It’s been a year and a half since the release of Warhammer: the Old World, and what an 18 months it’s been! Throughout this time, we’ve kept a close eye on the evolution of the game and released several FAQ updates at roughly six monthly intervals, answering your most burning questions. This month, alongside the eagerly anticipated release of Grand Cathay, we’re releasing the Warhammer: the Old World – Matched Play Guide alongside a new FAQ and errata which brings certain amendments to the rules. Here’s JTY, our Exalted Champion of Rules Undivided, to explain more.
Matched Play Guide
The Matched Play Guide is an invaluable tool for any player of Warhammer: the Old World. For most of you, the scenarios that this supplement includes will be the most exciting part: there are nine in total, three of which are designed especially for doubles games.
In addition to the usual Victory Points, these scenarios are bolstered by a range of new and interchangeable objectives. Fueled by the same strong narrative that drives all games of Warhammer: the Old World, these enable players to battle in defence of an army’s baggage train, over control of strategically important terrain features, and even over objective markers representing anything from significant landmarks to weapon caches or lost treasures. On top of these, there are secret objectives that present players with a variety of challenges to meet during the course of a game – challenges that remain a mystery to their opponent until the game is over.
Our goal is to fuel players’ imaginations every bit as much as their competitive nature. After all, battles fought in the World of Legend are grand spectacles through which epic tales are told, and Matched Play events are a wonderful opportunity to explore new adventures against fresh opponents.
FAQ and Errata
This update goes beyond the usual plan of answering questions. We’ve taken the opportunity to look again at certain aspects of the rules, endeavouring to address some of the issues players have let us know about.
Firstly, we took a look at magic. For a while now, Level 4 Wizards have dominated lower-level Wizards in terms of both casting and dispelling. With this in mind, we’ve altered the way in which modifiers are applied to both Casting and Dispel rolls, and tweaked the casting values of a number of spells. We’ve also taken the opportunity to amend the way in which units interact with magical vortexes. Taken as a whole, these changes make magic more reliant upon dice rolls rather than levels of wizardry, especially when trying to cast more difficult spells.
Secondly, we took a look at infantry, which some players feel have been underperforming. To help affirm infantry as the backbone of most armies, regular and heavy infantry gain some new abilities. Units armed with hand weapons and shields may now parry enemy attacks, there are bonus combat result points when you outnumber your foe, and there are now many more situations in which infantry can fight in two ranks.
We’ve also removed the inability to change weapons between rounds of combat, and tweaked a few weapon profiles, making the choice of when to use particular weapons more meaningful. These changes make infantry a much tougher prospect, but not overwhelming. Players may find themselves reassessing the pros and cons of infantry, and reconsidering how best to use them.
These are perhaps the biggest changes, but they’re by no means the only ones. We’ve made a number of small adjustments, including tweaking the wording of special rules (allowing us to remove some questions and answers), addressing how many models can fight within a fighting rank, and adjusting a few points values that we felt warranted it. Our goal with this errata is to refresh and rebalance the game, and this is a good time to do it. With the nine core factions and their Arcane Journals released, we’ve had time to observe the way people are playing the game and listen to their feedback.
We don’t anticipate there being any future errata of this scope, but we will continue to monitor the army lists, unit profiles, magic items, spells and so forth, and we’ll make further adjustments where we deem necessary. So please, continue to send us your questions, and continue playing the game – your experiences do inform its future! In the meantime, download the documents below.
