‘Warhammer: The Old World’ – How Thin Is The Grand Cathay Release Going To Be?

Let’s speculate about how beefy or thin Warhammer: the Old World’s  Grand Cathay release is going to be.

The other week GW dropped a pretty big bombshell for The Old World. Grand Cathay, the first new army in 20 years, is coming to the game. Now I’ll admit that I was slightly skeptical about Cathay coming, at least right now, when the first hints dropped back in January. Clearly that was wrong and we are getting the army. And likely this year, which is pretty soon! However one thing I have noticed about what’s been announced at least, is that the army might be a little bit… thin. Now obviously newly released factions aren’t going to have the same depth and size as ones that have been around for decades. That’s just logical. But it also means that Cathay isn’t going to feel quite like the other armies. So today lets take a look at what we might see from the release. Keep in mind, I don’t mean this as a complaint about the release. This is merely so that we can try to set some expectations.

A Smallish Army List

The announcement did give us a decent number of units we know are coming for the faction. But compared to existing factions the army is very small. Lets take a look at what we know is coming.

• One big mounted generic character type-  Shugengan Lords
• One other character type- Gate Masters
• One name hero- Miao Ying
• One close combat infantry unit- Jade Warriors
• One  heavy cav unit- Jade Lancers
• Two Warmachines-  Great Cannons and Fair Rain Rockets
• One Chariot? Centerpiece Flyer- The Sky Lantern
• One big centerpiece monster- Cathayan Sentinel

That is a total of nine units to make up the army. Take out the characters and its down to 6 units, thats 1-2 in each of core, special and rare. It’s also a very focused, but narrow list, no ranged infantry or cav. No light units. No skirmishers, etc..

How’s It Stack Up to the Other Armies?

So how does that stack up against the other armies in the game? Well lets take a look at say Tomb Kings, they are one of the smaller armies around. They still have 24 units, or about three times what’s been announced for Grand Cathay. If you add in their Arcane Journal that number goes up to 33. In fact the Arcane Journal along has the same number of new units as have been announced for Cathay. On top of that You’ve got a lot of mount and unit load out options to make those units very versatile, we don’t know how true this will be for Cathay.

Again this isn’t to knock the Cathay release. But we shouldn’t expect it to feel as complete an army, or have as much depth and choice as one of the other core armies. It’s going to feel like a very constrained army and I’m not sure how much choice there will be in army building.

Could More Grand Cathay Units Be Coming?

Now it is possible that not everything that is coming for Cathay has been announced yet. There could be more models and units coming. Some of the announced kits could also be dual use combo-kits. I’ve heard speculation that Jade Warriors might have some kind of ranged options. This would make the army bigger and feel better.

Now when it comes to duel use for any of the announced kits, well I’m pretty skeptical. They’ve already told us about various loadouts for them. In fact we know that the artillery kit is dual use. I’m not sure why they would tell us about some of the weapon options for Jade Warriors, but not that they also come with a ranged option. So I doubt the announced kits are hiding more units. But I could always be wrong.

As for more units they haven’t announced. Well to some degree that’s almost certianly true. I mean we will almost certainly see more Cathay units at some point. There will very likely be a wave 2 months or years down the line, followed by more to expand the army. As for more units at the initial release. That is possible but unknown. I am guessing they’ve held a little bit back to surprise us, but I also wouldn’t expect a whole ton.

We know what’s in the battalion box. Looking at other new armies nine units is pretty inline with what they get. There also isn’t a huge backlog of classic models to release, like with the rest of ToW. I think there is likely a few more characters we haven’t seen, but less sure on if there are any big full units, but maybe! This could all change. But the release is also pretty inline with what we know of the AJ.

What Are They Getting in Their Arcane Journal Anyway?

Lastly lets talk about the Grand Cathay Arcane Journal. This isn’t really going to be like the other AJs we’ve seen, as it’s not an add on to their army list. Instead it’s got the job of not only introducing a brand new faction and it’s lore, but giving us the complete rules for the faction. The Journal however is only going to be 48 pages, which is the same size as the Journals of other factions. According to GW it will have: “Inside you’ll also find rules for the armies of Grand Cathay including their unique special rules, magic items, armoury, and the twin magical Lores of Yin and Yang.”

Now that does seem like like it will cover the base of the army, but again it might feel a bit thin. Notice that it doesn’t mention Armies of Infamy. It also doesn’t mention any alternate units or builds like the other books added. So it seems like this book really will just cover the basics of the army and the lore. Given that 9 units, maybe adding a nother named hero and one or two other units, is about what could fit in here. Most of the other AJs add in around that many, and that’s likely going to be all the page count the army list will get in the AJ.

It also means that Cathay might get a lot less magic items than most factions. Tomb Kings for instance get three pages of magic items in Ravening Hordes and then an additional three pages in their Arcane Journal, for a total of six pages of magic items. Given the page count of the Cathay book, I’m guessing they are just getting the basic three pages worth of items. Now they are getting two lores of magic, though it’s unclear if these are big 7 spell lores, the smaller 2-3 spell army signature lores we’ve seen.

Final Grand Cathay Thoughts

Cathay seems really cool. I’m super excited to see a brand new faction enter the game. It’s also big news for any fans of Warhammer Total War (and you could look to that game for a blue print to future units). None of this is meant to take away from the excitement about the release. But we should also set our expectations. The release is not going to give us a full blown army equal to the existing ones. Instead it looks like at first we will have a smaller, more focused list, that has options, but is more limited. Hopefully it does well and gets expanded on. This is also all of course just speculation, we’ve got months till the army comes out and GW could drop some other big surprises on us, but for now, this is what we know.

Let us know what you think about the release, 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.

Read the Comments (0)

Read more at this site