The Future - And Past - of the AoS Aesthetic

[Ollie Grimwood]

I think Nagash tainting the memebers of the Stormcast is more likely than Chaos, mention has already been made of his displeasure that their souls have been denied him due to the reforging. 

The reasoning behind GW marketing Stormcast is based on Space Marines. However their  concept in the narrative is more similar  to Chaos Daemons (as are Seraphon) in that they are immortal  followers of a god and if their bodies are destroyed they are sent back to their Realm to to be rebuilt. It’s very much that Sigmar has see what Chaos has used against him and then created his own.   A never ending supply of warriors. 

[Killax]

In regards to Nagash, what I think will/should happen is that he will create a suit of armour that keeps the soul and energy of that warrior to Nagash. In essence I'm still hoping Games Workshop will create a warrior akin to World of Warcraft's Death Knights, bound to Nagash's bidding.

What this would lead to is not to have Stormcast turn to Death but to give Death a warrior who's soul cannot be obtained by Sigmar. It would also provide the warrior with necromantic powers (like Death Knights) so there is a win for such a bargain, especially if the warrior in question is in such a dire situation that he sees no other hope but to embrace Death itself (quite litterly). In essence they'd be selling their soul to the "grim reaper" early to obtain a form of immortality. 

Otherwise I agree, the way Warriors are fleshed out in Age of Sigmar really makes them all an extention of their God, like Daemons from Chaos Gods. Where the Space Marines are a product of humanity, following the Emperor who is most specifically not a god, despite the Imperial Guard woreshipping as such. In addition the reason as to why some Horus went heretical in the first place is because Horus recieved visions from Chaos/Tzeentch who showed him being woreshipped as a God and this in turn set the whole Horus Heresy in motion. 

In any case, the Age of Sigmar story line is more pure than that, simple aswell but absolutely not worse. Offcourse 40K is fleshed out way more, then again Age of Sigmar is only 3-4 years old. I believe we shouldn't compair the work of a 3+ year old to that of a 25 +year old  

[Ollie Grimwood]

I started wargaming when 40K was in it’s infancy, shortly after Rogue Trader was released and AoS at year 2 is a whole lot more detailed and fleshed our than 40K was at that point.  I’d very much agree expecting AoS to come into being with 30 years worth of detail is both a bit unreasonable and probably very impractical. 

Of course though the World that Was and all it encompassed is AoS Background as well, it wasn’t erased it all still happened as far as the narrative is concerned. The Age of Legends stuff about Sigmar, Nagash, Malkieth (or is that Malerion ?) and others is just as relevant now as it was when written.

[GammaMage]

The Lord-Relictors are basically necromancers. There's that whole thing about them constantly having Nagash whispering to them - it was already creepy and kind of scary, and then I went and read the end times Return of Nagash novel, which heavily implies that every undead creature and necromancer throughout history was being manipulated and controlled by Nagash even though he was dead at the time, which sheds a new light on the battle the Relicors are constantly fighting. And then there's the Plague Garden novel. As the plight of the Steel Souls becomes more and more dire, Morbious draws on more and more magic that the Relictors have kept secret and avoided using, until he's literally summoning the spirits of fallen Stormcast into battle. Actually, as Stormcast are basically a hybrid of paladins and einherjar, you could even make the argument that the Lord Relictors are already death knights in the vein of Warcraft - heavily armoured warriors who use necromancy but are defying the god of death by assisting the good guys.

As the Relictors hold so much power over the spirits of their chamber, all it really takes is for one of them to fail at resisting Nagash, and you could easily end up with Death Stormcast.

EDIT: As for Chaos Stormcast - just compare the Liberator and Chaos Warrior warscrolls. Chaos Liberators would just be duplicating something Chaos already has, and Chaos Warriors are pretty iconic and their designs hold up really well against the newer stuff.

[CoreCommander]

42 minutes ago, GammaMage said:

 And then there's the Plague Garden novel. As the plight of the Steel Souls becomes more and more dire, Morbious draws on more and more magic that the Relictors have kept secret and avoided using, until he's literally summoning the spirits of fallen Stormcast into battle.

I'm interested, what is the context associated with these spirits (I haven't read the last two or three books, Plague Garden included)? Aren't Stormcast spirits shot upwards in Azyr to be reforged? Aren't they spending their time being hammered by the six smiths before being re-forged again?

[GammaMage]

Most of Plague Garden takes place in Nurgle's Garden, which is part of the Realm of Chaos, and not a Mortal Realm. Stormcast who die there stay dead, but Lord-Relictors can take their spirits and store them temporarily inside themselves, and then release them once they return to one of the Mortal Realms. It does take a severe toll on them based on how many spirits and for how long they are contained for. But it also turns out that, if necessary, Lord-Relictors can do a lot more with said spirits than just contain them.

[Killax]

49 minutes ago, GammaMage said:

As the Relictors hold so much power over the spirits of their chamber, all it really takes is for one of them to fail at resisting Nagash, and you could easily end up with Death Stormcast.

EDIT: As for Chaos Stormcast - just compare the Liberator and Chaos Warrior warscrolls. Chaos Liberators would just be duplicating something Chaos already has, and Chaos Warriors are pretty iconic and their designs hold up really well against the newer stuff.

How I see it Nagash will create his own, I think that if Games Workshop wanted to make the Stormcast as open to coversions as Space Marines are they would have made several kits compatible with each other. However without doub the narrative could cover Relictors being taken over by Nagash himself aswell. 

What is very likely to occur in 2018 is that we will see Nagash move into the battle more, supplemented by his upcomming book, followed by a Deathrattle Battletome somewhere later...

In any case though I like the fact that AoS' lore continues to unfold and isn't stuck in 41.999. The same is happening in 40K but Im quite sure Age of Sigmar can speed up and down as much as the creators like to, which is another advantage of high fantasy filled with epic battles.

[chord]

2 minutes ago, Killax said:

In any case though I like the fact that AoS' lore continues to unfold and isn't stuck in 41.999. The same is happening in 40K but Im quite sure Age of Sigmar can speed up and down as much as the creators like to, which is another advantage of high fantasy filled with epic battles.

Agreed, in fact the realmgate wars took many years in the story. 

[GammaMage]

For those who don't know, the Firestorm book describes the Realmgate Wars having ended decades ago. So we have jumped forwards in time significantly.

[Menkeroth]

Which is logical, it ended in a kind of a stalemate and all the sides need time to regroup. I hope the next spiral of the war will take place in Hysh and Ulgu.

And concerning Nagash and all the stuff I do hope we won't get any undead SC, they must stay unique and Nagash already has morghasts, so all the new stuff must be more creative and interesting than the dull conversion of SC.

[shinros]

2 minutes ago, Menkeroth said:

Which is logical, it ended in a kind of a stalemate and all the sides need time to regroup. I hope the next spiral of the war will take place in Hysh and Ulgu.

And concerning Nagash and all the stuff I do hope we won't get any undead SC, they must stay unique and Nagash already has morghasts, so all the new stuff must be more creative and interesting than the dull conversion of SC.

Agreed. I am glad they are not going that route considering shadespire and the new model coming out 2018. Let's be real for a moment if they did that considering how long death players have been waiting I bet you people are not going to be happy. 

[Menkeroth]

Exactly. Nagash is way more creative and able to recruit much more interesting warriors than simply copying enemy units because they have 2 wounds.

[Kramer]

I've been reading along with this thread a bit because the topic is very fun, looking a bit back while speculating about the future, but the tone was a bit to much 'my truth is the only truth'. Happy to see that it's turning around. 

So for what it's worth, looking back I think GW shot themselves in the foot a bit with how they handled the change from WHFB to AoS. I think they did do an amazing job, I even support the choice to leave out points on release, but they didn't establish the story line enough. And even as I type I know they did offer a lot of content on a whole range of places but.... I'm not really the type of guy to seek out the Black library books when I'm not already invested in the setting. So while I read 2/3 of the End Time books and a Gotrek&Felix novel I saw no reason to read the AoS novels. 

Might not seem like a big issue but with the release of the free warscrolls it left me in the dark about the fluff... Bit of background, I played 4 armies over several editions by the time GW ended warhammer and as a result became invested enough to actively seek out more details and fluff. But with the free warscrolls, there was no need to buy army books (also didn't play anything with a released book). So I lost a major source of background info right there. Then they started releasing the handbooks and expansions which is amazing! But compared to the way they structured the Warhammer releases it's much more to the point and with less fluffy edges. Looking at the albion or lustria summer expansions, there is so more focus on the backstory there than in the Skirmish and path to glory expansions. Hell, i think there might even be more in those individual summer campaigns than in the Destruction handbook they released with the start of AoS. 

Now here's my point, looking back in the discussion in this thread I see three main arguments. 1. There is not enough backstory, 2. there is enough backstory and you can find it here and here, 3. the backstory that is there is not cool. Well 3 is personal flavour so i'm going to leave that to the side, although I have some issues with narrative choices as well. 

Argument 1 and 2 are the different sides of the same coin. I do believe that there is a vast amount of backstory released over the last 3 years, but most of it is released in such a manner that I have to be the one spending money and actively seeking it out to consume it. If you did so, you have a major advantage on me in narrative sense as the bits I have consumed, haven't motivated me enough to make that effort. 

A practical example is the narrative side of the silver tower/hammerhall. It's very cool that it offers that extra depth but it's not my type of game, so i'm not buying it for the fluff. And it's the same with the novels, the only thing that I found interesting enough to put on my to read list is city of secrets (thanks to the positive reviews on TGA) and the eight lamentations, just because it features a dwarf, elf and human battling together for a god I can remember based on old fluff. 

So back to the first paragraph, I do think it's a shame GW haven't used the narrative side more to get me into the world of AoS and for me they have dropped the ball a bit there. I'm still into AoS mind you, but because of the great streamlined rules and the quality of the models. Hoping a new release or on of those two novels will bring the place to life for me. 

[Kramer]

17 hours ago, Menkeroth said:

Exactly. Nagash is way more creative and able to recruit much more interesting warriors than simply copying enemy units because they have 2 wounds.

Well we have floating dwarfs! And the shadespire death models and the new herald of death look amazing modelwise, so i'm hopefull they will go that direction a bit. although as has been said here before, insects and depth have a very strong connection in real world older stories so it could be a great starting point. 

[Killax]

Yeah I think there is room for all of it eventually, which is what the advantage remains to be without having fleshed out everything. A point that is ignored by Warhammer Fantasy Battle fans is that the Old World was filled up, to the point where only specialist or sub-clans could furthermore keep the line interesting. This usually doesn't strike well with the fanbase either because they might have created that themselves before etc.

Change will always come with complaints, it's human. If certain players/posters do not want to look into change they get upset. By large because there is a large group of players/posters who feels they do not want to invest the same time into the hobby again. There are even a few GH2017 drama topics here and there, without doubt if we look at the results GH2017 has brought forth it remains an improvement over GH2016. The game isn't dominated by any Allegiance in particular. This isn't the same as saying every Allegiance now matters but there are objectively more useful Allegiances.

In the near future I don't expect Insects just yet though. What I do expect in the near future is Nurgle, Deathrattle and a mix of Dark Aelf Assassins with Daughters of Khaine to form what is know known as Cthulhu Aelfs. All the while I don't think they'll go that deep sea with it, much more Aelf/Daemonic/Dragon: 

[GammaMage]

I just tried order Executioners from the store, and they told me they're now web order too. Which is weird cause they're a popular ally/generic order unit. :'( Hopefully them moving DC troops to web order means new Dark Aelf stuff is coming out soon?

[stratigo]

On 10/25/2017 at 1:11 AM, Killax said:

If you don't read into the source material I am certain you can't see them as the colletion of the human realm's greatest heroes. They have distinctive personalities beyond being Stormcast. However what you seem to have forgotten to read or refused to read into is how several different armies of Stormcast excist and how based on their battles they have changed from realm to realm. As they are born anew into battle their former lives are important to them but secondary to the survival of that particular realm or secondary to the objective of that specific army.

What GW did is present warriors of order in a high fantasy setting. You do not seem to understand what this currently has brought forward. The battles and lore is created on epic scales, not that of an individual Stormcast, again purposefully. 
Age of Sigmar Stormcast do not seem like Warhammer Fantasy Empire heroes, by large because they do not come solely from that place. The prime reason why they are designed emptionless and unified is because Chaos has thrived of emotions and split armies. The prime reason as to why Chaos is such an hard foe to battle is because rage, lust, sorcery and manners of sloth directly empower the Chaos gods. The reason as to why Stormcast are largely stripped from this is so their power remains with Sigmar. In essence they are more perfect as Space Marines in battling Chaos. Unlike Space Marines these warriors cannot be swayed into following Chaos. It's what devided the Space Marines in the first place.

This results in them having personalities but nothing akin to that as Warhammer Fantasy. If they where what you hope them to be they would fail in battling Chaos like the warriors failed battling Chaos in the Warhammer Fantasy setting. If you are capable of 'turning' you will. 

If you really want to know more, look into the lore. Your working completely with assumptions.

The initial sentence shows you are unaware of the Stormcast their task and reason as to why Sigmar created them. This reason is not the same as to why the Emperor created Space Marines. The reason for Stormcast to excist is to unify realms of Order, defend them from Chaos and strike back at Chaos with a vengeance. This is not a ploy to unify human races on terra and continue to thake over the universe for the sake of humanity. This is defending the realms of Order from Chaos, Destruction and Death.

The end of Warhammer Fantasy did exactly what it was set up to do since the 6th edition, first Storm of Chaos. The prime reason as to why Chaos was all powerful is because the winds of magic came from the same place as the core of Chaos did. Magic was Chaos, Chaos was all powerful. In essence there was one nuclear plant in the Old World and the forces of Chaos had control over it. At the end Archaon decided to blow it up to show they where all powerful.

What I hope is that you look into Stormcast. I hope you understand that they are in essence "improved" Space Marines. Set out to reclaim the realms from the grip of mainly Chaos. In that same vein their are unified, unlike Chaos. They are unified and starting without much character because 1. So far only epic stories have been covered for the Stormcast and 2. It would ultimately make them susceptible to the influence of Chaos.
Unlike the Emperor on Terra, Sigmar actually is a god. Unlike the Space Marines, Stormcasts' energy upon death does not go to waste. Unlike 40K, Age of Sigmar is a high fantasy setting of epic proportions where sex, age and lusts don't really matter. What matters is what matters for the game, warfare. Afterall it's a miniatures game, not a novel. The immersion comes from the hobby not solely from books.

I and many more agree that Stormcast with human faces are more likeable and can be easier identified with. Guess what GW has been releasing the last 3 Stormcast releases?

The last thing that remains though is that I wish you'd inform yourself as well on Stormcast as you do for 40K's Space Marines. There are large differences between the two which visually arn't that clear. So in order to understand them you'd need to look into it.

Unlike Space Marines, Stormcast were initially solely created to be the extension of Sigmar's power. They are a force of Order to battle first and foremost Chaos but also Destruction and Death if the situation calls for it. 
Space Marines initially where created to unify Terra and conquer the galaxy, the difference is that Space Marines are suseptable to Chaos and initially where only designed to battle Xenos (Destruction). The same type of Death forces do not really appear in 40K. Necrons come close but have no Nagash-like figure leading them.

You're fine with stormcast and that's fine. I am not and they have not been interesting despite reading the battle tome and starting the realmgate wars (I could not continue. It wasn't exciting or compelling and it was just adequate on a technical level)

 

You do seem to not be super aware of 40k, but the actual narrative beats aren't what matters (though, for example, space marines didn't unify terra, the thunder warriors did). Stormcast are space marines in every way they space marines matter for a story. They are religious super soldiers organized into holy chambers to fight against all that is evil. They are superior to their mundane origins, but isolated from their mundane roots. They live separate from the people they protect. I will bet the "how do we, the mighty chosen, relate to fallible mortals" will be quite the common theme in stories focused on stormcast (it already shows up), just like it is for space marines.

 

Even as they flesh them out, they are still doin space marines. Ultimately, Space Marines work in the general setting of 40k, where everyone is kinda evil to lesser r greater degrees, than I think the VERY space marineesque Stormcast work in AoS where the setting is much more clear of good verse evil. Stormcast are all the good things about space marines with absolutely none of the flaws. They can't even die. It would work better if the stormcast looked and acted more like a collection of mighty heroes, than an organized lockstep military order. And this would not take anything away from the battle side of the game. The Ironjawz work fine on table top. The Khorne bloodbound work fine.

 

 

 

On 10/24/2017 at 12:10 PM, Menkeroth said:

Acknowledged.

And, by the way, it's possible GW will release minis for other chambers of the stormhosts and in this matter especially interesting look Sacrosanct and Auxiliary chambers. SC have plenty of room to expand.

3 days. Anyone want to over under?

[Menkeroth]

6 hours ago, Kramer said:

So back to the first paragraph, I do think it's a shame GW haven't used the narrative side more to get me into the world of AoS and for me they have dropped the ball a bit there. I'm still into AoS mind you, but because of the great streamlined rules and the quality of the models. Hoping a new release or on of those two novels will bring the place to life for me. 

Well, obviously it's not their problem, and you are wrong in that you think it was not enough from the start. It was. If you don't want to explore the new world, it's not its failure or concern. There was and is a book "Mighty battles in an age of unending war" which came out with the starter set and it explained everything enough to be the solid start. Now you haven an AoS Primer and "Getting started with the Age of Sigmar", not mentioning hundreds of novels and lots of other books, so it's just your subjective mood (pun intended) which justifies nothing but your own laziness. Sorry.

[Killax]

1 hour ago, stratigo said:

Stormcast are space marines in every way they space marines matter for a story. They are religious super soldiers organized into holy chambers to fight against all that is evil. They are superior to their mundane origins, but isolated from their mundane roots. They live separate from the people they protect. I will bet the "how do we, the mighty chosen, relate to fallible mortals" will be quite the common theme in stories focused on stormcast (it already shows up), just like it is for space marines.

 

Even as they flesh them out, they are still doin space marines. Ultimately, Space Marines work in the general setting of 40k, where everyone is kinda evil to lesser r greater degrees, than I think the VERY space marineesque Stormcast work in AoS where the setting is much more clear of good verse evil. Stormcast are all the good things about space marines with absolutely none of the flaws. They can't even die. It would work better if the stormcast looked and acted more like a collection of mighty heroes, than an organized lockstep military order. And this would not take anything away from the battle side of the game. The Ironjawz work fine on table top. The Khorne bloodbound work fine.

Space Marines are not beings made of energy reforged by an actual god, Sigmar. In addition Stormcast are not made of younger boys. So if someone states that Stormcast and Space Marine are the same they are ill informed. What occurs here is that you've made multiple posts that just show you don't know what Stormcasts are about and still havn't found a reason to do so before complaining about them.

Stormcasts do not have the flaws of the Space Marines because in essence they arn't the same. A Space Marine is a human upgraded and designed to the maximum limits of mankind, still mortal. Stormcasts are a product of Sigmar, handpicked from grown up heroes, picked from battles all throughout the many realms, realms not set in a sci-fi setting but high/epic fantasy setting. Once created Stormcasts act, look and think uniform, they are a direct extention of a god, Sigmar, they are immortal because they are created by an immortal being.

Your efforts in trying to dismiss the actual narrative for Stormcasts only proof one point; you do not understand the difference between a warrior in a high/epic fantasy setting versus that of heroes in a sci-fi fantasy setting. 

As an actual lesson in life, just because it looks visually the same doesn't mean it is the same. 
- Feel free to eat:

- Don't eat:

[chord]

6 minutes ago, Killax said:

 Once created they act, look and think uniform, they are a direct extention of a god, they are to some extend immortal because they are created by an immortal being.
 

I agree except with the uniform part.  As the realmgate wars opened this seemed to be the case, but as they explored the realms and got re-forged you can tell they are each developing more distinct personalities. 

But maybe I'm misunderstanding your term of uniform thought.

[Killax]

8 minutes ago, chord said:

I agree except with the uniform part.  As the realmgate wars opened this seemed to be the case, but as they explored the realms and got re-forged you can tell they are each developing more distinct personalities. 

But maybe I'm misunderstanding your term of uniform thought.

What I mend with uniform thought is that Stormcast so far have not doubted their ways in such a degree that they would choose to follow Chaos instead of Sigmar . The latter is however the case for Space Marines. Space Marines are in that sence susceptible to Chaos in such a way that their gene-seed needs to be checked upon and so do their chapters. Likewise the Inquisition was set up in order to battle Chaos influences.

So far there have been no Chaos influences within the Warrior Chambers of the Stormcast that I know of.

[CoreCommander]

1 hour ago, stratigo said:

... They can't even die...

Which makes it even harder for us when one of the  important ones dies . RIP Thostos, you'll be missed - legend forever...

[chord]

8 minutes ago, Killax said:

What I mend with uniform thought is that Stormcast so far have not doubted their ways in such a degree that they would choose to follow Chaos instead of Sigmar . The latter is however the case for Space Marines. Space Marines are in that sence susceptible to Chaos in such a way that their gene-seed needs to be checked upon and so do their chapters. Likewise the Inquisition was set up in order to battle Chaos influences.

So far there have been no Chaos influences within the Warrior Chambers of the Stormcast that I know of.

Ah yes I agree then.

The only hint we've gotten is when Archaon killed Vandus and placed his hand into the energy before it went back to Azyr. 

[Menkeroth]

30 minutes ago, chord said:

The only hint we've gotten is when Archaon killed Vandus and placed his hand into the energy before it went back to Azyr. 

Which is interesting and shame that is not yet expanded in this regard. Archaon's sword eats the souls of the fallen, Vandus's soul went to Azyr regardless, but Archaon still touched his soul and... and. It would be great if GW uses this idea to a greater degree.

[Arkiham]

I have to wonder if the people hating on stormcast as they look like space marines realise that space marines were apparently based on chaos warriors model wise.