Warhammer World Old World Event Packet Hot Takes

For months rumors have circulated that GW will be publishing an Organized Play packet for Warhammer the Old World. We don’t have that today but we do have an event packet for an upcoming event at Warhammer World which may provide us with some clues as to what to expect. This isn’t the first Warhammer World Old World event but it’s them moving to 2,000 points and adopting comp more restrictive than most community run events.

I do want to stress that this is just a GW tournament and we have no way of knowing what if any of these will receive any kind of official endorsement for organized play. As I’ve been reviewing the metagame for SBOT2 I’ll be using the 130 lists from that event as an easy source of data to look at the impact of this event packet.

Missions and Scoring

One thing that I think is actually pretty noteworthy is that we don’t know what the missions will be. Warhammer World events previously had run missions from the core book, the fact that this packet was released without mission details makes me think we’ll be seeing some noteworthy changes to that.

We do also know how the event will be scored, 1/3 game score, 1/3 army score, 1/3 favorite opponent score. Setting aside the soft scores it’s notable that they’re flattening game results to 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw, 0 for a loss. Margin of victory doesn’t matter here.

Going back to the soft scores I like how they’re doing them, you get 2 votes across your 5 games for favorite army and opponent. Each such vote received is worth 3 points. I have no strong feelings on how much of a component soft scores should be in tournament results (though I strongly support awarding best general) and I mostly like this system. Having players vote for their favorite army rather than judged painting scores I think helps reward fun armies and armies that might not have the highest technical level but are very cool to look at.

Army Construction

We knew it would be here but this does lead off by saying that you have to play an army from Ravening Hordes or Forces of Fantasy. It’s a shame they’re enforcing this but it was expected. It does mean that the metagame at GW events won’t reflect that of other events, though Vampire Counts are the main loss there.

Let’s get into the more interesting bit, army restrictions.

The rules go on to allow mercenaries and named characters but disallow allies.

25% Character Limit

As this is a 2000 point event that sets the cap at 500. This is clearly targeted at dragons. Let’s take a look at the SBOT2 Meta as that’s a good source of lists to see what the impact is. Across 130 lists 19 have a character made invalid by this. Most are in the 501-550 range but some break 600 points. It’s worth noting that event has a relative under-representation from Warriors of Chaos so that’s probably a bit lower than the meta as a whole. Most of the impacted dragons are from the three elf armies.

To take a look at an elf dragon build we might expect something like this from High Elves:
Prince (130pts), Shield (2pts), Pure of Heart (0pts), Star Dragon (290pts), Full Plate Armour (6pts), Dragon Helm (10pts), Seed of Rebirth (20pts), Opal Amulet (20pts), Talisman Of Protection(30pts), Lance (4pts)
Total: 512 points
At 12 points over you will have to drop something, I think Opal Amulet (+2 ward save for a single wound per game) is the easy drop at 20 points. All-in-all I think the elves will get around this without much issue. High Elf Archmage Sun Dragon builds are more expensive so this may be a bigger issue for them.

Wood Elf dragons are also a bit more expensive. A standard build looks something like this:
Glade Lord (135): Asrai Longbow (0), Moonfire Shot (3), Light Armour (0), Shield (2), Forest Dragon (275), Ogre Blade (65), Talisman Of Protection (30), An Annoyance of Netlings (15), A Befuddlement of Mischiefs (30)
Total: 555 points

I think here you just need to drop the Ogre Blade for a Great Weapon, you’re no longer as terrifying in dragon on dragon combat, but still very very hard to kill.

Chaos on the other hand have a much, much harder time. Here is a pretty common build:
Chaos Lord (195pts): Shield (2pts), Chaos Dragon (285pts), Mark of Nurgle (10pts), Ogre Blade (65pts), 3x Favour of the Gods (15pts), Brazen Collar (20pts), Enchanting Aura (35pts)
Total: 627 points

Having to drop 127 is just brutal. A Chaos Lord with no upgrades on a dragon is 480 points meaning you’ve only got 20 points to work with. My first thought would be something like this:
Chaos Lord (195): Shield (2pts), Chaos Dragon (285pts), Mark of Nurgle (10pts), Great Weapon (4pts)
Total: 496 points
That dragon is okay but damage output goes way down, survivability goes way down, and chance of stupidity goes way up.

It’s really hard to see this change as anything but a laser targeted nerf to Chaos Dragons. Which are very good, but I don’t think targeting them without hitting Bone Dragons or Elf Dragons makes much sense.

Wizard Limits

I’ve seen a number of events limit level 3/4 wizards and I’ve been thinking it’d be interesting to try and make level 3s more common which I think this very much does. Across 130 SBOT2 lists there are 15 level 3 wizards, but one is a special character and 12 of the others are Outcast Wizards capped at level 3. There were only two players who made the choice to include a level 3 over a level 4.

So in that regard I like this a lot. You can still spam wizards in some armies but you’ll have access to fewer spells and slightly worse dice for casting/dispel. I actually like this a lot more than capping level 3 and 4 at 1 total. This nerfs casting-focused lists without causing them to need to be entirely rewritten or made non-competitive. In the SBOT2 there are 109 lists that had access to level 4 casters, and they took 137 of them. So right off the bat that means we’d have at least 28 casters needing to be demoted or removed. And I think that’s a good thing, it keeps magic in the game, but takes it down a peg.

No Rule of 3

Unlike most events, and I believe some past Warhammer World events, there is no cap on how many copies of a unit you can take. I think the soft scoring of the event will make it unlikely someone brings 15 Razorgores, but they could. Likewise nothing is stopping anyone from taking the new megagame boogieman - huge blocks of archers, but again I think soft scores will mostly keep them away.

Conclusion

So this was pretty short but I think worth talking about. There are really two big rules changes for army construction and I think GW got a miss and a hit. The 500 point cap is so heavily targeted at one type of dragon it just feels unfair to Chaos players when Tomb Kings can ignore this change and Elves can easily account for it.

On the other hand the change to Wizards is great, it limits the ability of some lists to spam level 4s, but still lets you invest into casters if you want.

But I’ve got to say, this like every pack I see has a glaring flaw. Bretonnians, and particuarly Bretonnian Exiles completely dodge this comp. I think you could make a 500 point Duke but why would you, and Exiles can’t even take a Duke let alone a level 4.

I think these changes are a step in the right direction but I think the dragon question needs a different fix, the wizard rules are great, and that something needs to impact Brets especially if you’re taking other armies down a peg.