The Future - And Past - of the AoS Aesthetic

[stratigo]

the free people are the most important faction in AoS. They're actually people with history and culture.

 

The problem that plagued early AoS was that it was all muscley manly men fighting big wars against other muscley manly men. Where do these people come from? What's their culture? Why do they fight? What do they eat? Who arms them? Where are their families?

 

The 'bad' guys can get away with being a faceless horde representing destruction of civilization for a while (and khorne, of all the chaos forces, makes the best faceless horde. Tzeentch and slaanesh are both subversive as opposed to outright destructive, and there wasn't anything to subvert in the beginning), though I'd like them to be expanded, but the stormcast were just 100 percent soulless and dull. They don't even get to have flaws. Man they can't even die. They are great heroes from cultures we never see, and so don't care about, chosen for a noble act we'll never see, robbed of visual distinctiveness, and for extra lulz they eventually lose personality traits too. Ultimately the most important thing any stormcast will ever do, narratively, is the act they take that makes them worthy of being a stormcast. The act of heroism that a fallible human (or other) takes against insurmountable odds with no hope for eternal life. And we won't get to see that. What we get is, essentially, space marines without the flaws that 40k engenders in its factions

 

I think Stormcast failed as an introduction race on all levels for most people. And I know that will start a whole tizzy with people here, but the early response to AoS was WEAK. It was not a success in it's first attempt (which may be a reason that a bunch of references to the old world started creeping in later).

 

And then Kharadrons came out and suddenly there was an interesting race with a unique culture, and a people that exist beyond looking for the next fight. The ray of hope. And then they started to expand out the actual cultures of the people in the realms with books like city of secrets (thankfully getting away from sigmar's version of bolter ******). The people the stormcast fight for, the people the stormcast come from, and the only reason to care about the stormcast. It's lame to have great defenders of humanity fighting to reclaim the worlds from the grips of chaos when we never see any humans to be defended. Now I can care if the stormcast win a fight, not because it means anything to the stormcast, since they all respawn anyways and they don't need personality to do their singular purpose in the universe, but because if they lose, that chaos horde sacks anvilguard, and anvilguard does have people to care about.

 

Also, I mean, they gave sigmar points, and I know literally 99 percent of everyone who plays it in my community didn't care until they could throw together a point costed army. But my AoS community is really competitive. 

 

 

EDIT: Now I would love to see a free peoples that isn't just "Well we have all these rennaissance german models, so I guess that's what all sigmar humans look like". But, being realistic, I doubt they'll ever be anything else. I might start using my war of the ring easterlings as free people in an order army

[chord]

Fake news!  AoS was doing well prior to points.

Additionally in the first novel it opens with humans in the realm. The stormcast get discussed in terms of where they came from, their concerns when they realize coming back to life has consequences, etc   I would recommend reading the novels

[DynamicCalories]

I think the kickback against the 'faceless' nature of the Stormcast is kind of interesting. The fact you don't know the background and culture and heroism of their prior lives is both a great piece of subversive world building (where the supreme force of Order is ostensibly a state fascist that commands armies of what are in many circumstances barely more than faceless, mindless automatons) and also a great chance for you to self-insert your own fiction which is a huge part of the AoS mentality: make it yours.

Asking for to-the-mile-maps in an infinite world, and more named characters and backgrounds and culture is asking GW to fill in the voids they have left for you to create. The whole word is a sketch, a framework, an invitation to join in their creative vision. You can't be told "no, that doesn't exist in AoS" like you can in 40k, because the scale is untenable to anyone but the gods (which as someone pointed out earlier, are a great stand in for the player).

Nothing stops you from pulling from threads of old world fiction to create cities and battles and factions within the Mortal Realms. There's nothing to stop the Bright and Very Marketable Stormcast Good Boys (who are also secretly fascists) co-existing alongside very real flesh and blood Stormcast who exists on the dark underside of an infinite realm, who have not lost their personalities and memories because they are too far from Sigmar's light, or enduring horrors that crystallise their personalities that then cannot be wiped during the reforging process. 

In my mind, the Blanchian darkness of AoS28 exists in the exact same infinite universe that contains the delightfully OTT Kharadron Overlords, because there's nothing in the fiction to suggest that it isn't possible, and nothing to suggest that the bright and bold Overlords won't one day find themselves up against the horrific Aelves of the Black Sloth Hell - except for GW maybe making endless maps that try and draw borders on the universe.

I understand that not playing in a well defined universe can be frustrating because the onus is on the player and the mechanics of rules and what is possible can cause issues, but I'd argue it vastly increases the amount of interesting things you can do if you want to. Nothing is out of bounds. The more GW fill in the blanks, the less permissive it becomes. There's also nothing to stop you from creating an area of one of the realms that is surrounded by impenetrable chaotic mists that is an exact replica of The World That Was - except maybe GW not wanting to endlessly support you buying old models. There's nothing to stop an entire procession of Bretonnian knights pour out of a realm gate and crash into a befuddled  mess of Orruks... except perhaps some rules that are not optimum (that GW also encourage you messing around with at every opportunity).

A final caveat here: I understand people who are annoyed, frustrated, or disappointed in GW's handling of The World That Was - and the above isn't meant as a criticism at all. I really think that you can argue for the inclusion of the entire WHFB range in any aspect of the Mortal Realms, as it supports endless justifications. I understand also that the hobby scene doesn't particularly make it easy to keep on buying that old stuff, but that's part of the way the world works I guess.

Ultimately there is nothing to stop the very real struggles of small fictional cities coexisitng within the infinite and inexplicable mortal realms. It's also worth noting that when you feel the infinite nature of the realms means nothing matters, you could pretty much say that about our own lives, yet we're still here living and telling stories that matter to us.

As an aside: I'd really recommend the Crate and Crowbar's Minatures Monthly podcast to see how the setting of AoS invites really interesting stories to be crafted through even successive casual games. 

[Ollie Grimwood]

The “baddies” aren’t faceless in AoS that’s the beauty, they have a culture, desires and ambitions as well. Call of Archaon did this beautifully for Chaos and Fury of Gork did it for Ironjawz. 

That’s the real thing I don’t want to see backslide,  and we end up back with lots of stuff about humans and everything else being cardboard cut out.  Of course that isn’t necessarily a new idea and quite reminiscent of first Ed WFRP where there was a bit more interaction between the races other than just fighting.  

I still maintain a lot of the crtiasism of the AoS narrative to be unfair as it asks it to provide things WFB never did or by those that seem to want know the details without actually reading the new narrative. 

[Menkeroth]

8 hours ago, BobbyB said:

They remind me of this map of the realm of chaos which I always loved.

Exactly! I love it too. This was the map from the 6th, I think, Chaos Demons codex in 40k? I've forgotten it, but anyway it's AoS before AoS!  very beautiful map, full of character. This is fantasy incarnate, and we have enough pseudo-historical maps already.

And all in all it's a high fantasy setting, it does not need all those fancy details and small humans, it is not about them and has different rules. Dull and uninspiring humans are not needed in an epic universe with lots of other races and species, there were too many in the past. Small humans produce weapons for the great guys to wield them anyway.

[stratigo]

6 hours ago, chord said:

Fake news!  AoS was doing well prior to points.

Additionally in the first novel it opens with humans in the realm. The stormcast get discussed in terms of where they came from, their concerns when they realize coming back to life has consequences, etc   I would recommend reading the novels

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2016/03/gw-the-age-of-sigmar-problem.html

 

https://spikeybits.com/2016/04/dead-on-arrival-the-real-truth-behind-age-of-sigmar.html

 

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2016/09/20/age-of-sigmar-actually-worth-your-time/

 

There's dozens of articles about the problems with early AoS

I am not just making this stuff up. GW did not get the response it wanted from Age of Sigmar, according to GW itself. The early sales for age of sigmar did NOT live up to where GW wanted them to be. It's simply the truth. I am hoping more than a year later that that trend has reversed. The game certainly has picked up in my community.

 

Also, uh, I hope you are being facetious with that fake news stuff. I'd hate to think anyone uses that term seriously.

 

4 hours ago, Ollie Grimwood said:

The “baddies” aren’t faceless in AoS that’s the beauty, they have a culture, desires and ambitions as well. Call of Archaon did this beautifully for Chaos and Fury of Gork did it for Ironjawz. 

That’s the real thing I don’t want to see backslide,  and we end up back with lots of stuff about humans and everything else being cardboard cut out.  Of course that isn’t necessarily a new idea and quite reminiscent of first Ed WFRP where there was a bit more interaction between the races other than just fighting.  

I still maintain a lot of the crtiasism of the AoS narrative to be unfair as it asks it to provide things WFB never did or by those that seem to want know the details without actually reading the new narrative. 

Orcs are pretty faceless by the nature of being orcs. They are, as their faction puts it, destruction. Every orc wants pretty much the same thing, gordrak is functionally interchangeable from unnamed megaboss number 5000000 except he is even meaner and bigger. They make great antagonists, but it'd be majorly boring to follow their stories for long, because it's universal (although you could write a great subversive piece following a band of orcs as they comically kill, bash, and maim their way through civilization. It's not a trick you can pull more than a couple times though). They are the savage destroyers of civilizations, the barbarians on the doorstep that most works of fantasy have in the background. Sadly they are also overshadowed entirely by chaos as the enemies of the world and so will probably never get the time in the spotlight to be the big baddies their tropes desperately want them to be, and that's a shame because that would be fairly interesting. Chaos sells more, and so chaos gets the spotlight ever more though, only a few bones thrown to the orcs.

 

Chaos has more meat as chaos isn't purely a destructive entity, though Khorne usually is, which is why khorne's forces made the first stand off against the equally faceless and war obsessed Stormcast. Chaos societies can and do have cultures, beliefs, styles distinct from one an other. I'd, honestly, love for AoS to push a sort of cities of chaos series to go next to a cities of order. Right now there isn't much beyond piles of warriors and infrastructure for piles of warriors in Chaos' fluff. But I'd love to see detailed stories and descriptions of byzantine crystal palaces where the nobility spend their time in ever increasingly convoluted plots against each other while the masses toil beneath them.

 

Khorne, for me, as a society, just doesn't seem to work, unless they, like orcs, sprout from the ground (I'm not sure that's a thing in AoS. WHFB waffled on that subject as it were. But there don't seem to be orc women). Do the crazy cannibal men stop murder killing long enough to nurture a family? What do they eat? I mean other than each other. How do they coalesce into endless hordes if they spend 99.9 percent of their time murdering and fighting, often each other? I can't imagine it's easy to keep a population up like that.

[chord]

38 minutes ago, stratigo said:

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2016/03/gw-the-age-of-sigmar-problem.html

 

https://spikeybits.com/2016/04/dead-on-arrival-the-real-truth-behind-age-of-sigmar.html

 

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2016/09/20/age-of-sigmar-actually-worth-your-time/

 

There's dozens of articles about the problems with early AoS

I am not just making this stuff up. GW did not get the response it wanted from Age of Sigmar, according to GW itself. The early sales for age of sigmar did NOT live up to where GW wanted them to be. It's simply the truth. I am hoping more than a year later that that trend has reversed. The game certainly has picked up in my community.

 

Also, uh, I hope you are being facetious with that fake news stuff. I'd hate to think anyone uses that term seriously.

 

Orcs are pretty faceless by the nature of being orcs. They are, as their faction puts it, destruction. Every orc wants pretty much the same thing, gordrak is functionally interchangeable from unnamed megaboss number 5000000 except he is even meaner and bigger. They make great antagonists, but it'd be majorly boring to follow their stories for long, because it's universal (although you could write a great subversive piece following a band of orcs as they comically kill, bash, and maim their way through civilization. It's not a trick you can pull more than a couple times though). They are the savage destroyers of civilizations, the barbarians on the doorstep that most works of fantasy have in the background. Sadly they are also overshadowed entirely by chaos as the enemies of the world and so will probably never get the time in the spotlight to be the big baddies their tropes desperately want them to be, and that's a shame because that would be fairly interesting. Chaos sells more, and so chaos gets the spotlight ever more though, only a few bones thrown to the orcs.

 

Chaos has more meat as chaos isn't purely a destructive entity, though Khorne usually is, which is why khorne's forces made the first stand off against the equally faceless and war obsessed Stormcast. Chaos societies can and do have cultures, beliefs, styles distinct from one an other. I'd, honestly, love for AoS to push a sort of cities of chaos series to go next to a cities of order. Right now there isn't much beyond piles of warriors and infrastructure for piles of warriors in Chaos' fluff. But I'd love to see detailed stories and descriptions of byzantine crystal palaces where the nobility spend their time in ever increasingly convoluted plots against each other while the masses toil beneath them.

 

Khorne, for me, as a society, just doesn't seem to work, unless they, like orcs, sprout from the ground (I'm not sure that's a thing in AoS. WHFB waffled on that subject as it were. But there don't seem to be orc women). Do the crazy cannibal men stop murder killing long enough to nurture a family? What do they eat? I mean other than each other. How do they coalesce into endless hordes if they spend 99.9 percent of their time murdering and fighting, often each other? I can't imagine it's easy to keep a population up like that.

Posting blog posts proves nothing because they are opinion pieces and they are blog posts and podcasts who liked it.

you say AoS did not do well as a fact but you show no Facts to prove it. If you have GW's internal sales numbers by all means post them, otherwise you are just posting conjecture

[stratigo]

33 minutes ago, xking said:

Stormcast are not "obsessed" with war.

The kinda are. There are no stormcast bakers or cobblers or farmers. They are warriors. They exist to fight.

 

1 minute ago, chord said:

Posting blog posts proves nothing bad they are opinion pieces and they are blog posts and podcasts who liked it.

you say AoS did not do well as a fact but you show no Facts to prove it. If you have GW's internal sales numbers by all means post them, otherwise you are just posting conjecture

Sticking your fingers in your ears and going "NANANANANANANA" doesn't change reality. People examined GW's stocks, and GW's words, and GW's actions. It speaks to a rough year in 2015.

 

Like, does AoS have to release to universal acclaim, heralded by heavenly trumpets, with free expertly painted models handed out by actual models for you to feel validated? It didn't. It had a rough start. The game recovered, and has gotten stronger in gameplay, narrative, and artistry. Twas not the immaculate gameception.

[chord]

18 minutes ago, stratigo said:

The kinda are. There are no stormcast bakers or cobblers or farmers. They are warriors. They exist to fight.

 

Sticking your fingers in your ears and going "NANANANANANANA" doesn't change reality. People examined GW's stocks, and GW's words, and GW's actions. It speaks to a rough year in 2015.

 

Like, does AoS have to release to universal acclaim, heralded by heavenly trumpets, with free expertly painted models handed out by actual models for you to feel validated? It didn't. It had a rough start. The game recovered, and has gotten stronger in gameplay, narrative, and artistry. Twas not the immaculate gameception.

Again you show no proof. 

[Menkeroth]

30 minutes ago, stratigo said:

Sticking your fingers in your ears and going "NANANANANANANA" doesn't change reality. People examined GW's stocks, and GW's words, and GW's actions. It speaks to a rough year in 2015.

 

Aye,reality does not change, sure, but it is different from yours. In fact the starter set was sold so fast it is sold like eggs even now, and, for instance, in Russia and CIS people have got their piece of spoils only many-many months later, because shops could not order them due to being sold already, so you are posting nonsense. Which does not surprise me.

[Killax]

The succes really also is different depending on which demographic one wants to discuss. Initially it was a huge succes with the younger audience. It was less of a large succes for the 18+ audience up until Generals Handbook. All the while, just as mentioned, the sales continued well enough. We have proof of this if you want to look at the salesnumbers of Age of Sigmar since it's start.

Artciles from Bell of Lost Souls, other personal feelings like burning your Fantasy army don't reflect the market, they reflect the hardcore tournament gamer, which actually is the smallest piece of GW's market but the one who screams and cries the loudest. Most players playing Warhammer of any kind don't even thing about what is good or bad, they are looking for a good time with good miniatures. Age of Sigmar's line has been full of fantastic miniatures, which sell well.

Age of Sigmar's Factions are all war obsessed, obsessed isn't even the right word here. They are war bound, posessed, because this is what the game emulates. There really is no reason to flesh out any bakers or cobblers because we cannot play "farmville" with GW's Age of Sigmar range.

[Menkeroth]

22 minutes ago, Killax said:

The succes really also is different depending on which demographic one wants to discuss. Initially it was a huge succes with the younger audience. It was less of a large succes for the 18+ audience up until Generals Handbook. All the while, just as mentioned, the sales continued well enough. We have proof of this if you want to look at the salesnumbers of Age of Sigmar since it's start.

Exactly, and anyway, with FB being non-profitable for several years it was bound to be successful, and luckily for us, really was.

22 minutes ago, Killax said:

Age of Sigmar's line has been full of fantastic miniatures, which sell well.

And still are, which also is a very positive thing  

23 minutes ago, Killax said:

Age of Sigmar's Factions are all war obsessed, obsessed isn't even the right word here. They are war bound, posessed, because this is what the game emulates. There really is no reason to flesh out any bakers or cobblers because we cannot play "farmville" with GW's Age of Sigmar range.

True enough, it would be too boring. And, hilariously, all the denizens of the old world did was also war, war constant and unending, and two lines about society and peaceful life don't change this a bit.

[Menkeroth]

Exactly. In this regard it is what makes Order stand apart from others. Destruction fights for war and spoils of it (ogres also for food), Death is Nagash and Nagash wants to rule them all, Chaos wants to maintain its reign over the Mortal Realms (save for Khorne who cares only for war so he is obsessed, sure, but he always was since time immemorial), and Order fights for freedom (in general).

[Aegisgrimm]

I feel that Free Cities and/or a version of City States is both perfectly fine and essentially required, especially in the face of fluff advancement, where portions of the Realms have reached a resettlement period after the initial reconquest.  

I know in my own personal home games (I unfortunately typically both have to push AND host most of the games I want to play, I have been working on having my (mostly skirmish) games set in a resettled kingdom on Ghyran, where the Stormcast that will be seen locally (my army) exist as a form of Paladins or Knights, with a sort of monastery/fortress in the capitol city, and they go forth as strike teams in situations where the kingdom's army would either be under-equipped or too slow to react (the benefits of knights who can either teleport or outright fly to where they are needed.  They are basically the next level above City Guards, and spend their non-combat time bettering themselves.

[ZephyrExia]

My only problem narrative-wise with AoS, are the new human cities. I loved reading, in the realmgate wars series, about the tribes of humans, clad in pelts, who had somehow survived the age of chaos. I was kind of hoping that humans wouldn't be Freeguild, and that gunpowder weapons weren't around. Dispossessed with cannons? Sure. K.Overlords with rifles? Sure, just say that they are powered by a mystical energy.

I don't like the schwoo-bang! Empire cities in AoS! Political Intrigue! Surprise Humans are prone to infighting!

I think its incredibly boring imo, and a tired reintroduction of old stories. I still have a freeguild army from the old world, but I'd rather them be compendium (and phased out), then have the exact same, boring (aesthetically) units I've been playing with for years. Even the Duardin had a few shifts with the Fireslayers and K.Overlords.

I hope the elves get a decent make-over.

[stratigo]

7 hours ago, Menkeroth said:

Aye,reality does not change, sure, but it is different from yours. In fact the starter set was sold so fast it is sold like eggs even now, and, for instance, in Russia and CIS people have got their piece of spoils only many-many months later, because shops could not order them due to being sold already, so you are posting nonsense. Which does not surprise me.

Mhmm.

 

Well all the anecdotes on how people were trampling each other to death in front of GW stores to buy AoS the second it dropped aside because gods forbid something a person liked wasn't an instant and complete for all time success.

 

7 hours ago, Killax said:

The succes really also is different depending on which demographic one wants to discuss. Initially it was a huge succes with the younger audience. It was less of a large succes for the 18+ audience up until Generals Handbook. All the while, just as mentioned, the sales continued well enough. We have proof of this if you want to look at the salesnumbers of Age of Sigmar since it's start.

Artciles from Bell of Lost Souls, other personal feelings like burning your Fantasy army don't reflect the market, they reflect the hardcore tournament gamer, which actually is the smallest piece of GW's market but the one who screams and cries the loudest. Most players playing Warhammer of any kind don't even thing about what is good or bad, they are looking for a good time with good miniatures. Age of Sigmar's line has been full of fantastic miniatures, which sell well.

Age of Sigmar's Factions are all war obsessed, obsessed isn't even the right word here. They are war bound, posessed, because this is what the game emulates. There really is no reason to flesh out any bakers or cobblers because we cannot play "farmville" with GW's Age of Sigmar range.

a setting without farmers is boring. Most people are not content with just "Here is faction A in shiny gold armor fighting faction b daubed in red with a lot of skulls" forever. If you are, more power to you, but I like a setting that I can imagine actually exists, and one where there are no farmers, or bakers, or civilians of any sort to run the societies, gather the food, make the weapons, raise the children, et cetera I find soulless. There's no reason to care about a fight that has no stakes.

 

56 minutes ago, ZephyrExia said:

My only problem narrative-wise with AoS, are the new human cities. I loved reading, in the realmgate wars series, about the tribes of humans, clad in pelts, who had somehow survived the age of chaos. I was kind of hoping that humans wouldn't be Freeguild, and that gunpowder weapons weren't around. Dispossessed with cannons? Sure. K.Overlords with rifles? Sure, just say that they are powered by a mystical energy.

I don't like the schwoo-bang! Empire cities in AoS! Political Intrigue! Surprise Humans are prone to infighting!

I think its incredibly boring imo, and a tired reintroduction of old stories. I still have a freeguild army from the old world, but I'd rather them be compendium (and phased out), then have the exact same, boring (aesthetically) units I've been playing with for years. Even the Duardin had a few shifts with the Fireslayers and K.Overlords.

I hope the elves get a decent make-over.

a person's models should never be obsoleted. It's unfair to people who have spent years and thousands building a collection and the people who suggest it would flip tables if a single model of theirs became unplayable.

 

That said, I'd love to see free peoples that aren't renaissance germans, but GW has understandable budget limitations to doing so. The it strikes me as bizarre why they thus ended the bretonian line instead of folding them into free peoples. It would, at the very least, have added visual diversity.

[Mr. White]

52 minutes ago, stratigo said:

a person's models should never be obsoleted. It's unfair to people who have spent years and thousands building a collection and the people who suggest it would flip tables if a single model of theirs became unplayable.

Nah. The social contract of these purchases doesn't necessitate support 30 yrs later.  We're not paying for multi year product support, but as is at time of purchase. I can't be mad at Nintendo because my Super Nintendo cartridges don't work on my Switch. 

Likewise, AoS is a new system.

True, I can still play my SNES when I want, and an Empire player can still  play any older version of WHFB they want, but in neither situation is the gamer owed unlimited future support in later systems.

[Kyriakin]

15 hours ago, Menkeroth said:

And all in all it's a high fantasy setting, it does not need all those fancy details and small humans, it is not about them and has different rules. Dull and uninspiring humans are not needed in an epic universe with lots of other races and species, there were too many in the past. Small humans produce weapons for the great guys to wield them anyway.

Apologies if this was said sarcastically, but humans provide a baseline to compare things that are "bigger", "faster" and "stronger" than what we inherently associate with humans.

If everything is super powerful, nothing is.

Their inclusion also provides a frame of reference from which we, as humans, can identify with more easily.

[MOMUS]

2 hours ago, stratigo said:

A setting without farmers is boring. Most people are not content with just "Here is faction A in shiny gold armor fighting faction b daubed in red with a lot of skulls" forever. If you are, more power to you, but I like a setting that I can imagine actually exists, and one where there are no farmers, or bakers, or civilians of any sort to run the societies, gather the food, make the weapons, raise the children, et cetera I find soulless. There's no reason to care about a fight that has no stakes.

+1 

Its world building. The skirmish, battle or campaign only matters if there is something to fight for. GW has taught us for years to name our characters and build a backstory and rightly so,

Stormcast can be seen as the space marine equivalent, the difference is space marines have the imperium to fight for and the imperium is pseudo represented on the board by guard. It lends a human face and perspective to the game that's full of super soilders and gribbly aliens.

At the end of the day it boils down to how much emotional investment you need as a player, if you only need bad vs good then that's fine, but GW has always tried to be smarter than that by offering many shades of grey. 

I think and I think what the OP is partly saying is that we used to love fighting for the old world but we don't want the old world back, we want something AoS to replace it and the game just doesn't have that yet.

 

[Ollie Grimwood]

Beneath the Black Tumb, the tale of a Lord of Plagues and his farm.  It really is he hasn’t fought in years because they gave won and is settling down to building Nurgles Realm.  Released very shortly after the release of AoS  

There wasn’t anything mentioned about the farming systems in WFB it was just that it was set in quasi historical setting so we assumed they were the same as the ones from our history.  I still feel comparison and demands are unfair.

In the same series of stories, Call of Archaon, we also had humans holding out in Ghyran and being rescued by Stormcast. The same occurred in the Realmgate Wars series more than once. 

It doesn’t matter anyway the setting is so vast just make it up yourself that’s the point there’s very little in the Realms that isn’t possible and that’s great. It’s how it works for 40K and that’s pretty much the feel they were buying into. 

[Mace108]

I don't think GW are using old world style cities. They on the surface might be dark dirty cities, but they are still full of high fantasy. 

[Killax]

6 hours ago, stratigo said:

a setting without farmers is boring. Most people are not content with just "Here is faction A in shiny gold armor fighting faction b daubed in red with a lot of skulls" forever. If you are, more power to you, but I like a setting that I can imagine actually exists, and one where there are no farmers, or bakers, or civilians of any sort to run the societies, gather the food, make the weapons, raise the children, et cetera I find soulless. There's no reason to care about a fight that has no stakes.

This point is false to begin with. Not only are there no named farmers in Age of Sigmar, there arn't in 40K, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones or Starwars for that matter. The opinion you hold on farmers is not only an odd one, it just shows you know little to nothing about the Age of Sigmar narrative and just assume it's about shiny gold/skull red fighting factions. This assumption really makes you look ill informed about the subject altogether. If your looking for historical fantasy, Age of Sigmar won't offer you that (right now).

If you don't want to look into it all, really up to you. There are many cities, thus civillians and extremely different societies. What makes Age of Sigmar different from Warhammer Fantasy is that it's more high fantasy instead of historical fantasy (note last 3 editions where that about WFB, before much less so). 

As a results the stakes are the extremes, they fight for their massive cities, excistance, soul and realm. You might want to look into what high fantasy means. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fantasy You will then likely understand why Age of Sigmar works the way it does and how it's not even unique by the standards of not including farmers. Keep in mind that Age of Sigmar's universe is purposefully massive, thus so are it's subjects. The role of the game is to play with armies, thus the lore focusses on giant armies. Logical also because Games Workshop is selling an army game here, not a story. The latter is the job of the Black Liberary novels.

3 hours ago, Kyriakin said:

If everything is super powerful, nothing is.

We know not everything is super powerful. Look at Warscrolls if you want to know what is a true terror and what isn't.

A mob of Zombies will rarely scare a powerful Hero, a Mourngul is capable of destroying a whole Warband and still leave undamaged.

3 hours ago, MOMUS said:

Its world building. The skirmish, battle or campaign only matters if there is something to fight for. GW has taught us for years to name our characters and build a backstory and rightly so,

Stormcast can be seen as the space marine equivalent, the difference is space marines have the imperium to fight for and the imperium is pseudo represented on the board by guard. It lends a human face and perspective to the game that's full of super soilders and gribbly aliens.

At the end of the day it boils down to how much emotional investment you need as a player, if you only need bad vs good then that's fine, but GW has always tried to be smarter than that by offering many shades of grey. 

I think and I think what the OP is partly saying is that we used to love fighting for the old world but we don't want the old world back, we want something AoS to replace it and the game just doesn't have that yet.

How is the continuation of excisting not something worth to fight for? Do you understand that the impact of destroying the Old World is what formed Age of Sigmar in the first place? Do you understand that several races have fallen to Chaos, Destruction and Death and as a result the fight in some cases is a fight to excist? If anything you could reward AoS because it's not a simple fight about patches of land.

Please read into Stormcast Eternals lore, tey exactly fight for humanity like Space Marines do. They are aware of what they where, they are aware of what they are doing. They are also even doubting the ways they are doing it. All of this is also found in Space Marines.

I think what is said here is that we have fans of historical fantasy, thats totally cool and that's not what Age of Sigmar is. This doesn't mean it's sub-genre within Fantasy is unique or bad. In fact, most popular fantasy designs work in this realm because it allows for the maximum ammount of design space. Nothing is strange, everything can be an extreme. E.g. Kharadron Overlords and Fyreslayers are both Duaradin who came from different realms and their civilisations are incredibly different. Yet they are both Duaradin and reward different characterful aspects. One fought Chaos to the point where they became one with ground elementals, the other outthought Chaos, created amazing technologies and become one with air elementals.

[MOMUS]

24 minutes ago, Killax said:

This point is false to begin with. Not only are there no named farmers in Age of Sigmar, there arn't in 40K, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones or Starwars for that matter.
 

How is the continuation of excisting not something worth to fight for? Do you understand that the impact of destroying the Old World is what formed Age of Sigmar in the first place? Do you understand that several races have fallen to Chaos, Destruction and Death and as a result the fight in some cases is a fight to excist? If anything you could reward AoS because it's not a simple fight about patches of land.

Please read into Stormcast Eternals lore, tey exactly fight for humanity like Space Marines do. They are aware of what they where, they are aware of what they are doing. They are also even doubting the ways they are doing it. All of this is also found in Space Marines.

I think what is said here is that we have fans of historical fantasy, thats totally cool and that's not what Age of Sigmar is. This doesn't mean it's sub-genre within Fantasy is unique or bad. In fact, most popular fantasy designs work in this realm because it allows for the maximum ammount of design space. Nothing is strange, everything can be an extreme. E.g. Kharadron Overlords and Fyreslayers are both Duaradin who came from different realms and their civilisations are incredibly different. Yet they are both Duaradin and reward different characterful aspects. One fought Chaos to the point where they became one with ground elementals, the other outthought Chaos, created amazing technologies and become one with air elementals.

Luke  skywalker, uncle Owen and aunt beru were all farmers?

Your continued existance is something worth fighting for, it's just the lowest most primary motivator. Being able to feed yourself is at the bottom of maslows hierarchy of needs, anything above needs civilisation, which is interesting.

I have read stormcast lore, I don't doubt they know what they fight for but they are not the same as space marines. Marines arguably become more human the longer they survive.  Stormcast become less, they're personalities fade the more they die. This compounds another fluff/artistic difference between the two, marines can cheat and take off their helmets. Instantly becoming more relatable,  gold clad golems cannot and again the thing marines fight for is represented on the table top.

I love both the dwarf factions and associated cultures/stories, that's what I want but for the human faction. An AoS human civilisation not a Empire import.

 

[Ollie Grimwood]

25 minutes ago, MOMUS said:

 

I love both the dwarf factions and associated cultures/stories, that's what I want but for the human faction. An AoS human civilisation not a Empire import.

 

We might all be going a little at cross purposes because I think this is what we’re all after. 

[MOMUS]

Some of us do for sure, but others like Menkeroth state it's not important or needed.