“Warhammer: The Old World”- Five Things We Want From The High Elf Arcane Journal

Let’s take a look at some things we’d love to see in the new High Elf Arcane Journal for Warhammer: The Old World.

We’ve known for a while that High Elves were the next army coming out. LVO confirmed that they were coming out pretty soon, and this week we’ve got a first teaser of what we might see. The return of the Merwyrm is really cool and brings back a classic unit we’ve seen show up in High Elf lists before. That GW is teasing it now means that the book can’t be all that far off. Now while it’s cool, what about the rest of the book? We’ll today lets take a look at a few things we’d like to see in the upcoming book.

5. Ships Company

Ships Company are a unit that High Elves got access to in various forms in 3rd and 6th Edition (Storm of Chaos). They are, as the name suggests, the crew of High Elf ships and often fight alongside the Seaguard (and in 6th at least Merwyrms). Given that we are getting a Seaguard list this would be another cool unit to bring back and add to the list. In 6th they were basically just worse Seaguard able to have spears and bows. However I’d really love if they brought back the 3rd ed version which got bows and access to great weapons. It would be an actually different unit. Maybe a cool special rule or something would be nice also.

4. For the Merwyrm to be Good

We know the Merwyrm is coming back, but we don’t know if it’s going to be any good. The truth is that a lot of unridden monsters in the game are just not that amazing. However their are exceptions, such as the Great Chaos Spawn from their AJ. It’s quite good! Given that the Merwyrm doesn’t fly it’s going to need something to help make it good, and I’m not sure the rules we saw previewed are it. Hopefully it’s got nice stats or something else to make it worth playing and not just a nice model that sits on the shelf!

3. Some Kind of Cool New Magic Stuff

Out of all the core armies High Elves are really supposed to be the best wizards. In fact outside of the Slann, and few named characters, they are generally considered the best casters in Warhammer. Now thanks to their re-rolls they are very good casters, though they are outclassed by some armies that get better bonuses (Mort Cult) or that can spam spells. However outside of the re-roll they don’t really get access to a lot of cool magic stuff or tricks. Even their special lore feels a bit… meh. So I do hope the book gives them something to pump up magic a little bit more and make it feel cool or different somehow.

2. Something To Shutdown/Hurt Flyers

Look right now flyers are really dominating the game. In particular Pegasus Knights and mounted characters are a menace. However really most things that fly are great, with flying dragons being a close second for terror of the game.  Despite that only one army has anything that really hurts or shuts down flyers at all, the Falcon Horn. And it’s Brettonians that get it!

I think it really would be better for the game for a couple more armies to have things that really hurt or shut down flyers and makes taking them a bit more of a risk. And Seaguard seem like a perfect option to get some kind of item that does it. They are very much tied into sailing and the ocean and storms. Maybe something that causes damage to flyers instead of stopping them form flying? I don’t know, but this seems like it really could fit.

1. Something To Make Infantry Worth It

As I mentioned in my review of the Empire AJ, this was something I was hoping they would get but didn’t. It’s no secret that infantry is in a rough spot and kind of sucks right now. And look, I’m not asking for the High Elf AJ to change the game or “fix” infantry overall. However both the Seaguard and White Lions armies are pretty infantry focused (with White Lions at least getting some chariots). That means that we can expect both the Armies of Infamy we are getting to be pretty focused on fielding infantry and combat infantry at that. But combat infantry just isn’t very good in ToW.

So it really feels like if they want us to take armies focused on it they need to give us a reason to take these units. Some kind of special rules for these AoI that help out infantry really feels like it’s needed, or people won’t see a reason to field them. I don’t think it’s all that hard to come up with a rule to buff infantry in one or both of these armies (different rules we’d hope). But we will see.

Let us know what you’d like to see in the new book, down in the comments! 

Abe is that rare thing, an Austin local born and raised here. Though he keeps on moving around, DC, Japan, ETC., he always seems to find his way back eventually. Abe has decades of experience with a wide range of tabletop and RPG games, from historicals, to Star Wars to D&D and 40K. He has been contributing to BOLS since almost the start, back when he worked at and then owned a local gaming store. He used to be big into the competitive Warhammer tournament scene but age has mellowed him and he now appreciates a good casual match. He currently covers 40K tactics and lore, as well as all things Star Wars, with occasional dabbling in other topics. Abe remains in mourning over the loss of WFB to this day.

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