So far in our series of round table chats with the team behind Warhammer: The Old World, we’ve discussed the lore, the design, and the painting decisions behind the World of Legend. Today we’re talking about… everything else.
How long has Warhammer: The Old World been under development?
Jonathan: Ideas get tossed around all the time, but it was probably five years ago when we felt able to sit down and really start talking about this game – perhaps a little earlier. That’s when the ball really began to roll.
This is billed as a new game, rather than a continuation of Warhammer Fantasy Battle. What does this mean?
Jonathan: Essentially, we broke off from Warhammer Fantasy Battle and chose to go in a different direction. Warhammer: The Old World is still recognisably Warhammer, and still recognisable to players who play and remember that game – it’s got that nostalgia – but it’s something new, insofar as we’re able to do new things with rules and miniatures.
Rob: I’d go as far as to say it’s less about the game and more about the framing. Warhammer Fantasy Battle was a window into a certain time period in that setting, and the Old World shifts the frame to a different era.
It uses a lot of the same motifs – imagery, artwork, older painted miniatures, and so on – and there has been a lot of work done to ensure those things resonate with people who loved Warhammer Fantasy Battle. But there’s new framing – in areas like heraldry, you’ll see new takes on Bretonnian imagery and symbolism, leaning more heavily into areas we couldn’t before. The game itself is very familiar because it is supposed to be nostalgic, but there are a lot of new developments here too.
Dan: In the studio there’s a likening between Warhammer: The Old World and Warhammer: The Horus Heresy. Those who have played older versions of Warhammer 40,000 will be familiar with what's on offer in the latter game, and that will be the same for players of Warhammer Fantasy Battle of old. Some things will be very familiar to people who played older versions of the game, but many things will feel fresh.
Jonathan: One of the exciting things about this project is that there are a lot of things we can bring back – moulds and tools willing.
Rob: There’s a lot of invisible work in the Old World project, finding old miniatures in the archive, rebasing everything, and then trying to consider what elements we wanted to bring back – what’s going to excite people, what’s too much.
What’s more, plenty of the original ‘Eavy Metal miniatures had been lost or damaged through the wear and tear of 40 years of Warhammer. Painting new versions of these was a massive part of the project for a handful of people who worked very hard on it. Some of them stuck to the original schemes, but more often than not we looked to present things in a more modern way.
You spent a long time hunting through the Warhammer archives, warehouses, and the hidden corners of the factory. Which treasures are returning?
Rob: Loads of great stuff is coming back.
Part of this process involved looking at old kits and how to remake them. Large metal kits are ultimately quite difficult to make. So we went through and remastered the old masters, the ones you’d use to make an army – giants and war machines – and began a process of resculpting them with an eye for preserving details and making the construction process easier, before retooling and recasting them as kits in Forge World resin.
Jonathan: We spent ages in the archives searching for classic ‘Eavy Metal models, and the production guys worked hard getting old moulds and tools out of mothballs. Lots of cutting new moulds and polishing old tools, but it’s not old stock – none of the models we're releasing were found on a pallet.
Other Dan: Everybody is from a slightly different generation. Rob and I spent a lot of time in the archives, and the things that were getting Rob excited were completely before my time.
Rob: There’s one Bretonnian model coming out that had been designed decades ago and never released. It was incredible to be able to find things like this buried at the back of a cupboard.
How will these rarities be made available?
Rob: Some collectible metal models and oddities from the history of Warhammer Fantasy Battle will be available on a Made to Order basis, whereas everything else you’d expect to see for representing unit profiles will be available normally. For most units, the most recent version will act as your standard miniature for Warhammer: The Old World, but we could bring back older versions for collectors, or people who want an alternative.
How have you blended the new with the old?
Jonathan: Old armies were quite flat – with lots of troops at the same height – and the monsters were kept smaller on purpose to maintain that low fantasy aesthetic. In part however, that was down to the constraints of techniques and materials of the time.
Giorgio: We can achieve so much more with technology. You can now decide to have a massive monster and then choose to create it without any issues. We’re far away from the time when something like the old Elven Dragon was a huge physical challenge, and that’s broadened our horizons.
Rob: As models are being designed now, we’re looking at silhouettes – we can think about how models fit into units – battle standard bearers and champions can be embedded in units, and we can see how that changes the unit, the army, and also the range. Miniatures not only have to look brilliant, but they have to find a place in someone’s collection, too. It’s all done with much more intentionality.
Jonathan: People’s expectations have also changed quite a lot in the time we’ve been doing this, but we also have to balance that with an aesthetic and visual identity that makes sense for Warhammer: The Old World.
What about the legacy factions?
Rob: A few of the factions from the previous Warhammer Fantasy Battle game will not feature in Warhammer: The Old World – this is in terms of game rules, model ranges, and the ongoing background narrative. These 'Legacy' factions will however get free, downloadable army lists so people can try out the new system using their older model collections. More about this in the coming weeks, though please note that they won’t be considered legal for tournaments, and won’t receive ongoing support.
If you want to come on this long-term journey with us, the factions in the Forces of Fantasy and Ravening Hordes books are the ones to collect and play – and we want to be pretty clear about that
How important was mapping out these lands to the design process?
Jonathan: The map, the one that was posted all that time ago, was where defining the heraldry started in some ways. It’s now on the Old World website, and it’s a living document which will continue to have new things added to it over time, with areas that can be zoomed in on and a crazy level of detail
Holly: Technically, there are multiple maps for each area of the Old World, and all of them are designed to be contiguous eventually. It wasn’t a simple process of just drawing a map, though. We had to work out how to find the middle ground between accuracy and details. But also, over the years, different maps have rendered different areas with slight changes, so we had to reach a consensus on where cities need to be placed for accuracy, comparing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and older maps with the work that we’ve done in creating the world map for the Total War: Warhammer series.
Jonathan: Much of the iconography we’ve worked on has been designed so that at a glance you can define territory on these maps. You see the Wyvern in Bretonnia, you know that it’s the King, you immediately define them. Each one works to create a personality for each faction, via their icons and other subtle details.
Holly: If someone is interested in interrogating those maps, they’ll find interesting details and Easter eggs – some calling as far back as the third edition of Warhammer.
Any final thoughts?
Jonathan: It’s weird to think that we’ve been working on this in some capacity for so long. As a game designer, it’s rare to get this amount of time to dive deep into rules and previous iterations of the game, in order to dig out ideas – we’ve all got very strong opinions about which editions we prefer, which elements we like, whether we’re fans of the magic card system or not…
It’s very strange, bringing back an old game and old ranges that people know and love – and it wasn’t simple. We had to dive in the archive, retrieve old models, rework things, get new painting done, work out new basing sizes, and rebase everything. And that was a deliberate choice: because we were redesigning the system from the ground up, and because miniatures had scaled up and become more dynamic and three-dimensional as the technology had changed, I took the opportunity to ensure base sizes would actually let you rank up comfortably.
All of this was carefully considered. Early on in development, I painted up two full units on bases cut from plasticard. One used the old size and the other involved the sizes we were trialling, to get people to decide which they thought looked better, and to see how they worked in our games. There had been a lot of debate, but the new sizes won out because everything just ranked up so much better. The armies do just look so much more grand on the battlefield.
Thanks very much guys! We could have talked for hours more on this fascinating project, and there’ll be much more to come in the future. In the meantime, the first wave of Bretonnians and Tomb Kings will be available to pre-order from tomorrow. Log on early so you don’t miss out!
