OLD WORLD REVIVAL TO NEW WORLD...

For a new (9th?) edition of the game, if its hit or miss, its a miss for me.

 

At about 10 games into my Warhammer revival nostalgia trip, using The Old World, and man, it was getting old fast. After these first intro games and getting some larger 'medium' games in too, the rules were really starting to bring back the bad old memories. I could only come to the conclusion, that as it it stands, it was sadly not game I wanted to spend time playing. Here’s why.

There are many things I love about Warhammer, it has been such a large part of my wargaming hobby since First Edition, but the game’s current rules are not one them. Maybe once, but not today anyway. I enjoy the world, the look of the games, the army lists and the army backgrounds, the troops types and detail, the different monsters and wizards, magic items and such like. I really enjoy planning the collecting and painting of the models (which is no different to collecting and painting of the models for all the other wargame periods I play). So, where is it going wrong?   

I have four ‘legs’ to my wargaming hobby. These make the games fun and the (considerable) time invested worthwhile. These four ‘legs’ are: i. the models you play with (are they cool, do you like them, are they painted?). ii. The tabletop you play on (does the board look good, is it ‘right’ for the place/period, etc.). iii. The people you play with (are we all here for the same thing, enjoying the game and the social side of gaming). iv. the rules you play (do they challenge you and make interesting, fun, and/or historical-feeling games). Currently I have 3 legs, but for Warhammer, the fourth leg is broken, so the hobby is not going to stay-up, it’s falling over.  

I have actual been here before. Years ago, super-keen to be playing WWII games, we had it all, big painted armies, nice terrain for various theatres; Russian, Normandy, etc, people to play with, but the rules were ruining it all. We tried many different WWII rules, and the end, nothing worked for us. The games just were not that much fun, and none 'felt' much like WWII either,the 'vibe' was off (in modern terms). So, I started making my own, turning it into a game I actually wanted to play. In the end, we got Battlegroup from this. Well, I’m now in the same place with Warhammer fantasy battles. So, I’m going to do the same, to change the rules, to turn them into a better game, one I actually want to play. It is either that, or sell-up and get out. I have five large, fully and well-painted, Warhammer armies, each worth a small £s fortune at today’s rates. I could sell up and reinvest in something I will enjoy (2nd Punic War calls), but that would be giving up on Warhammer for good. Instead, first I’ve been giving making my own rules variants a go, so I can play with these painted armies and feel its worthwhile and fun. Atm, Warhammer, as a rule’s system, is not much fun, it feels like hard work getting to the end of a game, it is fiddly and odd in many ways (skirmishers I see you). 

Starting to look more like a Warhammer game than Warhammer games... disks are for hidden unit-by-unit orders and activation.

My principal problems here are;

The damned rigid turn sequence. I haven’t played game with such a rigid ‘I-Go, U-Go’ for a long time, I really like variety and card-driven games that break this all up. WH is very rigid, it feels old. Half the time whilst playing, you just sit (stand) about and wait for your turn whilst removing models as your opponent kicks the hell of your force, until it is your turn to kick the hell out of theirs. It’s brutal, predictable and gets dull. There is no nuance, no back and forth, nothing unpredictable, few surprises (beyond the occasional weird dice roll result)… this must change. The rigid ‘I-Go, U-Go’ must go, kill it! I already have an alternative in place for this, to introduce a basic level of ‘command and control’ and fog of war and take away the predictability. That might transform the game, whilst still retaining the basics of how to move, shoot and fight combats, and all the troop stat lines.

The magic system, for this edition is mostly terrible, and worse, a bit dull. Magic needs something else, not just rolling basic 2D6s. Magic is tricky I think, balance is all, it wants to be effective, but not dominate, to have its power but not decisively so. Too far either way and it’ll ruin games (or do so little its not worth the effort) The current spell lores seems fine, if samey, but a better way of using them is called for. I’m going to be working on it. Going back to a dice pool system might be the first step, although some modifiers has been the first trial, and it helps.

The current game is a brain-strain of minor rules, modifiers, exceptions and a lot, a lot, of special rules. 'If this, not this, if that, then this'… all the effort and energy in playing goes into remembering these rules, playing the game is, in a large part, remembering what everything can do, can’t do, when it happens, is -1 now, etc. I’d prefer to be putting the brain power into the tactical side of the fight, not the mechanical nuts and bolts. There is very little in the way of actual tactical decision making. Playing feels like a memory test, not a complex tactical game. It is hard to play and get the rules ‘right’. I’m an experienced wargamer, used to many rules, but this is a tough game to play. After 10 games in, and we were still making basic mistakes, and I have read the rulebook several times, check things during and between games, and have made an effort to learn it from scratch with small intro gaming. No other system I use has such a steep learning curve, I ask myself, is it worth it? This long curve does not happen with other rules I use (often because I wrote them, but for example, Longstreet, a superb game, does not require reams of paper notes and army lists, and stat blocks, to play, but is always challenging and fun). WH is slow on the tabletop. My feeling is, games take too long (if you're not speed playing, which I dislike, why am I rushing through my fun?).

List building, just dominates the game’s culture. I like an army list to use (it sort of the game before the game, which I enjoy), but I also like a theme and a story and for the many options to have many ways of using them. The drive to find ‘one list to defeat them all, one list to define them’, for each WH army is tedious, takes up most of the online discussion time, is reductive and has nothing to do with good wargaming, and all to do with efficient competition style play. Screw that, I like narrative play and campaigns. Of course, it’s a battle, so both sides are trying to win, but not by all the ‘rabbits out of hats’, or killer-list designs that attempt to pre-determine the games result… it seems players are searching for the one ‘best’ way to use any army list. How dull… what happens if you find it? You get to win every game? Even duller.  

Having tentatively rejoined the Warhammer community online, the standard of gaming is, err, often a bit poor. By ‘standard’ I mean the four ‘legs’ listed above. Whilst everybody talks about the ‘meta’, which lists is best and ‘how do I win with Chaos Dwarves?’, "Are Black Orcs worth taking?', etc. the games I see being played are, for the most part, pretty terrible. Unpainted models abound. Terrain is an after-thought, poor, plonked down or seen as something that needs restricting or ‘balancing’ to be fair for a tournament. 99% of scenarios are line-up and fight pitched battle, mostly at a set 2,000 points. You rarely see other nice games of Warhammer that inspire you to improve your own games. You see a lot of terrible messes, and I know everybody can’t play ‘the beautiful game’, but it would be nice of some were trying. For me, this isn’t good wargaming, its not a hobby I’d aspire to spend my time doing, pushing round grey plastic for the transient dopamine hit of victory. Unpainted miniatures are an anathema to me. I even painted my models when I was 10 years old… badly, but, much as I wanted to play games, I did not use unpainted metal/plastic, ever. I've become a painting fundamentalists. Painting an army is the mountain to climb in all wargaming, of whatever period/style (except maybe skirmish games), but either you’re a hiker and want to get up the mountain, or your not. Don’t claim to be hiker and then stay at home and forgot about the mountain… get your boots on (your brushes out in this strained analogy) and walk/paint. It’s what wargamers, well the good wargamers, do. You, personally, have to make your games good, it isn’t handed to you in grey plastic form as easily consumable. This is, for me, one of the hobby’s great strength, it isn’t just ‘sold’ to you, you have to have input… do something a bit creative to make it all work. Many it seems, just want to ignore this aspect of Warhammer and/or wargaming. 

A game to encourage the great variety of forces, characters, monsters, infantry blocks, missile troops, cavalry, chariots, war engines... you want a bit of it all.

Once, years ago (around 2000 I think), I was playing 40K, at Warhammer World, with a group of 4 other players. We were playing a mini tournament, 3 games each in the day, all with different armies. Mine model were painted, all of them, nobody else’s were. The terrain was largely rubbish, a few bits and pieces. I provided the only decent stuff. The games were competitive, all played much is silence, hard studying, like it mattered who won… did it? Because there was no prize, or even glory, just boasting rights between 5 players. Also using the hall that day was a big Warhammer Ancient Battles game, played 2-aside. It was a Punic Wars game, Hannibal and his elephants vs Roman legions. All models painted, big blocks or troops, skirmishes, war engines, on nice terrain (nothing major, few woods, a hill, a stream, etc) and looked great. The guys playing were chatting, laughing, having fun, rolling dice and, it dawned on me, that our 40K games were crap, and the wargame I wanted to play was theirs. They were doing the hobby I wanted. Since, I have never played competitively again… all gaming is now ‘social’. I always play to win, you should, but not so that it matters. Losing is part of the fun too, because a good game is a good game, regardless of its result. 

Our biggest game yet, Dwarves vs Empire @ 3500 pts. Starting to look like Warhammer games I love in WD magazine, way back in the 80-90s.

I have always thought that a wargame is ‘your’ game, regardless of the published rules, or company products. It is your time, with your models, your terrain, etc., so it should be for you, to do it your way. So, have I turned Old World into a game I actual enjoy? I think so, the ‘mountain’ of painting armies, the really tough bit, is already done (Ok, not quiet, but it never is and I’m tempted to start a new army now I have some rules I like). I really enjoy writing rules, so that is a fun project too, to work out what I don’t like, why it doesn’t work for me, and re-cast Old World into a game that engages. We’ve already started with the turn sequence for alternate unit by unit orders system that worked well in the first couple of tries, needed tweaking, but now far more interesting and tactical games have resulted, with no dull rigid turns to stick to, far more interesting and challenging situations arise. We also have a long list of house rules to 'fix' issues, from front two ranks of missile troops shooting, to allowing step-up attacks in melee so more models fight, to chariots that can try and break-through enemy units and keep going (rather than becoming stuck in attritional melees), how skirmishers work, and introducing simple modifiers for multiple spell casting by the same wizard... it all still uses the same army lists and stat lines, but I'm not sure it really much like Warhammer anymore, but it has inspired me to start a sixth army though... I'm now painting Wood Elves (to complete the full 'elf' trilogy)... an army I started in the 80s and didn't get far with, so just 40 years in the making.