Age of Sigmar: Skaventide delivers damn good Warhammer

Games Workshop, tabletop wargames titan, former UK Dungeons & Dragons publisher, and purveyor of tiny authoritarian supersoldiers to children, likes to be punctual. As it’s now 2024, GW’s mandated three-year product cycle has decreed that a new edition of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, their flagship fantasy wargame shall be bestowed upon us.

I’m going to assume, even though I’m writing on a TTRPG-focused site, that you have a vague idea of what a tabletop miniatures game is like. It’s generally played with two people, each with an army of (ideally) painted miniatures that are maneuvered around the play area, likely a big board, a mat, or a marked off area atop your mum’s dinner table, and big handfuls of dice are rolled to determine the outcome of fights, the casting of spells and all that jazz.

The story of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar is a wild one. Released in 2015 as a replacement for Warhammer Fantasy Battle after the venerable wargame was discontinued due to poor sales, the first edition felt somewhat slapped together, forged from the remnants of its predecessor. I mean this quite literally—Games Workshop blew up WFB’s Old World, and the Mortal Realms of Age of Sigmar were made from the surviving bits. Back in the real world, the vast majority of AoS’ initial product range was just repurposed WFB miniatures supplied with round bases instead of the old square ones. The basic rules were simple and unbalanced, and the various unit profiles included rules that encouraged you to—and I promise that I shit ye not—pretend to ride a horse, shout out various battlecries and compare mustache size (home grown or shop bought) with one’s opponent. It was the ultimate silly game of slamming your toy soldiers together for a laugh.