stuff,* but piecemeal replacements are.


*I think Sisters of Battle might be the only faction that's ever gotten basically their whole range remade within a short time period.

[Eldan]

Dark Eldar, too.

[Destro_Yersul]

And more or less Lizardmen, just recently. Anyways, I'm not expecting all the kits to be updated. A lot of the TK kits hold up well. It's mostly the basic infantry skeletons that are really dated.

[Catullus64]

New Bretonnian model preview just dropped:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/10/14/warhammer-day-preview-the-kingdom-of-bretonnia-revealed/

For my money, I think the Peasant units look the best, as does the Handmaiden of the Lady.

[Erloas]

New Britonnians? It only took them... 30 years? I thought about doing a Britonnian army mostly for show 20 years ago, but at that point they were already old and only kind of worked with the edition at the time.

I do like the models, but it's just too bad GW burnt all their bridges for me long ago and I'm not going to give them the benefit of the doubt or support their rather questionable prices.

[Grim Portent]

The peasants aren't new, it's part of the returning range along with the Pegasus Knights and Knights of the Realm. Men-at-Arms and Peasant Bowmen are classics though.

So the new models are Lord/Bannerman on Pegasus, Lord on Horse, Foot Knights, Hero on foot, Bannerman on foot, handmaiden, Named Character Prophetess.

Maybe the trebuchet, I'm not familiar enough with the original to see if they've made any changes to the new FW casting.


The old pegasus knights have not aged well compared to GWs more modern takes on feathered wings.

[DaedalusMkV]

The only new models are the new Characters and the foot Knights of the Realm. The peasants are old, the mounted Knights are old, the Trebuchet is old, all of it.

Personally, I think the foot knights are... Well, the sword and shield ones look great, though the choice to add female knights has interesting implications for the lore (They weren't unheard of in the old lore, but very rare, to the point that just being a female Knight got you moderately famous). The less said about the Great Weapons the better. Whoever looked at Brettonia and thought "Great weapons... Yeah, giant anachronistic crescent-moon axes that probably weigh 25 pounts!" should never have had a position on the design team. As for the rest, it's a mixed bag. The Pegasus guy looks pretty good, the Handmaiden is an excellent foot Damsel, the foot Paladin and BSB look excellent and the mounted BSB is weirdly proportioned and it makes him look like a toddler for some reason.

The Treb is interesting, though, because they've obviously redone the moulds from Finecast to FW resin. I assume the rest of the Finecast range that's returning will be in similar shape, which has some implications for the future of Finecast. Which I guess shouldn't be surprising, they've been phasing out Finecast for ages, but still.

[LCP]

I think most of the new models are looking disappointing.

The Pegasus lord/hero has strange proportions, with the Pegasus being huge compared to the rider and the saddle being raised up on some kind of booster seat.

The Damsel is very bland. I think if you were an absolute pro at freehand you might be able to make that miniature look great, but otherwise it feels overly smooth/clean and lacking character compared to the old metal minis.

The foot knights look like they come from an earlier era of plastic kit design, with stiff, wooden poses and that strange forward lean. Their armour designs also look overly exaggerated/cartoony to me, but a less shiny paintjob might help there.

Overall the only new sculpts for the Brets I can really say I like are the ones they'd already teased.

[Erloas]

The less said about the Great Weapons the better. Whoever looked at Brettonia and thought "Great weapons... Yeah, giant anachronistic crescent-moon axes that probably weigh 25 pounts!" should never have had a position on the design team.
I'm not sure what your problem with them is. All of them look at least pretty close to real, actual weapons used during that period. Granted they have the somewhat scaled up look all model weapons have, just because it's not really possible, or at least easy, to do finer free standing objects like weapons and have them cast right and not just break the moment they are looked at. The swords on horseback are probably less realistic, because they just don't have the reach to be all that useful on horseback, they were usually a back up weapon in case they were unhorsed.

[LCP]

Those axe blades are like the size of their entire torso. It's absolutely possible to make less exaggerated looking weapons than that at 28mm scale - GW has lots of examples in their own catalogue.

[DaedalusMkV]

I'm not sure what your problem with them is. All of them look at least pretty close to real, actual weapons used during that period. Granted they have the somewhat scaled up look all model weapons have, just because it's not really possible, or at least easy, to do finer free standing objects like weapons and have them cast right and not just break the moment they are looked at. The swords on horseback are probably less realistic, because they just don't have the reach to be all that useful on horseback, they were usually a back up weapon in case they were unhorsed.

What actual historical weapons? If you really squint and are extremely generous a couple of them look vaguely like poleaxes except with axe heads that are way too big. And one or two that look kind of Bardiche-like but without the thrusting point that really makes the Bardiche useful. The problem is just the sheer size of the blades; yeah, exaggerated weapons for heroic scale and all that, but nobody ever used huge honking crescent-moon blades like that in war. If it was for Chaos or Orks I'd let it go as fantasy nonsense but Brets have usually been better about maintaining some degree of historical accuracy. Look at the peasants, their weapons are also over-emphasized and huge, but they all clearly maintain the proportions of real polearms. The greataxes used by the knights don't.

Speaking of which, as far as I know the only Bret cavalry unit which uses swords as a primary weapon on horseback are the Questing Knights, who use two-handed greatswords. Which yes, definitely anachronistic and I was never really a fan of them from the beginning. The rest all use lances for their primary weapon, except the one Duke on Pegasus model who presumably has a fancy magic sword which overrides practicality by nature of being magic. Otherwise Bret cavalry have had some sword models (usually for musician or standard bearer models), but also maces which the Brettonian line have always been a bit famous for and which very much are historically accurate weapons for heavy cavalry.

Also, swords on horseback are very much a thing that happened all through history. Yes, your average Medieval knight would not have gone into battle with a sword as his primary weapon, but a lot of them would have been equipped with something along the lines of a lance, a mace/warhammer/cavalry pick and a sword, and for anyone who lost their lance and hadn't had a chance to get another yet the sword would have been just as common a pick for backup weapon as the mace if he's up against unarmored targets. And outside of the knight side of things cavalry swords have been primary weapons for cavalry in plenty of cultures; Persian Shamshirs, Japanese Tachis, any of the many variations on the Mongol cavalry saber that spread through the steppes, light cavalry have been using swords for ages. Usually with bows as well, yes, but it doesn't change the fact that swords are a perfectly fine cavalry weapon, as long as you make sure it's long and built for slashing. And knights on horseback with swords was an image fully ingrained into the Medieval consciousness thanks to melees, so we have all kinds of surviving historical artwork depicting it to base our models on.

[Erloas]

As for the swords on the knights, that was just me not looking closely enough at the unit. I saw, what is probably the champion's sword, and was somehow seeing the whole unit with swords, and the lances at flags, rather than lances. A whole unit of knights (in the time and era they are depicting) going in with swords as their primary weapon is entirely movie.

But the two handed great weapons, the axes are *mostly* right, as right as anything GW is going to be making any more. It's at least still in the realm of realistic, but not as close as the peasant weapons are. Of course if GW does remake the peasants I would expect their weapons to depart from the realistic design they have now too.

It's the giant counter-weights attached to the tops of their heads that is the silliest thing.

[The Patterner]

The Pegasus lord/hero has strange proportions, with the Pegasus being huge compared to the rider and the saddle being raised up on some kind of booster seat.

The booster seat looks a little weird since I don't know how that would work when the pegasus is not rearing, so point there. Still, I think it's a nice model and it will look good as a center piece.



The Damsel is very bland. I think if you were an absolute pro at freehand you might be able to make that miniature look great, but otherwise it feels overly smooth/clean and lacking character compared to the old metal minis.

Completly disagree, the damsel looks really good and even someone like me who is not a great painter feel like I could do a good job with that model.

It's not as nice as the unicorn mounted one, but the unicorn one is probably one of the best looking minatures GW has produced in several years.



The foot knights look like they come from an earlier era of plastic kit design, with stiff, wooden poses and that strange forward lean. Their armour designs also look overly exaggerated/cartoony to me, but a less shiny paintjob might help there.

Overall the only new sculpts for the Brets I can really say I like are the ones they'd already teased.

I think a dirtier paint job will help here. The ones with sword and shield I really like, the ones with great weapons I'll admit looks weird. They should have made the axe heads slightly smaller and they would have worked. Altough, I'd have prefered if they had given them either greatswords or bardiches. That would have been preferable.

Overall I like the new range a lot, but there are some models that do look wonky.

My main complaint is the reliance on resin and maybe even metal. That killed a loot of them for me.

[Erloas]

I think a dirtier paint job will help here. The ones with sword and shield I really like, the ones with great weapons I'll admit looks weird. They should have made the axe heads slightly smaller and they would have worked. Altough, I'd have prefered if they had given them either greatswords or bardiches. That would have been preferable.

I'm pretty sure they went with the axes for great weapons to keep them distinct from the Landsknecht's from the Empire (I forget exactly what they are called, but that is 100% what they are based on). Although they used more than just swords, the flamberge is their iconic weapon. Although the glaive or various other polearm weapons would be a more fitting choice, but the peasants already have a lot of those.

[LCP]

If I were doing the design I'd have gone with becs de corbin or something similar that evokes tournament melees.

Regarding metal miniatures, I love metal minis. Yes they're heavy and can be a pain to assemble, but they hold detail better than plastic and are way easier to repair when they break!

[The Patterner]

If I were doing the design I'd have gone with becs de corbin or something similar that evokes tournament melees.

Regarding metal miniatures, I love metal minis. Yes they're heavy and can be a pain to assemble, but they hold detail better than plastic and are way easier to repair when they break!

Becs de corbin would have been awesome.

Regarding metal I see your point about durability, but I love converting and that's pretty much impossible with metal. Also, sure metal won't break, but paint chips very easily which I hate.

[Grim Portent]

Out of plastic/resin/metal, metal is definitely my lowest rated material. Way too many of my older models were all metal and simply obnoxious for paint chipping and heavy extremities falling off at the slightest provocation.

Resin is a pain to paint sometimes, prone to bending and never being able to go completely straight again, but at least it isn't metal.

Plastic, good plastic anyway, is top tier, would take over resin/metal even for a substantial price bump. GW plastic gets details about as fine as I could ever want, and other plastics do a servicable job such that I would still pick them over most resin or all metal given the choice.



On the Foot Knights halberds, aren't those also a more accurate weapon for infantry than an entire unit of greatswords? My understanding is that greatswords in proper battles were used to guard individual people and the corners of polearm formations, but for actual shoulder-to-shoulder fighting polearms were preferred. The specific design is definitely over the top, but a more accurate polearm might blur together a bit with some of the men-at-arms weapons, and no knight worth the name would wield a peasant weapon.

[LCP]

All those issues with metal minis can be overcome if you have a few more tools than you'd use for plastic.

- Heavy bits falling off - pin vice drill.
- Converting - green stuff + a coping saw.
- Chipping - varnish.

I agree it's more work than building plastic minis, but once you've done it you get something reallly good that won't be irreparably broken if some spindly bit snaps off. I wish I had my minis handy to post some pics of the conversions I've done with metal! But anyway, personal taste as to how you enjoy your hobby.

[Beelzebub1111]

One thing on my wishlist for the old world is Albion. I would like to see Pictish warbands, Beast Shaman, and Woad Raiders from the isle of mists.

[LCP]

I doubt we'll see anything like that myself. The game is launching with only a subset of the WFB core factions. If you assume they want to work back up to the full roster over time, and also that Kislev (and maybe Cathay) is also on the slate, then I think with Specialist Games level support, seeing anything else new would be a looooong way off.

[Brookshw]

Disappointed in the faction set up, kinda seems like it's gonna be index bs codex factions practically out the gate. Also surprised vampire counts didn't make the cut, undead armies are iconic, and tomb kings are a very specific flavor. The purported lack of a battle box is weird, though I can live with it. Waiting to see what kind of army boxes they ultimately offer, as well as the price point.

[The Patterner]

As someone who has gotten used to WAP and the sheer multitude of options it is a bit disapointing seeing they won't even do all the original armies. I want to play Estallia, awesome story and potential for really cool models.

[LCP]

This is a fairly substantial teaser of the new rules: https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/10/30/old-world-almanack-your-first-look-at-the-rules/

I don't mind them nixing the Magic Phase, but I hope they haven't got rid of the resource-pool element of casting and dispelling. IMO that was one of the best things about the WFB magic rules (at least where it wasn't being short-circuited by everyone shooting for double 6s). From the fact that the spell they show has a casting value of 7+ (which implies rolling multiple D6) I'm hopeful.

Otherwise it mostly looks like just implementing some neater bookkeeping about what point in the turn things happen. The tidbit about rallying troops is interesting. -1 Ld at <50% strength and 'double 1s only' at <25% is a huge drop-off! I can very much understand not wanting non-unbreakable units to just casually fight to the death, but I'd maybe have gone for something like half Ld instead.

[DaedalusMkV]

This is a fairly substantial teaser of the new rules: https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/10/30/old-world-almanack-your-first-look-at-the-rules/

I don't mind them nixing the Magic Phase, but I hope they haven't got rid of the resource-pool element of casting and dispelling. IMO that was one of the best things about the WFB magic rules (at least where it wasn't being short-circuited by everyone shooting for double 6s). From the fact that the spell they show has a casting value of 7+ (which implies rolling multiple D6) I'm hopeful.

Otherwise it mostly looks like just implementing some neater bookkeeping about what point in the turn things happen. The tidbit about rallying troops is interesting. -1 Ld at <50% strength and 'double 1s only' at <25% is a huge drop-off! I can very much understand not wanting non-unbreakable units to just casually fight to the death, but I'd maybe have gone for something like half Ld instead.

From what I've heard (might be inaccurate, but supposedly comes from some people in the playtest group) spells are always rolled on 2d6, and there is no resource management in the system. Each Wizard will be able to pick a specific number of spells from one Lore of Magic (you pick which Lore when writing your list, some Wizards are always stuck with one Lore including Ork and Goblin Wizards), and you can attempt to cast each of their spells once per turn by rolling 2d6 and trying to roll equal to or over the required casting value. Counterspelling exists, but supposedly is "very limited", whatever that might mean. Mostly it's just pure luck whether your spells go off or not, and as it currently stands there is never any reason not to try to cast all of the spells you know every turn.

From what I've heard the Discipline system is actually a huge improvement, with fleeing and panic being much more intuitive than previous editions. Hopefully it's true.

[LCP]

From what I've heard (might be inaccurate, but supposedly comes from some people in the playtest group) spells are always rolled on 2d6, and there is no resource management in the system. Each Wizard will be able to pick a specific number of spells from one Lore of Magic (you pick which Lore when writing your list, some Wizards are always stuck with one Lore including Ork and Goblin Wizards), and you can attempt to cast each of their spells once per turn by rolling 2d6 and trying to roll equal to or over the required casting value. Counterspelling exists, but supposedly is "very limited", whatever that might mean. Mostly it's just pure luck whether your spells go off or not, and as it currently stands there is never any reason not to try to cast all of the spells you know every turn.

That will make me sad :(. I hope at least there's some reflection of 'caster level' in the casting attempt... but honestly, the old system was tactical, it had depth, it had flavour, it kept the same good bones over 3 editions, it seems a real shame if they've thrown it out in order to make the rules more like AoS/40K.


From what I've heard the Discipline system is actually a huge improvement, with fleeing and panic being much more intuitive than previous editions. Hopefully it's true.

More leadership stuff does sound good, in 8E WFB in particular morale was too easy to maintain. Units breaking makes for more dynamic fixed-length games than long grindy combats.

[TheSummoner]

I still love Warhammer, but I've sworn off GW. Call me bitter, but I've not forgotten the way they handled the End Times and unless they do a full retcon and separate Warhammer from Age of Sigmar as entirely distinct settings, all roads still lead there.

I will probably give the game a try, but unless it really picks up, I'll probably stick to other wargame systems or trying to homebrew my own. Short of them doing something that really catches my eye (tabletop Vampire Coast namely), I'm not buying any GW plastic though. Admittedly, owning a 3d printer does tend to help with that. My area is pretty limited as far as wargaming is concerned, so what little I do get to do anymore is usually when visiting friends who play or when going to events. All of that is over an hour drive, so it's not exactly common anyways.

[Errorname]

I don't know why creators feel the need to justify their reboots diagetically, it so rarely works out and is more likely to exacerbate the existing resentment of the new version.

[TheSummoner]

In defense of my resentment, "You can still use your old models. Their new rules are 'if you have a fancier moustache than your opponent, you get ingame advantage.' Go buy hundreds of dollars of new models now" was fairly egregious.

Also, the resentment is less aimed at the the old game being rebooted and more at them literally ending the world in-universe in the worst possible way at the end of the previous edition.

[DaedalusMkV]

In defense of my resentment, "You can still use your old models. Their new rules are 'if you have a fancier moustache than your opponent, you get ingame advantage.' Go buy hundreds of dollars of new models now" was fairly egregious.

Also, the resentment is less aimed at the the old game being rebooted and more at them literally ending the world in-universe in the worst possible way at the end of the previous edition.

AoS initial release wasn't even that good. "Just play games. The only win condition is whoever kills more dudes. Just take however many dudes you want. It's fine. Your opponent can also take however many dudes they want. Just push some dudes at each other. Every dude is probably about equivalently valued, so 40 Bloodthirsters should be about right to fight 40 Peasant Archers. Don't forget we killed Warhammer Fantasy for this."

The second (just take the same number of HP of models! They must all be about the same, right!) and third (whoever takes less dudes gets an alternate win condition from a list. Surely there will be no ways to abuse this) were absolutely no help. I understand the first General's Handbook made the game something akin to actually good, but that was far too late for my entire gaming group.

If you kill your game to make way for a new one, it probably pays to at least make sure that game is complete enough that people can actually play it. The joke rules were just a huge slap in the face on top of that.

[GloatingSwine]

"Field as many dudes as you want" sounds like a brilliant idea if you just want to sell models and think your audience will enter into a models-buying arms race to win.

It was a brilliant plan with one minor flaw, it was bollocks.

Nobody cared about the game yet so when the light turned green on the arms race everyone stood around on the starting grid complaining.

[LCP]

I'd love to know how the people in the rules team at GW felt at the time that the initial bin-fire version of AoS was getting ready for release. Best-case scenario, it flops and you either rewrite it (as they did) or consolidate to Just 40K. Worst-case scenario, it somehow succeeds, and you're out of a job because with balance left entirely up to the player, it doesn't matter at all what you write on a unit's profile any more - that's a job they could just give to the work experience kid.

[Catullus64]

Truth be told, my biggest excitement about the Old World is in neither models nor rules, but fiction. At minimum, one assumes it means new army books, and those are always packed with interesting new lore that I can use as inspiration for all sorts of games.

My fondest hope, however, is that once Games Workshop has an actual Warhammer Fantasy product line to support, The Black Library will finally start putting out Fantasy novels again; they did as much for the Horus Heresy.

Yeah, I know. Look at this eternally hopeful fool, thinking They did something good for 40k! Surely they'll do something similar for Fantasy! But ultimately, since I'm not pre-ordering anything, hope costs nothing.

Yes, as far as they've indicated, the End Times in all their glorious idiocy still happen as printed. Given the historical remove of the Old World, I'm not actually all that bothered. It could even mean a chance (here comes that pesky hope again) to fix certain aspects of that debacle. For example, for someone particularly annoyed by what was done with Elves, the fact that many of the major Elf characters are around in the Old World era could be the chance to seed characterization that makes people's choices in the End Times less jarring and idiotic.

[Mx.Silver]

That will make me sad :(. I hope at least there's some reflection of 'caster level' in the casting attempt... but honestly, the old system was tactical, it had depth, it had flavour, it kept the same good bones over 3 editions, it seems a real shame if they've thrown it out in order to make the rules more like AoS/40K.


It was, although it did have an effect on list-building (at least in 6th and 7th ed) in that it incentivised you to either invest fairly heavily into magic or put a minimal amount of points into defense. That's not inherently a problem, but it does mean that as an individual purchase, as single wizard wasn't really something you could slot into an army the same way a psyker could in 40k, which might be something they want to avoid, or don't feel confidant enough


I don't know why creators feel the need to justify their reboots diagetically, it so rarely works out and is more likely to exacerbate the existing resentment of the new version.

Yeah. Honestly, 'canon' meta-narratives have probably become so ubiquitous a feature at this point that they may just feel that they have to.
Either way, don't know if it bodes well for what's going in with Warmachine/Hordes (not that a lot of things have done so for the last few years), but then that's its own topic.

[LCP]

It was, although it did have an effect on list-building (at least in 6th and 7th ed) in that it incentivised you to either invest fairly heavily into magic or put a minimal amount of points into defense. That's not inherently a problem, but it does mean that as an individual purchase, as single wizard wasn't really something you could slot into an army the same way a psyker could in 40k, which might be something they want to avoid, or don't feel confidant enough

They solved that in 8th though. 8th brought its own problems to the magic phase, but they were independent from that fix.

[Mx.Silver]

They solved that in 8th though. 8th brought its own problems to the magic phase, but they were independent from that fix.

Ah, fair enough. I'd stopped playing by then, so was unaware of the changes.

[LCP]

Yeah, in 8th they changed it so that:

Magic dice pool = 2d6 + 1 for each of your wizards that can roll a 6 in that magic phase. Dispel pool = the higher of the 2d6 rolled for magic + the same roll-a-6 bonus for the dispelling player's wizards.
Miscast and Irresistable Force both happen on a double 6, rather than IF on double 6 and miscast on double 1. Miscast results get deadlier.
Those would have both been great changes IMO, if not for the fact that they also rewrote the magic lores and made it so that the spells with the highest casting values in most lores were so powerful that they could gut your opponent's most expensive unit with 1 successful cast - so people were incentivised to just chuck as many dice as possible at those spells to fish for the double 6, since doubles no longer came with an equal chance to auto-fail, only to have Bad Things happen to your wizard. You could mitigate that by keeping your wizard cheap and/or away from your valuable units.

IMO my ideal WFB magic phase rules would be something like the 8th ed. framework with 6th ed. spell lists. Maybe switch the 2d6 to 4d3 to make it a bit less swingy too. But if your biggest spell is a 12+ to cast, "quite a good thing happens" rather than 24+, "point at a unit, delete it and laugh" , then I think the incentive to be a 6-dice monkey goes away, and you get back to the tactical, "how do I choose a spread of spells to get some good ones past my opponent's dispel pool" kind of play with none of the earlier editions' problems of investing in wizards being all-in or nothing.

I do appreciate there's some utility in what TOW is doing with spreading out casting through the player turn so that you cast the spell in the phase where it's needed (rather than e.g. having movement spells either move a unit out of sequence or wait until the next turn's movement phase), but IMO there's no reason you can't still have a Winds of Magic pool. If anything, watching how many magic dice your opponent has left and wondering which phase they're keeping them for sounds like it would up the bluffing-game aspect of it.

[Avaris]

I'd love to know how the people in the rules team at GW felt at the time that the initial bin-fire version of AoS was getting ready for release. Best-case scenario, it flops and you either rewrite it (as they did) or consolidate to Just 40K. Worst-case scenario, it somehow succeeds, and you're out of a job because with balance left entirely up to the player, it doesn't matter at all what you write on a unit's profile any more - that's a job they could just give to the work experience kid.

You’re in luck: https://www.goonhammer.com/the-goonhammer-interview-with-james-hewitt-part-1-age-of-sigmar-and-40k/

[FireJustice]

I don't know why creators feel the need to justify their reboots diagetically, it so rarely works out and is more likely to exacerbate the existing resentment of the new version.

It's not rocket sciense, really.

Once you have a consumer base in a number that is significant, you should care to not alienate anyone when changing things you stabiished before, as people get commited, they just want to have their grievances aired and heard. Also, I don't know if it's the western culture in general, but people (and corporations) are so hard to admit their mistakes.
I see few people griefing "I hate that there' was reset/rework/apocalypse" and many many saying: "I don't like HOW they did the it the rework/apocalypse"


More in GW's fault, they shoehorn their reworks (even new miniatures and changing the scale, yeah, i'm talking about primaris here, and now Chaos Primaris, f'ing called it) into the lore... and that can be done with grace too

[LCP]

You’re in luck: https://www.goonhammer.com/the-goonhammer-interview-with-james-hewitt-part-1-age-of-sigmar-and-40k/

I think I've seen this interview before, actually! It's definitely interesting, but doesn't cover the question I was thinking of (i.e. were you aware that if this succeeded you'd be making yourself redundant).

It also frustrates me a little to read again about sigmarines being devised as an entry point army because fully-armoured figures are nice for beginners to paint... when here we are in 2023 with Brets being one of the 2 flagship factions for the TOW launch. Brets were always there! They're based off the same historical archetype that Space Marines themselves are based off! They'd been left to languish without an army book for 2 editions at the time that the End Times kicked off!

Unrelated, there's another rules preview (https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/11/06/old-world-almanack-the-movement-phase-introduces-marching-columns/), about the movement phase this time. Unless there's some drastic change to the context of what the playing space looks like, or unless reforming has got more permissive, I don't see the 'marching column' formation being much of a positive contribution to the game. For a normal infantry unit, 3x move speed is going to get you a 12" move - if you assume a 6x4 board with the old deployment zones then that takes you bang to the centre line, only 1" beyond the average charge distance for other M4 infantry and in easy charge distance of lots of other stuff, in this formation that means you lose all your static CR (a swing of 4 points for a proper infantry block with a standard). At that kind of mid-distance it's also really hard to hide out of LOS arcs. Best-case scenario where you can find a safe location to move to, you're going to have to reform anyway, so the net movement gain over the 2 turns might be nothing, which would remove the advantage even for advancing on a static gunline defence.

All that's harmless if it's just something that people aren't motivated to use, but it also applies to the fastest units. 6 Dark Riders could form up 2x3 (or 1x6 even) and just bomb it 27" forward, solving 'how do you hide from LOS' problem by threading the gaps between enemy units and getting behind the enemy on turn 1 (add that to vanguard deployment and you could even get off the back of the board on turn 1, making scenarios like Breakthrough a bit silly). IMO fast cavalry didn't need any help over how strong and flexible they already were in the positioning game. Particularly if they keep the ability to change formation more easily than other units, I could see this just widening the gap between fast and slow.

Very possibly I'm jumping the gun if the new rules make it possible to reform in the same turn as a march move, or do something to make the effective playing space bigger (which in an ideal world I would say WFB would benefit from - but in the real world a 6'x4' game table is already quite a lot of space to take up in peoples' homes/businesses). But on the face of things, I'm not sure this is a positive change.

[Catullus64]

New update regarding shooting rules:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/11/13/old-world-almanack-darken-the-skies-with-volleys-of-arrows-quarrels-shot-bolts-balls-and-screaming-skulls/

So far, so familiar. I'm confused by the notion that the BS-to-hit matrix is "back." Did it go somewhere? Only substantial change I can detect from 8th Edition is a change to how a BS of 6+ works.

For me, the most interesting thing is actually incidental to the shooting, and it's the look this gives us at some spell profiles. Judging by the casting numbers, I'm going to guess that 2d6 is the rule, maybe +Wizard Level.

Also intriguingly, they have the tags 'Battle Magic' and 'Daemonology', rather than the 6th-edition onwards Lores of Magic. Makes sense, as the game is set pre-Colleges, and also I believe harkening back to the classifications of even older editions, not to mention early Roleplay.

[Eldan]

It's back compared to Age of Sigmar. A lot of these articles are aimed at players who played Warhammer, but didn't like AOS.

[LCP]

Yeah, the shooting phase looks almost identical to 8th (apart from there now being spells that occur during it). The only real change I can see is that they've brought back wound rolls capping out for sufficiently low S + high T, which is something from earlier editions - but they've padded the range in which you can still wound on a 6+ to be wider. IMO that makes these interactions so rare that I'm not sure why they bothered - you're going to need to be T9 before an arrow from a peasant archer can't hurt you.


Also intriguingly, they have the tags 'Battle Magic' and 'Daemonology', rather than the 6th-edition onwards Lores of Magic. Makes sense, as the game is set pre-Colleges, and also I believe harkening back to the classifications of even older editions, not to mention early Roleplay.

Yeah, the 'Battle Magic' lore looks to me like what I'd suspect the path-of-least-resistance approach would be for GW to make Age of 3 Emperors Empire armies that still let people use their College wizard minis. I'll be interested to see if they put in any mechanical differentiation between whatever kind of renegade wizards are supposed to be casting these spells and College wizards of the 2500s - if they're just as effective and just as accepted by the other troops in the army, that'll be a bit of a let-down IMO.

N.B. the term Battle Magic was around after the invention of the 8 winds + the colleges in the lore, both in the wargame and in the RPG. It just refers to spells that are designed for the battlefield.

[GloatingSwine]

Empire Magic in these times is supposed to be wild and dangerous and very unofficial, so they might represent that as having more/worse miscasts.

[LCP]

OK, I didn't have "TK get a massive skeledragon" on my bingo card

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/11/18/world-championships-preview-awaken-an-ancient-terror-from-beneath-the-sands/

[Destro_Yersul]

Neither did I, but I'm very here for it.

[Grim Portent]

Bit iffy on the head myself, the crest is very Tomb Kings, but I would prefer some horns. Jaw is very crocodilian, which is also very Tomb Kings.

The keel on the breast bone is a nice touch.

[hamishspence]

Yeah, the shooting phase looks almost identical to 8th (apart from there now being spells that occur during it). The only real change I can see is that they've brought back wound rolls capping out for sufficiently low S + high T, which is something from earlier editions - but they've padded the range in which you can still wound on a 6+ to be wider. IMO that makes these interactions so rare that I'm not sure why they bothered - you're going to need to be T9 before an arrow from a peasant archer can't hurt you.



Yup. T9 used to be incredibly rare (the Emperor Magma Dragon from Monstrous Arcanum, for Storm of Magic, had it but I'm not sure if anything else did), T8 was almost as rare, and the main way to be immune to Str 3 attacks was via having the Colossal Beast rule instead.


Perhaps they're giving a lot of monsters a Toughness boost?

[Mx.Silver]

Yup. T9 used to be incredibly rare (the Emperor Magma Dragon from Monstrous Arcanum, for Storm of Magic, had it but I'm not sure if anything else did), T8 was almost as rare, and the main way to be immune to Str 3 attacks was via having the Colossal Beast rule instead.


Perhaps they're giving a lot of monsters a Toughness boost?

Buildings/fortifications used to have it in that range back in the day, so that may be why. Destructable terrain rules didn't tend to come-up much, but I could see them including it for completeness' sake.

One other thing from the shooting rules is that there's no mention of high strength impacting armour saves. That may not be reflective of the full rules, obviously, but it is also notable that the ap value listed for the screaming skull catapult's direct hit also looks a bit weird if the old system was still in place.

[DaedalusMkV]

Buildings/fortifications used to have it in that range back in the day, so that may be why. Destructable terrain rules didn't tend to come-up much, but I could see them including it for completeness' sake.

One other thing from the shooting rules is that there's no mention of high strength impacting armour saves. That may not be reflective of the full rules, obviously, but it is also notable that the ap value listed for the screaming skull catapult's direct hit also looks a bit weird if the old system was still in place.

Actually, this one I do know. They've split strength and AP entirely. Everything will have its own value for both, and some weapons will increase AP but not Strength or increase Strength but not AP.

My only problem with the big ol' Skeleton Dragon is the connection between the Howdah and the Dragon. How are they connected? It looks like they're only attached via some leather straps and maybe a couple of small wooden posts. Is the howdah floating under its own power? The tiny struts connecting it to the bony dragon, with just a couple of leather straps lashing them down, would last maybe 5 minutes before the howdah was flung off at high speed. The howdah looks great. The dragon looks great. They don't look like they belong together.

Which I suppose they don't, considering the guy who sculpted the howdah put out a tweet talking about how it was intended to be part of a chariot/war litter.

[LCP]

Actually, this one I do know. They've split strength and AP entirely. Everything will have its own value for both, and some weapons will increase AP but not Strength or increase Strength but not AP.

We've seen that for shooting, where the S of the weapon is usually fixed, but not confirmed for melee where the S is a function of the user. It'd be a very interesting change if e.g. S5 Kroxigor with great weapons ended up with the same AP as S3 humans with great weapons... would make armour a lot more powerful.

The Skeledragon is a mixed bag for me. I like the concept, particularly how they're just taking an organic combination of elements already in the lore and running with it rather than making something new out of thin air (i.e. the Nehekharan culture must have interacted with dragons, what would that interaction have looked like?). I don't like the needless 'necrolith' in the name but I guess that's NuGW copyright policy at work (still dumb though).

I think the skeledragon itself is a good sculpt - I like its sinuous profile (which the photos don't do justice, you have to look at the vid to see it side-on) and the breastbone. The croc-face seems a nice way to make it seem more Nehekharan too. On the downside, I think the tail blades are a bit of a miss - they look more like goth jewellery than Ancient Egyptian - and the forefeet seem to be articulated like the paws of a big cat, rather than the kind of reptile/raptor claws that they ought to be. Maybe that's an intentional choice to evoke Ammut (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammit), but if so I think it's too subtle, since the rest of the skeleton is pure dragon. It also looks impossible to safely transport without risking e.g. wing bones breaking off, but again that's par for the course with big GW centrepiece models now.

Most of all though, I think it suffers from the problem that any big skelemonster has, which is it looks like a museum exhibit rather than something you'd find out in the world. There's a huge surface area of naked, intact bone compared to anything else. I think it would look better if they'd found a way to break that up with more interesting detail - e.g. some broken/missing bones, ceremonial armour, bandages, inscribed hieroglyphs etc. (the old Bone Giant minis did this well). You'd think that a culture as obsessed with preserving the dead as Nehekhara would go to some pretty crazy lengths for a pet dragon!

The howdah is cool in that it looks like a chariot carriage, but also annoying in that it looks like it's made of stone. That's a trend with fancy new GW plastics that I really dislike, having these big stone elements that would be obviously insanely heavy and prone to shattering if they took any kind of a knock. Why would they make it out of stone? Stone is not an expensive material! It's not a flex to show you can make a stone howdah or a stone banner, it's just nuts! It being mounted on that stalk is also weird (it looks like it has stays out the back to act as stabilisers?). As far as I can see they've done that because the spines that run down the dragon's back keep it from going flush to the backbone... but it's a skeleton, not a live dragon. Why wouldn't you just knock a spine or two off? It won't hurt.

The Tomb King rider looks great with the trident (a weapon for a dragon rider that looks like it can reach past the dragon!), silly with the flail (looks like a weapon designed solely for hurting yourself). The High Priest looks fantastic, I love the effect of the vulture materialising out of a whoosh of sand. Speaking of sand, I think the generic basing is doing it a disservice - in the vid they show it with its base buried in sand and everything hangs together much better when it's shown crawling over a Nehekharan desert.

Overall though, a cool sculpt, and very promising that they're doing new units and new BIG kits for TOW.

[Catullus64]

Whoops, forgot to post this update when it dropped a few days ago:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/11/20/old-world-almanack-fight-the-good-fight-in-the-combat-phase/

Not gonna lie, this part looks awesome. The idea of battle-lines wavering back and forth across the battlefield, of a sturdy line being steadily pushed back as they grind through the enemy, has me really excited.

In terms of spotting differences from earlier editions, am I right in thinking that charging granting an Initiative bonus, rather than automatically striking first, is new? I can't quite keep it all straight across different games & editions. I think Overrun looks different too, though it seems somewhat situational.

[LCP]

Yes, this specific implementation w.r.t. charging is new. Charging did used to interact with the initiative order in 6th & 7th, but in a more binary way - chargers just struck first, full stop.

I like this halfway house implementation a lot. Ditto the different grades of falling back - I think that's some great design, making it so every round of combat has some kind of visible outcome on the board. I think in a game with only 6-7 turns that's a really critical consideration, and dodges the 8th. ed. situation of big unbreakable bricks of troops just hammering at each other without going too far the other way (e.g. how a lot of 6th & 7th revolved around powerful cavalry units being able to run units over in a single turn).

I do think that with only a fail against the natural leadership of the unit producing a rout (or presumably the leadership of the general if they're in range), combat might still feel quite sticky. A lot of armies like dwarfs, elves and lizards will almost always be either giving ground or falling back in good order rather than breaking & fleeing. What would be really cool would be if pushing units around matters for victory conditions (i.e. having objectives to control or scoring by table quarters). Since you're almost always going to be pushing units away from your own army, you're rarely going to expose a flank or rear through pushing - although I guess in that respect, the chance to push a unit into an exposed position really adds an extra layer of reward to flank and rear charges, if you can get a mobile unit into the right position.

[Eldan]

I think it's not entirely new, I seem to remember Ancient Battles, their historical wargame that had very similar rules to early Warhammer had something like this.

[DaedalusMkV]

Worth pointing out that Charges just giving +1 Initiative is how it worked in 8th edition, the last iteration of WFB. A lot of what's present here is adaptations of 8e rules; random charge ranges (though they're shorter than in 8e), models stepping up to fight, charging interacting with Initiative rather than supplanting it and the entirety of the combat resolution score calculation are straight out of 8e.

There are definitely some hints of earlier editions in there (only one rank fights, no Horde formation, no Steadfast) and a few things which are entirely new (entire front rank fights even if not touching an enemy, new outcomes from Break tests).

Something interesting to keep in mind is that the distance an opponent falls back looks pretty unpredictable. Give Ground looks to be just a small nudge while Fall Back in Good Order looks to be a pretty significant change of position. Seeing how all this interacts should be interesting, but it definitely gives charging players much less control over the state of the battlefield following combat than any previous edition on WFB. How impactful that will be should depend on how random falling back actually is.

[LCP]

In 8th I don't think charges gave any bonus to initiative. It was just initiative order, always (which meant that elves' Always Strike First rules from 7th became 'always get rerolls' :smallannoyed:). Also worth pointing out that a lot of that 8E stuff (e.g. combat resolution) has continuity with 6E & 7E.

In other news, the magic preview (https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/12/04/old-world-almanack-how-magic-brings-a-sparkle-to-the-battlefield/) is out.

You can colour me surprised that they've completely abandoned colour magic. IMO that's a very Empire-centric change - the Empire is the only place where colour magic is a new 'discovery' between the timeframes of TOW and WFB. For elves it might even be the same wizard in both timeframes (for Slann it's definitely the same wizard). More than that, they made the 8 colours such a fundamental part of the cosmology for AoS, it seems strange they'd downplay that link. But, eh. The 'new' lores are a callback to the WFRP 1E magic system, which is fun.

Also worth noting that Waaagh magic is in the core book, which implies they're not doing additional lores in the army books. Since Vampire Counts aren't on the initial faction slate I'd assume that means that Tomb Kings use Necromancy, and Beastmen/Warriors of Chaos probably just get Daemonology in lieu of god-specific lores.

The move to the 2d6 casting system is much like everyone was predicting. My thoughts:


I'm sad that the dice pool is gone but I can understand that holding a dice pool over multiple phases could be a hassle.
Positional dispelling sounds fun, but those ranges are long. Assuming a 6'x4' playing space, a level 3-4 wizard is going to command a huge % of the area of the board where things are actually happening. I guess I can see that boiling down to a few outcomes:
Bring high level wizards over low level wizards if you can, to be able to brute force through dispels (that was already a thing in previous editions, for different reasons).
Mobile lower level wizards who can scoot to a point outside the dispel bubble will be more valuable.
Killing off your opponent's wizards will make them way more vulnerable to magic than in previous editions. You only get 1 wizardless dispel a turn and it's unmodified; with wizards having 1-4 spells each and no dice pool to limit them, anything outside a dispel bubble is very vulnerable.
The corollary to that - since there's no limit to how many dispel attempts you can make, a unit inside a level 4 wizard's bubble is very well protected.
They've gone back to 6E/7E miscasts, which I think is a shame because the miscast/IF mechanic exists to insert additional risk/reward into rolling more dice to cast. Now all spells are cast on 2 dice, so miscasts are only for flavour, and in that case I think having both results on double 6 is both more flavourful and more fun than double 1 being 'bad luck, you suck' and double 6 being 'hooray! your opponent doesn't get to interact with this now'.
Speaking of miscasts, the miscast table seems more dangerous to people near the wizard (higher % chance of template damage) and less dangerous to the wizard themself (no multiwound results, no permanent loss of spells or wizard levels). I think that's a bad change, because different factions have wildly different options of protecting their caster. A necromancer in a zombie bunker or a sorceress on a pegasus don't give a hoot about putting the large template down on top of themselves and vapourising everyone else under it; a Slann in the dead centre of a unit of Temple Guard cares very much!

[GloatingSwine]

Elves still had ASF in 8th. IIRC the only time that went away was with Great Weapons which had ASL which cancel each other out.

And yeah, it didn't affect initiative if you charged, just combat resolution and interacted with certain weapons like lances that got +2S on the turn you charged.

[LCP]

Yeah, I just meant 'from 7th' as in that's when they first got the rule. IIRC it came in with the 7E High Elf army book because one of the writers was inspired by the scene in the prologue of the Fellowship of the Ring where all the elves do a synchronised sword-swoosh at the charging orcs, and it ended up with Dark Elves rolling their dice 4 times before you even got to making saves.

(it may be subtle but I was not a fan of this rule)

[Erloas]

Speaking of miscasts, the miscast table seems more dangerous to people near the wizard (higher % chance of template damage) and less dangerous to the wizard themself (no multiwound results, no permanent loss of spells or wizard levels). I think that's a bad change, because different factions have wildly different options of protecting their caster. A necromancer in a zombie bunker or a sorceress on a pegasus don't give a hoot about putting the large template down on top of themselves and vapourising everyone else under it; a Slann in the dead centre of a unit of Temple Guard cares very much!


There is no getting around that some armies will be much worse off for miscasts than others though. Even one where it is much more lethal to the caster, since a tricked out Slann is probably 5x the cost of a cheap wizard in other armies. Also when the wizard is also the general of the army. In most cases with expensive and important wizards you would probably rather have some of their protection die than having them die, and even for more expensive troops like Lizardmen you would still prefer them over the Slann taking damage. Depends too on how powerful the templates are, lower str template hits are going to take out a lot more zombies than they are lizards, though if it's high str then it's going to wipe out everything equally.

[DaedalusMkV]

The miscast rules are frustratingly vague. What does 'risks being hit by' even mean? Does the results that prevent 'you' from attempting any more spells apply just to the Wizard who miscast or all Wizards? If you miscast on a dispel roll are you prevented from making more dispels? I really, really hope this isn't a screenshot of the final rules in the book, or I guarantee I won't be able to play this game just purely based on lack of rules clarity.

As for the specifics of the rules... Level 4 Wizards look utterly mandatory, even if they don't let you know more spells (which the article doesn't make clear). Not only is the difference between a +2 bonus and a +4 bonus immense, but the difference in dispelling range is incredibly impactful. Remember both players take turns casting spells on both players' turns. Level 3 and 4 Wizards have a 24" range to Dispel while level 1 and 2 only have an 18" range. Which means that it is possible for the Level 4 to be in range to dispel the opponent's spells while the opponent is not in range to dispel back. This is potentially backbreaking if the high-end spells are as impactful as I've been told.

As for the harshness of miscasts, remember that certain factions are likely to get items or abilities that mitigate miscasts to a significant extent. While the Lizardmen aren't one of the core factions and we can't know how much actual effort GW will expend on them, one of the Slaan iconic abilities lets them just ignore the first miscast of the game and another let them reroll dice selectively. GW was never afraid to give armies rules that greatly changed the odds and outcomes of miscasting.

Edit:

There is no getting around that some armies will be much worse off for miscasts than others though. Even one where it is much more lethal to the caster, since a tricked out Slann is probably 5x the cost of a cheap wizard in other armies. Also when the wizard is also the general of the army. In most cases with expensive and important wizards you would probably rather have some of their protection die than having them die, and even for more expensive troops like Lizardmen you would still prefer them over the Slann taking damage. Depends too on how powerful the templates are, lower str template hits are going to take out a lot more zombies than they are lizards, though if it's high str then it's going to wipe out everything equally.
Actually, this is in the article. 'Bad' Miscast is a 5" template (old GW large blast) and 'risks hitting' models underneath the template with S10 AP-4. The 'not quite as bad' Miscast is a 3" template (GW small blast) and 'risks hitting' models with S6 Ap-2. Armour and maybe high toughness help against the second one. Nothing except Ward Save helps against the first.

[LCP]

This is potentially backbreaking if the high-end spells are as impactful as I've been told.

The new system also kind of changes what a 'high-end spell' means. Previously it was a spell that cost a lot of resources to cast; now it's a spell that you have a lower probability to successfully cast on any given attempt. But, since you can seemingly cast all your spells every turn, no reason not to always give it a go.

EDIT: The more I think about it, the more what defines this system to me seems to be risk management.

Miscast chance is 1/12 for any spell.
In any turn you have the opportunity to cast all your spells, or (if you're in range) dispel all your opponent's.
If you assume a "normal" amount of magic being roughly 1 level 4 wizard that's 4 cast/dispel attempts per player turn.
12 player turns per game means the expectation value for no. of miscasts on your wizard per game is 4.
Each miscast has a really hefty probability of putting a high-strength template down over your wizard.

All that seems to disfavour the initial obvious path of putting your strongest wizard in a well protected central position and letting them handle everything. If you put them in a bunker unit they are very likely to nuke it at least once or twice in the course of an average game. But without a bunker, they won't survive long in the centre of the field.

The solution that seems to present itself is to have cheaper wizards as 'dispel jockeys' who can cover the dispel attempts for less critical spells, accepting the lower chance of success to bring down the overall no. of rolls your big wizard has to make. But then if your opponent does the same thing, the total number of spells getting cast goes up, and so the number of miscasts you expect goes up too.

I don't think you can predict how it will shake on just by armchair analysis - it'll be interesting to see. Items could play a big part, and it seems to make Magic Resistance more valuable (making your opponent fail the casting check is safer than having to roll a dispel). But I guess we'll have to wait and see.

[Catullus64]

This is a few days old now, but: YAY!

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/12/20/lords-of-the-lance-is-the-first-new-novel-for-the-world-of-legend/

Graham McNeil is far from my favorite author to work on Warhammer properties, but I'm very excited to have a new book forthcoming. From the synopsis given, this looks like it will do a lot to get me interested in Bretonnians and Tomb Kings, two factions I was never that into before.

Oh, and also the starting box sets for the actual game, I guess:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/12/26/warhammer-the-old-world-the-tomb-kings-of-khemri-revealed/

[Renegade Paladin]

And that's it, preorders are going up this weekend.


Miscast chance is 1/12 for any spell.

1/36* They're rolling 2d6, not 1d12. The odds are very different.

[Renegade Paladin]

GW being GW, they want $40 for their movement trays. Pull the other one, it's got bells on. :smallamused:

[Brookshw]

GW being GW, they want $40 for their movement trays. Pull the other one, it's got bells on. :smallamused:

Please tell me that's for, like, 10 trays...

[Renegade Paladin]

Please tell me that's for, like, 10 trays...

Looking at the sprues on WarCom, it seems to be eight max.

[Grim Portent]

https://www.warhammer.com/en-GB/shop/the-old-world-modular-movement-trays

Assuming you mean these movement trays, they are bloody overpriced for what they are.

2x 200mm x 200mm floor sections
32x corner pieces
48x straight pieces

So the idea seems to be that you cut the floor sections along the gridlines and add the corner/straight pieces to make your movement trays. It's basically £25 for 2 8x8 25mm trays, or up to eight smaller trays. £12.50 for an 8x8 25mm tray is at least twice the price of other movement trays, easily more. GSW has 5x4 25mm MDF trays for £3.64 each for example.

I guess you could probably make them magnestised or something so you can refit the trays to different units, but movement trays are one of the least space-consuming things in the hobby, so just buying enough for any given units you want is a no brainer, so these new GW ones are just a garbage option.

[snowblizz]

https://www.warhammer.com/en-GB/shop/the-old-world-modular-movement-trays

Assuming you mean these movement trays, they are bloody overpriced for what they are.

2x 200mm x 200mm floor sections
32x corner pieces
48x straight pieces

So the idea seems to be that you cut the floor sections along the gridlines and add the corner/straight pieces to make your movement trays. It's basically £25 for 2 8x8 25mm trays, or up to eight smaller trays. £12.50 for an 8x8 25mm tray is at least twice the price of other movement trays, easily more. GSW has 5x4 25mm MDF trays for £3.64 each for example.

I guess you could probably make them magnestised or something so you can refit the trays to different units, but movement trays are one of the least space-consuming things in the hobby, so just buying enough for any given units you want is a no brainer, so these new GW ones are just a garbage option.

GW still selling Ye Olde Trays for Ye Modern Prices I see.
One thing am going to say for those, they happen to be perfect for putting magnetic tape on the underside (as the lip lifts the bottom like 2mm), put a sheet of steel paper on the inside and magnetise your troops. And you can smack an entire Skaven army on to the refrigerator door if you want. Yes I've got pictures of it.

They are quite convenient, with a 20mm an 25mm side (or used to be) and you get to decide the layout yourself. The main issue last I checked was you don't get enough sides if you make a lot of small ones.
They should be like half price and they'd be great value IMO and you'd buy 4x as many as you wouldn't want to bother with swapping models off the trays. But GW gonna GW.

[Corsair14]

Meh, cereal box cardboard works just as well, you get to customize the size, and you get yummy cereal to boot.

[Eldan]

Or for slightly more durable (and sold in our local miniature store), plasticard is about 50 cents for a piece the size of a standard page and also very easy to paint.

[remetagross]

The battle report between Brets and Tomb Kings shows a few interesting tidbits:

-Skeletons have Regeneration (6+), which is really neat. It helps reduce attrition from losing combat by a million points.
-Skirmishing cavalery is a thing now. Why not, after all?

[Grim Portent]

I decided to order some of the made-to-order Bretonnian character minis, and have set my heart on doing a Mousillon themed army as I did before the End Times. Going to take a while to get the actual knights and things because of the stock issues, but I have other stuff to work on in the immediate term anyway.

Complicating this is that Mousillon still has a living duke at the time The Old World seems be going with, so going full Vampire Counts in Bretonnian clothes is probably not the best idea thematically. So all I've really got in mind is some knights in variants of Mousillon heraldry, and some Paladins with the heraldry of Mallobaude's four companions from the later timeline. I'm not confident Maldred himself will get an official model, so I should probably think about how to convert one.

[DaedalusMkV]

If you want Vampire-Brettonians, the Red Duke is active around about the point in time the Old World is set. You could easily use him and his undead Knights in place of Mousillon if you wanted a fluff-compliant Old World force.

[Grim Portent]

True, but the last time he had a model he was very much just a generic blood dragon in terms of aesthetics, and a lot of what makes Mousillon interesting is the aesthetics, and the Black/Yellow colours also look very striking.

Even with a younger Maldred in charge there's still room for evil stuff, the man did wind up falling head first down the path of dark powers and evil schemes as he aged, the vampiric du Hane family supported his play for the throne, and Mousillon was a rather wretched place even before all the stuff that happened after he died.


What I will probably wind up doing is making some units that are set later in the timeline, such as a Mallobaude model, and some knights that play with the more undead and chaos tainted themes of Mousillon by the End Times. Mousillon got invaded by Nurgle daemons shortly before Maldred died, and it seemingly left a lasting impact, which means I could incorporate Nurgle aesthetics into future knights alonside human and vampire ones.

[LCP]

The Bret exiles army of infamy looks like it'd be a pretty good fit for Mousillon. Outcast wizards and Brigands and not using the Blessing/grail troops.

I think being set in the earlier time period really works for playing them using Bret rules (rather than using e.g. vamps). You can have the men and women of Mousillon being the backbone of your army and the dark stuff lurking round the edges/under the surface.

[Grim Portent]

The Bret exiles army of infamy looks like it'd be a pretty good fit for Mousillon. Outcast wizards and Brigands and not using the Blessing/grail troops.

I think being set in the earlier time period really works for playing them using Bret rules (rather than using e.g. vamps). You can have the men and women of Mousillon being the backbone of your army and the dark stuff lurking round the edges/under the surface.

An outcast wizard with dark magic, necromancy or daemonology would probably be the best way to represent the sorceress Malfleur, consort of Maldred, so that's definitely a solid fit for the time period. Short of them releasing rules for a 'Mousillon as it falls fully into darkness' army theme at some point down the line, Bret Exiles seems the best fit.

Depending on how the allies and/or mercenary rules are intended to work Having a Bretonnian army with a few VC units mixed in might also be an option. I don't think many people would refuse a Mousillon Bretonnian army with allied VC for casual play even though it's not by the book, and who knows what mercenaries will wind up being fleshed out as in future. Having a vampire, some ghouls and some blood knights as allies in a Maldred army would be entirely lore appropriate for the Affair of the False Grail.


EDIT: Bought the ebooks so I can properly plan things out, and basic sketch of a 1000 point list has been drafted up so I can work out what needs bought.

1 Baron on Bret Warhorse, Virtue of Confidence, shield, Exiles Vow, Crusader's Clarion and Foebreaker.

1 Outcast Wizard, level 2, with the Prayer Icon of Quenelles

2 units of Mounted Knights of the Realm, 6 knights each, First Knight, musician and banner for both.

20 Yeoman Guard with thrusting spears, a Warden, banner and musician.

20 Peasant Bowmen with defensive stakes.

1 Border Princes Bombard or Trebuchet.


Now I have bugger all experience with WHF as a system, and haven't gotten intimate with these rules, but this looks like the skeleton of a reasonable force. For 60 points left over, so that might become a Paladin with a standard, or more magic items/banners.

[LCP]

You'll probably get more mileage out of the peasant bowmen running them in 2 units of 10. If you form them up deep, only half the models in the back ranks get to shoot.
The stakes are a cool visual element but don't do much - most things that charge peasant bowmen will batter them with or without their bonuses. It's small change, but if you find yourself in need of small change that's the first thing I'd cut.
You probably want a larger unit of Yeomen Guard. They are regular infantry so their min rank size is 5, and they have Horde so their rank bonus can go up to +3. That means as soon as you lose a model from the unit you've lost a point of rank bonus. Having more models to soak casualties before you start losing rank bonus will keep your static CR and your leadership (from Warband) high. I also wouldn't bother buying thrusting spears when you can have the more flexible polearms for free.
A horse would be super valuable for your outcast wizard. It lets you get into dispel range (or out of dispel range) of your opponent, and gives you more freedom to get where you're going without Marching (which stops you using magic missiles or vortexes). Mounted characters can still hide in infantry, and you can use the Lone Character rules to keep her from being targeted if she hangs out near your knights. If you go for the 'evil' magic lores you might even want her to join the knights as there are some very nice buffs that target the caster's unit.
Crusader's Clarion can only be taken in an errantry crusade army, not an exile army. Also the Frontier Axe is really exceptionally good and I would recommend almost always taking it if you're running Exiles. Particularly when you're built for challenging with the Virtue of Confidence, the multiwounds will consistently generate value through Overkill.
For the bombard/treb, I would pick based on what you feel least confident about facing - monsters/heavy cavalry or big tough blocks, respectively.
At 1000pts it might be a little tight, but if you can squeeze a battle standard bearer in, battle standards are an always-pick choice for most armies as they get larger.

[Beelzebub1111]

I've got a Beasts of Chaos army and was thinking about converting them to a beastmen army for this but I'm not sure how they play compared. my available models are mostly gors, bestigors, and bullgors. I've got three gorgons and a cygor, a chariot, some hounds, four shaman including malagor, a doombull, and kazrak for a beastlord.


Too much to ask for GW to show them any love, but maybe in some reality they might be alright?

[Grim Portent]

You'll probably get more mileage out of the peasant bowmen running them in 2 units of 10. If you form them up deep, only half the models in the back ranks get to shoot.
The stakes are a cool visual element but don't do much - most things that charge peasant bowmen will batter them with or without their bonuses. It's small change, but if you find yourself in need of small change that's the first thing I'd cut.
You probably want a larger unit of Yeomen Guard. They are regular infantry so their min rank size is 5, and they have Horde so their rank bonus can go up to +3. That means as soon as you lose a model from the unit you've lost a point of rank bonus. Having more models to soak casualties before you start losing rank bonus will keep your static CR and your leadership (from Warband) high. I also wouldn't bother buying thrusting spears when you can have the more flexible polearms for free.
A horse would be super valuable for your outcast wizard. It lets you get into dispel range (or out of dispel range) of your opponent, and gives you more freedom to get where you're going without Marching (which stops you using magic missiles or vortexes). Mounted characters can still hide in infantry, and you can use the Lone Character rules to keep her from being targeted if she hangs out near your knights. If you go for the 'evil' magic lores you might even want her to join the knights as there are some very nice buffs that target the caster's unit.
Crusader's Clarion can only be taken in an errantry crusade army, not an exile army. Also the Frontier Axe is really exceptionally good and I would recommend almost always taking it if you're running Exiles. Particularly when you're built for challenging with the Virtue of Confidence, the multiwounds will consistently generate value through Overkill.
For the bombard/treb, I would pick based on what you feel least confident about facing - monsters/heavy cavalry or big tough blocks, respectively.
At 1000pts it might be a little tight, but if you can squeeze a battle standard bearer in, battle standards are an always-pick choice for most armies as they get larger.


So split the bowmen, drop the stakes.

The Yeoman thrusting spears are free, it's the polearms that cost 1 point a piece. Other free options are hand weapon/shield and halberds. The polearms are clearly better, but not a high priority. Would you think 5 extra yeoman would be sufficient for rank bonus purposes? I can knock off magic items or some archers for them, I'd like to keep both units of knights.

Missed the bit on Clarion about crusader armies, trouble with flicking between e-books at 11 at night.


So dropping Clarion, the stakes and adding 5 more Yeomen, a horse for the wizard and a paladin with Battle Standard and warhorse leaves me 14 points over 1000. I can shave off 14 by dropping musicians and/or standard bearers from the knights, or by dropping all upgrades from the Yeoman Guards. Swapping out Foebreaker for the Frontier Axe would need me to free up a few more points. Or I could just not add the paladin with standard and keep the extra points for magic items.

[LCP]

Ah sorry, I must have got my peasant upgrades back to front. Spears sound fine then. 25 sounds like a decent size - it's as deep as you can be while keeping combat order at 5 wide, and going wider would just give the bigger kids more frontage to beat on.

Dropping the Virtue of Confidence saves you 15 points and I wouldn't say it's super necessary.

I definitely don't rate Foebreaker highly myself - weapons that debuff an enemy when you wound them are usually pretty bad, because they're messing around with status conditions on something that (you hope) is often about to die anyway. If you want to keep it cheap, you could just go for the rulebook Sword of Might - but also just a mundane lance would be a perfectly decent choice.

[Grim Portent]

Ah sorry, I must have got my peasant upgrades back to front. Spears sound fine then. 25 sounds like a decent size - it's as deep as you can be while keeping combat order at 5 wide, and going wider would just give the bigger kids more frontage to beat on.

Dropping the Virtue of Confidence saves you 15 points and I wouldn't say it's super necessary.

I definitely don't rate Foebreaker highly myself - weapons that debuff an enemy when you wound them are usually pretty bad, because they're messing around with status conditions on something that (you hope) is often about to die anyway. If you want to keep it cheap, you could just go for the rulebook Sword of Might - but also just a mundane lance would be a perfectly decent choice.

They formatted the weapons for Yeoman weird, free halberds on top, then 1 point polearms, then free spears. Would have made more sense to list them as a free/free/1, to go from cheapest to most expensive in descending order.

I think you're right about Foebreaker, it's worse than a lance for straight up killing things, and magical attacks is not important, and the lance drops me down to a clean 998. So, barring any further tweaks I need 1 Bretonnian Lord with lance, 1 mounted damsel, 1 mounted paladin with banner, 12 knights of the realm, 20 bowmen, 25 men-at-arms, and one empire/dwarf cannon. Should be a nice easy start to the army.

Well, apart from the cannon anyway, since those are still OOP, but I should be able to find or make any number of stand ins.

[DaedalusMkV]

Ah sorry, I must have got my peasant upgrades back to front. Spears sound fine then. 25 sounds like a decent size - it's as deep as you can be while keeping combat order at 5 wide, and going wider would just give the bigger kids more frontage to beat on.


Don't overvalue the effect reducing your frontage has on an enemy's damage output. This is not 9th Age or old Fantasy, and every model in the opponent's front rank (and second rank if they have Supporting Attacks) gets to attack you regardless of how many models are in base contact. It's true that they only get one attack each if they are not in base contact, but most models in The Old World only get one attack anyways (or one per profile part, which is unaffected), including most of the scariest things you have to deal with, so that will rarely matter.

It is usually best to assume that if the enemy is charging your peasants with anything, those peasants are giving ground at best and breaking and running at worst. Your static combat res almost certainly won't matter. Unit width and rank bonus in this case matters much less than unit strength - you want enough unit strength that the opponent will not have double yours after they've finished killing the 8-10 peasants they're probably going to kill, so that you will most likely give ground or fall back in good order on the General's natural leadership. In this case I'd say 25 is probably the lowest number you can reasonably field (enough to not be doubled by Unit Strength 30, or be outmatched by Unit Strength 15 with Fear), and 30-40 is probably the number you want to make it reliable (with 40 Peasants only a very powerful Fear-causing unit will likely break you in one turn).

There is something to be said for going wider with melee peasants with thrusting spears - if you put them 10 or so wide odds are very good you'll get to attack with at least some of them and inflict some damage. But their stats are poor and that's not to be relied on, and keeping the unit narrow improves the ability of your Lances to get those counter-charges you want. Elf Spearmen they are not.

[LCP]

Things with 2A are not so difficult to find. Frenzy and 2 hand weapons can both be found on Core choices.

Also yes you will be losing combat, but if you keep your base leadership high (which forming up deep with Warband helps) most of the time you're going to be Falling Back in Good Order, which is much closer to holding in earlier editions than to fleeing. Eating a charge and falling back in good order is I think what most cheap anvil units are aiming to do in TOW.

Also, Yeomen have Shieldwall, so can always convert their first FBIGO to a Give Ground, should that matter.