Osiedlowe Cinquecento: our tiny Old World league is happening
We love it when a random chat thread suddenly turns into an actual plan. This time it started with Stas throwing a couple of ChampionsHub campaign links into the channel and casually mentioning that maybe, one day, we could run something similar ourselves — just lighter, friendlier, and at our own pace.
And, well, that “one day” escalated very quickly into right now.
It started with inspiration
Stas first pointed us toward a couple of existing Warhammer: The Old World events and campaigns. One was in Matisoft, another in Pruszków, both with that very appealing slow-burn structure: a handful of rounds, played every couple of weeks.
That immediately got our gears turning. We started talking about doing something local and low-pressure — a league with rounds every week or two, something easy to fit around normal life, hobby backlog, and the usual scheduling chaos.
Then the campaign goblin woke up
Michał, naturally, went one step further and said: yes, but what if we also did a narrative campaign?
And not just any campaign. He had already been reading the General’s Compendium, digging through campaign advice, and pretty quickly came to the conclusion that instead of inventing our own system from scratch, we should trust the old-school wisdom and play it more or less the way the book suggests.
The pitch got us instantly interested:
- blind movement,
- territory play,
- NPC armies appearing as events, rebels, caravans, local warlords or defenders of points of interest,
- extra forces not as full player factions, but as campaign elements that make the map feel alive.
Honestly, the whole thing sounds glorious. Especially the bit where a player might have to smash through a local force first and then fight the actual defender with whatever survives. That is exactly the kind of old Warhammer nonsense we are here for.
We are not launching that full campaign just yet, but it absolutely became the spark that got us moving.
Warm-up first: the small league
Before we dive into blind movement, NPC factions and campaign bookkeeping, we decided to do the sensible thing:
play a compact introductory league first.
The idea was simple: small armies, short rounds, a manageable number of games, and a format that lets everyone learn a bit more about The Old World without needing to commit to a giant event.
At first we bounced between 500 and 600 points. Stas made a strong case for 600, because the extra hundred points opens up some much more interesting choices — especially for characters and unit sizes. There was a very real and very serious discussion involving percentages, special choices, hero caps, and whether certain units only become fun once you cross a specific threshold.
To help everyone get on the same page, Stas also linked the Battle March mustering rules:
And yes, because we are us, this immediately turned into practical list-building questions, model availability concerns, and the eternal hobby truth: what we want to play is not always the same as what is currently assembled.
Here is one of the rules screenshots that landed in the chat while we were figuring things out:
Michał also threw in another useful screenshot during the discussion:
In the end, after a dead heat in the voting, Stas made the executive call:
We’re doing 500 points
And honestly, that feels right.
It means several of us already have something close to playable, it makes trial games easier to organise, and it gives us a neat baseline before we eventually test whether 600 changes the feel of the format in a big way.
Enter: Osiedlowe Cinquecento
Once the decision was made, Stas went and did the dangerous thing:
he created the event.
The name is perfect: Osiedlowe Cinquecento.
Which is extra funny because, as Michał immediately pointed out, all our events are somehow “neighbourhood leagues” despite the fact that none of us actually live on the same estate.
Still counts.
The current vibe is exactly what we wanted: a friends-only league, chill in tone, but with enough structure to motivate games, lists, and a bit of healthy competitive spice.
Who’s in?
At the time of planning, the core interested crew looked like this:
- Stas as organiser and chief logistics gremlin,
- Michał, already hyped enough to smile at his phone and talk about campaign systems,
- End3r, happy to join even with proxies because Kill Team painting deadlines are real,
- Pegie, keen to try and even open to borrowing an army to focus more on rules than list construction,
- Wilini, with Bretonnians in progress and a very honest assessment that some of the lads may still be missing heads and arms, but are technically playable.
This is, frankly, the exact energy we want in a small local league.
Practice games before the league proper
One of the nicest parts of the whole discussion was how naturally it turned into people helping each other get ready.
Michał offered Pegie a meetup to go through his Khorne collection, talk list-building, and play a learning game. Wilini and Michał started talking about a Wednesday test game. There was discussion of whether 500, 600 or even 700 might be possible for one-off practice battles depending on what could be assembled in time.
That kind of pre-league momentum is always the best sign. The event exists, sure — but more importantly, people are already arranging games.
Wilini also shared a handy saved reference during the prep talk:
And later another screenshot showed up in the thread as the event setup continued evolving:
What format are we actually playing?
This part is still delightfully in-progress, which feels very on brand.
The broad outline is:
- 500-point armies,
- likely everyone plays everyone if we stay at five players,
- which means four games each and one bye in each round because of the odd player count,
- list changes between rounds are likely allowed, because we think that will actually be more educational than locking one list for the whole event.
There was also discussion about scenario selection. Stas grabbed the matched play guide and started looking at how to mix things up. Right now the idea seems to be a blend of Battle March-style scenarios and matched play ones, with some caution around objectives like Domination at very low points values.
Which is to say: we are trying to make the games interesting without letting one scoring quirk decide everything in tiny armies.
Side quests, naturally
Because no hobby chat can stay on one topic forever, we also briefly veered into two side roads:
First, End3r dropped the latest Golden Demon winners from AdeptiCon, which led to the usual collective reaction of “these don’t even look painted, they look rendered.” Fair.
Second, there was a quick mention that the Kill Team championship got moved to Dragon on Trocka 4. Not directly related to the league, but very much related to the real-world calendar pressure behind some of our proxy decisions.
What we’re most excited about
Honestly? The scale of it.
Big events are great, but there is something wonderful about a tiny league among friends where:
- nobody pretends to be fully optimised,
- partially assembled models are still welcome,
- proxies are fine if they help get games in,
- people can ask for help mid-game,
- and the whole thing is as much about learning as it is about winning.
Also, we can already feel that this is probably just the beginning. If Osiedlowe Cinquecento works the way we hope, the next step is obvious:
the full homebrew-not-actually-homebrew General’s Compendium campaign.
With blind movement. NPC armies. Wandering threats. Caravans. Local warlords. Ambushes. The whole messy glorious thing.
Michał even said he would happily be at every battle writing reports for a Wiatry Magii bulletin, which, honestly, sounds like exactly the kind of feature creep we support around here.
See you on the tables
So that’s where we are: the league is live, the lists are forming, the practice games are being scheduled, and the excitement level is already suspiciously high for a bunch of 500-point armies.
If all goes well, Osiedlowe Cinquecento should give us a month of small games, lots of rules reps, and probably at least a few stories about heroic goblin-tier nonsense.
And after that?
Then maybe we march into the real campaign.
We’ll definitely report back.