Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, the gateway drug to miniature gaming
Imagine a lush fantasy world inundated with conflict between the forces of chaos and order. Valiant heroes, demigods, and mortals struggle against the merciless hordes of the evil and depraved for centuries.
Now imagine that fantasy world being completely destroyed by that malevolence and every whimsical and fantastical creature on said world snuffed out in a glorious molten explosion. The bad guys won and the sole survivor, a god-king, hurdles through space and time clutching desperately to the fractured core of his world.
This god-king, named Sigmar, is eventually saved from his cosmic fate by a Star Dragon. Sigmar soon discovers new realms and establishes a new kingdom with armies to exact revenge upon the dark forces that fell him.
Welcome to Warhammer: Age of Sigmar’s totally badass Heavy Metal beginning for a tabletop miniature game! Games Workshop wiped out their Tolkienesque world-that-was in order to give us an entirely new universe, newish races with newer names, and new rulesets.
Warhammer Fantasy Battle miniature games has been saturating table tops with the blood of orcs, elves, and human tears since 1978.
With 40 years of genre defining games under the belt, nothing seems to be slowing this tabletop giant down. AOS oozes with Game Workshop’s penchant for epic lore and has expanded so much between two editions that players and collectors have a lot to get into.
Games Workshop has created a brutally kinetic and ADHD fueled mythical playground of factional warfare and army building. But the aesthetics of AOS feels darker than the previous with a mishmash of Steampunk, Goth, and Arthurian mystique all wrapped in a crunchy taco shell of high fantasy fodder.
I have to say that the miniatures featured for AOS are gorgeous and some of my favorite that The Citadel produces. In skilled hands the models can figuratively, or literally, shine amidst vast seas of similar models.
At this year’s ATC I found myself wandering back to the Sigmar tables for the absolute jaw dropping details of the painted models. My favorites are the miniatures from the Death Grand Alliance which comprises of wraiths, skeletons, and undead wreathed in streams of ethereal fire and smoke.
If I were to break the piggy bank and start collecting AOS figures, the Mortis Engine would be my first choice. It’s a colossal bone shrine of dead Necromancers encircled by screaming Banshees and ether fire trailing from the hooves of skeletal horse riding revenants.
It looks as awesome as it sounds and one would be of the right mind to have this macabre monstrosity decorating as a companion set piece to their Dethklok posters.
Though the biggest deterrence for many to get into anything created by Games Workshop has always been the cost of entry. It’s a tough sell to get into these complicated versions of Chess with a near $250 start-up price and it’s more of an investment than a game. However, many of the bank draining rule books and tomes that went with the previous versions have went through an overhaul.
Expensive rule books are now called War Scrolls and are available online for free, FREE! War Scrolls are lore light digital files that are written with the newbie in mind. As an outsider observing the iterations of the Warhammer franchise the AOS 2nd edition fits snugly into the business model of attracting new players much like 40k’s Kill Team.
If the crazy back story has piqued interest I would recommend Storm Strike as a brilliant skirmish starter set designed for the cutting of teeth and blowing of mind. The kit only packs 15 models collectively for Stormcast Eternals and Nighthaunts and require no adhesive to put together.
This near plug-and-play setup does tie into more comprehensive collections but at only $55 for the kit Storm Strike is perfect for those coming in tabula rasa not only for Warhammer but also tabletop miniature gaming.
Games Workshop has contributed to the surge of table-top gaming since adopting smaller and more affordable kits with free start-up guides and endless video tutorials. Chattanooga is no stranger to this uptick in miniature gaming culture and with the lines blurring between traditional roleplay and tabletop tactics the future is bright for an age where the hobby-sport will invade more households and game shops across the world.
Consider Age of Sigmar as the gateway drug into the fantastical and epic realm of collecting, crafting, and conquering. I promise you’re in for one hell of a ride, molten planet cores, star dragons and all.
When not vaporizing zombies or leading space marines as a mousepad Mattis, Brandon Watson is making gourmet pancakes and promoting local artists.