‘Warhammer: The Old World’: Everything You Need To Know About The Legacy Armies
Let’s take a look at the new Legacy Armies for Warhammer: The Old World. They are still hanging in there – kind of.
The Old World is out! At long last we can return to the World of Legend and fight epics battles. However, not all the old armies are back in the same way. The game has launched with nine fully supported “Core” armies. Meanwhile, seven of the old armies have been moved over to Legacy status. However, you shouldn’t worry all that much about them right now. As GW promised, they each now have their own, totally free, PDF to play with. Today, let’s take a look at what being a Legacy army really means and what you need to know about them.
What Is a ‘Warhammer: The Old World’ Legacy Army
Legacy armies are the seven armies from old Warhammer Fantasy that are not currently core in The Old World. Each of these armies got a free PDF of rules allowing you to play them. However, these armies are not designed for match play, nor legal in such settings. As such, they can’t be used in GW tournaments. In addition, GW has said they will not be updating or FAQing the Legacy Army PDFs. You get what you get – and nothing more. As of right now, there are no plans to support these armies moving forward. The seven legacy armies are:
- Lizardmen
- Dark Elves
- Vampire Counts
- Ogre Kingdoms
- Skaven
- Daemons of Chaos
- Chaos Dwarfs
What Is (And Isn’t) In The PDFs
The free PDFs contain very complete Grand Army Composition lists for each faction. These lists are pretty well thought-out and thorough. They seem completely on par with the Grand Armies the other factions get in Forces of Fantasy and Ravening Hordes. Pretty much every unit, and most options, that were around in 8th Edition Warhammer Fantasy are here. These armies also feel pretty well balanced with the core armies for now and don’t feel like a waste of time. It’s clear some love was put into these Legacy lists.
On the other hand, these armies do not, and will not, get Arcane Journals. That means no named characters. It also means no Armies of Infamy and no extra set of magic items. If you were hoping these would be in the PDFs you will be disappointed. While this doesn’t put them at much of a disadvantage now, as more armies get Arcane Journals, I think Legacy factions will start to feel left behind a bit. It does lock them out of a lot of the cool things in the game. For the moment, however, they are on par with most core factions.
So Where Can I Play With My Legacy Army?
A lot of people have been pretty worried about the fact that Legacy Armies can’t be used in Matched Play. However, the truth is that currently, that means very, very little. Basically you can play with these armies anywhere that will allow you. The only place we know you can’t use them is official Games Workshop tournaments, and we don’t even know how many of those there will be. This could be a restriction that only affects a handful of events. Outside of GW events, other tournaments will need to make the call to allow them or not. Several have already said they will allow them for now. I don’t know of any that have specifically said they won’t. Tournament Organizers as a whole tend to not lean towards supporting restrictions that will drive potential atendees away.
In casual games, well as long as the other player is fine with it, then you can use them. Since that’s basically the rule with anything, there isn’t a big change here. For the moment, it seems like you can play your Legacy faction in about 95% of situations. More or less, if you aren’t going to one of the big GW events playing a Legacy Army a non-issue.
What’s The Future Of Legacy Armies?
The big question everyone wants to know is: “What’s the future of these factions?” And well, we don’t know. I still think that nixing the factions for the moment is the right move. This lets them focus the game on a few factions to expand. However, the future is a vast unknown, and there are a few ways it could go.
We might see The Old World become very popular. If this happens, it’s possible that the Legacy factions will slowly get moved over into core factions. GW could easily change their position on them and update them over time. While this would make people happy, I kind of doubt it’s going to be the case. It just doesn’t seem in line with how GW is doing things.
A second option is that the armies just… kind of fade away. Eventually, the game moves on from them with enough updates and expansions that they aren’t really viable. As this happens, you will likely see more and more events disallowing them. Fewer players will have the armies, and they will fade into irrelevance as the years pass.
Lastly there is something of a middle option. They could bring back the armies in a different format than we currently have. Maybe instead of Vampire Counts we get the Vampire Coast. Instead of Skaven we get… Clan Moulder, or something. Alternate takes on these factions that bring them back in a new way in the older Old world timeline. Only time will really tell what their fate is. For now, let’s just enjoy the free rules and models we can actually buy!
Let us know what you think the future of the legacy armies is, down in the comments!
