warhammer the old world Archives - Felix's Gaming Pages

The Battle of Matorea

This diorama is one of the newest displays at Warhammer World. This is a Warhammer Old World diorama and shows The Battle of Matorea. A massive conflict between the undead Tomb Kings of Khemri and the valiant Kingdom of Bretonnia. One half of the battlefield you have a Bretonnian castle being defended with Bretonnian knights sallying forth from the battlements. Opposing them are the hordes of undead skeletons, chariots, and monstrous constructs. Flying across the battlefield are the bone dragons of the Tomb Kings of Khemri and Pegasus Rights of the Kingdom of Bretonnia.

This was a very impressive diorama and really showed off both Old World forces.

Settra the Imperishable lays siege to the coastal city of Matorea with a massive undead host as Cecil Gastonne, the Wyrm Slayer rallies its hopelessly outnumbered defenders. Just as the city’s defences begin to fail, the trumpeting of silver clarions sounds in the east, heralding the arrival of Duke Gastille. Have the duke and his knights arrived in time to lift the siege, or will they join the doomed defenders in a heroic death?

The castle was scratch built.

The Warhammer World Studio embraced classic modelling techniques to design and craft the landscape and buildings, with minimal use of plastic terrain kits. Built from scratch, the castle’s walls use extruded polystyrene sheets with the brickwork patterns hand carved and textured. The repeated features, such as the battlements, were hand sculpted, then moulds were made from the original so that multiple resin pieces could be cast from them. There are a number of conversions to spot. For instance, the flying Bone Dragons were cut down to individual bones and repositioned.

Siege of Volganoff

The Siege of Volganoff was originally displayed as the Siege of Altdorf at Games Day 2010 and was then put into place at Warhammer World in 2015. A few years later it was reduced in size. The Chaos forces were replaced with Orcs and the the “new” diorama was entitled the Siege of Volganoff.

The diorama has changed quite a bit over the years. More photographs of the Siege of Volganoff.

TA3 Orc War Wyvern

This is the old Citadel Orc War Wyvern, which is from the Games Workshop archive and was on display at Warhammer World.

TA3 stood for Tony Ackland. Tony was one of the early artists, designers and sculptors for Citadel Miniatures (and Games Workshop).

An early release for Warhammer, I do in fact have one of these, somewhere! I remember having real issues gluing the wings using an epoxy resin glue, which I used back them to stick models together. Even then I then added lots of Milliput to keep them attached to the body. Today I would probably need to pin the wings to the body and use green stuff to fill the gaps.

Games Workshop have recently re-released a newer resin version of a old (but not as old as this one) metal Orc War Wyvern kit for Warhammer: The Old World.

The green tide is coming back…

I was a little surprised to see on the Warhammer Community details announced of all the models that will be released for Orcs and Goblins for Warhammer The Old World.

I was really surprised by the sheer quantity of miniatures, new and old, that are going be available for building a green horde.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the range of models that will be available and the fact they are going to re-release models that are in some cases over thirty years old.

When I heard about Warhammer The Old World I did think I might raise a Dwarf army, but now I am seriously tempted to build an Orc and Goblin horde. Knowing that I can easily use my existing models, I think this could be a fun army to build.

I love the fact that the Orc Warboss on Wyvern will be coming back, this time as a resin model.

I also saw that Snotling Swarms and the Snotling Pump Wagon are on the release schedule.

I am also tempted to get some Trolls, models I never got when I originally built my army.

Excited?

Yes.

Warhammer Old World

Over on the Warhammer Community site they have announced how Warhammer Old World will be released.

They won’t be doing a huge launch boxed set, instead, in the first instance they will be releasing two army boxes, Tomb Kings of Khemri, and The Kingdom of Bretonnia. These each contain a 1250 point army.

It will be interesting to see how these are priced, considering each box contains nearly a hundred miniatures, and a huge army centrepiece. You also get the 352-page hardback Warhammer: The Old World rulebook.

As well as the boxed sets the rulebook will be available separately.

The rulebook will also be available separately. This weighty 352-page tome features over 70 pages of background on the World of Legend, plus Core and Advanced rules for the game, an explanation of the Winds of Magic and rules for casting spells, a gallery of armies painted by the ’Eavy Metal studio, and rules for building armies and setting up your battlefields.

I do like how the two army books are called Forces of Fantasy and Ravening Hordes.

Forces of Fantasy is a 192-page book covering five factions: the Dwarfen Mountain Holds, the Empire of Man, the Kingdom of Bretonnia, the Wood Elf Realms, and the High Elf Realms. Ravening Hordes contains all your Evil factions – it’s a 160-page containing similar material for the Orc and Goblin Tribes, the Warriors of Chaos, the Beastmen Brayherds, and the Tomb Kings of Khemri.

Forces of Fantasy was the name of the first Warhammer (1st Edition) supplement. Whilst Ravening Hordes was the army list for second edition. I bought both of those back in the day!

I am tempted by the Tomb Kings of Khemri boxed set, as I always liked the idea of an undead skeleton army. I had some metal skeletons back in the day.

I am also thinking of rebooting my original Dwarf army as well. Then again I always liked Orcs and Goblins.

As for a release date, no idea.

Photographing in the sun

Having finished painting my Typhon Heavy Siege Tank I took some photographs of the model on my desert terrain.

My desert terrain is too big for my lightbox, so I took it outside into the sun.

It was very bright and sunny, so much so, there were some really harsh and hard shadows.

In order to diffuse the harsh light, I would have used some kind of photographic reflector, but I don’t have one. What I did use was a large piece of white card.

This helps to reflect the sunlight back and reduced the depth and harshness of the shadows.

I am thinking about getting though a bigger lightbox for taking more photographs of dioramas and scenic settings.

Chaos on the ebb

The original Warhammer world was “destroyed” in 2015. The Warhammer: The Game of Fantasy Battles changed forever when Games Workshop (though they said Archaon was responsible) destroyed the world.

Of course we know now that the Old World in Warhammer is coming back.

Reading the most recent Old World Development Diary entry, The Main Factions Revealed we found out what the core factions will be in the game.

I quite like the fact that Chaos is almost non-existent in this era.

The battles of Warhammer: the Old World take place in the decades immediately before the Siege of Praag.

This means that Chaos is not as strong as it was in previous incarnations of Warhammer.

Chaos Daemons have existed in the past and will again, but there is an ebb and flow to the power of Chaos – in our period Chaos is at its lowest ebb in a long time.

You can still play Chaos if you want, but I like the fact that the focus is on the core factions.

The Old World

It’s on it’s way, but still looks like we will need to wait a while!

The Warhammer Community website gave us another insight into the development of Warhammer: The Old World.

The first mention of this game was in 2019, so we are approaching four years of development, and we’ve not seen a single miniature in all that time.

Though it would appear that the development team have spent hours doing research and playtesting the new game.

Our goal was to create a game that captures the best elements of all the editions of Warhammer Fantasy Battle, but at the same time providing new and exciting rules, and fresh challenges to overcome.

We are getting a lot of background information, the setting won’t be the world we remember from Warhammer Fantasy of the past, but a time before then.

I am looking forward to seeing where this is going and what the final game will look like. Hopefully we might see some miniatures soon.

One can dream…

So over the last week we have had Warhammer Fest Online.

Last weekend as I looked over the list of live shows, it was apparent to me that what I was most interested in was, would there be new Orks for Warhammer 4000, what would be revealed on Thursday for the boxed games and what would be the BIG mystery on Saturday.

Well we found out on Saturday that the mystery was a new edition of Age of Sigmar.

I am guessing exciting for players of Age of Sigmar, for me not so much.

I was hoping we would see the return of the Old World and Warhammer. We know from previous reveals that this was in the works and I am intrigued to see what this new (old) game looks like and what the models will be like, especially as we have seen massive jumps in model detail and development since the end of Warhammer back in 2015.

I was secretly hoping that we would see a relaunch of Epic in the (new) Adeptus Titanicus scale, but that was a far out dream… Well one can dream….

The Old World in Warhammer is coming back…

According to the latest posting on the Warhammer Community sites, the Old World in Warhammer is coming back.

Everything we knew of the Old World collapsed into a void of Chaos and infinite possibility. From that tumultuous storm came the Mortal Realms, heralding a new dawn of unending war in the Age of Sigmar.

I never really got the Age of Sigmar, apart from it was an attempt to make Warhammer Fantasy Battles more like Warhammer 40K.

I am intersted to see where this is going, but it’s not a new story or a new world, it’s the original old world.

The Old World is to Warhammer Age of Sigmar, as the Horus Heresy is to Warhammer 40,000.

So looks like we’re getting the old Warhammer back…