‘Warhammer: The Old World’- Games Workshop is Losing Control Of The Game
Control of how Warhammer: The Old World is played and its rules are slipping away from GW. Here’s what’s up.
The Old World is a little more than a year old at this point. It’s a great game with a growing player base. It’s also got a very vibrant competitive scene with more and more events being run around the world. The does however have flaws. Now, of course, all games have flaws. This isn’t unique to The Old World, and in general they don’t prevent players from playing the game. However in the case of ToW the flaws are starting to lead to a big issue. As GW fails to really address the issues with the game, other people are addressing them, and this is leading to the company that makes the game starting to lose control of it. Now despite what you might think of GW, that’s not really a good thing. So lets take a look at what is happening, why, and how it could be fixed.
Losing Control of Comp/Events/FAQs
GW is really losing control of the game in two key areas. The first one is in the rules events are using to play the game. This takes the form of Comp (composition rules) and FAQs. Comp rules can be used to affect a couple of things. In an ideal situation they are used to tweak an event towards some kind of fun and different format. In a less ideal situation, which is what we have now, they are used to try and correct real or perceived balance issues in the game. These changes can be small, such as limiting the points spent on characters, or large such as outright changing core rules of the game. FAQs of course address open answers in the game rules.
Neither of these things are new, or even unique to ToW. Lots of events use comp and have their own FAQs to address issues. But the degree to which they are being used in ToW is unusual. A number of events are outright re-writing sections of the rules to address issues they see with the game. There are some pretty big un-official FAQs out there. All of these things have come about to fill a gap left by GW’s silence.
The GW Gap
Now in the case of FAQs GW has been working to put out regular ones, and that’s good. While they haven’t been as fast or through as we might want, this is hopefully an issue that will fix itself. On the issue of balance however GW hasn’t done much of anything. 15+ months into the game and there haven’t been really any murmurs of balance updates core rules tweaks, or changes to address some big issues. There is also no real official GW support for ToW events. GW runs only a very small handful at Warhammer World and are not any official guide lines on how to run events.
GW’s other major competitive games, in particular 40K and AoS, see pretty regular balance updates and do have event guidelines. They also have lots of official events to base your rules off of. But ToW doesn’t have this and there isn’t any indication it will get this kind of support. So players and TOs have had to fill in the gap.
The issue here is that it is creating a lot of different ways to play the game – leading to regional rules fracturing the player community. Now events having their own flavor and differences is on it’s own fine. I’m all for fun missions and even for some events to have slightly different comp rules. But having to learn several, often radically different ways to play to play at each event is not good for the game. Being unable to take the same army, or even a slightly modified version of that army, to more than one event due to radically different comp rules, is also not great.
ToW Players Are Used To Supporting Themselves
Part of the issue here is the ToW, and it’s players have a very different history from that of most other GW games. When GW killed off Warhammer Fantasy and launched Age of Sigmar back in 2015, the player WFB base was left to fend for itself. They did this through a number of means. Some of them kept playing unsupported Fantasy, of various editions. Others moved over to fan-made versions, such as 9th Age or Warhammer Armies Project. Both of these ran events and had players. A large number of ToW players came from these games. They are players who for the last decade have played without any central company running the games. They are used to having to make their own FAQs and rules, and quite willing to take over the game. Some of them still bear grudges against GW.
Let’s be clear however. While these player-based version of the game kept things alive for a time, they were small. They were not growing, and ultimately they were far far less popular the WFB or ToW. These were basically fringe movements to keep a game alive, and while they worked, they were never huge.
Legends Armies
This leads us into the second, and arguably bigger issue with GW losing control of the game. That is the issue of Legends armies. Seven factions from old Warhammer Fantasy Battles were moved over to the Legends category when ToW came out. While these armies did get free PDF rules, they were explicitly stated to not be supported. They are not supposed to be balanced for competitive play, not supposed to be legal for competitive play and, according to GW, will get no updates or support. Now, if you ask me, once GW had chosen to remove them from the core armies, giving these armies rules at all was a mistake, but they did and here we are.
So the first issue is that basically every event, outside of the few official events at Warhammer World, allows Legends armies to be used. As far as 95% of the game and players are concerned, they are a part and a central part of the game. But this of course isn’t reflected in the rules or the balance of the game at all. New updates don’t apply to Legends armies, and aren’t balanced around them. The Legends armies themselves tend to be pretty lacking in flavor , and while a few are powerful, most fall at the weaker end of the power listings. This is unlikely to change.
Homebrew Lists
It’s obvious that as time goes on the position of Legends armies will grow worse. If GW ever does any kind of balance pass they wont apply to Legends armies. As armies keep getting more updates and rules add and cool things, Legends armies will only start to feel more and more left behind.
All of this has led, already, only about 15 months into the game, to players and groups starting to write their own Homebrew fixes to Legend armies. Now if this was just some random people doing it for fun that wouldn’t really be an issue. But there are some pretty big groups working on these. For instance the people at Square Based have put together what they call the Renegade Legacy Pack. This is an, admittedly fairly restrained, attempt to update a few of the Legends army lists and make them more playable, and it does come from a place of love for the game.
This also isn’t some fringe movement. A number of events, some of them very large, have said they will be using the packet. The major army builder sites have updated to include it in their options. This is something being adopted by a decent part of the game and player base. Yet it remains a homebrew army list packet, with totally unsanctioned changes. Right now this packet is fairly tame. But it’s only a matter of time before someone else starts using a more radical packet, or before the game moving forward, calls for bigger changes.
Splitting The Game And Player Base
Both these issues, radical comp/FAQs and using/making up new rules for Legends factions, represent GW losing control of the game. It is not being played in any kind of controlled or regulated way. In fact it’s being played in a way, competitively at least, that GW has openly said they don’t support. Rather it’s players and events that are dictating how the game is played and it’s rules. That might sound fine on paper; after all, shouldn’t players choose how to play the game? But in reality it’s bad, and very bad for the long term health of the game.
The issue is that its in effect creating a lot of different games. And doing this splits the player base. In order to player in any number of events, you have to basically learn several sets of rules to account for wildly different comps and FAQs. Now with the introduction of homebrew army rules you even have to keep track of different army and unit rules depending on an event. Some of these radically change the game and or units and armies. You have to build very different armies. And it can all be very confusing. And this is just 15 months in. It’s only likely to get worse from here.
Now experienced players might be able to navigate this. but it’s a HUGE turn off for new players. Imagine turning up to your first event ready to play the game you’ve just learn, only to find out you are actually playing a totally different game. One only played at that event and nowhere else. Then going to another event and playing a whole different set of rules. These also aren’t rules that are, in theory, written and tested by the designers, but just by some random folks.
What Can Be Done
Look, I want to be clear here, this is all not meant as an attack on players or TOs. They are making changes out of a love for the game and because they feel they need to to provide a good experience. These people put a lot of effort into what they do and have good intentions. They are filling a gap that they see as needing to be filled. They have good intentions, even if I think what is happening is very bad for the long term viability of the game. The real issue is not what the players and TOs are doing, it’s that GW has currently abdicated control of the game.
So what can GW do? Well addressing comp/FAQs is the easiest thing here. They are already putting out regular FAQs, they just need to keep doing that, maybe a bit faster, and it will work out. As for comp, some kind of balance pass would be great. Also something like a General’s Compendium or matched play handbook that gave more a frame work for events would be great. Doing that would basically resolve this issue. Running more official events that can set the standard for events would be the cherry on top.
Fixing The Legends Issue
The Legends issue is a big harder to tackle. Of course the ideal fix, and what the player base really wants, is to make Legends official and release real army books/journals for them. That would fix the issues right away. Even just announcing they were going to would likely stop people form using homebrew fixes as they would know that an update was coming at some point and it would put GW back in control.
However if GW doesn’t want to do this, then really the only other fix is to completely get rid of them. To pull them out of competitive play all together. This is a pretty hard thing to do, the genie is already out of the lamp here. The only real way for this to happen is for GW to take control of the competitive scene. But this might be pretty hard. I’ve heard rumors that GW has offered more support to some of the big ToW events and to make them official, with the caveat that would have to drop most comp changes and Legends armies, and that most of the events refused this. So the only real option GW has is to start running a number of their own official ToW events. If they can set the standard, other events may eventually come around.
They could also try changing the rules so much that Legends lists just don’t work anymore. TOs might feel like there is too much to write whole new lists. But that might not work. All in all it’s a bit of an issue, but its one that GW needs to address for the good of the game.
Let us know what you think about this issue, down in the comments!
