‘Warhammer: The Old World’ – What We Want From the Matched Play Guide

Let’s talk about our hopes and dreams for the upcoming Warhammer: The Old World Matched Play Guide.

It’s been a super busy month for The Warhammer: The Old World. Wood Elves and Beastmen both dropped with new Arcane Journals. While we were all busy talking about those releases GW went and dropped the news on us that we are getting a Matched Play book and a new FAQ/errata. On top of that we still have Grand Cathay coming up sometime soon and another book past that. I mean it’s a lot. But lets pause for a second and go back to the announcement on this matched play book. People have been asking for this for a while, myself included. We’ve also heard rumors about it and some kind of ToW 1.5 update hitting, and this seems to be it. So lets take a look at what it could be and what we’d like from it.

The Matched Play Book Probably Wont Change The Core Game

Right off the bat we should be clear, as there is some confusion, the Matched play Guide isn’t going to change the core rules. This seems to be designed more for events and missions than rules fixes. Those are coming in the free errata/FAQ. What this Guide is going to do is add a lot of things that events and players can use in games. I wrote about how GW was losing control of their own game a while ago, and this is a big play in Nottingham’s attempt to take back that control. Now a lot of this book will likely not be of use to everyday play. Advice on how to run events and doubles is pretty niche. Even the comp options are a bit niche. So the real core here is going to be the six missions and the alternate objective modes. Sadly it doesn’t seem like there is really any expanded terrain rules.

What We Would Like For This To Do

So this is a very interesting book and it’s hard to tell how much of an impact it will really have. There are three comp modes, one of which may just be “no comp”. This is clearly an attempt to standardize comp, which isn’t bad. I’d expect that players will like one of the comp modes best and that will kind of become standard. However I do wonder if most events will keep doing their own thing.

On top of that we have six new missions. Which isn’t really a ton, but does double the amount of base missions. Are these missions going to be radically different from the core missions, or just variations? I’m hoping they are pretty different and really allow for some more fun missions. We’ve then got the Secondary Objectives part. This is a full eight pages, almost as much as is given to the missions. So it’s a pretty significant part of the book. I’m guessing its got rules for secondary objectives and then gives you a bunch of them to play around with. I don’t know if the six missions in this book will use them at base or not. Lastly a pretty short section on secrete objectives, that given the history of those, I doubt people will use outside of some narrative matches.

So I have four real hopes for this book:

1. It helps standardize comp a bit so that you don’t have to build a totally different army for every event.
2. It’s got some very divergent missions that make you think.
3. That the secondary missions can be “bolted on” to the other missions. This would allow for a lot of customization and fun mission building, giving us a lot more than just 6 missions.
4. All of this comes together to help give infantry a bit more of a role in the game. At the very least giving them a role as objective takers/holder would be nice.

So What About The FAQ/Errata?

If it’s changes to the game you are looking for, those should also be coming. Just not in this book, but rather in a new FAQ/Errata coming out alongside it. I’m guessing the FAQ is going to more of the usual, clearing up some questions/issues with the game. More important maybe the errata, which GW has said is aimed at making some targeted changes to the core rules and the game to fix a few issues. What those changes are we don’t really know yet.

If you’ve been paying attention online you’ve likely seen one or more sets of rumors or claimed “leaks” about what’s coming floating around. I have no idea if any of these are true. Several seem contradictory and at the best incomplete, so I’d take them with a grain of salt. I’m not going to get into idle speculation on these rumors as we just don’t know enough. I’ve seen a lot of people start calling this ToW 1.5, but to be honest I feel like that’s pretty extreme. Even if all the rumored changes are true I don’t think it’s going to be that big of a shock to the system or change to the core of the game to be a 1.5 game. but we will see.

 What We’d Like To See From the Match Play Guide

There are however a few things I do hope the changes address. I’d like some buffs for infantry. It would be really nice if these buffs somehow dovetailed with the missions/matched play book, to give infantry a real role in the game and make them good at it. That would be something. I’d love if the FAQ/Errata cleared up some things about skirmishers and maybe nerfed them a bit. Toning down big monsters/ridden monsters would also be nice. Maybe nerf Brets a bit somehow. A lot of people want magic to get a rework, but honestly I’m kind of fine with how it is.

More then anything I hope these changes help streamline the game and make it easier to play. If they do make changes I hope they are done in an elegant way that’s easy to use and makes the game more friendly for new players. I hope they don’t just bolt on a bunch of clunky patches to the game.  I also hope the changes don’t like… totally invalidate/ruin new rules/items that just came out, making books or armies not work. GW would never do that. Anyway, I’m hopeful for this update. It seems like it could add some fun changes to the game and make it better to play. But from what’s been shown it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a radically different game.

Let us know what you want from the matched play updates, 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 Warhammer: The Old World, as well as all things Star Wars, with occasional dabbling in other topics. Abe mourned over loss of WFB for its entire hiatus, but has been reborn like a gaming phoenix with Warhammer: The Old World.

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