‘Warhammer: The Old World’- The New Terrain Rules Are A Mixed Bag

Take a look at the new terrain rules for Warhammer: The Old World in Dawn of the Storm Dragon. They are both more and less than expected.

This year saw the release of Grand Cathay, the first new fantasy army in over two decades. It’s been an exciting time and the army is very interesting, even if it has a few OP things in it. However the initial release was a little limited, so people were excited to hear the news that a second Cathay Arcane Journal. This week we’ve been taking a look at that book,  Dawn of the Strom Dragon, and what it adds to the game. Last time we looked at the overview of the book and the new Cathay rules in it. Today I want to take a look at the other main chunk of rules, the terrain rules.

What You Get In Dawn of the Storm Dragon

Dawn of the Strom Dragon comes with 5 pages of terrain rules. You get one page covering random terrain generation and placement. One page that covers Lineal Terrain (not obstacles) such as roads and rivers. One page that covers expanded building rules. You then get a page that is a random terrain chart for the Wastelands near Marienburg and another page that is a random terrain chart for the Shadowlands.

Random Terrain Placement

The first section of the new rules covers the placement of terrain and randomly rolling for it. To be honest there isn’t a ton to unpack here. If you choose to randomly roll, you pick the amount of terrain you want, six for a standard sized game, and roll that many times on the proper chart. It gives you the sizes to pick from and duplicates either allow a second bit of terrain or for you to use a larger piece.

The rules for placing terrain are the same as those found in the Matched Play Guide. They are bad, as I said before. I don’t think you should use them.

Linear Terrain Features

The next section details Linear terrain features. These come in 12 inch sections that can be strung together to form longer features. The more dangerous ones can only be a max of 36 inches long, while the “friendlier” ones can be of any length. Most of the time these count as either difficult or dangerous terrain, and can have safe crossing points. They do have some special rules for well maintained roads and fast flowing rivers.

A fast flowing river must connect to two table edges, and a unit in one can be moved d3 inches down the direction of flow (chosen at the start of the game) on a failed strength check. Meanwhile a unit that marches its whole move along a Well-Maintained Road can move an extra d3 inches. Note this an extra move and not an increase to it’s movement, so its not doubled/tripled by marching. Other than that these are pretty basic open/difficult/dangerous terrain features.

The Issues With Linear Terrain Features

I think there are some good ideas here with Linear Terrain Features, but that the execution has some real issues. The first one is the size. With something like a river or a road you kind of want a long feature for it to have much effect, especially as they don’t block LOS. However each “instance” of the feature is only a max of 12 inches long. So in a standard game to have a road or river that goes long table to long table edge, one of the more useful orientations, requires 4 pieces of terrain. 4 of the 6 you are supposed to use.

A linear feature running long ways across the table is all the terrain you are supposed to use. That’s kind of silly. It also means that when randomly rolling for terrain you are unlikely to get a useful length. Just having a 12″ section of road in the of the table is… silly. The fast flowing rivers, the ones that have an interesting effect, are also capped at 36 inches, but have to touch two table edges. This means they can only really go in a strange L in a corner or a U along an edge, giving them very limited effect. I’m also not sure how they work with the scattering terrain. I have to put a river a long the edge, but then it can just scatter into the middle of the table?

Not Enough Of An Effect

And for all that, the effects are as extreme as I’d like. A fast flowing river maybe pushing a unit is a cool idea. But d3 inches is negligible. Likewise a marching unit moving faster along a road is a very cool and thematic idea. However D3 extra inches is not really that great a buff. Its even sillier when you look at the random tables and read that most of the roads there are supposed to have a 3 inch patch of difficult terrain for ever 12 inches. That means that most of the time marching down a road will cost you 2 inches (3 in march column) and only gain you d3 inches. Mean most of the time its a net zero gain in movement, but restricts you to moving along a specific path.

These are cool ideas, but they just don’t feel like they are going to have a real impact. Giving up almost all your terrain budget to have a road that has at best a very very minor effect in a specific situation, just doesn’t seem worth it. I do think there are ideas that narrative players can grab on to here, but I’m not sure that as written they are worth it.

Building Rules

Next up we have the new building rules. These are basically the same as the Tower rules form the core rule book. There are a few minor changes, mostly to represent this being a bigger building. For instance You can but US 20 in, rather than 10 and any type of unit may assault them. The rest is pretty much just copy and pasted, and at least in the assaulting a build section they even forgot to change the word “tower” to “building”. There’s nothing really bad in this section, but also not really anything new.

Random Charts

Lastly we have the two random terrain charts. I’m not going  too go over them in depth, but will rather just say I  think there are some cool ideas here. For instance I like the idea of the “extra” dangerous terrain you can have, with mishaps happening on 1-2 or even 1-3 rather than just a one. That makes some sections of the table really trick to move through and gives you some cool variation in terrain. I like that they might get you to have a more interesting table than say, two hills, two forests and two rocks. That’s cool.

However that being said I don’t think I’d ever actually use these tables to roll for terrain. I think it would lead to a pretty useless table set up. In particular I don’t like the idea of have a single random 12 inch section of road or river that goes nowhere.  That’s not going to look good or have any real effect on the game. it’s also unlikely that most people’s terrain collections can really handle it. I know I don’t have 6 Fishing Villages on hand!

Good Ideas To Steal From

Again, this is a legal set up using the written rules. 

Overall I know I may seem a little harsh on these rules. And I am a bit disappointed by them (especially given they are about half the rules in this book). I don’t think the execution is very good. But I do think there is a lot of good ideas to barrow from.  I really like the idea of rivers and roads. Terrain variation is great.  There are some wonderful ideas for narrative terrain uses here. But I don’t think most of it works “out of the box” so to speak. Players are really going to need to use these rules as a starting point and build from there. It’s great to get the brain juices flowing, but I can’t help but wish there was a little more here.

Let us know what you think of the new terrain rules, 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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