Sell Me on Age of Sigmar (or not)

[Hawki]

So, there's a bit of a hub-bub about Warhammer 40,000 getting a new edition, new lore, etc. Having looked at the website, looking at this from purely a lore-based perspective, I...really don't have a problem with it. A lot of the plot points (Guilliman's return, Ynnead forming, the Golden Throne failing, etc.), were foreshadowed long ago, and it feels like a natural progression of the setting. Far more natural than the end of Warhammer Fantasy Battle, which outright retcons the end-result of Storm of Chaos.

Which brings me to Age of Sigmar. Now, I've made no secret that I have some disdain for the setting, if only because it's a replacement for Fantasy Battle, which I quite liked as well. There's a really noticable shift in style, with WFB being more based on real-world cultures, while Age of Sigmar...well, ironically, it reminds me of Warcraft than anything else. Yep, Warcraft started off being based on Fantasy Battle, went off and did its own thing, now events have come full circle.

But that aside, I'm willing to evaluate Age of Sigmar on its own terms. I long stopped collecting models and, for the most part, games and novels for Fantasy Battle/40K, but still appreciate both universes. So, for those who can comment, taking Age of Sigmar purely as its own thing, separate from its WFB roots, how would you appraise it as a setting? Is it interesting? Original? Or is it just generic fantasy with "Sigmarines?"

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Age of Sigmar is...interesting. Its an okay system all things considered, simplistic and straight-forward even to a fault. Now its no Fantasy, and I truly thing GW should have kept Fantasy and released AoS as a separate thing.

AoS is all about the flat-dice roles, unit synchronization and special rules. Some people enjoy the fact you only get the 'warscrolls' for the units you want to use(rules) and never mind the rest, but I always liked being able to plan ahead and know what my opponents are good at. That's not really a thing in AoS.

If you do play it you'll be very much aware how little you know about your opponent's army and tactics.

 

[Breakdown]

I've read a few Age of Sigmar battle reports in White Dwarf, and they always come across as total slaughter fests with no tactics or strategy involved, and the dudes in gold armour always kill every single model in the other army.

 

[09philj]

It's a rough and ready system that leaves plenty of room for writing interesting scenarios. The downside is that without interesting scenarios it's going to just turn into groups of models slowly whittling each other down. If they had retained the ranked up miniatures it would probably have worked altogether better.

 

[Hawki]

Guys, I appreciate the comments, but I'm only interested in the lore-side of things. I won't be playing it anytime soon. Question is whether it's a setting worth getting invested in.

 

[cleric of the order]

Oh the lore
let's see

now the stuff isn't all that well written, it's a lively sort of like DropZone/DropFleet commander and their stuff (every new book updates the story but DZC is a cool reasonably compelling story with clear limitations on the United colonies expitionary forces and the scourge forces, and paints a story of total war while keeping intriguing high as the other factions are regarded) AOS is powered by bad pulps and penny dreadfulls.

the broad strokes are
Sigmar survives
dragon shows him how to make special realms from the 8 winds of magic
brings every non chaos worshipper that isn't also and elf back to life.
some important folks come back to life as gods
sigmar has become super zues and rules over an infinite realm of the heavens wind and allies himself with grugni who has become vaul
Grimir dies killing the mother of all dragons for sigmar , exploding into cocain gold
The witchking fuses with his dragon and becomes the god of shadow
nagash is here and playing nice
Gork and mork become gorkamorka and have some weird sonething, spend their time angry they can beat everything.

then chaos realized this shit is locking them out of magic and they can shit up mutliple worlds now so they invade from fucking nowhere, using the gates within the realms to invade everywhere but sigmar's personal world
Slaanesh is slain, the souls of the elves are fried by tyrion and tectlis so the horned rat is retconned into being the only other chaos god and joins the big god table as the least liked chaos god archon apparently spitting on him
Archon is powered by anime, his horse has become an even stranger deamon after eating one of the 5 great power's Greate demons and he is planning to challenge the gods themselves

sigmar's alliance is fucked because everyone but him fucked off to their own intrest, gorkamorka making their own faction of fucking idiots and nagash decided to fuck off and build his army of the carnage also because he isn't getting any new models yet.

Sigmar throws his hands up, seals himself up alone and begins his super solider programme.
basically angel marines using his stardrakes kids as troops as well.
eventually DDay comes and he's waging war everywhere.
Someone went and got his hammer back.
Sigmar is sending troops to try and rebuild alliances everywhere
nurgle has apparently been pushed out of the realm of life, at great cost