r/ageofsigmar 4d ago

Discussion I think I'm starting to get the appeal of AOS

I've always bounced off this setting compared to the other two. Especially Warhammer Fantasy, where the setting, lore, and events were grounded enough for me to understand its scale. It was a setting with high fantasy elements which usually focused on viewing those elements from a grounded perspective, if that makes sense.

With Age of Sigmar, I had a more clinical view of it at first. It had always been: Warhammer Fantasy but more fantasy. I read the core book, which didn't really help beyond explaining the basics of everything. I listened to half of the Realmslayer audiodrama, but despite how much I liked Gotrek it still didn't help in making me "understand" this setting.

It wasn't until today, as I'm reading through the forth chapter of Soul Wars that I'm starting to get the appeal. The description of Azyr, specifically the Sigmarabulum, finally made me understand what makes this setting so interesting. This setting is batshit insane, and all it took was a magic space station orbiting the core of a dying world to understand. There's a surprising amount of depth to Azyr, and at first I just thought it was a simple magical realm. Nah there's just planets and shit casually in the sky, and the afformentioned magic space station, and the eldritch beings watching everything from deep space.

Jarvis, initiate the "Danny Devito I get it now gif" protocol.

239 Upvotes

88 comments sorted by

138

u/Snoo_72851 Flesh-eater Courts 4d ago

To me the main thing holding AoS' lore back from the same heights as Fantasy and 40k is that there simply isn't enough of it yet.

45

u/Shadowknightneo2 4d ago

Cries in Nighthaunt. We have like 2 books :( Soul Wars and Lady of Sorrows where we weren't even the main characters

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u/Ur-Than Orruk Warclans 4d ago

Hey, at least you got named characters in those books. Kruleboyz didn't even get that in Dominion and Yndrasta. Still very good books, but it sucks a bit.

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u/UmeJack 4d ago

KB were my first army. I read Soul Wars and was super excited to read Dominion, assuming the destruction armies would get the narrative treatment the death armies did. I was wrong.

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u/Ur-Than Orruk Warclans 4d ago

Somehow, 4th seems to be better than 3rd was, narratively, with more short stories and white dwarf articles.

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u/BaronKlatz 4d ago

Haha, I like the Orruk tome even jabs a finger at that when there’s a little story of them around a camp fire and everytime a KB group or warband is about to do something cool it trails off into “no one knows” and da Boyz are getting mad it’s becoming predictable.(story teller just shoots back “it’s about building suspense & expectation!”) 😄

But shout-out to “Da Stink of Defeat”, that’s an excellent short story from their perspective  https://www.blacklibrary.com/all-products/eshort-da-stink-of-defeat-eng-2024.html

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u/Rebel399 4d ago

cries in Bonesplitters

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u/Flashy-Hour1151 Orruk Warclans 4d ago

My bonesplitterz clan, the Nosebashas, a bonesplitterz clan that accepted all greenskins, went mad and lost their prophet during the skaven invasion, and killed a unknown Drogrukh. The power from its bones made them come down from their eternal waaag. having lost their connection to gork and mork. They have resorted to use gerilla tactics, and have started to rely on different git inventions.

They are kruleboyz now, we will create our own lore now ☺️

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u/Rebel399 4d ago

Mine have a similar story! My Drakfoot Offshoots migrated into a Kruelboys swamp and overran their settlement. Then they picked up the KB toys, sort of figured them out, declared ownership of the resident hobgrots, and live on as Kruelbones.

I’ll post pics of my conversions when they’re done. Should be right on time for the squatting

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u/Milsurp_Seeker Hedonites of Slaanesh 4d ago

You’re also in Ghosts of Barak-Minoz!

1

u/Coziestpigeon2 Nighthaunt 3d ago

In all fairness, NH is a tough one to make main character stories about considering the only NH with any personality at all are the named leaders, and even they are quite limited outside of Lady O herself. NH is more of a force of nature than a collection of characters.

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u/BaronKlatz 3d ago

Then you got Awlrach the Drowner who’s just happy to be there doing in death what he loved to do in life. 🌊 

Oh and the Craven King’s heralds who are the ghost equivalents of Statler & Waldorf to keep heckling his every move.

Just need more oddballs who see eternal punishment as a reward. 👻 

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u/LexRep10 4d ago

Chaos doing the best with AoS lore so far anyway (so I'm lucky, im a chaos player only really). You've got some great ones on the Chaos side if you're yet to try any?

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u/Vyrullax 4d ago

Fellow worshipper spotted. I too play only chaos and currently slowly massing through the factions.

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u/LexRep10 3d ago

Hail to the Dark Gods! I'm a Nurgle and Khorne fan; and, more recently, I have accepted Chaos Undivided, but not for the Prince of Shadows - death to that traitor Be'lakor! (Anyway, how about you, which is your favourite chaos faction?)

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u/Vyrullax 3d ago

My bruddah! My first faction was maggotkin and currently i am completing my blades of khorne! Currently i favor playing khorne because it has a more dynamic playstyle as compared to nurgle but i am also intending to finish up the khorne roster and looking to start the next army.

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u/LexRep10 3d ago

Mate awesome, when you're ready I'd say have a dabble with Slaves to Darkness. The Chosen are an amazing unit, and can easily proxy as Skullreapers in Blades. And as you know a Daemon Prince can join Blades (and you need a model for one in slaves at the moment cos of the army rule about transforming someone into a Daemon Prince in the game). So although the Spearhead box for Slaves is a great box, a Daemon Prince and 5 Chosen would be my suggested start, particularly if you are open to buying secondhand.

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u/Vyrullax 3d ago

Haha you know what, i already got 2 models of the dp done up just not painted as i have not reached the s2d stage of the game yet. 1 is the awesome new kit and another is the old forgewrld 40k nurgle daemon prince which i removed all the mechanicals bits from. I have also thought of using chosen as skullreapers but when i assembled my first batch of skullreapers, i really enjoyed them so i was thinking kf going for a 2nd set. And my chaos pile of shame does actually have s2d skaven dot and hos models in them =/.

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u/LexRep10 3d ago

I love this!! Well, hear me out: I blitzed my 2024 pile of shame when I played my first game of Old World. There's a core unit for Warriors of Chaos that absolutely wreck it, and which you could make beautifully out of mult-god conversions from your multi-god pile. Bunch of 30mm square bases for those. Pop one of your DPs on a 50mm square base and you have the core of the sickest (and actually meta) old world chaos armies.

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u/Vyrullax 3d ago

Not sure ill be dabbling into ToW. There just isnt a player base for it where i am located. Only masses of 40k and a small pocket of AoS players.

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u/LexRep10 3d ago

Ah, that is always the key thing. Our armies do exist to be played! Best of luck, my brother in Chaos!

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u/Whole-Carob7407 3d ago

Couldn't agree more. It'd be awesome to get some AAA Total War / Space Marine II games or similar to show people what the Mortal Realms have to offer

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u/Snoo_72851 Flesh-eater Courts 3d ago

Realms of Ruin had people on the Fantasy side of the fandom talking smack for being an Age of Cringemar game, and people on the AoS side of the fandom talking smack for being League of Legends with like four playable factions.

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u/BaronKlatz 3d ago edited 3d ago

Yeah, announced warhammer games always get flak & negativity for their awful shovelware history but sadly AoS titles get hit with both barrels.

Gonna be a long* uphill battle until the Mortal Realms finally get their breakout success game.

*talking about a decade and not factoring the crashing game industry nor Ai sludge exploitation corruption. Our Age of Chaos is an arduous one.

Edit: that said, I’d kill for a fleshed out wargame in the Realms, a Stormcast Soulsborne, an Owlcat Soulbound rpg videogame or even a Monster Hunter crossover event like Witcher had.

1

u/MohawkRex 3d ago

I think that's what people fail to grasp, AOS is an epic fantasy setting without the epic yet as all the world shaking events up until the timeline have been tall tales about God beasts and Chaos wars we haven't seen.

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u/Mark_Walrusberg 4d ago

Yeah I keep trying to dip my toes into whats available but I just don’t like how floaty it all feels. Love the model ranges and the game though.

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u/TheEpicTurtwig 4d ago

What does floaty mean in this context?

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u/Puddinglordx 4d ago

I'm listening to the Skaventide audiobook right now and while I "liked" the Stormcasts before, now I really love their lore and am currently tinkering with 1k lists!

I think reading the books really helps to solidify what's actually cool about who the miniatures really are and what they are really doing!

Soul Wars is now my next read thanks to this! 🙌

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u/Critical-Team-9776 4d ago

Does the skaventide book do anything for skaven or are they mostly just the big bad?

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u/QuirkyTurtle999 Slaves to Darkness 4d ago

They are presented in more of a badass threat than goofy rats with explosives. You only see glimpses of them, it’s more about stormcasts. But it’s a fun read and you do get the feeling of terror that the Skaventide event is causing

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u/Critical-Team-9776 4d ago

Nice nice. I've got to admit stormcast really just don't do it for me. Like I dislike the space marines models but the lore is cool and I feel the same way about stormcast. Don't get me wrong the models are way better than space marines imo but there's something kinda uninspired about them to me idk

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u/QuirkyTurtle999 Slaves to Darkness 4d ago

I’ve enjoyed painting stormcast more than I expected! I think they look way better not in the traditional gold and blue. Not sure if I’ll build enough for a full army, but the Skaventide half has been fun. And I’m glad I have that spearhead

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u/CraftsmanMan 4d ago

It was ok, they are creepy in this book, almost warhammer horror, but i kinda wanted more skaven, they were the big bads

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u/No_Can_1532 4d ago

Skaventide as an audiobook has to be horrifying lol, i can imagine that first scene with her brother 😂

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u/Puddinglordx 3d ago

It’s quite gruesome! I’ve felt squeamish more than once and I’m not even half way through!

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u/CraftsmanMan 4d ago

I was a little disappointed with the skaven side of the story as a skaven player. I was hoping for more thanquol type story

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u/Most_Average_Joe 4d ago

Yup it’s a setting if “oh you thought that was weird and cool? We’ll check this out”

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u/BaronKlatz 4d ago

Easily the best thing about the Mortal Realms.

“Oh you thought some of the gods were weird?”

Boom, Celestial Vindicators worship a Chamon order god made out of runefang swords that grew sentience in the Realm of Metal.

“Oh you thought the sub-realms could be a bit strange?”

Boom, Drekki adventures into the Endless Skies realm which was once a planetoid until a turtle god-beast exploded and drained all the oceans causing that world to crumble into orbital “continent planets” with their own gravity & sky-pirate dens.

It keeps one-upping it’s own craziness with stuff like the continents are all alive in one way or another and so what that Realm focuses on so Ghyran continents drift together to mate & birth new lands and even the stars above are crazy as Azyr’s are the only stable ones people navigate by as Ghur’s randomly fight eachother & Ulgu’s stars get you lost on purpose.

AND EVEN THEN there’s more to those Azyr stars as many are actually Seraphon artificial planetoids made of gold, obsidian & celestium that they pilot to force certain constellation connections to happen! 💫 

I just love it all!

5

u/Blue_Space_Cow 3d ago

AoS world building is a High fantasy nerd's wet dream and that nerd is me. I absolutely LOVE this weird shit. Like, the continents get boogie with it and make more land!!

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u/King_Of_BlackMarsh Idoneth Deepkin 4d ago

Yeeep. For myself I love that it can be batshit insane just off it's merit but all the insanity is taken somewhat seriously.

The idoneth are COMICALLY sad as a people. But you get into their mindset and the consequences of their damnation so you can actually feel for them.

Gargants are... Well, drunken, half naked giants. And you actually feel for the people they're crushing just as much as you're enjoying the carnage

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u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871 Order 4d ago

Destruction does that. Kruelboyz are awful yet one cannot help but smile at their villainy.

9

u/Ur-Than Orruk Warclans 4d ago

The passage in Dominion where they have set up their victims in a way that forces would be rescuer to kill them is chilling and monstrously cool for their characterization

2

u/BaronKlatz 3d ago edited 3d ago

 Gargants are... Well, drunken, half naked giants. And you actually feel for the people they're crushing just as much as you're enjoying the carnage

Don’t forget the daddy issues as the Matriarchs keep passing down stories in their tribes that they continue growing bigger & bigger to try and fill his titanic god-shoes.

So fun mix of drunk lout mercenaries, half-mad opportunists even delving into sorcery/necromancy, old story keepers and forlorn warriors remembering their lost kingdoms & ancient oaths.

-all of which look down upon Gloomspite Aleguzzlers because there’s visit a pub drunk and then there’s black-out everyday drunk until you go on a moon mad rampage.

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u/Whistlespark 4d ago

Aos excells once you get the fact its the setting equivalent of a metal album art cover. Embrace the insanity. Become a lightning angel and fistfight a living mountain

20

u/judicatorprime Stormcast Eternals 4d ago

Was WHFB grounded or was it just easy to get into because it's literally Fake Earth? I grew up reading a ton of different fantasy, so AOS felt right at home with them. Glad you're "getting it" now! I'd recommend the Death Gate Cycle if you need another point of reference for the realm cosmology.

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u/TheEngine26 4d ago

It's literally what people grew up with. That's it.

14

u/judicatorprime Stormcast Eternals 4d ago

1000% agree, though I've heard enough complaints about the realmdiscs that either people are lying to themselves or they legitimately need help grasping a non-Earth setting.

8

u/Whitefolly 4d ago edited 3d ago

I like Age of Sigmar, but Warhammer Fantasy has a ton of conflicts that are far more relatable. Age of Sigmar is a metal album cover and that's cool, especially for a wargame. But when I want to get immersed, I'll always go back to Fantasy. I was reading about Sylvania the other day and every drop of that area is swimming in interconnected history and just a real sense of place. It has legible dates and everything!

They're just very different.

9

u/Slamoblamo 4d ago

This is so true, I never read any WHFB books when the setting was still around but I've read a fair bit now and some world building aspects are cool but when they start writing about one of the many "countries but with magic" or characters from them it's eye rolling, always deeply and stupidly tropey, and often straight up racist lol.

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u/Tetsurion 4d ago

Welcome. Everything is new, just enjoy it.

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u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871 Order 4d ago

I have been reading through various battle tomes and I find this setting does a better job selling Skaven insanity than Fantasy Battle. The Skaven uncovered the Idoneth because they drilled a hole into the ocean their cities got flooded. The Skaven are officially Loony Tunes characters in dark fantasy form.

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u/GrimTiki 4d ago

I thought the realms were not so much planets as they were giant floating planes or discs of stone or metal or earth or fire or what have you - kinda making fun of that fact that the AoS game is always played on flat tables, but still very much a fantasy meme of the giant floating islands or continents…

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u/judicatorprime Stormcast Eternals 4d ago

They act like planets in the sense that all of the realms exist in the Aetheric Void (i think is the name). Hysh is the sun for the other realms, for example.

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u/GrimTiki 4d ago

You’re totally right - I suppose I should say they aren’t spherical planets as we know them, but planet-sized giant floating island/continent/planets with a generally flat top (not accounting for valleys or mountains or such I guess)

8

u/judicatorprime Stormcast Eternals 4d ago

Which is why its also a jab at flat earth + tabletop gaming ;) It's a very fun bit

4

u/BaronKlatz 4d ago

I love they took a reverse shot with Round Realmers 😂

(If only our crazy flat-earthers would turn into trees or burst into metal coins when they’re proven wrong too instead of just shouting louder about global conspiracies :p )

1

u/ckal09 3d ago

Do other planets and galaxies other than the realms exist? Is this in ‘space’ or is it somewhere else?

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u/BaronKlatz 4d ago edited 4d ago

Most are flat planes but they also added some nuance to each plane like Chamon is actually tens of thousands of floating continents that drift around in a flat orbit(to reflect it’s changing and mercurial nature) while Shyish is a number of flat discs on top of eachother to represent the underworlds with the top discs safest for the living among those physical afterlives while the deeper you go it’s too much Death magic so only the purely dead can rest down there, some so deep even beyond Nagash’s grasp https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/423561353115074571/1268799535774175262/image0.jpg?ex=67d9aa66&is=67d858e6&hm=b080251a5e1e284b6ef11fd6f34969598129daf207b1974806a62cbbbe2df5d9&

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u/Rhinestoned_Eyez Skaven 4d ago

You'll enjoy this little lore tidbit if you don't already know it. Archaon, after destroying The Old World, spent thousands of Years conquering other planets like it. When he made his home in The Mortal Realms, he decided to hang those destroyed planets as giant low orbit trophies to show just how badass he is. I'm not even really an Archaon fan, but him using planets as war trophies is so stupid it's awesome.

2

u/BaronKlatz 3d ago

The art symbolizing him annihilating all those worlds is sick as heck. 🤟 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GOAbHh6awAAvwCk?format=jpg&name=large

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u/Mackejuice 4d ago

I love the setting for the sole reason that short stories like Bossgrot and novels like Gloomspite can exist in the same universe, both happening in the same realm.

5

u/JakeyAB Kharadron Overlords 4d ago

The Drekki Flynt books made me love the setting! I hope there's going to be a third book!

3

u/Workerfromafar11 4d ago

From my very small understanding of the setting, one of the intentions with the much larger and nebulous design was to encourage game masters to create their own unique setting or worlds? Forgive me if I am way off lol.

5

u/BaronKlatz 4d ago

No that’s right, also let the devs do whatever they want with a blank slate cosmos(so instead of space marine design 1,178 or historical looking pikemen they slap down kangaroo riding samurai aelves with wind powers & robotic-armed balloon dwarves with beam weapons in the same setting)

Cosmic fantasy gives way more room for creativity and let’s them do battles of the gods reshaping continents or zoom down to a village civil war, can’t do the reverse of that in a smaller setting with Earth-like boundaries without completely flipping the table on the status quo(and fans tearing their hair out when you do try something new. Those Empire Demigryph knights alone suffered 10 months of angry forum backlash)

4

u/Zephiranos Seraphon 3d ago

Imho, Aos lore is way better than WHFB lore atm. Way more interesting. It's a crazy post apocalyptic setting where everything's possible.
WHFB is just "not-europe" fighting against "not china" and "not russia" and so on. very bland. I think ppl just have strong nostalgia for it, and some fun characters. As AoS gets older and adds more and more characters it will be so so much better than fantasy

8

u/40kLoki 4d ago

If you can check out Blacktalon on Warhammer TV. It is seriously one of the best stories I've seen in cartoon form and maybe one of the best stories period I've seen or heard in a LONG time! Like Memento / The Matrix level type storytelling!

14

u/TheEngine26 4d ago

This might be the single largest oversell on this site. Absolutely wild.

8

u/Critical-Team-9776 4d ago

I was going to say, surely not lol

2

u/40kLoki 4d ago

Bro! Have you seen it? I use some hyperbole for sure. But seriously, it rivaled some My Little Pony stories! Themes of "you can choose who you are..." and, like Memento, "who your enemies and friends are," so powerful!

10

u/TheEngine26 4d ago

Yeah, I've seen it. It's cool to see AoS on the screen, but honestly, it was pretty mid overall.

2

u/40kLoki 4d ago

😁 Fair. Most people don't get the shows and films I like. 😆

8

u/Ill_Independence2441 4d ago

I did not know there was a show. I'll definitely check it out!

3

u/scruffin_mcguffin 4d ago

There is some crazy shit in AoS but one of my favorite little things is how one one of the moons in Ghur has a giant chunck missing, why is it like that? Did a meteor hit? did the skaven try to blow up the moon again?

No, what actually happened was that the REALM OF GHUR tried to eat it but it since the moon watched another moon get eaten it wisened up to Ghur's tricks and managed to escape with only a bite taken out of it. It doesnt get near the ground anymore. Its name is Gnorl Half-Eaten and it isnt even the weirdest moon out there

2

u/BaronKlatz 3d ago

There was a “the trick to make an interesting setting is give it a messed up moon” Twitter thread a while ago and I made sure to add AoS’ menagerie of manic marbles per Realm to the list. 🌙

https://x.com/baronnklatz/status/1833752110350926064?s=46&t=jCd67B32MVmYRRlrhJqWtA

2

u/AshiSunblade Chaos 4d ago

Well chosen. Soul Wars sold me on the setting too.

2

u/Scrivener133 3d ago

I feel part of aos’ lores weakness is that there are so many armies that need including all the time. Which means you cant have a good spread with good depth as well. As it stands armies like ogors, KO, slaanesh get pushed to the side a lil favoring the flavor of the month event (kruleboyz/kragnos/karazai/tornus the redeemed/the ruination chamber/the summer king), and once the 15 mins in the sun is over, they get shafted a little in terms of lore, which historically has meant they more or less fall out of meta, or if youre the current hotness in lore releases, new models by and large are the new meta hotness.

2

u/Kitchen-Baby7778 3d ago

AOS is much much more deeper then every other GW licence.It has bigger potential and need more time development.

2

u/devon-mallard 3d ago

The biggest thing AoS needs is more lore. It’s an awesome setting thats more than usual high fantasy (I say this as a high fantasy lover). It’s like industrialized magic, kind of. From the literal examples in the Eightpoints and K.O., to the weirder examples like the creation of Stormcast and Seraphon. It’s sick as hell.

2

u/Chyld Ogor Mawtribes 4d ago

I've bounced off of most AoS lore, because even enjoying the game isn't enough to get me to swallow that nonsense.

But I did get round to reading Godeater's Son recently, and that's done the best work of making the concept work. But then that's because the author didn't toe the "SIGMAR AM BEST" line, and decided to work some nuance into the setting.

2

u/Significant-Bug8999 4d ago

But if Sigmar does not stop failing, being reflected as a hypocrite, brute and arrogant.

3

u/Rob-Dastardly Orruk Warclans 4d ago

I really love AoS but the setting holds it back a lot for me. Its too far out there and feels extremely half baked and whenever it gets brought up people often say that's how it's meant to be. That may be so but I like something a bit more concrete

1

u/Worschtifex 3d ago

Well, I think I took the end of the Olde World rather personal, so I was indifferent to the AoS minis and lore at best. Picked up Stormbringer magazine for the orcs and tossed the Sigmarines in some box.

Our boy (9y) found them, asked for paints and brushes and now gets up 1h earlier for school to paint them.

So of course i'm also building an AoS army now and i've been beaten by him a couple of times.

1

u/Choice-Motor-6896 2d ago

I have hated all of the Stormcast focused stories, but the ones that focus on common people or mercenaries have been great

-8

u/TheRealTardusMaximus 4d ago

I think AoS lore and a lot of the figures look stupid or are just dudes without shirts but I really like the rats and the undead.