Warhammer - The Old World

[amysrevenge]

Yeah that is one beautiful map.  I like it a lot.  I'd put that on my wall (and I'm not some weird basement guy, I've got a family and a nice house and everything!).

[Public Universal Duardin]

Really interested to see where this is going, I didn't expect them to show us anything - even just maps - this soon!

[Hashut]

Some really interesting stuff happens in this period, or around it, not least of all the comet hitting Mordheim...

A quick look at a timeline of the Warhammer World shows that once they’re done with the Empire, there’s Repanse de Lyonesse fighting off chaos in Bretonnia, and then the many wars of the vampire counts.

I have such high hopes for this, I just know I’ll be let down haha

 

[Morglum StormBasha]

I’m so incredibly exited about this now.

if it’s circa 1990-2010 then we have 

- 4 emperors - Middenheim, talabacland, Marienburg and the official one. So no actual real empire but city states and lots of opportunities for creating new special characters and allegiances for those 4 human empire ish armies

- Repanse de lyonesse fighitng off the khorne and nurgle invasion of bretonnia. Amazing! Who doesn’t want to play a Joan of Arc against the hordes of chaos!

- the skaven civil war - skyre and moulded and eshin all at war with one another 

- the rise of Vlad Von Carstein

- Gorbad Ironclaw is still active for orcs and goblins

- Mordheim 

its an incredible 3 decades to put the setting in.

 

[hughwyeth]

1 minute ago, Morglum StormBasha said:

- Mordheim 

OH man if they redo morheim....

[Morglum StormBasha]

I mean the sensible thing is to do mordheim first right as a way to get some empire miniatures updated and then launch into the wider settings. But then give me Bretonnia vs Chaos as the starter please gw.

[Morglum StormBasha]

1999-2000 is also the year of Morghurs rebirth

its also the end of 300 years of Ariel being sequestered and allowing Orion sole rule of Athel Loren.

it must be around the time finubar travels to the old world for the first time as well braking their isolation of the high elves..

[EccentricCircle]

That era is great, the only problem is that dates in that range feel really modern. Maybe its just me, but when you talk about something happening in 2010 it feels, wrong somehow, as though its too tied to our contemporary world. I find the same with Tolkien 's chronologies. Dates a century or so on either side have more of a sense of "otherness" to them, a distance that makes then somehow seem more appropriate for scifi and fantasy settings! 2004, or 1996 don't somehow. I was there!

[Morglum StormBasha]

I get what you mean that in a sense the dates feel modern but it does appear to be pretty much the most interesting part of the timeline for most factions 

[Chikout]

I really hope they don't limit the time frame of the game too much. That was one of the problems of the old game. I would like to see a series of releases themed around major historical events on the old world. If they are starting with the three emperors they could do a release focused on the invasion of Gorbad, one about the vampire wars and then go back in time and cover the war of the beard. 

Making it clearly a historical game would also be a good way of keeping it separate from AOS. 

 

That said the confirmation that it is a forgeworld product and the setting does suggest something about the scope of the product. 

I would not be at all surprised if the first year of releases are empire only perhaps with some basic rules to let people use their existing collections. 

If they do that we might see a release as soon as summer 2021. 

If they want to have orcs and/or vampir counts ready for launch I would expect to see the game in 2022. 

I think we will probably see our next piece of info at Warhammerfest in May. New info every 3 months for the first year feels about right. 

[Cèsar de Quart]

Oh my Sigmar. This was a good night present alright.

Making Warhammer "historical" scenarios and campaigns is the best thing  they could have done. Setting it in the Age of the Three Emperors (plus one) is a genius stroke.

I hope they develop the three Emperors in a quirky, satirical way. The Old World was plenty quirky and satirical, but it had sometimes too much of a hero fantasy bias. Karl Franz HAD TO BE the BEST STATEMAN THE WORLD HAD EVER SEEN. Come on, Karl Franz never was interesting. Boris Goldgather was interesting. Dieter the Incompetent was too. Even Mandred Ratslayer or Magnus were interesting. KF was too much of a Marty Stu. I actually liked when the End Times killed him in a heroic way and then the Reborn KF was actually Sigmar in disguise. There's not much you can do with a character so flawless as this boy, except for killing him to give other people meaning or purpose. Or to advance the plot.

I've got to say, though... I don't like this heraldry in the new map. It looks very different from the traditional symbols and colours we expect from Talabecland, Marienburg and Reikland. The style is also very... ahistorical. Whenever visual art is taken up by people with no idea of history, I tremble. Just look at the first seasons of Game of Thrones vestuary. Awful.

"Fantasy" doesn't mean "nonsense". 

Edited February 7, 2020 by Cèsar de Quart

[Uiovich]

It doesn't look like " 3 Emperors " age, Nuln was the capital of Empire that time, not Altdorf. I guess  that symbols in the map mean nothing, just "... we do something,  see?"

[Morglum StormBasha]

As far as I’m aware there is no official capital of the empire in the time of the three (Four) emperors. There is a stirland normal claim followed by a talabecland secession, then a middenheim secession then a Marienburg secession. The actual normal claim I think would probably still move around between reikland and wissenland in this case they’ve gone for Wilhelm X of Reikland.

its going to be interesting to see how they’ll deal with human magic at this stage as it’s a pre teclis world. 

very much hope the empire armies go back to having halflings, ogors and imperial dwarfs in them.

[hughwyeth]

10 hours ago, Cèsar de Quart said:

Oh my Sigmar. This was a good night present alright.

Making Warhammer "historical" scenarios and campaigns is the best thing  they could have done. Setting it in the Age of the Three Emperors (plus one) is a genius stroke.

This would be great- essentially what they do with Horus Heresy. Each additional campaign book includes the rules for the newly released miniatures. And they trickle out new miniatures constantly. 

[Hashut]

I just noticed the very large,  very clear “Norse Dwarfs”.  Now that is very cool. 

[michu]

15 hours ago, Cèsar de Quart said:

I've got to say, though... I don't like this heraldry in the new map. It looks very different from the traditional symbols and colours we expect from Talabecland, Marienburg and Reikland. The style is also very... ahistorical. Whenever visual art is taken up by people with no idea of history, I tremble. Just look at the first seasons of Game of Thrones vestuary. Awful.

"Fantasy" doesn't mean "nonsense". 

But it also doesn't mean "we have to stick to real world rules by all means". Especially with heraldry.

Oh, and those are not coat of arms of imperial provinces but of four lords:

- Ludwig XII 

- Sigismund

- Willhelm 

- Magritta VI

EDIT: And someone noticed that if the game is set during age of three emperors that could possibly means new Sisters of Sigmar! Maybe we will have double-setting releases - Sisters of Sigmar could also be a remake of Devoted for Sigmar.

Edited February 7, 2020 by michu

[Cèsar de Quart]

11 minutes ago, michu said:

But it also doesn't mean "we have to stick to real world rules by all means". Especially with heraldry.

Oh, and those are not coat of arms of imperial provinces but of four lords:

- Ludwig XII 

- Sigismund

- Willhelm 

- Magritta VI

Well, they didn't do a good job at making up something new when it comes to the design of these coats of arms. I find it funny because real heraldry has been around for almost a thousand years (maybe 900 years) and had become, already by the 1400's, a very stylish, respected and fashionable form of design. Now people come in and say they can "do it better"? I doubt it.

If you can't do something better than what we have, why persist? It's like armour design. We know, in our brains, what is possible and what is practical. Within these bounds, you can do many "new" things. But as soon as you get super pauldrons that impede movement in, it stops looking cool. The adjective "ridiculous" is always happy to have company.

And yes, I know they're the CoAs of the Four Emperors. But one would expect that the Prince of Reikland would have the Reikland colours, for instance. But it's really no big deal, they'll make up some lore excuse and it will probably be fine. I'm a bit bummed because if the Warhammer lore has something, it's depth, and them making up coats of arms and colours feels like emptying the box and having a new one, not necessarily better. Using something obscure from the established lore is both a way to fill gaps for the writer AND a small reward for the reader who knows about it. It's what CA are doing with Total War Warhammer. I mean, Repanse de Lyonesse? Who would have thought anyone would remember her?

I'll never tire of saying it: one of the joys of knowing History is that the world gains meaning because you become capable of recognising things which previously had none. Some ruin on top of a hill in Tuscany become the last vestiges of the mysterious Etruscans. A series of brick buildings on a parking lot behind the Blue Mosque turn into the last pillars of the Golden Palace of the Roman Emperors. A painting on the wall is a 19th Century celebration of someone becoming a college graduate. A letter from a WW1 soldier dated 1914 who says "I'll be home soon" becomes quite the tragedy... you get my meaning. 

This is also true in most deep fantasy worlds where there's much, much to take in. So I hope they take the Horus Heresy route of combing the lore over, making it rounder, tying up some loose ends, creating new questions to solve and putting in the extra effort to have the Old World become even deeper. If not with seriousness, then at least with good, black, cynical references to real world culture and history.

[michu]

2 minutes ago, Cèsar de Quart said:

Well, they didn't do a good job at making up something new when it comes to the design of these coats of arms. I find it funny because real heraldry has been around for almost a thousand years (maybe 900 years) and had become, already by the 1400's, a very stylish, respected and fashionable form of design. Now people come in and say they can "do it better"? I doubt it.

If you can't do something better than what we have, why persist? It's like armour design. We know, in our brains, what is possible and what is practical. Within these bounds, you can do many "new" things. But as soon as you get super pauldrons that impede movement in, it stops looking cool. The adjective "ridiculous" is always happy to have company.

Why they have to make something better? I don't understand your reasoning. They just have to make something cool. And not everyone is a heraldry expert. For them (me included), those coats of arms are cool. And sometimes the rules of heraldry were broken in real life because some people wanted to show how important they are -e.g.  coat of arms of king of Jerusalem.

 

[zilberfrid]

30 minutes ago, Cèsar de Quart said:

Well, they didn't do a good job at making up something new when it comes to the design of these coats of arms. I find it funny because real heraldry has been around for almost a thousand years (maybe 900 years) and had become, already by the 1400's, a very stylish, respected and fashionable form of design. Now people come in and say they can "do it better"? I doubt it.

If you can't do something better than what we have, why persist? It's like armour design. We know, in our brains, what is possible and what is practical. Within these bounds, you can do many "new" things. But as soon as you get super pauldrons that impede movement in, it stops looking cool. The adjective "ridiculous" is always happy to have company.

And yes, I know they're the CoAs of the Four Emperors. But one would expect that the Prince of Reikland would have the Reikland colours, for instance. But it's really no big deal, they'll make up some lore excuse and it will probably be fine. I'm a bit bummed because if the Warhammer lore has something, it's depth, and them making up coats of arms and colours feels like emptying the box and having a new one, not necessarily better. Using something obscure from the established lore is both a way to fill gaps for the writer AND a small reward for the reader who knows about it. It's what CA are doing with Total War Warhammer. I mean, Repanse de Lyonesse? Who would have thought anyone would remember her?

I'll never tire of saying it: one of the joys of knowing History is that the world gains meaning because you become capable of recognising things which previously had none. Some ruin on top of a hill in Tuscany become the last vestiges of the mysterious Etruscans. A series of brick buildings on a parking lot behind the Blue Mosque turn into the last pillars of the Golden Palace of the Roman Emperors. A painting on the wall is a 19th Century celebration of someone becoming a college graduate. A letter from a WW1 soldier dated 1914 who says "I'll be home soon" becomes quite the tragedy... you get my meaning. 

This is also true in most deep fantasy worlds where there's much, much to take in. So I hope they take the Horus Heresy route of combing the lore over, making it rounder, tying up some loose ends, creating new questions to solve and putting in the extra effort to have the Old World become even deeper. If not with seriousness, then at least with good, black, cynical references to real world culture and history.

Real world heraldry has lots of ties with real world history that does not fit seamlessly.

Armour design just requires the basic anatomy of fantasy humans (and dwarves, and elves) to be somewhat similar to real world humans. Something like the Lord Relictor won't work with arms that can move.

[michu]

5 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

Something like the Lord Relictor won't work with arms that can move.

And Land Riders models are too small for 10 Marines to be inside them. It's not about accuracy, it's about creating an illusion. For me it works.

[Gecktron]

1 hour ago, Cèsar de Quart said:

Well, they didn't do a good job at making up something new when it comes to the design of these coats of arms. I find it funny because real heraldry has been around for almost a thousand years (maybe 900 years) and had become, already by the 1400's, a very stylish, respected and fashionable form of design. Now people come in and say they can "do it better"? I doubt it.

Heraldry is absolutely a field where people can experiment. Heraldric tradition differs a lot between cultures even here in our world. The same should hold true in a fantasy world. 

There are a lot of heraldic rules that are based on traditions, not because they are the best thing people came up with. A coat of arm can look great even if it breaks a lot of these rules. Just look at the heraldry in A Song of Ice and Fire (https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Heraldry). Many of the most striking designs break a rule or two. 

Even the two most well known arms, the arms of House Stark, and the one of House Targaryen, wouldnt be possible if G.R.R. Martin would have just followed traditional conventions. 

A coat of arms has to be recognizable from afar. Everything else is secondary. 

Edited February 7, 2020 by Gecktron

[Cèsar de Quart]

4 hours ago, michu said:

Why they have to make something better? I don't understand your reasoning. They just have to make something cool. And not everyone is a heraldry expert. For them (me included), those coats of arms are cool. And sometimes the rules of heraldry were broken in real life because some people wanted to show how important they are -e.g.  coat of arms of king of Jerusalem.

The eagle for Reikland doesn't really seem to inhabit the same world as the face of Taal in the Talabheim coat of arms, for instance. Inconsistency. The wolf of Middenheim looks good, the eagle as well. They are the closest ones to real heraldry. The one in Marienburg, I haven't been able to distinguish what it is. Already a bad sign, heraldry should be at least marginally easy to recognise from a distance (of course, this varies from century to century, but in the 15-16th, it still should).

I'm not saying they shouldn't try to do something new or different, I'm saying that if you want to have a style, you must commit to it, or you risk the integrity of the style to fall apart. Lord of the Rings did that very well with the Elves and Dwarves, very consistent style and iconography. Very different heraldry as well, but distinguishable and coherent within itself.

This is two very European looking heraldic designs and two very strange choices, the overdetailed face of a bearded god, and something with a fish tail I can't even picture. You're telling me this is consistent?

As for "not everyone is a heraldry expert", the only people who have to be are the ones designing heraldry, real or imaginary. If you don't know the grounds you're working on, you're missing on both inspiration and perspective. I don't trust an artist who doesn't know their classical and academic art history inside and out.

They want to try new things? Cool, but we already have Warhammer heraldry. Buckets of it. We already know the iconography and style of the Empire. Want to change it to make it look older? Do it right. Half-assery and rule of cool is how you end up with bland, forgettable fantasy worlds.

Edited February 7, 2020 by Cèsar de Quart

[Still-young]

I like em. 

[JPjr]

8 minutes ago, Cèsar de Quart said:

The one in Marienburg, I haven't been able to distinguish what it is. Already a bad sign, heraldry should be at least marginally easy to recognise from a distance (of course, this varies from century to century, but in the 15-16th, it still should).

it's a classic split tailed mermaid, which is also the city's symbol so...

the other one looks like a classical foliate head design too, again works fine.

Edited February 7, 2020 by JPjr

[whiskeytango]

7 minutes ago, JPjr said:

it's a classic split tailed mermaid, which is also the city's symbol so...

the other one looks like a classical foliate head design too, again works fine.

Reminds me very much of The Green Knights shield boss actually