Warhammer The Old World – Kingdom of Bretonnia Unboxing

We've talked about the upcoming Warhammer The Old World Pre-Order last Monday and today the vast list of items is ready to order, with delivery on January 20th (so in 2 weeks' time). As you might know, this new game won't come with a classic two army starter, but army bundles that include the new rulebook as a hardcover, and for the release there are two sets, the Kingdom of Bretonnia and the Tomb Kings of Khemri. We're going to cover both of them today, and start with the Kingdom of Bretonnia.

This is the cheaper one of the two and costs 206 EUR / 155 EUR, with a total of 76 miniatures. It is available in English, German and French.

It is a huge, stable box set with glossy prints on all sides. You can see the back below, and the lower part shows two of the painted units, the Men-at-arms and Knights of the Realm. As you can see, the Bretonnians look more uniform than they looked in "regular" Warhammer Fantasy. They go into detail on this in Warhammer Community and to a certain degree, this is the fantasy-counter-part of the pre-heresy paint jobs of some of the Legiones Astartes.

These boxes are filled to the top with plastic sprues. Someway the 76 miniatures have to be stored. After you take out these stacks, you see a blue separator with the Old World Logo on it, and beneath that, the remaining gaming material is. In this case the hard cover rulebook with 352 pages, the bases and in case of the Bretonnians the decal sheet as well.

The templates are made from transparent orange plastic, the flexible measure sticks from softer red plastic. Both of them have been around for some time, as you can see from the production stamps of 1995 (rulers) and 1998 (templates). Similar with the rectangular bases, some of the designs date back to 2001.

The measurement sticks are still 1/4th of an inch shy of being 18 inch long, but as long as both of you use / or don't use them, that's not a problem. The dice set are 20 regular d6 and a scatter die. Funny note, the dice packaging says Age of Darkness, as it is the same product, they use with the Horus Heresy starter set.

The printed parts of the boxed set are the hard cover rulebook, a reference sheet and an assembly sheet with the army list for 1.250 points in the back.

The first and last spread are a double page of the map of the Old World (from ~2300 IC) and we're lead through the book, with the introduction on the game system and a brief overview on the various races of the Old World. It is a full coloured book, with lots of illustrations and images, assembled in a lovely layout.

The rules are shown in the way we've seen it in the books of 6th to 8th edition, with top views of the regiments in various diagrams. And one thing that I really enjoyed among the layout were the scribbles and artworks, they used in the older publications, across rulebooks and army books. And you get an idea how the armies look on the new bases. But to be honest, the High Elves Spearmen look a bit lost on the large bases.

On the later pages you see army shots of all the 9 armies included in initial release, those will be covered with army lists in the Forces of Fantasy and Ravening Hordes supplements for The Old World. These are in detail:

• Empire of Man
• Dwarfen Mountain Holds
• Kingdom of Bretonnia
• Wood Elf Realms
• High Elf Realms
• Orc & Goblin Tribes
• Warriors of Chaos
• Beastmen Brayherds (not shown)
• Tomb Kings of Khemri

Some factions are not part of this release, but will receive legacy rules, that are available free for download from the Warhammer Community page. Those will cover rules for Dark Elves, Skaven, Vampire Counts, Daemons of Chaos, Ogre Kingdoms, Lizardmen and the Chaos Dwarfs.

Later on, we see some examples of gaming tables, who really bring back the feel of old Warhammer. And I really hope we will see some of the terrain pieces return, as the chapel and tower are really impressive pieces. The rules of the core rulebook even cover a campaign system and a very practical overview in the back.

Among the extended gaming accessories are multiple card decks. There are the Lores of Magic and Common Magic Items. These will only be available in English and not translated in German or French. They don't cover additional information, but are practical in game play as you have rules of the spell or magic item on hand and can keep them with the unit or miniature. In addition, there is something similar for the Bretonnians (and Tomb Kings) as well, covering their special rules, items and such in a deck of its own. These kinds of items had a problem of going out of stock in the past and then just being available through second hand market, usually at a hefty mark-up. So, if you intend to use them, take the chance if you see them at a regular price.

But let us move over to the miniatures. The first things you take from this box is a huge stack of grey plastic. And with the exception of the Baron/Duke on Royal Pegasus, which is a new model for this release, previewed on Warhammer Day 2023, the others are reprints of the initial release from January 2004.

All the miniatures will be covered in reviews of their own, but I'll provide you with an over of the sprues already here. As the models are the "old" multi-part design and intended to be able to swap pieces from various kits with each other, you can mostly do head swaps and such across the range. This will be part of the reviews as well.

You get 1x Lord on Royal Pegasus, spread across two sprues. A large one for the Royal Pegasus itself (which is shared with the Battle Standard Bearer) and the small sprue for the Lord, which can either be built as a Duke or Baron.

There are 3x Pegasus Knights in this boxed set, a sprue each. The wings of the Pegasus are packed in the bag with the barded horses, of which there are 12, split into two different kind of bodies and four different heads.

The Knights, that can be build either as Knights of the Realm or Knights Errant come with 3 sprues, with 4 knights each, and include the parts for the command section as well in each sprue.

As for the infantry, the Men-at-Arms are armed with halberds and shields, and are four to a sprue, of which there are 7 sprues included in the boxed set.

The ranged weapons in this set are the Peasant Bowmen, with 5 sprues of four miniatures each.

The Men-at-Arms and Bowmen share the same command sprue, which is included 3 times for the three regiments of the boxed set.

We don't have prices on the new units yet, so it is a bit tricky to break down the savings on these. But the rulebook will be 55 EUR, as will the Lord on Royal Pegasus. The three regiments of Infantry would probably around 35 EUR each (assuming they're 20 miniatures per box and we handle four of the archers as man-at-arms for this calculation), the Pegasus Knights could be 50 EUR for the set of three (they used to be a boxed set of three and available as singles), with 1,5 boxes of the Knights (they used to be 8 per box) at an assumption of 40 EUR per box that would give us (55 + 55 + 105 + 50 + 60 EUR) a rough value of 325 EUR in individual RRP. Not the worst savings.

The miniatures are from the early 2000s, but not worst designs, already moving closer to 30mm heroic scale, so they don't stand out that much. But this will be something we will cover in the individual reviews. This is a solid starting point. I won't suggest buying multiple of these, as you want primarily knights not that much of infantry, as the Bretonnians are an army focused on Chivalry. So, adding another box or two of Knights and then go for special units would be my suggestion for the start. But that is something that can be drafted out easier with access to the Forces of Fantasy and Arcane Journals for the Kingdom of Bretonnia.

Warhammer The Old World is a brand by Games Workshop.

The reviewed product item was provided by the manufacturer.