Part of it I guess is just is nostalgia. Although I started playing (miniature games at all) with Warhammer Fantasy Battles 4e, I was reading the White Dwarf magazines (mostly borrowed from a friend back then) for some time before that, before the release of Warhammer Fantasy Battles 4e, so my introduction to the hobby was the Warhammer Fantasy Battles 3e era.

Then there is the point of simplification, of the felt tendency for constantly reducing detail and complexity with each new edition, to speed up play. I love details and having options, and I gladly spend time on that. I don't want to set up two opposing forces, then roll a dice to see who won – that would be a tremendous time saver, but where would be the fun?

My most often told story of wargaming, which I remember very fondly, is the most hilarious moment of my Warhammer 40,000 games. In a very small game using 2nd edition rules, the Marines had a Rhino on the table, and the hardest hitting weapon of my Orks (mind, Orks – not Orcs) was a melter. The melter was not able to penetrate the Rhino's armour. Except the turret armour. Bravely, my Ork Boss moved in front of the Rhino, fired the melter, hit the turret and penetrated the armour. The roll on the armour chart caused an explosion which triggered another roll on the body damage chart, triggering an explosion in the body as well which resulted in the crew getting killed and sending the Rhino out of control. The brave Ork boss was rewarded with the out of control Rhino careening around him, rolling randomly across the board for two turns, before crashing into some trees. This kind of experience I try to recreate with this ruleset for my fantasy games, too.

For example, starting with Warhammer Fantasy Battles, ed. 4, after a hand-to-hand combat with one side breaking, there was one pursue move; you either catched the fleeing enemy and wiped them out, or you didn't. In Warhammer Fantasy Battles, ed. 3, when you catched the enemy, you got free strikes – you cut down more enemies easily, but did not necessarly wipe out the enemy. And the pursuit continued into the next round – where you got free hacks again.

Warfork Fantasy Battles is complex with a lot of details – that is what I like.

Back in the day, there was hardly any buyable scenery, with the notaböe exception of the Warhammer Townscape cardstock buildings. And model railroad trees.

You had to build your own stuff from scratch. There were White Dwarf articles with templates and building instructions (I still flip through these and occasionally build one of these to this day). Today, there is just plastic kits, the most DIY part is kit bashing. You buy (for exorbitant prices if I may say so) pre-designed scenery, that is also why many tables more or less look the same – even in the old days, if three people build a barn from the same White Dwarf article, you had three distinct buildings – just using different materials made them look different (one using plastic card, one using card board, one using balsa wood); they would work with different tolerances, everyone somehow changed the design a bit…

And no-one put a skull on their scenery, except it made sense (like a Khorne shrine, etc.). Today, every piece needs one skull – or more.

Of course, nothing prevents you from using scratch build scenerey in a game of Warhammer: The Old World, but is is not done that often, I don't associate it with modern era editions.

The same goes for miniatures. Today's miniatures are very detailed, crisp, with a lot of effects (like smoke, lightning, etc.) added – I don't like it. The old metal minis, for me, have more »soul«, if you know what I mean. This is a fantasy game, there is no industrial production, so why would everyone look the same? With the handsculpted miniatures, there was always variety. The best/worst example for me a the Chaos Warriors. I still flip through the Citadel Red Catalogue from time to time, and I don't know how much hours I spent with that back in the day. There is such a variety of Chaos Warrios there (and this is just one example), which especially fit the nature of Chaos Forces. When the first plastic models were released, this drastically changed – they looked suddenly looked uniform. Completely different, for me they lost what made them appeal to me before. Yes, you could still convert them, and stuff, but still…

And yes, again, you could still use old minis with the contemporary rules, but I mentally just don't link that.

The previous point of aesthetics and the level of detail for me basically means a certain mindset. This is a bit exagerated, but today's environment is build for sameness to allow fair and balanced tournament style of games – I prefer narrative based games, that do not necessarly need to be balanced.

When rules allow flexibitly and are not watertightly written, this is a certain flavour; I understand this is not suited for tournament style games, but I don't like playing those anyway. Rules-lawyers wouldn't want to play Warfork Fantasy Battles I am sure.

There were two main sources, which made me start on Warfork Fantasy Battles, and a third I stumbled upon while already working on it: