Warhammer Age of Sigmar

Warhammer Age of Sigmar

Warhammer Age of Sigmar Rulebook Cover
Manufacturer(s) Games Workshop
Publisher(s) Games Workshop
Years active 2015
Genre(s) Wargaming
Players 2+
Setup time Varies depending on size of game. Usually 15 to 30 minutes.
Playing time Varies depending on size of game. Usually around two to eight hours.
Random chance Medium (dice rolling)
Skill(s) required arithmetic
Website www.games-workshop.com

Warhammer: Age of Sigmar (AoS) is a tabletop wargame released by Games Workshop in 2015. It replaces Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WFB) as the fantasy wargame in the Warhammer universe. Several supplements released for the eighth edition of WFB centred on the End Times which led to the almost total destruction of the Warhammer world and the death of most of the world's population. This leads into the Age of Sigmar with the return of the long-lost founder of the human empire worshipped as a god.

Setting

Following the destruction of the Warhammer World by the forces of Chaos, Sigmar floated through outer space, clinging to the core of the Old world. He eventually met a space dragon called Dracothion, and they became good friends. Dracothian let Sigmar ride him, and showed him the way to nine new realms, each a representation of a magical "wind" emphasising some element like fire or light or life - as well as the later, unilateral addition of Chaos by the Chaos Gods - which are connected by magical portals called realmgates. Souls were drawn to these realms, some being survivors from the previous world, some new, or were sought out by Sigmar. Sigmar forged an alliance amongst these peoples and their gods (his former acquaintances from the old world) as civilisations were re-established. Following an attack by the Forces of Chaos which captured most of the realms the alliance broke down and the civilisations were almost totally destroyed before Khorne and his forces turned upon the rest of the Chaos armies. Sigmar decided to create the mightiest warriors ever, the Stormcast Eternals. Armed with mighty storm weapons, the Stormcast led the fight back against Chaos. The Age of Sigmar begins many, many generations after this with Sigmar attempting to re-establish the former alliances and purge the world of Chaos once and for all.

As in the lore, there are present souls who survived the End Times and have wandered through space, nearly all races from the WFB game and even individual characters noted as having died in the End Times, are eligible for play.

Factions

There are four main factions in Age of Sigmar, called Grand Alliances.

Order Grand Alliance

Order wishes to beat Chaos. It comprises:

Chaos Grand Alliance

Fueled by the base desires and actions of mortals (wrath, decay, intrigue, and lust), they seek to bring every realm to heel. They serve the Four Chaos Gods. Before the Age of Sigmar they had conquered 7 of the 8 Mortal Realms and began the Age of Chaos, before Sigmar struck back with the Stormcast. It comprises:

Death Grand Alliance

Opposed to Chaos, more or less allied with Order when uniting in common cause against Chaos, but wishing to rule all the realms for themselves. Ruled by the self-proclaimed god of death, Nagash. They consist of:

Destruction Grand Alliance

Unpredictable and opportunistic, they fight for their own self interests or often for the sake of conflict. They consist of:

Rules

General principles

Warhammer Age of Sigmar emphasises the narrative part of the wargaming experience. It encourages you to play scenarios and recreate battles from the existing books or to make your own stories .

The ruleset is designed to make the game easy to learn but hard to master. It is very quick to read the basic rules common to everyone, the real flavor of the game comes from the "Warscrolls". Each units in AoS has a warscroll, it's a pamphlet with a set of rules and stats that gives you everything you need to field your unit on the battlefield. The art of AoS is to understand how your units work together to make a cohesive army that works like a well oiled machine.

The rules and warscrolls are free and can be downloaded from the Gamesworkshops website and app.

Game balance

Whereas WFB included points totals for different units and opponents agreed on the number of points to be fielded by each army Age of Sigmar bases its size simply on the number of units in play. This leads to a situation where one army could be composed of very strong units and the other same size army of very weak units. There is no incentive in the rules to take weaker units.

There is no requirement that the number of models on each side be equal. However, if at start of play one side has a third more models than the other the smaller side may opt to play for its choice of "sudden death" victory such as:

Bonuses for player behaviour and appearance

The rules compendia have included rules (one for each "old" army with a few exceptions ) that are regarded as absurd and could be possible tongue-in-cheek humor.[1] such as:

If, during your entire hero phase, you can maintain a dignified (even arrogant) composure and not smile, smirk or laugh regardless of your opponent's antics, you may re-roll all hit rolls of 1 made for models in a Dragon Host until your next hero phase. (Dragon Host, High Elves, page 28)

and

You can re-roll any failed hit rolls when attacking with the Runefang so long as you have a bigger and more impressive moustache than your opponent. (Kurt Helborg, The Empire, page 4)

as well as bonuses for toasting to the mythical figure "the Lady", pretending to ride a horse, dancing while rolling dice and other unusual criteria.

It has been stated however, that the silly rules for the Warhammer Fantasy Battles Armies were intended as a sort of tongue-in-cheek sendoff to the Old World, as well as an incentive to get people to take a look at the newer armies they would be releasing, as it would be somewhat embarrassing to play with these rules in public.[2]

References

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Saturday, May 07, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.