Where Did Kislev Go? Our Fan-Made Old World Army-Building Rabbit Hole
Where Did Kislev Go? Our Fan-Made Old World Army-Building Rabbit Hole
Sometimes a hobby discussion starts with a simple question and then immediately turns into a full-on army-building project. That was exactly the case for us this week.
Michał dug up an old Warhammer Community article from 2021, written a good while before the release of Warhammer: The Old World, and it very explicitly talked about Kislev Ascendant. Which naturally led to the question: so… where the hell did Kislev go in the meantime?
And then, because one suspiciously hopeful article was not enough, he found another one from March 2020, this time specifically about the Ice Guard of Kislev.
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At that point we were fully in conspiracy-board mode. We noticed that the last official WarCom post about anything Kislev-related was from February 2022, right before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It is hard not to notice the timing, and we ended up wondering whether that had anything to do with the faction seemingly vanishing from the current Old World conversation.
To be clear: we do not know. This was us trying to connect dots from the outside, not claiming insider knowledge. But it definitely sent us down an interesting design rabbit hole.
If Kislev comes back, what should it look like?
Stas immediately threw out what might be our favourite kind of hobby idea: the half-joke that becomes weirdly compelling after five minutes.
If the problem is that the classic Kislev concept leans too hard into specifically Russian-sounding themes, then maybe the answer is not to abandon the army, but to reframe it. Push it more toward a broader eastern commonwealth vibe. Less one-note fantasy Russia, more a mixed cultural frontier kingdom.
The naming brainstorm got gloriously out of hand. Suggestions included things like:
- The Commonwealth
- Kingdom of Intermarum
- Res Publica of Two Nations
- and, naturally, some increasingly unserious options after that
This is exactly the sort of discussion we love: half lore chat, half army design, half trying to make each other laugh. Yes, that is three halves. That is how these conversations work.
From rant to project: a fan-made Arcane Journal
The really fun part is that Michał did not stop at complaining about missing Kislev support. He immediately started sketching out a fan-made Arcane Journal for Kislev in Warhammer: The Old World.
And honestly? That is the best possible hobby response.
Instead of waiting indefinitely for an official army release, the idea is to build a playable, thematic stopgap version: something that respects older Kislev identity, but also updates it for The Old World and maybe sands off the most overtly Russian-coded elements.
That led straight into one of the most enjoyable parts of army-building: renaming units.
Renaming the roster
The goal was simple: swap out names that sound 100% Russian for alternatives that still feel regal, martial, and setting-appropriate, but less tightly tied to that one cultural reference.
A few examples from Michał’s work-in-progress notes:
- Kreml Guard became Wawel Guard
- Tzar Cannon became Krol Cannon
- Chekists briefly created a naming crisis
That last one was especially funny, because it produced exactly the kind of cursed placeholder name that appears in every fan design document at 1 a.m. before being replaced by something more sensible.
In the end, Michał landed on Crown Wardens, while also noting that the unit itself is not especially exciting and may get cut in the first iteration anyway.
That feels very real to us. Fan rules writing is rarely a clean process. First you make the thing work. Then you make it elegant. Then you realise one unit is just dead weight and quietly delete it.
Looking back at old Kislev rules
The next step was checking what actually made Kislev feel like Kislev in earlier editions.
One standout was By Our Blood, a rule that helped define the army’s identity as stubborn, resilient, and hard to break in the first clash. Michał was digging through how that mechanic worked and how it might translate into The Old World.
The old version, in broad terms, let a Kislevite unit ignore combat resolution modifiers on its Break test in the first round of combat if it lost. That gives the army a very specific feel: not necessarily elite in every statline, but incredibly determined when the lines first meet.
From there the design thinking got more ambitious.
One possible adaptation discussed was:
- if a Kislevite unit has more ranks than each enemy unit fighting it, it gains Stubborn
- if it already has Stubborn, then for that first round of combat it becomes Unbreakable
That is obviously a very spicy rule, and Michał immediately clocked that it might be too strong.
Which is, again, exactly how good homebrew starts. You identify the fantasy first:
these are soldiers who do not give ground when the enemy first crashes into them
Then you try to express that in rules. Then you realise you may have accidentally created a nightmare brick that never runs away.
Character support and design space
Another interesting point was heroes granting Stubborn to units. Michał noted that he does not think there is a character in The Old World currently doing exactly that, which makes it potentially powerful design space.
And that is where fan army-building gets genuinely interesting. It is not just about copying old rules forward. It is about asking:
- what was the faction’s battlefield identity?
- what mechanics already exist in the current ruleset?
- what can be translated cleanly?
- and where does “fluffy” become “absolutely broken”?
For us, that is the sweet spot. Not just nostalgia, but reconstruction.
Our takeaway
We still do not know what GW’s actual long-term plan for Kislev is in Warhammer: The Old World. Maybe it is delayed. Maybe it is being reworked. Maybe it is simply parked for now.
But the conversation reminded us of something we really like about this stage of The Old World: there is still a lot of room for community imagination. If an army is missing, the instinct is not just to shrug and move on. It is to start writing lists, testing names, comparing old mechanics, and figuring out how we would do it ourselves.
So for now, our Kislev project lives in that wonderfully messy place between lore speculation and fan design document. And honestly, that is a pretty fun place to be.
If Michał keeps pushing the fan-made Arcane Journal forward, we will absolutely want to share the next step — especially once the unit roster and special rules survive first contact with actual balance concerns.
For now, though, the main question remains:
GW, where did Kislev go?