Despite increasing digital support for miniature wargames, it’s rare to find official digital clients that allow you to play virtual versions of games over the internet. Fans tend to fill the gap: War Table supports Warmachine, Eldfall Chronicles, Malifaux, and Guildball, and for just about everything else there are Tabletop Simulator mods. But a new contender has appeared: ‘The Old Wargamer’, still in development, is a platform that lets you play both Warhammer: The Old World and Warhammer 40,000 in your browser.
The site’s mission statement says it’s “an unofficial practice tool to learn the games by playing them, where every charge, wound, save and break test is rolled on screen and explained rather than hidden”. I’ve only had a very basic fiddle with each client, but that intent shines through: the site prioritizes surfacing the rules and making explicit what you can do, must do, and can’t do at every phase of the game, and it controls the flow of events through phases in a way I’ve found easy to parse.
Battles are represented in simple 2D that will give older gamers nostalgic flashbacks to 1990s White Dwarf battle reports. Beside them sits a whole panel dedicated to information about the current phase, the unit you may have selected, and the choices you can make.
Creators Ab1t & Dorreah say that they’ve summarized the rules for the Old World in their own words, with reference to the fan maintained Online Rules Index, while the points and unit options are imported from Old World Builder. Rules for Warhammer 40k factions are taken from Wahapedia’s data export.
While the engine doesn’t offer a complete simulation of every rule in either game, the framework covers the critical core systems, and the developers have been posting regular updates and bug fixes. The creators specify that they’re paying for AI for the website but not how they’re using it; presumably as a coding assistant, but perhaps to provide AI opponents for the single-player mode.
You can find details of how to register with the website on Reddit. Whether the web hosting can keep up with increased demand is a real question for this kind of fan project!
Digital wargame clients can be a helpful dojo to practise with an army before you commit to buying it, and allow physically distant players to play friendly matches or participate in virtual tournaments – they really took off during COVID lockdowns. The Old Wargamer’s goal of adding much more scaffolding and rules explanation is a smart one. Done right, this could be an excellent training aid, whether you’re learning the basics, memorizing your army rules, or really honing your play.
It would be great for Games Workshop to make an official client similar to this, but I can see why it’s not a high priority. In this stripped back form it’s a tool for people who are already fairly au fait with strategy games even if they’re new to Warhammer, and GW doesn’t struggle to recruit that audience. Turning it into something more elaborate, a fully fledged Warhammer 40k videogame with the panache to draw in a wider audience and justify an MSRP on Steam is a much bigger and more risky proposition, not least because the game’s core systems will need to be reworked every three years. I hope one or the other version happens, but it seems unlikely.
What do you think? What’s your preferred way to play Warhammer online when you can’t get a game IRL? What tools did you find most useful in helping you learn to play? Share your thoughts in the Wargamer Discord community!
Source: Wargamer
