Warhammer: The Old World – Five Reasons Why It’s the Best Game For Hobbyists
If you love the Warhammer Hobby, then Warhammer: The Old World is probably the best game for you. Here’s why.
Warhammer: The Old World is a ton of fun to play. It’s one of the most fun GW games of the last decade and I love throwing down some dice and bashing armies together. However Warhammer has always been more than just a game. It’s also a hobby, where building and painting your models can be just as much of a draw as playing. For many people it’s the main point. Playing, if they even do, is an afterthought. Indeed the odds are that even a casual hobbyist will spend as many if not more hours building and painting their armies as they will playing with them. Of the recent GW big games to be released, none have embraced this aspect, the hobby aspect, as much as The Old World has. So lets take a look at why its so good for hobbyists.
5. A Big Lineup, With Classic Models
Right off the bat TOW is a big game with a large and rapidly expanding miniatures line. The average army that has been released has between 30-40 sets you can buy, ranging form big multi-part plastic units, to metal or resin characters. There is a huge variety of options and models here. On top of that each release has been bolstered by even more limited time made to order models. While most of these are only on sale for a few weeks, the hope is that GW may periodic re-release them, as it would cost them little to do that.
All this goes to say that this isn’t a small game with only a few options. You have a ton of miniatures and units to work your hobby magic on. And the releases are often eclectic. Not only do you have the various and diverse armies to pick a style you like from, but you’ve often got you choice of time period. The TOW releases have added both brand new, modern GW models to the range, and brought back tons of old classic models. These aren’t just models from when WFB was last around, many are from the early years of GW. Hobbyists can find models from almost any period of GW that they liked to latch onto. Its really a rich miniature environment.
4. Large Scale Game
Another advantage of TOW is that it’s a large scale battle game. Some people really like just painting up one or two models. That’s great, and you can do that with TOW. But others like to build whole units, throw in filler, build out an army and a display, etc.. TOW is really a game that allows you to go wild. GW has some other games that also have a big hobby focus. Necromunda in particular I think has that kind of old school convert stuff feel to it. But a lot of them are smaller scale games and that can limit what you can do. TOW is as big as you want it to be and that’s amazing.
3 Armies of Infamy
It’s not just the models that make the game great for hobbyists. It’s also the rules. This is, fortunately, something that’s very baked into the rules of TOW. One great example of this is the Armies of Infamy. Now each army in TOW already has a ton of history and variation. You’ve got tons of sub-factions, and different ways to paint units and armies up. Lots of variation coming from 40+ years of lore.
But Armies of Infamy take it an extra distance. These represent truly alternate ways to play and build the core army. They don’t just allow for variation and changing things up, they encourage it, they demand it. They open up a ton of news ways to convert, paint and build models and armies and are a massive boon for hobbyists and players alike.
2. Embracing Customization/Conversion
The very sad fact of the matter is that most GW games these days shy away from converting and customization. You buy a box, you build what’s in it. You are lucky is you get a few small minor options. Many models have gone to single pose, or very minor pose options. This extends to the rules. Many of the games have moved to giving units only the options that come in a specific single box. It has stifled the ability of hobbyists customize units and convert things.
TOW of course is radically different. This is a game all about customization units, and especially characters, often have tons of options for how they can be built and fielded. These might have some relation to how the models come, but are not tied to them. Instead GW encourages you to convert things and build units your way. They wrote about wanting you to build unit fillers for Sigmar’s sake! No other GW game does anything like that.
The models also help a lot. The bulk of the plastics come from the very possible multi-part era of GW (the best era in my mind) and have lots of cross use. For instance it was easy for me to combine parts from the Pegasus Knights, Empire Knights and Pistoleers and even new Foot Knights to make a unit because of how these style of kits are built. You can do a ton with them.
1. Units Without Models
Nothing stands as a greater testimony to the Old World’s support of the hobby side of the game as much as the inclusion of units with no models. These have in the bulk, been introduced in the Arcane Journals. Each journal has added in some new units to the game. Some of them have existing models to support them. However the vast majority of them don’t have any models at all, and in many cases never did. These are units you have to explicitly scratch build and convert. Some of them will give you guidance on how you might do it, but there is nothing holding you to that. This is such a hobby forward move, and one that is so much the opposite of the stance the rest of GW has taken, that you have to give them mad props for it. It’s just another reason why TOW is the best GW game for hobbyists.
Let us know what you think of the hobby aspects of The Old World, down in the comments!
