Warhammer: The Old World Factions Revealed – Who’s In and Who’s Out
Games Workshop has revealed which factions are going to be supported in Warhammer: The Old World and the results are surprising.
The approach that Games Workshop is taking with The Old World is an interesting one. They aren’t bringing back Warhammer Fantasy Battles exactly as you remembered it as they are tweaking a few things. Aside from the base changes GW is also shifting the timeline you might be familiar with.
Warhammer: The Old World takes place some two centuries before the End Times and decades before the Siege of Praag. This time period might not seem that far off from the uh…”modern” Warhammer Fantasy Battles timeline but that time gap represents a fertile area to explore. The Old World setting provides some shifts for the factions that were active during this point in “history” for Warhammer.
“The game will be set firmly within the Old World itself – the lands between the coast of Bretonnia to the west and the Worlds Edge Mountains to the east – during the decades immediately before the Great War Against Chaos and the Siege of Praag.
Much of the action in the first wave of books and supplements takes place in and around the Border Princes – the barrier lands between the Empire and Orc territory. Accordingly, we will be focusing on nine core factions.”
Old World Factions – Who’s In
As you can see we’re getting nine core factions to start off with:
- Empire of Man
- Orcs and Goblin Tribes
- Dwarfen Mountain Holds
- Warriors of Chaos
- Kingdom of Bretonnia
- Breastmen Brayherds
- Wood Elf Realms
- Tomb Kings of Khemri
- High Elf Realms
This list has just as much to do with the timeline as the actual setting of where the game is taking place. In the time before the Great War against Chaos things were calmer in some ways and more chaotic in others. A few of the factions have an ebb and flow to their power — Chaos Daemons for example are absent because ” in [The Old World] period Chaos is at its lowest ebb in a long time.”
With that in mind let’s talk about who’s out…
Old World Factions – Who’s Out
- Dark Elves
- Skaven
- Vampire Counts
- Daemons of Chaos
- Ogre Kingdoms
- Lizardmen
- Chaos Dwarfs
Sorry Vampires – you don’t count this time.
So what are these factions up to? Here’s a quick breakdown per faction
- Skaven – Civil War has caused them to retreat from the surface and have been gone long enough to become “folklore”
- Vampires – the Von Carsteins are “Dead” after the Vampire Wars and the rest of the bloodsuckers have gone into hiding
- Dark Elves, Lizardment, Chaos Dwarfs, and Ogre Kingdoms – based too far away from The Old World and are pretty insular races anyways
- Chaos Daemons – as discussed above, the power of Chaos is a low point so it’s that much more difficult for the Daemons to manifest their powers
For more details read the article linked here. Now, what if you collected one of those armies? Well, you’re not completely left out in the cold!
Legacy Faction Support
“These legacy faction army lists will be made available for free as pdfs as a service to fans who have these classic armies on their shelf, so they can still bring them to battle for old times sake. We don’t plan to publish rules for Warhammer Age of Sigmar miniatures, except for those units that were part of the game and setting during the final edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles. “
Well that answers that question! That also answers questions about any of the units from the Age of Sigmar range. Now then, we’ll have to figure out what to do about the basing situation. If only there were basing tray inserts for round bases to make them rank up in formation or something…
What do you think of The Old World Faction list? Was it what you were expecting?
