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I have been interested in Warhammer: The Old World for as long as it’s been announced, which is about four years ago now. I was never into Warhammer Fantasy, other than buying some of the models that looked fun to paint. The game was bloated and hard to play, with too many rules and too little innovation. But: Warhammer: The Old World had the potential to change that.

So I’ve been watching the reveals and getting excited about things, along with many of the rest of you.

But… I just am not interested in buying either of The Old World’s starter sets–either the Tomb Kings or the Bretonians.

The thing is this: Games Workshop just doesn’t seem to be investing in this game. I would have expected that there would be range refreshes for the new armies. Not that there would be range refreshes for every faction, because that’s a TON of new models that would need sculpting and mold making. But I expected a range refresh for the flagship armies. I expected to see new Knights, new Yeomen, new skeleton warriors, and new chariots.

But we’re not getting new stuff. In each boxed set–which are, you know, HUGE and EXPENSIVE, there are two or three new models and the rest are sometimes decades old. Those skeleton warriors, for example, are from 2004. Yes, we’re getting some 90-odd models in the box, but they are old. And worse than old, they LOOK old.

When you compare the new Tomb King–not even the guy on the Bone Dragon, but just the Tomb King–and compare him to the rest of the army, there is an enormous discrepancy. The new models look, well, new. And the old models look old. And that’s just not good enough.

And this is to say nothing about the rules for Warhammer: The Old World.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but as the Warhammer Community website releases about rules, it really looks like this game is going to be a lot like Warhammer Fantasy. And of all the conspiracy theories that surround the death of Warhammer Fantasy, the truth is that it died because no one was buying it. For the life of me, I don’t see why Games Workshop thinks that the way to revive an old game that few people liked is to release it virtually unchanged both in models and rules, but here we are.

Yesterday I was at my FGLS, hemming and hawing about whether I was going to buy one of the boxes. Part of me wanted to buy it because I run this website and I wanted to be a completionist when it comes to buying rules and reviewing games. And part of me really wanted to get my hands on those Bretonnia Knights that I have wanted for years.

But I just couldn’t justify buying a $255 boxed set full of 90 models just so I could slog through a rulebook that already doesn’t entice me and buy a ton of models I don’t want just so I could get the Knights and the Pegasus. I’ll be able to pick them up piecemeal for a lot cheaper later.

My decision was made even easier yesterday when I watched the Warhammer TV battle report for Warhammer: The Old World. The game just… doesn’t look fun? It seems to suffer from the same problem that Warhammer Fantasy did–that manuevering is so important that terrain is an annoyance, making every game (or, every game that you don’t want to get bogged down in endless problems) run across an open field against each other. And, to me, that takes a lot of fun out of a wargame.

Ultimately, this game just seems like it was made for Warhammer Fantasy players, who aren’t bothered by things that are old, who like the rules essentially as they were.

And that’s a good thing because Games Workshop doesn’t appear to be investing a ton into Warhammer: The Old World. This release feels either deliberately targeted at old players or foolishly under-supported.

I’m not saying I won’t eventually give the game a try–and I want to paint some knights–but Warhammer: The Old World doesn’t appear to be for me.