Suprise, Warhammer Fantasy is coming back (sort of). Did Oldhammer die for good reason or will Old World be the game we deserve?
Jstove here, and before I get into writing this highly inflammatory hot-take article about my dumb opinion on the internet, I’m going to let you guys peek behind the curtain.
Set the Stage
There I was, with a half-packed suitcase, ready to road trip across the southwest to Utah, when I get an email from 40k’s number one catdad, Rob Baer- with a link to the spicy Warhammer Community Post. WARHAMMER FANTASY! IT’S COMING BACK!
“The stage is set for the greatest editorial of all time.”
Now for those of you that aren’t in the writing or website or computer mumbo jumbo business, that’s a very innocuous thing to say. But for those of us big brain 300 IQ hobby news nerds, that seemingly innocent sentence translates as…
“Write the most inflammatory and opinionated editorial on the most butthurt of topics in the history of the Games Workshop hobby to make these Facebook commenters break their keyboards and scream for your blood.”
So, you know… Prove me wrong, internet. I dare you not to comment on this article on Spikey Bits. Show me you can restrain yourself. You can’t. I hobby for free on Rob Baer’s dime because you can’t. Prove me wrong.
Editor’s note: A lot of this is speculation on Jstoves part. I really just like hearing his opinion on things in general, and he’s a mostly okay-ish writer 🙂
Highly Inflammatory Warhammer Hot-Takes Inbound
Oldhammer Died For Good Reason
Here’s the thing about the hype surrounding Oldhammer- It’s all coming from a bunch of old men who played back in the late 90s that haven’t bought new models in 15 years and don’t want to buy new models. They play in their garages and didn’t want to learn Age of Sigmar or swap their models to round bases because they didn’t want to change or spend more money.
Anyone who is actually excited about Oldhammer is a member of a vocal minority that played fantasy back when the meta in 40k was six Marine las-plas in a las-plas Razorback. If you’re not old enough to remember that, ask your cousin. It was back when we all had Nokia phones and still rolled dice because dice rolling apps didn’t exist yet…because smartphones didn’t exist yet. Kenny Boucher was wearing JNCO jeans. The last time anyone who is excited about oldhammer bought models, the starter box was Brettonians vs Lizardmen.
It Took Longer to Set Up & Tear Down Than it Did to Play
It took longer to tray up and deploy models for a game and then repack them afterward than it did to actually play the game. Oldhammer was a game that should have always been a video game. The peak of the Oldhammer experience was the Total War video game license. If you really want to play Oldhammer, just go play a Total War game instead. Having 2,000 men on the battlefield to do your bidding and crush your enemy is awesome. Actually laying out that many troops on the table is a nightmare.
Plus, actually buying all the army transports, foam, and regiment trays to make that process more tolerable is even worse. Preparing for an Oldhammer game was like flying back home to visit your family for Thanksgiving. Except there was no turkey. If you’re a 40k player and you’ve never played Oldhammer but want to know what you’re missing, it’s this- Imagine you’re playing a 40k game, but both players are Astra Militarum, but not fun mechanized AM or Tempestus Scions AM. Straight conscript blob Astra Militarum on both sides of the table. Twice.
Game Didn’t Play Out of Box & Armies Were Hard to Collect
Here’s the biggest problem with Oldhammer. Nothing worked out of the box. When you play 40k or AOS, you go to the store, you buy a box of Space Marines for $40-50, you dump them out of the box and bam- That’s a squad of ten Marines. Throw them on their bases and glue bolters into their hands, you’re ready to play. Dump the models out of the box and go.
Oldhammer didn’t do that. You bought a box of ten Elven Spearmen that cost the same amount of money as that Marine box. Were they ready to play? Nope. You needed a minimum of thirty of those dudes. Oh and by the way, in the last edition of Oldhammer, which was super infantry focused, realistically, you wanted fifty of those dudes. Do you want to buy that box of Spearmen five times for one unit? An Oldhammer player does. What do you call a GW hobbyist that has to spend $200 for one unit of troops? In 2019, we call that a Horus Heresy player with a modest Forgeworld order. From 1999 to 2014, we called that a Warhammer player.
Age of Sigmar is Actually Really Good
The biggest problem with Oldhammer is that Age of Sigmar is actually one of the best games GW ever made and there’s no reason to rewind the clock. 40k players won’t try it because it’s not 40k. (Jokes on them, 8th ed 40k is just a worse version of AOS. They’d know that if they played it.) Oldhammer players don’t want to try it because they have an emotional investment in their flanks and ranks and square bases. Maybe that’s the best reason why AOS is so good though… Because all the salty-ass 40k players and Oldhammer Grandpas don’t want to play it!
GW Stores Can’t Actually Support an Oldhammer Battlefield
This is my personal opinion that is not shared, endorsed, or supported by Spikey Bits or any of its associates. So don’t go crying about how Spikey Bits are a bunch of salty anti-GW contrarians and go hunting for Rob Baer’s blood, come hunting for mine. (You won’t, because you won’t read this deep into the article anyway.) If your primary place for gaming is a Games Workshop store, then you can’t play Oldhammer.
Why?
Because Oldhammer requires 8×4 feet of flat, continuous table space. You cannot cram all your armies, dice, books, and peripherals on a six-foot table and play Oldhammer. Ask any serious Oldhammer player and they’ll tell you I’m right. Or even better…they’ll give you a waffling answer like “Well, you really only need a six-foot table but…”
Most GW stores no longer have this kind of space. They have six-foot Realm of Battle tile tables set up, and Realm of Battle tiles are half hills. Oldhammer models on regiment trays can’t stand on Realm of Battle hills. They slide off of them. Believe me, I’m an Oldhammer player, I’ve seen it. The reason I don’t want to go back to Oldhammer is because I’ve played Oldhammer in a GW store. It’s a comedy of errors.
The Realm of Battle tile system is the single worst idea Games Workshop has ever implemented in their stores. They are awful, poorly designed, unplayable tables that do not support models, and absolutely will not support Oldhammer battles.
The King is Dead, Long Live the King
Let’s get one thing straight- I Oldhammered harder than half the people reading this article, and probably more than anyone that actually read the whole thing, which I imagine was about four of you, and you’re all mad Brettonian and Tomb King players that got your armies Squatted. I know exactly four of you actually read this far into the article because the rest of you all went back to your Facebook tab to whine about how crappy my opinion was or how I wrote a giant wall of text essay or how angry or sad or lacking a real-life I am.
But the truth is, I don’t miss Oldhammer because I was an Oldhammer player. I have 6,000 points of Orc and Goblins, fully painted, sitting on a shelf in shoeboxes, and they’re the best-looking army I’ve ever painted in my life. Am I excited to take them out and play with them again? Absolutely not. Because I remember what playing Oldhammer was like. It’s a nostalgia trap. The only people that miss it are the people that never let go of it in the first place. Warcry, Shadespire, and Age of Sigmar are just better games that are more accessible and more fun to play.
The Warhammer Fantasy franchise is better with round bases. The only square base game GW made that’s still any good forever was and always will be Mordheim- prove me wrong.
