Old World

In the real world, "Old World" is a fancy way to refer to the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa, as opposed to the "New World" (the Americas and Oceania). That definition was coined by people who lived on those continents; to them, their landmass was "old", and the continents on the opposite side of the world from them were "new". They also placed themselves at the middle of their world-maps, which, it should be noted, did not lead to the naming of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth; Middle-Earth is analogous to Midgard in Norse mythology, and refers to the entire human-inhabited world or known world, regardless of its orientation on a map.

The nations of Warhammer Fantasy Battle use the term almost identically — the Warhammer world's equivalent of Eurasia and Africa (home to the Empire, Cathay, Kislev, and others) is the Old World, compared to the New World of Lustria.

In a list-like order, here is the Warhammer old world nations at their real world equivalents:

• The Empire: Germany and plus the Czech lands, so pretty much the Holy Roman Empire. Similar modes of dress, German and Germanish West Slavic names and the like can be found here.

• Bretonnia: An unholy fusion of England and France, taking the worst of both - the English posh toff indifference to the poor and air of superiority and the French love of mauling peasants and the like in a variety of unpleasant ways. Plus a heaping helping of Arthurian legend.

• Kislev: Russo-Poles. Russian in the cold, the ruler being called a tsar and an unhealthy love for big bears (love the fur!). Militarily Polish, with Winged Hussars and a Westernized (Empireized) upper class (Gospodar/Szlachta) ruling over a diverse populace, including Poles, Russians, and Mongols.

• Albion: Britain and Ireland, it is a gloomy rainy country covered constantly in a dense fog with a rural population suspiciously similar to the Celts....GW's fluff making department were in overdrive making up this island, it took all of five whole minutes to work out all the details.

• Estalia: Spain through and through.

• Tilea: Italy and Greece hybrid, basically a bunch of warring city states constantly scheming against each other.

• Border Princes: a strange mesh up of various eastern europe countries with names too complex to remember.

• Athel Loren: Alsace-Lorraine. Both as neutral as the other, except that they use Bretonnia as a buffer against the Old World's nasties.

• Sartosa: Sicily/Corsica/Sardinia turned into a pirate haven, which makes it the best place to be in the Old World due to all that swashbuckling.