From the desk of the irreplaceable Matthias Eliasson.
Download it all now folks. It’s plain text from here on out.
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Good catch @chitzkoi , thank you for sharing.
While it would be a huge amount of work to trawl through and ask for permission and re-edit the army books, this could easily just be a speedbumb to be overcome as to polished army books with slick formating and artwork.
There are so many community artworks out there, that I am confident that Warhammer Armies Project in the long run could fill army books completely with community artwork. As to formating, just do something a bit similar to GW, but in your own style. Similar to @thommyh.
This need not be the end of polished Warhammer Armies Project books, just a temporary setback. What they need is one or more dedicated souls willing and able to trawl through Deviantart and other websites, searching out community artwork and asking dozens or even hundreds of artists for permission to use it for this non-profit community project, due credit given. I’ve already done something similar with Chaos Dwarf artworks on Deviantart in 2017, and on an artist hunt for the Ninth Age in 2019. A ton of work, but doable.
Mathias Eliasson’s sterling work deserve polished end products, not just plain text. Though plain text rules-only documents could serve as relevant rule documents when updates run ahead of polished army books.
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Is there any way to save the previous rule sets here on CDO and make them available to the CDO community? Since I am not registered on the corresponding websites (and also do not want to be) and also have no idea how this would be feasible here, could this possibly be done by an Internet-savvy CDO member?
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I think that might be best left to PMs to avoid our one legal issues
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I’m not quite sure what they (or rather Matthias) are planning to wait for.
Rework will need time, yes. But what will change if TOW releases in Dec? And what difference will it make if doesn’t release but instead will be announced for, let’s say, Mar?
I also could imagine that especially when TOW goes live and people are speaking about whether they do or do not like it enough, you want your alternative system to be ready.
And what is the part about updates going fast in the future: Less formating b/c of missing pictures (why does there even have to be less pictures when replaying them?), or actually less content?
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I suppose because finding enough original artwork that you have permission to use, to fill all those army books will be a mayor pain in the ass cannon.
And writing all custom lore is also a looot of work.
I assumed he was going to go with a sort of rules only approach.
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What he is waiting for when he says “TOW supersedes them” is to understand whether TOW is better than, or a copy of, WAP to the point where WAP isn’t needed anymore - or alternatively, whether TOW is broken shit.
Everyone knows if TOW is good mechanically many folks will just play that, Matthias included. In that case WAP likely goes back to being about fan books for missing/fan factions of a popular game system, which is how it started with regards to 8th edition, rather than being its own game system - an exhausting extra burden only necessary because 8th is broken.
Regarding formatting, he is talking about unembellished game stats. Have you ever seen the 40k 2nd edition Battle Bible? It’s just a white page word document. Maybe he wouldn’t go that far; I’ve seen Ravening Hordes docs from him that are just tables on army book style army list pages (i’m sure you know the ones). That’s what I’m expecting.
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You mean what WCE always has done? 
But I agree in expecting vom WAP still more eye candy.
I’d still consider it a better choice to give people something to compare when TOW drops.
Be it a shrunk version of WAP, or a strongly unofficial and with no connection to the author anonymous dump friendly people would link to.
(WCE does not have said IP problem, but is also on halt with updates this year for the same reason, as I recently learned.)
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Folders for download, as WAP apparently hit it’s data cap yesterday.
If one link doesn’t work, the other still might. Neither are hosted by CDO people.
Google drive:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BxcLVAcEG-r-MJfY9jDiLJnPMdXotHNs?usp=sharing
And Mega:
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Well, this was bound to happen eventually: Matthias took a calculated risk there by using copyrighted material. I am more surprised about the relatively mild and reasonable requests from the GW side compared to previous incidents — they seem to have learned something there. They could have requested that he stops using certain unit and faction names or the project as a whole (irrespective of if they would get away with it in court), effectively forcing him to go down the 9th age route. The nicely formatted army books have to go for the time being but overall, I think this is a fair compromise.
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The main reason for that will be that Matthias makes no money from WAP.
Thanks a lot for the link! 
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I think he means that in the “rules only” reworking, he is going to go the approach of the slim version armybooks from The 9th Age @Kuanor
Basically toned down booklets of about 20 pages in black and white, without any lore or art, just the what you need to play an army stuff.
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Matthias has just announced he will be remastering the rulebooks, starting with Kislev, but he’s also opened a Patreon, which strikes me as a risk.
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Very sad but I am taking out curly beard bros in one one day WAP tourney this weekend.
It’s a great rule set and I am sure I will do our boys proud
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As many denizens of the discord will know, Matthias has begun his remasters of the WAP army books, stripping out all offending text… and art… and lore…
Sigh
He has been holding polls on his patreon for the sequence of factions. Chaos Dwarfs (after a lot of discord shilling on my part) is finally up next.
If you are not a WAP 9th Edition player - and I personally am not - I still recommend having a review of the pdf when it comes out. Matthias crafts and balances units at a much higher rate than the TOW team and considers Chaos Dwarfs a living, popular faction in his game. He has provided the only rules for many vintage Chaos Dwarfs minis, and on that basis, his work is worth considering for any TOW or other-edition player who wishes to expand on the army list they have.
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We are still playing the odd game of WAP but most are returning to the old world including me.
I also tried the new hobgoblin update - it was not pretty:
Still was fun and I like the addition of dire wolf riders.
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Dire wolves are a big plus for me; I have a number of khanate mini-projects on the go, chiefly Temple Dog Riders and conversions that will use two-headed wolf models by Privateer Press and so on. A monstrous wolf mount is ideal for the army on that basis.
The battle looked really cool! Always love seeing your hobgoblins haiden. A real staple of CDO.
I think the changes to the Chaos Dwarfs book that Matthias has suggested he will make are to do with magic items from Total War Warhammer. The army roster is bigger than any other version so I assume it will stay stable and just get balance changes.
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I fully expect to see said temple dog models on here my friend!!! ;). Bonus points for using them in a game!
~N
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