Warhammer the Old World is an upcoming tabletop game from Games Workshop. Even though we know very little about it, it is one of the most anticipated games from GW at the moment, as people think it is Warhammer: Fantasy coming back.
In this article, we have gathered every little bit of confirmed information we could find. The only source here is Games Workshop from their official Warhammer Community.
Read on to learn about what Warhammer: the Old World game is about, when the release date is and what armies you can expect to play in it.
If you cannot wait to play it, why not take a dive into Total War: Warhammer?
What is Warhammer: The Old World?
The title “The Old World” refers to the fictional universe where Games Workshop’s retired game system Warhammer Fantasy Battles took place.
Before the Age of Sigmar, Fantasy Battles was the fantasy twin of Warhammer 40,000 (the space version of Warhammer that we don’t cover much here on this site). It was a rank and file tabletop wargame where fantasy armies of orks, dwarfs, elves, undead and humans faced off against each other in regiments on square bases, and it was one of the most popular fantasy games for a full eight editions of its ruleset.
A great many of the miniatures people now use to play Age of Sigmar, such as most of the Cities of Sigmar models, many of the Death, Destruction and Chaos miniatures, and even monsters like the Treelords or Stormfiends, were originally part of the Fantasy Battles model line.
But – the Old World wasn’t just a setting for at game system. In a way that the Age of Sigmar is still years away from achieving that Old World warhammer lore (but it’s getting there pretty quickly), the Old World was a deep, insanely detailed fantasy setting with a darker tone than most other fantasy worlds in its time.
It has influenced many other fantasy settings, such as the video game universes of Diablo and Warcraft. The entire Old World was massive and could really set your imagination on fire.
It might seem strange that such a rich and successful franchise doesn’t exist anymore, and the theories about why exactly it was discontinued are countless.
No matter what the reasons were, Games Workshop ended the Fantasy Battles franchise through a series of books called the End Times, that ended in a total apocalypse for the setting via a calamitous chaos invasion. And so the classic lore of the Old World was dead for many years.
From the ashes of the Old World Age of Sigmar was born
Archaon (who you know from AOS!) destroyed the Old World, and from the Chaos that ensued, The Mortal Realms (the setting of Age of Sigmar) came into being. This means that The Old World, in a way, is the ancient past of the Age of Sigmar universe, and many of the heroes and villains of the Age of Sigmar have ties to The World that Was, as they call it in AOS.
(If you want to know more about the lore behind the AoS world, we got an article on it here)
Will Warhammer The Old World replace Age of Sigmar?
Over the last four years, some fans of the Fantasy Battles system have cried “bring back the Old World”, and if you look through a comment thread on anything Games Workshop shares about the Age of Sigmar system, chances are you’ll find commenters asking them to scrap the entire AOS system and go back to Fantasy battles. But, that’s not what GW is doing with their new game Warhammer: The Old World.
Warhammer: The Old World isn’t going to replace any current game systems.
- First of all, it’s being developed by the Warhammer Studio in cooperation with Forge World studio (it’s still a bit unclear how exactly this works), which does many of GW’s “side projects”, usually in resin rather than plastic.
- Secondly, Games Workshop have referred to Warhammer: The Old World as a parallel to Horus Heresy, another Forge World game that chronicles the ancient history of the Warhammer 40,000 universe with rules that resembles that games earlier editions rather than its current edition.
This means that it’s safe to say, even with as little information as we have at the moment, that The Old World will be a game that feels and plays more like Warhammer Fantasy Battle than Age of Sigmar, but it doesn’t sound like they are bringing the old game back as much as creating a new game experience within that rich old universe.
Warhammer Old World Release Date and Announcement
Warhammer: The Old World was announced on November 15, 2019 with an article called “Old World? New Warhammer!!” which mainly told us that the game was coming, what the Old World was in relation to Age of Sigmar, and that the release date of the new game was more than two years off.
Since then, there have been a few more updates about the game, but no reveals of any models or rules, so this confirms that the game still has a long way to go. What those updates have given us, however, are a few hints about what armies will be playable in the game.
Our initial bet on a release date for Warhammer: The Old World was therefore some time in 2021. This is not going to happen with the various holdups in Games Workshop production line. Now we are not even sure it will be in 2022. Our current prediction is that Warhammer The Old World will release some time in 2023.
What armies will be available in Warhammer: The Old World?
Update May 2023: The first update article since Warhammer Fest confirmed that the following factions will be the “Core Factions” of the game:
- Empire of Man
- Dwarfen Mountain Holds
- Kingdom of Bretonnia
- Wood Elf Realms
- High Elf Realms
- Orc & Goblin Tribes
- Warriors of Chaos
- Beastmen Brayherds
- Tomb Kings of Khemri
Being a Core Faction means that the faction will be part of the main narrative for the game, and that it will get new model releases and that many of its classic model kits will return.
Other factions will explicitly not get new releases or be part of the story, but will get free PDF rules when the game releases. Those factions are:
- Dark Elves
- Skaven
- Vampire Counts
- Daemons of Chaos
- Ogre Kingdoms
- Lizardmen
- Chaos Dwarfs
Update April 2023: First models revealed! At Warhammer Fest, the Specialist Design Studio was finally ready to reveal their first new painted models for the game.
First, there’s the Tomb King with Hand Weapon:
To counter this, the Brettonians got this Paladin:
The presenters at the seminar revealed that the Tomb Kings and Bretonnians will be the focus of the launch of the game (but were vague as to whether they’ll be part of a launch box set). They said that the game will focus on armies that are fighting in The Old World (so, not Ulthuan or Lustria, for example) for the first long while in the game, so we should expect human factions to be majorly featured at first.
Here’s some of the Tomb King and Bretonnian art that was featured in the preview as well. They didn’t confirm if this artwork meant new sculpts of these units or just that the old kits are going back into production:
So far, the following armies have been mentioned in the previews:
- The Empire (possible split in several factions)
- Kislev
- Bretonnia
- Orcs
- High Elves
- Wood Elves
- Cathay
- Tomb Kings
Update March 2023: at last, actual bits of miniatures for the game have been teased! An update showed 3D designs for weapons and equipment for Brettonnians and Tomb Kings, the two Warhammer Fantasy factions most notably absent from Warhammer Age of Sigmar.
Update October 2022: An update on artwork confirmed Orcs, Bretonnia and Tomb Kings, and in a footnote for the article, it also confirmed Cathay and High Elves:
The first update came out on February 6, 2020 on Warhammer Community, and was called “Cartography in the Old World”.
The article showed a detailed map of the game’s world, which seems very focused on the area of the Human Empire, and the heraldry of three human rulers, Sigismund, Ludwig XII, Wilhelm and Magritta, which are all characters from an era of the Old World called The Age of Three Emperors. The dukes and Kings previewed in this article about Bretionnia further narrows down the time period.
We can also see the World’s edge mountains bordering the Old World from everything else.
This tells us that the Empire, a renaissance-fantasy faction of human mortals with both gunpowder and armored knights, are absolutely going to be playable in the game. But, since the game takes place in an age where this Empire is divided between several rulers vying for power, it could mean that we will be able to play several different factions of Empire humans, in the same way that you can play as different Space Marine chapters in the Horus Heresy.
But, the Age of Three Emperors wasn’t all humans arguing over thrones and civil war:
It was an age of invasions from both Undead, Chaos forces, Beastmen (Beasts of Chaos in AOS) and Orcs. It is likely that at least some of those will be playable as well, but to say that those armies are confirmed on the basis of that first article would be a bit of a stretch.
The second preview article, released on March 23, 2020 and was called “The Old World: Ice Guard of Kislev”, definitely confirmed another faction called Kislev. Kislev is another human faction to the North of the Empire, which takes its inspiration from Slavic, Russian and Mongolian historical armies, with winged Hussars and tons of fur-clad armor.
The concept art for the new Ice Guard unit for this faction at display in the article shows that at least not everything about Warhammer: The Old World will look exactly as it did in Fantasy Battles. The unit design looks like a North-east Asian warrior in many ways, but its weapons are adorned with magical ice and looks slightly more fantastical than what players of human factions were used to in Fantasy Battles.
(This fantastic feel, of course, sparked grumblings from the fantasy players of old that just want a re-release of Warhammer: Fantasy).
This is, of course, still concept art, and the practical considerations for model production as well as the many iterations that designs usually go through could mean that this is not what this unit will look like in the end.
What it does show is that the design team wants to find new ways of imagining the Old World, rather than just nostalgically recreating what it used to look like.
A preview article expanded upon the concept art for the Kislev faction with a closer look at the armored bears they ride into battle. These used to exist in Warhammer Fantasy Battles, but the design team is coming up with some new designs for them:
This preview article covers a map of chivalric Bretonnia, with heraldry from the different cities within that realm:
This confirms Bretonnia (whose units and aesthetics have been missed in the Warhammer Community since they were one of the few armies to be left out of the migration to Age of Sigmar) as a playable faction in Warhammer: The Old World, but the map also shows iconography belonging to High Elves, Wood Elves and Orcs.
The Orcs can be seen assaulting the Northern Provinces of Bretonnia, with the City of Couronne being represented as being on fire on the map, while the High Elves have colonies and outposts along the coast, and the Wood Elves occupy the forest in the Eastern and Northwestern part of the realm.
Recently, a map of the areas that are home to the Border Princes was also released, with heraldry teasing all sorts of smaller human factions:
As you can see, there are also lots of hints for Dwarfs, Beastmen, and even possibly Tomb Kings on this map. What other niche factions will pop up in the future? We are super excited to know more!
What will the game rules for Warhammer: The Old World be like?
We still know very little about how Warhammer The Old World will actually play or how the new rules will be different from all the other systems.
We know it’s a tabletop game. That doesn’t tell us a whole lot. It could be a different model scale from Age of Sigmar, like the Middle Earth Battle Strategy Game, or use rules none of us has seen before.
Recent comments from the developers seem to suggest that the game’s rules are at least based on or inspired by the old Warhammer Fantasy Battles 8th edition rules, but what that means exactly remains to be seen.
The most important bit of info we have about its rules at the moment actually comes from its marketing on Facebook:
The game will be played on square bases rather than the round bases that are now more or less required in Age of Sigmar games. This was officially confirmed in a Warhammer Community article on July 21, 2021. This also indicates that the game will most likely have ranked up units instead of skirmish formations.
This might not seem like a big difference, but square bases work best with rank and file games where units are moved as one rectangular block (on a movement tray or something similar) rather than as individual models that have to be within 1 inch of each other as in Age of Sigmar.
Being on square bases could mean the game will be about more large-scale battles than Age of Sigmar, since such battles are easier to play if you move a unit block at a time rather than hundreds of individual units.
Apart from that, we don’t know much yet. We do not know if it will have the entire old world in the rules, or only a portion of it.
Will the dark lands be there? We know the models are going to be in the same scale as Warhammer Fantasy Battles was, so you can probably use your old Empire kits, and while we don’t know anything specific about the rules, we know that the developers see it as an evolution of the Warhammer Fantasy rules. This means that rumours about a game on a smaller model scale or a radically different ruleset are probably untrue.
If you really want to go into high speculation mode, the art used across the yellow letters in the game’s logo (look closely at the top of this page) seem to include a siege tower, so perhaps the game will have dedicated siege battle rules?
Only time, and regular updates to this page as we get more information, will tell!
Will you be able to use your old armies from Warhammer Fantasy in The Old World?
To some degree, yes! A Warhammer Community Article from April 14, 2023 clearly shows old Bretonnian models being used in the game, but it also states that most models will have to be rebased to slightly larger bases. The reason for this is that the designers want to make room for more dynamic poses in the ranks and files of your units, and as far as we know, everything is going up one size (20mm bases are gone and are replaced by 25 mm, and so on).
On April 30, Games Workshop confirmed that all the old armies will have rules at launch, but that only a few of them (Bretonnia and Tomb Kings) will get new models in the first months of the game’s existence.
The connection between Warhammer Total War 3 and Warhammer the Old World
Right now it is looking like there will be a big connection between the factions that will be in the anticipated Warhammer Total War 3 and the upcoming release of Old World Warhammer.
If you watch closely in the video on that article, you will see that the concept art they show is actually some of the concept art they have shown for the Old World game.
So is it actually for both games? Is it mainly used for Total War and borrowed into Old World? Time will tell.
But I would bet that Cathay turns out to be a playable faction in The Old World game, just because it will be playable in Total War 3.
If you wonder if you liked Total War 3, we have a review right here (from warhammer fans).
New content from Total War: Warhammer 3 that are likely to end up in The Old World tabletop game
For Grand Cathay:
- Jade Warriors (infantry)
- Celestian Dragons (elite infantry)
- Terracotta Sentinels (giant living statues)
- Great Longma Riders (warriors mounted on winged horse creatures)
- Sky Lanterns/Sky Junks (flying war machines)
- Heroes and leaders who can transform into dragons
For Kislev:
- Kossars (infantry)
- Streltsi (gun/axe hybrid infantry)
- Winged Lancers (cavalry)
- War Bear Riders (cavalry on polar bears!)
- War Sleds (chariots)
- Snow Leopards
- Elemental Bear (giant polar bear)
- Little Grom (cannon)
- Ice Guard (elite infantry pictured above)
- Frost Maidens and Patriarchs (heroes)