Look, I know it’s been a little over six months at this point but for many of us it’s really only been about six months of actual gaming. How has it all panned out? 

Here we are. Six (or so) months after the release of Warhammer The Old World with a couple of FAQ/Errata documents, a few Arcane Journals, and more models that I (Bair) expected to be re-released. I mean really, did we need those ancient night goblins back? I’m sitting down with Reece W, Liam_Jordan, and Perigrin to talk about what we are enjoying about the game and some things that we might like to see change or think are causing some issues. The four of us span two continents and, mostly, different gaming groups. We approach the game differently from each other in ways that I think are common amongst gaming groups. Some of us are competitive tournament-style players and approach the game that way, and others are not. Some of us are just collecting armies we’ve always wanted to own and playing games for the fun of rolling dice or wanting to build a narrative that we enjoy. Don’t confuse my words though, these are not mutually exclusive endeavours. We do all enjoy winning games but who doesn’t??

Q: What are your favourite parts of The Old World so far? 

Liam_Jordan: Seeing armies again on the table. I wasn’t that sad when WHFB disappeared as I ran straight into Age of Sigmar, armies still looked like armies (but on round bases) for a good few editions and I never really noticed that they didn’t have that feel about them. But towards the back end of AoS2 into mid AoS3, armies started to change in what people took to events and moved away from feeling like an army, which just wasn’t for me. TOW launching has made armies on the table look like armies on the table again and it wasn’t until recently that I realised just how much I missed it. I’d also put the Give Ground and Fall Back in Good Order mechanic in here as one of, if not the best, rule for the feel of the game. Knowing that units might just lock down and grind out a combat until they lose a majority of their number is great and really lets you play hammer/anvil armies if you want to. 

I’d also throw magic into this section as well. The idea that mages just did stuff once per round never felt the best to me, despite the stories it could tell. With TOW’s spreading of magic throughout the game it feels just so much better. With Total War having wizards launch big vortexes through armies or buff allies as they engage in combat really made me visualise how magic worked best in Warhammer and TOW has really done well to capture that on the tabletop.  

Reece: There’s a certain feeling I get that I think a lot of us can resonate with. When you like a game a lot, you start to think about it in moments of silence. At a consistent rate I’ll think about how the game plays, what I want to do next in it, or how to overcome a challenge in the game. These thoughts are removed from any hobby ideas, so that signals it is entirely about the game itself. That ability to stick with you is what I think makes this a special game worthy of its rerelease. I never forget an upcoming game because I’m thinking about list tweaks, things my opponent might do, and any combination of scenarios that can occur! 

Perigrin: I am a massive fan of the Warhammer Fantasy setting so getting to see tables at events loaded with big armies that look like Warhammer armies just tickles me pink. Something about the big rectangular formations and ranked combat just feels special to me. I also have been very much enjoying playing at events and getting to play against a wide range of factions and types of army list. Having Fantasy back has been great, the game has a very satisfying feel to the push and pull of combat, and there are fewer massively broken shenanigans than there were in previous editions. I would also like to second how much fun I find the new morale system with the various degrees of running away/backing off. 

Bair: Dwarfs. As much as I love Age of Sigmar Fyreslayers and Kharadron Overlords, Middle Earth Dwarves, and Conquest Dweghom, none of them quite scratch the itch for the army that really got me into fantasy settings: Warhammer Fantasy Dwarfs. Simple as that. I’m really approaching this game from a “I love dwarfs and just want to put them on the table in big blocks of infantry with some artillery” perspective and trying to make that work for me. It has, on occasion. Echoing Liam and Perigrin I really love that combats don’t end in a massive sweep after a single round; the addition of Give Ground and Fall Back In Good Order is fantastic. Newer movement-based mechanics like marching column and drilled are great too and add a lot to a movement-based game.

Q: What things have come up that you don’t care for? 

Liam_Jordan: I’ve only really got a few things I’d amend if I had a magic wand. I’m not massively keen on the big disparity of wizard levels and how they can warp the game if you don’t get the right spell selection but I do really like how the placement of wizards can impact that. The second thing is that while I do feel that Dragons (and larger ridden monsters) should be terrors on the battlefield they can sometimes skew maybe 10% over what I like, mainly through triple stacking of decent saves. The last thing is elite infantry maybe need a little upgrade in some format, not sure how I’d do this one at all but I’d just like to see a few more real blocks of solid elites on the field of battle and sometimes just feel that’s missing. 

Reece: Being six months in we can see the ugly as well. Dragons are incredibly strong, and a few key skew lists can cause major disruption in the meta. Large ridden monsters have some counters but not every list gets them, so a grouping of “haves” and “have-nots” is created. And due to the power of cavalry and monsters combined there is a lot of Monstrous Cavalry units that are just incredibly useful. Dragon Ogres, Demigryphs, and Pegasus Knights being some of the all-stars of the edition so far.

Perigrin: The extreme power of flying units, monstrous cav, and cavalry in general has been unpleasant. Elite infantry feels very weak for the price, and non-elite infantry only feels worth it if you are building them as cheap as you can. The hard push away from infantry is an understandable reaction to the sheer horror that was 8th edition, but most infantry could stand to go down 2-ish points per model. I wouldn’t want to see them get much better at fighting, but Infantry should be used to bulk out a front line and give your cavalry something to use as an anvil. Most armies are just skipping the anvils to go pure hammer at the moment.

Big ridden monsters are an issue but less of one that I was expecting, the availability of a 50 point item that grants the chance to instantly kill on to everyone works wonders on that, though armies without their own flying mount options can struggle to deploy the DSS to actually counter them. 

Another major issue is that spamming level 4 Wizards is very strong and most armies don’t have any super hard limits on the amount they can take. Magic Missile Spam is very hard to deal with without dedicated anti-wizard tools or your own very strong shooting units. 

Bair: I really don’t have much to add to my co-authors here; I agree with every point that they’ve made regarding cavalry, monsters, and very specifically: dragons with stacked saves. Dwarfs might not have much (read: almost none, but thanks Ungrim) access to Monster Slayer to be a threat to these big beasts but stone throwers, cannons, and irondrake trollhammer torpedoes all exist to threaten these. The biggest let down to me is that infantry don’t feel more important in the game as a whole. I understand that this was a big issue during 8th edition but the pendulum swung too far back the other direction. At inception I really liked that ridden monsters had a combined wounds profile because it was easier and it works really well in Age of Sigmar and other systems but as they are right now they’re just too strong. Also, challenges often create a “feels bad” experience for one player or the other. I’ve found that as a mechanic it’s much more often used to “game” the system instead of to create those fun epic moments between heroes and I mean that I’ve also used it much to my benefit!

Lastly I just really dislike some magic items: Lore Familiar and the Ruby Ring of Ruin. Both are seen in just about every army list and are too good. Level 4 wizards are good enough without being able to spend a middling 30 points to guarantee spells.

Q: What changes might you like to see for these, if any? 

Liam_Jordan: I’d look to maybe alter the way wizarding levels interact with spell casting, but not sure how I’d actually implement it. Same for the elite blocks; maybe bring back step up for certain units as a USR or something so Chaos Warriors had more or a place or so White Lions could really show what they’re made of. What’s weird is I get far more out of the M3 elite infantry in the dwarf list than what I get with the M4 Chaos Warriors or M5 Elves, so go figure.

Reece: I’d like to see split profile changed almost entirely. Sharing defences, the massive amount of wounds, and the way rules need several layers of rules to even work with them just makes me feel like it needs a redo here. More broadly I think unit typing needs another look at as well, as a few things feel like they fall through the cracks, such as not being able to Killing/Cleaving Blow the crew of a warmachine. 

Perigrin: Making lower level wizards worth taking would be awesome, as at current there is zero reason to not just spring for the level 4 in all cases. This would probably require a major change to the magic system because at current level 2s simply do not get to cast spells on the same table as a level 4, but I would settle for the level 2 wizards getting significantly cheaper. Elite Infantry could stand to either come down a few points or gain Step Up like Liam said. Basic infantry mostly suffers from there being Heavy Cavalry in a lot of factions CORE slot, and there is very little reason to take basic infantry instead of Cav. A lot of basic infantry is also 1 or 2 points overcosted depending on faction. I love how powerful Cav feels, but having a huge amount of good quality cavalry in CORE is not great. Potentially bringing something similar to the Compulsory Troops rule from Horus Heresy where at least, say, 50% of your CORE minimum points had to be infantry so that armies couldn’t just spam out 3-6 units of Knights to fill CORE would be a good change.

Split Profile Monsters are way too strong at the moment despite having some counterplay, you really shouldn’t be adding the wound values of the character and monster together. Or the Monster could take up Magic Item points, simply to prevent people from stacking 3 saves on top of every monster in their army list. The 3+/4++/5+++ Chaos Dragon is fucking disgusting and you really should not be allowed to do that.

Bair: A few thoughts are get rid of the Ruby Ring and Lore Familiar. I’m not sure it could be implemented at this stage but a further difference in Lords vs Hero level characters to limit how much you can take of the big-hitter/caster characters would be great. Infantry getting a larger rank bonus cap than they currently can would be huge (increasing it further for horde etc) and adding an “outnumber” bonus to combat res like older editions would help those blocks against the big monsters too. Some of the dragons need to get a bit more expensive, especially the ones stacking to an incredibly good save. Would love to see the above of more elite infantry stepping up to fight and would help against the absolute joke of “linehammer”. The last thing would just to pull the legends armies out and actually give them real rules; the more time goes on the more jank and weird interactions are found with them that will likely just never get answered.

Q: What are you most looking forward to in the future for the game? 

Liam_Jordan: It’s got to be what comes after the Arcane Journals right? Once we get through the remaining of those (Chaos, Empire, and High Elves have been announced now) then it’s really dealers choices. New Armies? Campaign Books? Second round of arcane journals? They’ve got a blank slate to pick from and I can’t wait to see what they paint on it. 

Reece: Just more stuff! I can’t wait to see where we are in the next year, and seeing how successful it has been so far makes me feel like we’re in for some good support if GW likes money. More specifically I’m extremely interested in where they take Chaos Dwarfs and Wood Elves. For Wood Elves I’d love to see some kind of Wild Hunt type army that doesnt focus on forest spirits or archery. 

Perigrin: I would really love to get the legacy factions expanded in the long run of the game, a few years from now once we have a pretty good idea what a full featured faction will look like. I am very excited for the Arcane Journal for Empire. My Empire army has been taking up shelf space so far in Old World due to the very poor quality of Empire State Troops, so some sort of Army of Infamy that buffs up State Troops would be a huge deal to me. I also would second how much I would love some campaign books or new armies. If we are going to be doing a storyline about the Great War Against Chaos, we need to get Kislev in as an army at some point.

Bair: Kislev bear cavalry (yes, I know it was supposedly scrapped/not happening but let me dream!) and more named characters. I imagine we’ll be getting the latter through arcane journals as they keep coming out but it’s a whole new age to explore and I’d really like to see more named characters. Named guys is really one of the big reasons I love Warhammer. Campaign books like the old Storm of Chaos during 6th Ed would be fantastic as well as Siege rules. Above all? MIGHTY EMPIRES! Bring back the tiles! Has anyone actually ever run a full map campaign? I highly doubt it. If you have please let me know. But just the idea of being able to? I’d spend money on it.

Q: What does the meta look like? What do you think is generally strong or weak? What does well at events?

Liam_Jordan: I’ve done my fair share of events and what I would say is that Dragons win games, not always events. I think there are a few outlying factions which if built in specific ways can certainly skew your view on the game (looking at you Vampires and Elves) but they aren’t unbeatable if you choose to play into it in certain ways and have the right tools to do the job. I’ve so far done 6 events and played into 14 different armies so to say that lots of different armies and styles are present would be an understatement.

Being able to bring your hitting power to where you need it and denying or slowing with other parts of the army looks to be the most powerful playstyle I can see at the moment which is why flying units hold a lot of power in the current Meta. Minor changes such as the recent ones to Fanatics or the previous one to the Bedazzling Helm have certainly been to the benefit of the game and hopefully we’re just starting to see what other creations people can come up with to counter some of the powerful lists and starting to see the beginning of a meta which isn’t’ truly defined or dominated by a single army or playstyle. 

Reece: My lens is mostly through that of the Bretonnian playstyle, so how I perceive the game could be a lot different to others, and especially to what some might consider the “proper” way to play fantasy, as I do not use any ranked up units in my lists. That being said, I find there are only a handful of factions that really really struggle with the field, and Skaven being the bottom of the barrel is a shame. Overall the units that seem to take the most from TOW are the monstrous cavalry, behemoths, and fliers in general, but each of those types of units have their poorly priced units as well. While I would say that a Necrosphinx is amazing due to a lot of the Behemoth rules, I would also say that an Arachnarok spider or a Giant is quite poor even though they share those same Behemoth rules. 

Nearly every army (sorry Skaven!) has a few key units that can bring some proper strength to bear at the table, so there is at least a good shot of any game going down in a number of ways. But the thing that seems to win games the most in my experience is simply deployment. Games have been won and lost on deployment and the strategy that unfolds afterwards, and by playing to your strengths and to a gameplan that your list is focused towards. The only thing that I have felt totally helpless against so far is the magic of a Mortuary Cult list, as getting +8 to cast whenever they want basically means it has no interaction. Outside of that, I feel like the way you play can change the outcome of a game immensely. 

Perigrin: Hey there are good Skaven builds. They are mostly Ratling Gun by weight, but they do exist! 

A good way to phrase the meta right now is that Dragons are gatekeepers and win games against people who don’t know how to deal with them, but Cavalry and Magic win events for you. The top of the meta right now, Warriors of Chaos, Bretonnians, and Beastmen, all have high quality monstrous cavalry and 2 of the 3 have good conventional cavalry too. Shooting is great to have some of but it isn’t a great idea to build a pure shooting army right now, you will not do enough damage before the enemy gets on top of you and beats you to death. 

Every faction is beatable by every faction though, if you have a good build. I think that Empire and Skaven have good builds but their good builds are so unintuitive that people aren’t playing them, and Empire suffers from ending up as “Bretonnia at home” in their very best builds. 

A unit type that people are sleeping on in general are missile infantry with good melee stats, things like Lothern Sea Guard and Chaos Dwarf Fireglaives. Having the ability to soften up an enemy on their way in and then beat them to death with good melee ability is very good in Old World. Shooting is a supplement and generally these hybrid units are a touch cheaper and easier to use than taking both a melee and a shooting unit together.

On the whole the best armies are either cavalry spam, level 4 spam, or various flavours of Monster Mash. The top meta armies all generally fall into one category or another, though out of those the level 4 spam is probably the weakest due to how thin it leaves the rest of your army, and a few bad casting rolls can lose you a game. 

Below the absolute top level of play though, the game is pretty well balanced and if you play a normal person army into a normal person army you will have a great time. At the highest level even pretty normal looking armies can compete, the best player I personally know plays a pretty thematic Bretonnian list, so you can do well without doing weird skew stuff. You will have to play more carefully and tactically than someone who has pounded back a 6 pack of Rip-Its and brought 15 Dragon Ogres to the event, but it is doable.

Bair: Really just as above, I haven’t been coming at this game competitively at all and haven’t attended any competitive events instead opting to host “game days” of a dozen or so players just playing 2-3 games of Old World together in a more relaxed setting. These have gone over pretty well too and I’d like to do more of them!

Q: What do you think about the overall state of the game? 

Liam_Jordan: I’ve comfortably played triple figures of games at this point, both in a casual and event setting (play most weeks, done 6 events) and I’m still eager to play. I’ve got 3 fully painted armies and I’m sitting here looking at the first models for the 4th while typing this. If after 9 months of a game (as I was lucky enough to get Goonhamer early access) I’m still looking forward to playing every week, looking for my next event and buying/painting armies then it’s clearly got it’s hooks into me and should say all I can about how I feel of the state of it. In short I’m loving it, it’s past the nostalgia of ranks and flanks now and I’m starting to make friends at events, certainly playing more at the local hobby store and painting more than I have done for years, in all I’m just really excited and can’t wait to see what’s next. 

Reece: I think we’re actually in a great spot right now. The skew and meta lists do well but they’re not winning everything or even close to it, and a lot of factions have answers to a lot of questions out there. The part I dislike is how small the game started on the rerelease, but as long as it grows with the same mindset that we started with I think we’ll be in a great location going forward. 

Perigrin: The game is in a pretty good place right now, above complaints aside. I am enjoying the hell out of the game and have been getting as many games and events in as I can, with 3 events so far. The various skew armies are a bit annoying but all of them are beatable if you know what you are doing. Combat is fun, the new morale system is great, and I am 6 armies deep into this system and won’t stop until I have a list for all of them. I can’t recommend playing this game enough and I do genuinely think that it has legs to stand on beyond people’s blind nostalgia for older editions of Fantasy Battles. If GW keeps up a decent level of support I can see Old World being around for a long time, it is a really solid engine that handles everything in the game pretty well and is quick to play once you know the rules, compared to older editions of Fantasy.

Bair: Overall, aside from obvious issues above, I really believe that this is the best edition of Warhammer Fantasy that has existed. Could it be better? Yes, sure. That doesn’t stop it from being fun. I’m approaching this much more casually than I usually approach games; I don’t get to play a lot of it and when I do I want to play against folks with a similar approach to the game and have some fun rolling dice with big blocks of infantry. I’m fortunate to be in an area where I can get those games, easily, too. My next game is 2500 points and I’m going to be fielding all of my slayers, because that’ll be fun! Ungrim leading with Daemonsalyers, Dragonslayers, Doomseekers, a couple bricks of Trollslayers, and even a Goblin Hewer? Hell yeah. Is it good? Probably not! But it’s against greenskins and it’s going to be a blast!

Roving Onwards

That’s that. Six months of Old World and many, many, more to come. I’m pretty hopeful for the game and its continued support and I speak for all of us when I say we’re very excited to see what’s in store! Old World has had a surprisingly (to me, anyway) large audience of both old, returning, players as well as brand new ones that weren’t even really around during old editions of fantasty. That’s right, there are young hobbyists playing Old World that hadn’t even picked up a brush yet when the End Times happened, feel old? Let us know in the article comments or comments on whatever social media you saw this on of what you’re liking (or hating) about Old World so far.

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