
Since the last post talking Old World (and the minor update in the monthly project update) things have… escalated. At this stage I’ve managed to get all the figures I need for my 2000 points list, thanks to an assault on eBay and some careful pushes. The next step was to actually assemble them all. Seeing as the Dastardly Regular Opponent needed his introduction to the Old World and the Creative Regular Opponent offered to host/provide one of the forces, I would need to get my force together. Which means I’d need to rebase and break out the glue.

First up, the Chaos Chosen. In The Old World come with all the same options as the regular Chaos Warriors (meaning you can sword and board if you wish) but for me, this unit is going to be all about advancing behind the force to rip into any troublesome enemies. The figures I went with are the latest models from the Age of Sigmar range and it was obvious from the start that these are not designed for ranking up in the old ways. On the other hand, these models are gorgeous – they are The Ideal for what Chaos Warriors should be, the massive armoured warriors that loom over regular humans and destroy them with ease while wrapped in chaotic plate armour and wielding a variety of dangerous-looking tools. Each figure feels unique, thanks to a good mix of heads, weapons and armour details
One thing to mention about the modern GW figures is that they all seem to be designed to be assembled with usually two main variants – these are mainly for the command group (banner, musician and champion) or for specific weapon variants (as we’ll see with the marauders later). By picking up two sprues to build 10 (again, thank you eBay because £40 for 5 models is a bit mad), I was able to basically strip one entire sprue of all its parts, which is a satisfying feeling. The rest may end up being re-sold for others to use or may join the bits box.

One element my force was going to need was screening elements – I may be planning a lot of big chunky bois stomping across the board but that’s going to mean a long time for ranged weapons to pick people off. Light infantry or cavalry would fit the gap, with Chaos Marauders and Marauder Horsemen cheap enough while still being pretty nasty to deal with. And lucky for me, the new Darkoath box which launched earlier this month would fill that gap nicely, including 20 marauders, 5 horsemen, a mounted champion and whatever the Wilderfiend can be.

The marauders were fun to assemble with a good mix of heads and shields to go with the dynamically posed bodies. I went for a mix of spears and hand weapons, pushing that visual of the pile of tribesmen pouring out of the woods to ambush the brightly coloured soldiers of the Empire. I really like the mix of female and male bodies among the group, again tying into the. I find it interesting how GW do the heads on this kit, leaving the neck as part of the torso while making the head (and more importantly the wild hair) fit.
However, the dynamically posed bodies do cause a problem with ranking up. The move to 25mm bases from the old 20mm definitely helps, and I didn’t have any problems with feet not fitting on the base. Less useful was how much of each figure can lean forward. the biggest offenders are the lunging spearmen, but some of the more agile marauders can have pokey parts that mean they don’t quite fit flat. However, I was still able to bodge them together to fit, mostly by pushing the problem figures to the edges. If I really needed, I could start noting which figures fit where and then write a little guide on the movement tray.
Speaking of the movement tray, I had 20 figures and a movement tray designed for 24. If only there was something that could fit on 50x50mm… such as the Wilderfiend. Although not technically part of the rules, the idea of including the tribe’s guardian creature/walking reminder of the power of the gods did strike me as cool – the main thing was to make sure my opponent knew that it was ACTUALLY part of the game, mere a marker to fill some space. Assembling the Wilderfield was a little bit of trusting the instructions and head-scratching (the wizards at GW were pulling some tricks designing that thing) but it’s going to be fun to paint up. That said, I’m not sure about how much I’ll need to fill the big movement tray (as we’ll see later on once I hit the table).

Finally, and the stage I was not looking forward to, the rebasing. As I mentioned in the first post, I played the first game with the 32mm rounds to 30mm adapters and they were Fine with a capital F. Seeing as I’m thinking of moving all fantasy to square bases, it made sense to bite the bullet, crack out the pliers and start stripping models from bases, all while trying not to damage the paintwork. Luckily for me, moving to use Tamiya Extra Thin for my plastic glue meant I was actually able to simply crack many of the models off with a bit of elbow grease, rather than having to saw my way through broken plastic. The newer models with the peg connection lost that piece, but I managed to keep the paint jobs intact.
Fitting them onto the 30mm bases was also relatively easy. For the old plastic chaos warriors in their pre-ranked poses, there were mountains of space around each warrior. The newer ones for the most part were still pretty easy to rank up, except for a few of the more aggressive folks who were mid-swipe.
As I may have mentioned in earlier posts, my plan is to build a 30-man unit of Chaos Warriors to form the core of my force. This is a frankly ridiculous notion and putting a lot of eggs into one basket. That said, there is something immensely terrifying about a slow-moving, heavily armoured block that is going to go for the centre of your force and slowly chew its way through, thanks to having multiple ranks. So far, I’ve only assembled a couple of them which were needed for my 20-person mini-block in my first list (specifically the musician and banner bearer to finish the command squad) but the rest will soon join them.

This isn’t all the figures I’ve assembled and rebased but it does show just a few of the items I’ve managed to get ready for potential lists (as well as getting them one step closer to being painted). There are some figures in there I was very happy to find among my collection, being reminded of cool things I was looking forward to working on. Or, in the case of the Keeper of Secrets, frankly terrifying to paint (even if I think she looks cool). Sadly it’s unlikely she’ll appear in a list as The Old World has split demons and mortals apart (not even allowing and I’m not exactly rushing to build a second force. However, she should be good for some narrative games, assuming I can bribe the game master with enough M&Ms.
After collecting the Dastardly Regular Opponent from York and heading north, we managed to get to Darlington on a rather nice day. So of course we immediately dashed inside to get on with the games.

The first game was between the Regular Opponents, pitting 500 points of Dwarf against 500 points of Beastmen. These small-scale clashes are a good way of learning the rules, and gave me a chance to relearn the rules. The game went well, with the beasts managing to get some good hits in (mostly from the absolute monster that is the Shaman with Viletide). It was also fun to see how the different armies play – ironically in this case the dwarves actually went on the assault rather than their usual static defence, but they still were able to stick around in combat. Meanwhile, the beasts moved fast and hit like a truck, but the lack of armour (or limited armour in the Bestigor’s case) meant when the enemy hit back, the gors were struck down. The last unit standing was a set of Ungors with bows, which we assumed after the game were beaten up by the local peasants who had spent most of the game cowering in their homes.

The second game was a chance for me to get my figures on the board and for my opponent to move up to 1000 points. This meant that the Dwarves managed to include a unit of Miners, two sets of Thunderers and even a cannon (along with the Veterans, Warriors and Rangers from the first game). On my side, I had a set of 20 marauders, a block of 20 warriors, the 10 Chaos Chosen and a Demon Prince.
Despite the Dwarves forming a gunline, my only tactic was to advance my force in waves. First, the marauders would absorb the incoming fire, then the Warriors would come in behind and slam into the biggest set of melee units it could find. Finally, the Chosen would finish off anything troublesome or push to clear the flanks of the main unit.
That was the plan but the execution could have gone better. First of all, the Dwarven Rangers appeared on the right flank, able to hammer crossbow bolts into the advancing marauders and warriors. That was before the armour-piercing rounds from the Thunderers and cannon opened up, chewing through the units even more. The marauders did their job of absorbing most of the hits before they broke, meaning the warriors were able to close in with only a few casualties. However, they then got charged in the flank by the miners, leading to a very messy multiway fight.
I also ended up using the Chaos Chosen to fight off the Rangers which was a little overkill. However, despite losing two of their number on the way in, the rest of the unit absolutely wrecked the Rangers with ease, sending them fleeing off the board edge. Maybe not the best use of points, but still was good to see them act as the lore would make you think they act – utterly devastating.

The moment that got me the most excited though was when my Demon Prince, having piled down the flank, managed to rumble the rear of the “thunderers” (totally not bretonians in disguise) and ended up getting stuck into a unit of Veterans and the attached Thane. And then in one turn cleared an entire rank of dwarves. I’d given the Demon Prince a demonsword which (along with some very good Gaze of the Gods rolls) gave a frankly nightmarish statline – D3 strength and D3 attacks had all three of us exclaiming when rolling for attacks.
Of course, the dice gods give and take – the following turn saw most of the Demon Prince’s attack roll 1 and instead hit himself. Made worse by rolling up to strength 8, a few of these wounds managed to slip through the armour save (the ward and regeneration were stopped by the Magical Attacks rules). Down to only a single wound, and only killing another pair of Dwarves, the combat resolution bonuses from a stacked command group meant I lost the combat, closely followed by the Instability rules kicking in and sending all 395 points of Demon Prince back to the warp. The Dwarves won the game, although both the Chosen and the Warriors were still on the table when the bell rang.
The Old World continues to be a game I’m really enjoying playing. When I was younger, I never had a chance to play it properly (I’d already managed to get into Lord of The Rings and a little bit of 40k, so getting my hands on all the figures needed for Fantasy Battle was never possible) so I’m coming into this as a newbie. Unlike a lot of other rank and flank games, each army FEELS like they should – having now seen four different armies play, each one feels slightly different from the others. You also have plenty of room for tweaks and different playstyles within your own armies as well – for example, my own Chaos Mortals are heavily warrior-focused, but swapping out for marauders would lead to a pretty viable horde army.
As for my army, I’m going to do a few little tweaks – the main thing is breaking up the marauders into two smaller groups, either as skirmishers or open order. This will let them perform their screening role more efficiently, opening up the angles they can cover rather than a single mass. This would have allowed me to advance on two fronts in the game or to have prevented the Rangers from getting any shots in. The other major change is refocusing the Demon Prince from being both combat and magic to purely a damage dealer – having fly and a slightly less risky weapon should make him handy for getting into the back line and shredding gun teams.
Aside from that though… next step is getting the paint on!