Age of Sigmar background primer: Soul Wars

Between the final installment of the Realmgate wars books and the release of the new edition of the Age of Sigmar core rules a lot of background has been added to the Mortal Realms. As my last series of background primers was/is rather popular it seems an apt time to bring everybody who has not quite gotten around to reading all the background up to speed.

Undead play a rather large role in the latest part of the story.

Age of Sigmar primer: The Silver Tower, Excelsis, Shadespire and witch hunters

With 8^th edition Warhammer 40K appearing tomorrow I’m getting ready to do a bit of sci-fi wargaming in the near future. Having said that, I’m going to finish my overview of the Age of Sigmar background first. This is the third and (for now) final installment of the background overview. In part one I’ve discussed theRealmgates, the transition from the Old World (the world that was) to the newand some of the other (global) changes to the realms, Slaanesh and other races. My second blog was a condensed version of the Realmgate Wars as described in the five hardcover source books (with a few bonus facts from the Black Library novels). This post will deal with the realms as they are now.

Age of Sigmar background primer: The Realmgate Wars

In an effort to give the Age of Sigmar background more love I previously madea post with a general Age of Sigmar background primer. Here you can read (a bit) about the fate of the Old World, the Mortal Realms and their gods and – most importantly – the realmgates and the setting in general. This post deals with the Realmgate Wars. These are the wars that kick off the Age of Sigmar, got us started on the current background story and are dealt with over the course of five sourcebooks.

Black Library published a number of novels and audio books on the Realmgate Wars. More importantly Games Workshop released five hardcover books telling the story, adding rules and giving rules for themed battles. I’ll be using these books as the basis for this post. In the books Games Workshop tells the story by jumping from one realm to the next, slowly following the timeline up to the finish. I’ll be summarizing in a slightly different fashion, giving descriptions of the events on a per realm basis. As with the other post here’s a ‘here be spoilers’ warning. I recommend getting the Realmgate Wars books. They are quite an entertaining read and a collection onto themselves.

I don't have any Stormcast painted up to show here, so I went with a nice old Skaven model instead. Ignoring the fact that this makes no sense whatsoever. 

Age of Sigmar background primer or: How I learned to stop worrying about Stormcast and love the setting

Sometimes I miss the Old World. I played a lot of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay adventures there, read the novels (even the early ones) and fought a lot of battles over bits and pieces of it. When the end-times was announced I was slightly miffed (hands off my setting!). Having said that, the End Times was a fantastic send-off full of fascinating twists and amazing revelations. What a lot of people don’t realize, is that End Times is also a misnomer. The Age of Sigmar background continues what started in the Old World and adds to it.

Chaos warriors of Tzeentch emerge from a realmgate.

The mysteries of a Realmgate await...

This Realmgate was lounging around in the bits box and in desperate need of assembling and painting. As my plan to play the first three Age of Sigmar missions requires a Realmgate (and feeling rather uncreative) I just assembled it according to the GW manual. I went for a paint job that will allow me to use the Realmgate beyond these three scenario's. As an aside, I did not think much of this piece of scenery when it was launched. But having assembled (converted) and painted a number of them, I'm warming up to it. It is a great centerpiece to fight over, can be used with some interesting rules to change a battle and it is great fun to paint.

Add some purple smoke...yeah that looks mystical enough. 

Building buildings for Age of Sigmar Mighty Battles battleplans

As a rabid collector I couldn't resist buying the amazing hard cover Age of Sigmar books. Since then I've been toying with the idea of playing through all the missions from the books one by one, campaign style.

Big linked campaign battles are awesome, even when fighting against unpainted troops.

Realmgate of Nurgle and the Sylvaneth Realmgate finished

The paint job on the two realmgates is finished (well it has been finished since last Thursday, but I did not find the time for a write-up until today. First of the Nurgle Realmgate. It was base coated in Chaos Black, followed by a second base coat of Zandri Dust (both from GW rattlecans).

A 'do not enter' sign seems redundant on this realmgate.

Sylvaneth realmgate construction

Almost no time to paint this weekend as I had to construct a second realmgate for the upcoming campaign and time is short. I had a free hand (and a lot of plastic Citadel trees) although the concept of a giant tree was given as a starting point. For the curious after the first stage it looked like this.

More leaves were added later on.

Realmgate to the Garden of Nurgle

The local Warhammer store has asked me to build some extra terrain for the grand Games Workshop campaign this summer. I don't have a lot of information to go on other than that the campaign is set in Ghyran, the realm of life. I have been asked to build two Realmgates, one for Nurgle and one with a Sylvaneth team. I'll also be repainting (or re-using) some of the store's older terrain and I get to use a few brand new kits to hack to pieces. Always a nice bonus. For my first Realmgate I decided to go for Nurgle. Time being a bit short I used the Realmgate Wars Battle Tome for inspiration and then started building. I want this Realmgate to have a diseased theme (of course) and give it a completely corrupted by daemons look. You should not want to get near it. I started out with the old base of a Witchfate Tor. I made an MDF base and added a 4cm layer of polystyrene to get some extra height. The Realm Gate has to be imposing!

The work space looks relatively clean, it must be the start of a new project!

Chaos Dreadhold with huge Realmgate

I recently got a chance to work with a few of the Age of Sigmar scenery kits for the local gaming store. The request was to make something cool for an event. We chose a nice looking portal building from Age of Sigmar Balance of Power and I got to test a bunch of Chaos Dreadhold buildings, a Baleful Realmgate and a parts of the older Storm of Magic kits.

Let's start off with the end result: