The Old World Is Starting to Really Pull Us In
The Old World is starting to really pull us in
Lately, the more we read about Warhammer: The Old World, the more excited we get about actually putting it on the table.
At this stage it is still very much the phase of reading rules, comparing impressions, and imagining how our games might feel — but honestly, that is already a big part of the fun. Sometimes a system grabs us not because we have played ten games already, but because a few mechanics immediately make us start thinking: okay, this could be really cool.
What caught our attention
One thing that immediately stood out to us is how combats seem to have a bit more flow and consequence than what we are used to in some of our Age of Sigmar games.
As Stas pointed out while reading through the rules, after each fight you determine whether it ended in a draw or a win for one side. If one side loses, that unit might give a little ground — or even start fleeing.
That sounds really appealing to us.
In a lot of our AoS games, combat can sometimes turn into a big pile of models that crashes together and then just… stays there until one side is dead. There is obviously a lot more going on in the game than that, but we all know the kind of melee scrum we mean. Two blocks meet, everyone is locked in place, and the fight becomes a slow grind.
And maybe, to be fair, part of that is on us. We also noticed that we basically do not use fleeing in our AoS games at all, so some of that “static combat blob” feeling may come from our own habits rather than the system alone.
Still, the idea that units in The Old World can lose, fall back, and potentially break gives the whole battle a more dynamic feel in our heads. It makes us think less about a simple damage race and more about momentum, positioning, and pressure.
The part that makes us hesitate
At the same time, not everything sounds instantly comfortable.
The biggest concern so far is bookkeeping.
Stas mentioned being a bit worried that there may be just a little too much of it. Instead of the more direct style we know from systems where a unit simply has, say, a fixed save value, here you are looking at interactions between stats — for example, a save characteristic modified by the difference between the attacker’s Strength and the defender’s Toughness.
That does sound like the kind of thing that can add texture and depth.
It also sounds like the kind of thing that, at least during the first few games, might have us pausing every couple of minutes and asking:
- wait, what is the value here?
- what modifies what?
- are we doing this in the right order?
And honestly, that is probably normal when learning a new system. Still, it is the first thing that gives us a bit of pause. We love interesting mechanics, but we also know that there is a fine line between “satisfyingly crunchy” and “why are we doing spreadsheethammer at the table?”
Why we still want to try it
Even with that concern, our overall feeling is still excitement.
The Old World seems to promise a style of battle that feels a bit different from what we usually play. More movement after combat. More consequences for losing a fight. More sense that formations and morale matter, not just raw damage output.
That is exactly the kind of thing that makes us want to give a game a chance.
We are not coming into it expecting perfection, and we are definitely expecting a learning curve. But right now, this is one of those cases where the rulebook ideas alone are enough to get us curious.
So yes: the more we read about TOW, the more we want to actually try a game and see whether that excitement survives first contact with the table.
Maybe it will turn out to be exactly the kind of rank-and-flank experience we have been missing.
Maybe it will turn out that the bookkeeping is heavier than we would like.
Most likely, it will be a bit of both — and that is precisely why we want to test it ourselves.
If nothing else, it is already doing one very important thing right: it is making us want to play.