Tabletop Game / Warhammer: Age of Sigmar

Mighty battles in an age of unending war!

"This night, we ride the storm!"

— Vandus Hammerhand, Lord-Celestant of the Hammers of Sigmar

Warhammer: Age of Sigmar is a Wargame created by Games Workshop.

The game's setting is set after the events of Warhammer: The End Times, after the Forces of Chaos succeeded in destroying the Old World of Warhammer. Sigmar, last seen wrestling with the Lord of the End Times Archaon over his Warhammer Ghal Maraz, survived and rallied the remaining Incarnates of the Winds of Magic and Gods to create a new reality for their people — one free from the taint of Chaos. This reality is made up of eight realms, each representing the Winds of Magic. Sigmar lorded over all the realms from his own, the Realm of Azyr (Heavens), and all was peaceful... for a time. This was the Age of Myth.

The Forces of Chaos then invaded these realms, aided by the betrayal of the new god of death Nagash, forcing Sigmar to seal off his own realm and leaving the rest and its inhabitants to fend off the Chaos tide by themselves. This was the Age of Chaos.

As the Forces of Chaos ravaged the nine realms, Sigmar created the Stormcast Eternals, powerful warriors forged from magic, as his means of retaking the realms from the Chaos Forces, coming along with them is the Grand Alliance of Order: the armies of Aelves, Duardin, Man, Seraphon and Sylvaneth. This is the Age of Sigmar.

For the tie-in roleplaying game, see Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound.

Video Games

• Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin: An RTS game Developed and Published by Frontier Developments.
• Warhammer Age Of Sigmar Storm Ground:

Western Animation

• Blacktalon: An animated show centered around the Knights-Zephyros Neave Blacktalon of the Stormcast Eternals.
• Hammer and Bolter: An animated anthology series set in the universes of Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar.

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This game provides examples of the following:

• An Adventurer Is You: The heroes in Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower qualify:
  • Knight-Questor: Tank — A dedicated brick wall who can pull enemies closer and keep them there indefinitely.
  • Knight-Venator: Archer/Blademaster — Fast, agile and equipped with heavy armor. He can shoot even in melee and his arrows are accurate and powerful.
  • Lord-Castellant: Jack — Can do everything from fighting in melee, dealing some ranged damage, stunning and healing. There are lots of heroes who can do each of these individual tasks better, but few who can turn their hand to so many.
  • Excelsior Warpriest: Healer/Beastmaster — He is capable of healing and smashing heads alike, and is also accompanied by a Gryph-hound companion.
  • Mistweaver Saih: Debuffer/Nuker — Focuses on throwing magic missiles, stunning and annoying the hell out of enemies.
  • Sorceress: Nuker — All about blasting enemies to smithereens with magic missiles, which can be further fuelled if necessary by sacrificing wounds.
  • Tenebrael Shard: Scrapper — An assasin that can jump from shadow to shadow and has supernatural skills for assasination.
  • Fyreslayer Doomseeker: Blademaster — He wants to get stuck in and gets better if enemies are hitting him and when he's killing stuff.
  • Auric Runemaster: Buffer/Nuker — A support hero with mediocre weapons but useful defense buffs and splash damage attacks.
  • Slaughterpriest: Scrapper/Healer — A beatstick who can heal himself and his friends by chopping up enemies and who can make enemies' blood boil.
  • Bloodstoker: Buffer — He is able to whip allies to fury but otherwise has very mediocre attacks.
  • Lord of Plagues: Regenerator/Blademaster — A meatshield who can keep himself in the fight for a long time and his attacks have some nasty side effects.
  • Tzeentch Sorcerer Lord: Nuker/Mezzer — He has a powerful missile weapon that can cause splash damage and since he also serves Tzeentch he can control enemies to an extent.
  • Great Bray-Shaman: Debuffer/Buffer/Mezzer — Capable of buffing allies, as well as stunning and controlling enemies to some degree but has very weak damage by himself.
  • Necromancer: The Minion Master — His main gimmick is to overwhelm enemies with hordes of weak skeletons.
• Age of Titles: The timeline for the game is split into various ages, beginning with the Age of Myth. The title for the game itself comes from the part of the timeline that the game takes place in, the Age of Sigmar, where the God-King Sigmar, his followers and allies begin their quest to free the Mortal Realms from Chaos.
• The Alliance: One the reasons for the End of Times happening was the failure of the races of the world-that-was to bring this. Now, Sigmar leads the "Grand Alliance of Order", formed by the civilised races of the Realms, consisting of Aelves, Duardin, Man, Sylvaneth, and Seraphon; and their gods, consisting of Sigmar, Alarielle, Gurungi, Malerion, Teclis and Tyrion. Gorkamorka and Nagash were members briefly, but that didn't work out.
• Always Accurate Attack: The Arcane Bolt spell, the basic offensive magic spell available to most Wizards, can magically seek out its target and thus automatically hit, dealing mortal wounds.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence:
  • Though he is already a God, the Horned Rat has ascended to an even higher plane of existence after the capture of Slaanesh. With the Dark Prince absent, the Horned Rat filled out the space left out in its place and became the new fourth God of Chaos (even calling himself "The Great Horned Rat"). The remaining three are not pleased by this, and see the Horned Rat as nothing but a verminous upstart.
  • The Lizardmen/Seraphon have gone through a species-wide ascension, going from being a particularly magically adept mortal (well, biologically immortal but can still die in battle) race to Daemons of Order. Although the new codex added a second sub-faction of Seraphon that have become a mortal race once again.
  • Various Chaos Champions of the World That Was have ascended to Daemon Princedom when said world fell and new ones that were born in the Mortal Realms can still ascend.
• Barbarian Tribe:
  • Nothing really changed for the Warriors of Chaos in the regard. The question remains, however whether these tribes are the Norse, Kurgan and Hung of the original setting. As a whole however, they are still Viking-esque tribesmen in service to Chaos, even if there technically isn't a Norsca anymore.
  • Most of the Stormcast Eternals are the resurrected spirits of fallen barbarian tribesmen slain by the Warriors of Chaos.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Many characters who have supposedly died during the End Times have returned, alive and well. This includes Nagash, Tyrion, Drycha and Neferata to name a few.
  • The Stormcast Eternals as a whole, considering that, in order to be forged (and later be re-forged) their bodies are destroyed by Sigmar. The prime example is Balthas Aurum, Balthasar Gelt reborn as a Lord-Arcanum. He is still is a master of the Wind of Chamon.
• Barrier Warrior: Every single Wizard in the Realms (except Stormcast Evocators) is capable of protecting allies with the universal Mystic Shield spell.
• Beware the Silly Ones
  • The Greenskins are even more dangerous than before while still filling a comic relief role.
  • Ditto for the Skaven, who are still just as comedically evil as before.
  • Aleguzzler Gargants, who fight by getting drunk and going on destructive rampages through a battlefield.
  • Many Freeguild generals take to battle in crow's nests mounted on an Ogor's back.
  • Subverted in the Flesh-Eater Courts. They believe themselves to be paragons of all that is good in the world, and it can get kind of strange when you consider what they are actually doing. Thing is, no one but themselves think of them as such.
• Big Damn Heroes: Dracothion discovering the dying Sigmar in the great emptiness after the World-That-Was was destroyed and breathing life into him.
  • Celestant Prime, arriving to fight the daemon Torglug, and protect Alarielle's Soulpod as it grew into the goddess' most warlike aspect.
• Blood Knight: The followers of Khorne are extremely happy that the Sigmar made the Stormcast Eternals. After several thousand years of slaughtering defenseless weaklings throughout the realms, they've finally got a worthy battle.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Several factions operate on a strange system of rules, even by the standards of this setting.
  • The Sylvaneth have manufactured goods, such as tapestries, weapons and musical instruments but no economy. Though it is in their ability to make clothes they do not bother with them, except jewelry and magical artifacts such as circlets. They have varying attitudes on the "Quickbloods" (any non-Sylvaneth faction, including the immortal daemons and Seraphon as well as undead), but have a strong hatred of the Wanderer aelves due to the Wanderers abandoning the Sylvaneth during the Age of Chaos.
  • The forces of destruction care only about fighting, and are happy to fight whoever up to and including each other, but still maintain tribal identity and loyalty. They prize valor in battle but have no qualms about attacking non-combatants (beyond seeing them as a "waste of time" for "not providing good sport").
• Brain Uploading: The Katophrane rulers of Shadespire (the setting for the first Warhammer Underworlds season) discovered that the mysterious substance known as shadeglass could be used to capture the souls of the dead. Seeing the potential in this phenomenon, the Katophrane constructed a network of shadeglass mirrors throughout the city to store their living essences that they could continue to guide their city eternally rather than pass on to the afterlife. It was for this denial of his due that Nagash God of the Dead cursed the city, turning it into the nightmarish realm of madness and illusion that it is today.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: In the first version of the game, before the release of the General's Handbook, you can field whatever you own, as can your opponent, and there's no way to ensure a fair match. With a lack of a point-based army building system, spending as much money as possible on big models was encouraged. The only things that stop you from doing so are the Sudden Death rules, a sense of sportsmanship, and your opponent simply refusing to play. Naturally most players were not satisfied, so Games Workshop had to rectify it with the release of the General's Handbook, which reintroduced points to the game.
• Bus Crash: Many characters have suffered this. Two notable cases are Mortarchs Vlad von Carstein and Krell (a cruel irony since undead under Nagash are one of the groups much more likely to be able to make it to the new setting).
• Call a Pegasus a "Hippogriff": Most units are the same generic fantasy races of previous editions, such as orcs, ogres, goblins, zombies, skeletons, elves, dwarfs and so on, just with different, and at times more easily trademarkable names.
• Cavalry Betrayal: Nagash and the undead turn on Sigmar's forces and attack them during the Age of Chaos. However Nagash does it for himself, not for an alliance with Chaos, though some in-universe believe otherwise. Surprisingly however, Nagash was the last of Sigmar's allies to either abandon or turn on him.
• Continuity Drift:
  • When the game was first released, lore explicitly had Sigmar recruit his Stormcast Eternals by pulling the great heroes of the Realms away from their people just when they were needed most, leaving those they protected to their fates. This has since been expanded so that there are multiple ways that a soul could be recruited including being chosen after the moment of the hero’s death or, in the case of the members of the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, recruited from those who rest within tombs of ancient civilisations.
  • Much of the initial background material implied that civilisation outside of the Realm of Azyr was all but extinct only for later sourcebooks introducing numerous pockets of civilisation with distinct cultures surviving all across the Realms.
• Cool vs. Awesome: Crops up several times. For example, when Archaon invades Shyish and challenges Nagash; it's heavy-metal vikings and daemons vs undead of all descriptions.
• Cosmic Keystone: Each Incarnate is this for their respective realm, as evidenced by the followers of Nurgle trying to claim Alarielle's essence as the key to Ghyran's corruption.
• City Planet: Azyrheim a city so large that even a lifetime is not enough to go from one end to another. It has entire mountains created from the combined rooftops of low-level slums to high-level mansions and in some places time flows faster and in some slower. It was explained by a Black Library writer.
• Death Is Cheap: For the undead inhabitants of Shyish, especially Nagash himself.
  • Subverted with the Stormcast Eternals, whose constant and pretty much guaranteed ressurections slowly eat away their personalities.
• Decomposite Character: This happened to many of the factions who made the transition from the World-that-was, in many cases leading to the extrapolation of one aspect of that faction becoming the general motif of its successors in the Mortal Realms:
  • The old Warhammer Fantasy Skaven Clans are now types of Clans; what was once the Clan Eshin is now tens of thousands or more of Clans like Eshin, and so on with Clans Skryre, Moulder and Pestilens.
  • The Ogre Kingdoms had two specific motifs that led to new factions here: their insatiable appetites became the general theme of the Gutbusters, while their cold mountain-lairs and use of ice-age beasts serve as the Beastclaw Raiders main aesthetic.
• Degraded Boss: While most of the heroes from the original Warhammer are long dead, their models were kept around and reimagined as generic hero units. For example, the Curseling hero for the Disciples of Tzeentch is based on the Vilitch the Curseling model. Since then, altough, most of those heroes were dropped off entirely from the game (with a few exceptions, including the aforemented Curseling hero - which even got a new model still based on Vilitch's design).
• Divided We Fall: Multiple times in the backstory, the victory of one side or another has been possible through the other side deciding to betray one another: originally, the Allpoints, the nexus into the various Mortal Realms, was being held by Sigmar and his Alliance of Order. However, they were betrayed by Nagash, who screwed things up enough that Sigmar went to Nagash's Realm himself, smashed everything in it, and then abandoned the Mortal Realms and went to his realm of Azyr to create the Stormcast Legions so that he could fight on his own terms (leaving Nagash helpless against Chaos when they came). Almost as soon as Chaos conquered the Mortal Realms, the Chaos Gods also turned on one another, and were fighting each other when not slaughtering helpless mortals. Part of Sigmar's plan for the invasion is to re-kindle the alliances with the old forces of Order to get help.
• The Dragon: Archaon returns, given the title Grand High Marshall of Chaos by the Chaos Gods, and commands the entirety of the Forces of Chaos during the invasion of the nine realms. Nagash also returned his second-in-command Arkhan.
• Dramatic Irony: Early in the prequel novel Nagash: the Undying King one of the minor characters is taken up to join Sigmar's chosen (which nobody involved knows is a thing). Since this happens in the middle of a sorcerous duel and the resulting lightning devastates the Chaos force, both sides assume it's an attack by the other.
• The Dreaded: Due to a form of ancestral memory, Lizardmen are this for Skaven.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The Warscroll Compendiums, whose purpose was to allow players to play the game with their old armies before any Age of Sigmar army was introduced, featured 'joke rules', which involved doing things like raising a goblet and crying "for the Lady" or maintaining a dignified and stoic expression for a phase to gain some in-game benefit. They were quite quickly dropped, probably because the concept of something other than your tactical decisions and dice rolls affecting the game was pretty jarring.
  • The early battletomes (released before May 2016) were very barebones, consisting of only the warscrolls, warscroll battalions and fluff, when the game was much more casual than today (you could field whatever model you own, as could your opponent). In the middle of 2016, the gameplay received a drastic change in order to accommodate matched play: from the 1st Edition Sylvaneth battletome onwards, all of them have had rules for allegiance abilities, magical artefacts and spell lores, resembling army books from the old Warhammer.
  • Initially, the Grand Alliance books released as an updated compendium of all available units in early 2016 split apart many of the old Warhammer armies into a bunch of smaller factions, some of which had a very small quantity of units that made them borderline (and in some cases, completely) unplayable as standalone armies; those that did not get expanded into full armies in their own right were later fused together. For example, what once was the Vampire Counts army was separated into Deathmages (Necromancer and Mortis Engine), Deadwalkers (Zombie units), Deathrattle (Skeleton units), Soulblight (Vampire units), Flesh-eater Courts (Ghoul units) and Nighthaunt (Ghost units). After the Flesh-eater Courts and Nighthaunt received their own battletomes, in 2018 the remaining factions were rolled back into a single army, the Legions of Nagash (later renamed Soulblight Gravelords).
• Enemy Mine:
  • In an open play or narrative game you can put any model in the game into your force. You can field an army of duardin, daemons, undead and ogors. Stormcast Eternals and Savage Orcs, WAAAGH! it up against the Blood God and his army of Sylvaneth. Want to have an armada of Kharadron Overlords, Screamers and Dragons? Go for it. How about Gargants and their Beastmen herds? Maybe a plague army of Skaven Pestilens and Nurgle's minions with some Fanatics and Witch Aelfs to spread the rot? Go for it.
  • In Silver Tower, there's nothing that prevents you from including, in the same party, say, a champion of Nurgle and a Tzeentchian sorcerer, a Seraphon hero and a Skaven warlord, or an aelf and a Grot — people that otherwise fear or hate each other's guts.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Much like Warhammer Fantasy Battles, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar mixes multiple traditional mythological and fantasy races, tropes and themes. Due to the wider scope of the setting, the game even expands on its predecessor’s Kitchen Sink by adding the likes of Sky Pirates, planet sized monsters and an even greater focus on Norse Mythology for some factions.
• Fatal Flaw: Nagash's is Pride. Nagash decides to take on the forces of Chaos with only his own faction and without the help of any allies who don't give allegiance to him. He gets killed by Archaon, though since he controls the Afterlife he easily comes back.
• Fisher King: It's implied that each realm's climate responds to the mood of the Incarnate ruling it. The realm of Azyr is mentioned to be strom-wracked whenever Sigmar gets mad, the seasons in the realm of Ghyran are outright stated to shift in response to Alarielle's moods and in the audiobooks Nagash himself states being able to control the realm of Shyish and makes it a desolate wasteland to deny resources to the invading forces of Chaos (it's unknown whether he's being truthful or telling himself that as consolation after his defeat).
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Whilst the Chaos Gods hate each other, they hold the newly ascended Great Horned Rat with the most contempt. Even Archaon gives it nothing but scorn, and outright rejects a gift it offered him once he becomes Grand High Marshall of Chaos.
• From the Ashes: Warhammer Fantasy ends with the complete victory of evil (Chaos, orcs, vampires, and Skaven) over good, destroying the world for good measure. That's the starting point of Age of Sigmar.
• Fungus Humongous: The Sporehollows, located within the Flamescar Plateau of the Realm of Ashqy, are a series of caverns filled with forests of massive, multicoloured fungi that spew mind altering spores that the players can fight through using the rules from Season of War: Firestorm.
• Gaiden Game:
  • Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower and Warhammer Quest: Shadows Over Hammerhal were limited-release competitive-coop dungeon crawlers based on the original Warhammer spin-off version of Warhammer Quest.
  • Gorechosen was another limited-release game, a brutal gladiatorial brawler between Khornate champions.
  • Warhammer Underworlds and Warcry are small-scale skirmish games with different focuses, both receiving significant ongoing support.
  • Champions is a CCG contracted out to PlayFusion, with a Hearthstone-esque mobile app version that can scan physical cards to add them to your list.
  • Soulbound is a tabletop Roleplaying Game by Cubicle 7.
• Glowing Flora: The Glowy Morkeyez mushrooms, which grow in some dank underground caverns, give off an unsettling, pale light. These glowing mushrooms are most commonly found illuminating the squalid lurklairs of Moonclan grots.
• Golem: The mage-rulers of the lost Agloraxi Empire created massive, mountain-sized golems known as Colossi that were used for both manual labour and warfare. The narrative campaign from the Season of War: Firestorm supplement allows a player to build new Colossi to help fulfil one of the campaign's victory conditions.
• The Good, the Bad, and the Evil: Order is the Good, only interested in survival and fighting against Chaos. Death and Destruction is the Bad: the former seeks peace and unity and opposes Chaos but is led by Nagash who seeks to rule over the realms forever with an iron fist; the latter cares about nothing other than krumpin' 'eadz and is chaotic to the point of rivalling Tzeentch himself. Chaos is the Evil, as always. And it gets even more complicated if the factions within each Grand Alliance is taken into account.
• Gratuitous English: Initially, in the non-English versions of the game almost all names (including all unit and faction names) except in very few cases are kept untranslated from English (for example the Silver Tower's name in French and German is still "Silver Tower", not "Tour d'Argent" or "Silberturm"). This was albeit changed starting with the release of the third edition of the game in mid 2021, which introduced proper French, Spanish, German and Italian localizations for the entire terminology.
• Guns Akimbo: Models armed with a brace of pistols, such as Freeguild Pistoliers and Dispossessed Ironbeards, are able to make two attacks each turn, one for each pistol.
• Healing Spring: The Lifesprings, situated in the Flamescar Plateau region of the Realm of Aqshy, are a group of mineral-rich hot springs famous for their ability to heal any wound or disease afflicting those who bathe in them. The Season of War: Firestorm^note a campaign supplement for 1st Edition includes rules for fighting battles near the Lifesprings that allow Heroes to heal a random number of Wounds if there are no enemy units nearby.
• Heel–Face Turn: After being killed by the Celestant-Prime, Torglug the Despised, the Nurglite Warlord who led the campaign in Ghyran, is redeemed by the energies of Ghal-Maraz and reforged as a Knight-Venator in the Hallowed Knights Stormhost. He's now called Tornus the Hero. To put it into perspective, usually when someone falls to Chaos there is no going back — you are forever damned. This is an event thought to be impossible: he was cleansed of Chaos corruption and redeemed.
• Hellgate: During the Age of Chaos many Realmgates became corrupted and cursed by the Dark Gods and now lead to the nightmarish Realm of Chaos, abode of daemons and the Chaos Gods.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: Due to the way wounds work in Age of Sigmar (any damage that's done over the target's wounds bleeds over to other enemy models in the combat), potentially any high-damage attack can be this. The Stormcast Eternal Decimators explicitly have this, however. Their axes get one attack for every single enemy within range as they scythe through them.
• Hero Unit: Hero is a keyword reserved for commanders, wizards, priests, standard bearers, particularly elite soldiers and other army experts. They are the only units that can use Artefacts of Power and serve as generals, and with very few exceptions, each Hero model counts as a unit in its own right.
• Horny Vikings: There's an area in the far north of Ghur, Realm of Beasts, known as the Ice-Kingdoms of Gjoll, which are populated by a race of people suspiciously similar to the Old World's Norscans in that they are Vikings and followers of Chaos — particularly Khorne. Two characters in particular in the Black Rift of Klaxus series being put forth by Black Library are Hroth Shieldbreaker and Volundr, War-Smith of Khorne. Both are Gjallervolk and champions of Khorne. The more things change, the more they stay the same it seems.
• I'm a Humanitarian: The Bloodreavers of Khorne believe that feasting upon the flesh of their enemies (preferably while they still live) imbues them with the divine might of Khorne. This is also practically the slogan for the Flesh-Eater Courts.
• Lethal Lava Land: The realm of Aqshy gives this impression as a whole.
• Lighter and Softer: Surprising as it is, Age of Sigmar is probably the brightest and most idealistic setting the Warhammer franchise has ever produced. In particular, Chaos is treated as an enemy that can be reliably fought and beaten by the forces of good, rather than an unstoppable force that can only be resisted and delayed. This is becoming a downplayed trope as the story advances, as the Sigmarite dream cracks down and the society of Order slowly becomes like the Old World's. Also, the Stormcast Eternals, initially depicted as Incorruptible Pure Pureness, are now shown as starting to break down under the pressure of being reincarnated multiple times, sliding into Knight Templar territory.
• The Magocracy: The lost Agloraxi Empire of Aqshy's Flamescar Plateau was ruled by the Arch-Domini, a group of powerful mages that persecuted anyone incapable of using magic. The Arch-Domini created numerous magic items and golems to make their lives easier and protected themselves with a magical Wave-Motion Gun. According to legend, the Agloraxi Empire was eventually destroyed when the Arch-Domini annoyed the magic hating Chaos God Khorne enough that he personally destroyed their Ominous Floating Castle.
• Mercenary Units:
  • A Regiment of Renown consists of a small selection of thematic units, representing a group of sellswords who ply their trade across the Realms. Regiments of Renown are added to your army like allies—if you're playing a Pitched Battle, you'll be taking them from the same pool of points, but all armies of the same Grand Alliance and different faction can hire a Regiment of Renown. Regiments of Renown each have a special rule of their own and the Mercenary keyword, differentiating them from the normal versions of these units and giving them all a distinct feel on the battlefield.
  • In Warcry, allies (fighters from other factions), thralls (beasts bound to the warband) and monsters (gargantuan creatures) can be included by any warband that comes from the same Grand Alliance, even if their faction runemark is different from the warband's.
• Multiple Head Case: Several creatures and beings, most prominently the orc god Gorkamorka. Archaon's mount, Dorghar, took this form with one head for each Chaos God (except Slaanesh who's gone missing and the Great Horned Rat who Archaon despises).
• Neutrals, Critters, and Creeps: Roaming Monsters^note introduced in Wrath of the Everchosen know no allegiance beyond hunger, are treated as enemies by both players' armies (and vice versa), and attack anyone that gets too close, according to their situational Behaviour Tables.
• New Season, New Name: Each edition (known as a season) of the Gaiden Game Warhammer Underworlds has a new subtitle describing the setting in which the season takes place. Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire being the first, with Nightvault, Beastgrave, and Direchasm being the second, third and fourth seasons respectively.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: Nagash took over the afterlife and had the same goals as Sigmar and the other Incarnates for a time. Subverted as, being Nagash, he never intended to stick it out with Sigmar, betrayed him and went his own way. He still intends to take over these new worlds once the Chaos Gods are dealt with.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Zigzagged with the duardin; whilst clearly based in the dwarfs from the original Warhammer, different cultures put their own unique twists on it. The two main independent factions are the Fyreslayers; religiously-motivated mercenaries with a "naked mohawked barbarian" aesthetic, an obsession with fire, and who hunt for magical "ur-gold" to craft into enchanted runes that they hammer into their own flesh for power; and the Kharadron Overlords, who are a race of dwarven Steampunk Sky Pirates who practice Magic Powered Pseudo Science.
• Our Souls Are Different: Nearly every living creature in the Realms has a soul, a spark of vital animus that gives it life. Should a living creature have its soul removed, it will fall into a coma or simply die. If not pledged to the Chaos Gods, stolen by Sigmar or the Idoneth Deepkin, souls would eventually make their way to Shyish after death, where they would reside in their chosen underworld until their energies fade to nothingness, which can take anything from a few years to millennia.
• Perception Filter: The Penumbral Engines that Grungni created for Sigmar from Teclis' Enlightenment Engines, are able to supress or remove the memories of anything a being sees within its area of effect, allowing the God King to hide his Stormvaults from discovery and stop the dangerous things they contain from falling into the wrong hands.
• Phantasy Spelling: The game often uses more fantastical spellings of words associated with the various faction, including many of the classic races from Warhammer. Elf, for example, was changed to aelf — an alternate spelling of ælf, the Old English word for elf — while dwarfs became duardin, orcs became orruks, ogres became ogors, trolls became troggoths, and so on.
• Points of Light Setting: During the Age of Chaos, the hordes of the Ruinous Power swept over creation and overran almost everything save for the fortified realm of Azyr, leading to the collapse and erasure of almost every trace of the many civilizations that existed within them. By the game's timeframe, the lands of the forces of Order consist of the far-scattered Free Cities founded by Sigmar's expeditionary forces, alongside isolated and embattled cities, tribes and kingdoms of mortals that survived the dark times, which are separated by world-sized expanses of wilderness and wastelands ruled by Chaos worshipers, roving hordes of Destruction barbarians, former Order cultures that became dark and hostile to survive, primordial monsters, living and predatory spells, and stranger and more dangerous things.
• Poisoned Weapons: The Vial of Manticore Venom is a universal Artefact of Power that can be applied to a weapon's edge, rendering it even deadlier.
• Portal Network: The Mortal Realms are linked by a series of mystical portals known as Realmgates. The Realmgates are the only means for the majority of creatures to travel between the eight Realms with even the gods themselves finding the network of portals to be the most convenient means of travel. While most Realmgates only link two specific points within the Realms, some link to multiple locations while a single portal, the Allpoints, links to all the other Realmgates and is the single most strategic location in the Mortal Realms.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: A party in Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower can consist of heroes from most armies in every Grand Alliance, with the only restrictions being size (so ogors and cavalry aren't eligible) and daemonhood. You can include Stormcast Eternal heroes, Fyreslayers, Sigmarite priests, necromancers, Orruk bosses, Seraphon, and even Chaos champions in the same party — and none of them seem to mind working with hated enemies in the quest for the Silver Tower.
• Reconstruction: To Warhammer Fantasy Battle, yes, the forces of Chaos nearly destroyed the Cosmos and are still rampaging through large portions of the Mortal Realms, Sigmar's initial gains after the Realmgate Wars are now threatened by Nagash onslaught, but the narrative no longer implies all the worlds are doomed and the Gods of Order are now far more proactive and empowered to fight the forces of corruption, divine intervention is no longer the exclusive and objective domain of Chaos and Death, and new civilizations stand defiant. While the war is far from over the fight seems more balanced.
• The Red Mage: All wizards are capable of casting the two basic spells Arcane Bolt (which is a magical attack) and Mystic Shield (which protects a friendly model), except the Stormcast Evocators and Moonclan Shroomancers and Boggleyes.
• Religion is Magic: Zig-zagged. Priests can activate prayers which, to an outside observer, are indistinguishable from a wizard's spells. The key difference appears to be that while a wizard attempts to bind a spirit's power whether the spirit wants to obey him or not, the priest is calling upon a deity to answer him, and the entity in question is responding of its own free will.
• Rent-a-Zilla: Some of the biggest monsters in the lore, such as the Zodiacal Godbeasts, are truly massive in size. The Celestial Drake Dracothion, for example, is large enough to have caught the remains of the-world-that-was while Fangathrak has the All-Gate of Ghur on its gullet.
• Replacement Goldfish: Nurgle is trying to conquer the realm of life and sees Alarielle as this for Isha/Shallya.
• Rivals Team Up: Sigmar and Nagash during the Age of Myth, after Sigmar liberated him they fought together to bring order to the Cosmos, defeating powerful ancient horrors which put in jeopardy the emergence of the mortal races and civilization, averted in the current Age, where each one has gone his own way and blames the other of betraying him, although Arkhan, Nagash's main lieutenant, hopes they eventually reconsider so Azyr and Shysh could beat Chaos once and for all.
• Rousing Speech: Gates of Azyr begins with Vandus giving one to the assembled Stormhost.
  "This night! This night, we open gates long closed! This night, we smite the savage. This night, we smite the daemon. We cross the infinite. We dare to return to the realms of our birthright. The design of eternity brought you here. Fate gave you the gifts, and the Forge has augmented them a hundredfold. You are the foremost servants of the God-King now. You are blades, you are his shields, you are his vengeance. You are the finest, the strongest, the purest. In pain you were made, but in glory you will live. No purpose have you now but to bring terror to the enemy, to lay waste to his lands and to shatter his fortresses. We are sent now into the heart of nightmares. For ages uncounted this canker had festered across the face of the universe, extinguishing hope from the lands once claimed by our people. The war will be long. There will be suffering and there will be anguish, for we are set against the very legions of hell. But they know us not. They believe all contests to be over, and that nothing remains but plunder and petty cruelties. In secrecy we have been created, and our coming shall be to them as the ending of worlds. With our victory, the torment will cease. The slaughter will cease. We will cleanse these worlds with fire and consign these usurpers to the pits that spawned them forth. Let the years of shame be forgotten! The fallen shall be avenged, and the Dark Gods themselves shall feel our fury! Reconquest begins, my brothers! This night, we bring them war! This night, we ride the storm!"
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Slaanesh has been captured and imprisoned by the Aelfs. The lore is vague on how they accomplished this.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Khornate Lord Anhur makes one to Robert E. Howard's Kull of Atlantis with the proclamation — "by this axe, I rule."
  • In July 2020 a Lumineth Realm-lord cavalry model was teased◊ with the mount being painted light blue, with a rainbow mane. Alas, the model is a unicorn, not a pegasus.
• Sky Pirate: The Kharadron Overlords are a dwarf civilization based around this. Their background mentions Grot and Orruk air fleets as well.
• Solo Tabletop Game: During the 2020 COVID pandemic, Games Workshop released rules on their Warhammer Community site (later republished in the December 2020 issue of White Dwarf) that allow people to play Age of Sigmar as a solo game. These alternate rules allow players to take a small force of Heroes and pit them against Adversaries whose behaviour is randomised.
• Species-Specific Afterlife: Not only does Shyish, the Realm of Death, contain afterlives for every mortal culture that has ever existed, it also includes underworlds for animals and creatures. One such afterlife is the Evercrawl, the web-filled underworld of dark forest, ruins and tunnels that is the destination of all arachnid spirits after death.
• Spell Book: The Arcane Tome, a universal Artefact of Power, can turn any Hero into a Wizard, with the standard spells Arcane Bolt and Mystic Shield.
• Sudden Name Change: Many names from classic Warhammer: Aelf (from Elf), Duardin (Dwarf), Highborn (High Elves), Exiles (Dark Elves), Wanderers (Wood Elves), Fyreslayers (Slayers), Seraphon (Lizardmen), Sylvaneth (Forest Spirits), Soulblight (Vampire), Deathrattle (Skeleton), Deadwalker (Zombie), Mordant (Ghoul), Deathmage (Necromancer), Nighthaunt (Ghost), Orruk (Orc), Grot (Goblin and Gnoblar), Ogor (Ogre), Troggoth (Troll), Gargant (Giant), Ironjawz (Black Orcs and Big 'Uns), Bonesplitterz (Savage Orcs), Gitmob (regular Goblins), Moonclan (Night Goblins), Spiderfang (Forest Goblins), Sourbreath Troggoth (regular Troll), Rockgut Troggoth (Stone Troll), Fellwater Troggoth (River Troll), Brayherd (Beastmen), Dragon Ogor (Dragon Ogre), Malerion (Malekith)...
• Time Skip: After the Realmsgate Wars^note the first campaign in the game's ongoing narrative the timeline jumps ahead about a century (or a few centuries; time moves at different rates in different realms). This has given the cities built in the wake of the Stormcast's gains time to grow into important centres of civilisation within the Mortal Realms and develop their own distinct cultures.
• Token Evil Teammate: The Daughters of Khaine (and their leader, Morathi) are this for Sigmar's alliance of Order. While the Order Grand Alliance includes some questionable members (such as the Idoneth Deepkin) the Daughters are openly part of Sigmar's alliance despite being vicious killers who worship the God of Murder. Not that the entire Order faction is against them; Even some of the Stormcast approve of their brutal methods.
• Took a Level in Badass: The Ghouls of Warhammer were little more than vermin, a weak and easily overcome foe that was used whenever the writers needed something for the characters to utterly crush and not make any of the established factions look weak. And now in Age of Sigmar they have become badass armies of flesh-eating abominations that roam the Mortal Realms, devouring everything in their path. They've bested armies of the Fyreslayer Duardin, the Bloodbringers of Khorne and even the Stormcast Eternals. Nagash, the God of Death himself, is angry that he cannot control them, since technically they aren't dead. The Ghoul Kings themselves can tame Zombie Dragons and ride them into battle, and even have Vargheists (bestial Vampires) in their service. Even their origins are a badass improvement over simply being inbred vermin, they are now the people who survived the Age of Chaos outside of Azyrheim and resorted to cannibalism to survive.
• Trade Your Passion for Glory: The Warriors of Chaos have basically been in retirement for the past thousands of years ever since conquering the Mortal Realms and have basically gotten flabby by the time the Age of Sigmar begins. It's actually the main reason why the Stormcast Eternals' initial strike is a success, and even then it's a close-run thing. With the prospect of a worthy foe on the horizon, it's all but explicitly stated Chaos is gonna bring the same A-game they brought in the Old World to bear against Azyrheim's forces, and the war's only gonna get worse.
• Unblockable Attack: Mortal wounds are a game mechanic that represent extremely powerful and/or inevitable damage that a model or unit suffers. Such wounds hit and wound automatically and ignore all regular saves, some special rules allow the chance to save such wounds however. They have become an important tactical element since they, of course, represent far and away one's best way of dealing with enemies with excellent saves. Conversely, the special rules that allow saves against them are important as one's only way of dealing with them.
• Unexplained Recovery: Several characters who died on-screen in The End Times are back with no explanation. While this might make sense for the gods and Incarnates, it also includes Teclis (last seen being torn apart by the out of control winds of magic, now a god somehow).
• Unfulfilled Purpose Misery: After the complete victory of Chaos in Warhammer Fantasy, the Norsca tribes (especially those devoted to Khorne) gladly welcomed the news of non-Chaos forces surviving, as it meant they finally had different enemies to fight against.
• Villainous Badland, Heroic Arcadia: The central home realm of the Order factions, Azyr, is a beautiful world of star fields surrounding Azyrheim, an immense city-slash-fantasy space station of elegant domes, soaring spires and wide avenues. This is in stark contrast to the base realms of the other three groups of factions — Ghur, home to the forces of Destruction, is a primordial realm of harsh environments and tectonic upheavals roamed by monsters and barbarians; Shyish, home to the legions of Death, is a bleak realm of finality and sterility ruled by undead empires and a few hardscrabble mortal nations; and the Eightpoints, home to the mortal hordes of Chaos, is a blasted wasteland home to nothing but twisted abominations and apocalypse cultists.
• Warrior Heaven: Hallost, the Land of Dead Heroes, is the Shyishan underworld where the spirits of the mightiest heroes of the Realm of Beasts spend eternity feasting and fighting. Over the aeons, Hallost has become increasingly war-torn as it has been invaded by the followers of Khorne and Orruk warclans looking for a good fight.
• Wave-Motion Gun: The Primatikon was an immense magical weapon that drew power of the Realm of Fire to unleash a lance of magical energy that could obliterate entire armies with a single shot. The weapon was destroyed millennia before the timeline of the game itself and one of the objectives of the narrative campaign included in the Seasons of War: Firestorm supplement is to rebuild the ancient weapon of destruction.
• Weird Sun: The Land of the Chained Sun in Aqshy was once illuminated by the colossal Godbeast Ignax, the Solar Drake. Captured by Grungni, the Duardin God of Metalwork, the massive dragon was bound and kept within the skies of the Floating Continent with great god-forged chains so that the Fyreslayers who lived there would never know night. During the Realmgate Wars, however, Archaeon freed Ignax from its bonds so that he could use her as a weapon against the forces of Order.
• Wham Episode: Every Broken Realms entry. To wit:
  • In Morathi, Morathi succeeds in becoming a goddess, absorbing the essence of Khaine and countless ancient aelven heroes and gods.
  • In Teclis, Arkhan the Black is banished for a time, Nagash and his Nine Books of Necromancy are destroyed (with Nagash barely surviving), the Shyish Nadir is re-inverted, and Teclis is corrupted by Death Magic.
  • In Be'lakor, Chamon is completely overrun by the forces of Chaos, at least three Stormhosts are wiped out or decimated, and Be'lakor nearly succeeds at his plan before being stopped by a Duardin hinted to either be Grungni reborn or Grombrindal the White Dwarf.
  • In Kragnos, Alarielle enacts the Rite of Life which restores the Oak of Ages, sending shockwaves of magic that all the Mortal Realms could feel. This inadvertently releases the ancient being known as Kragnos, who immediately rallied the forces of Destruction to go on a rampage. Though ultimately repelled, they left their mark on a City of Sigmar, while Grungni himself returned from exile to halt the quarrel between the Celestant-Prime and Morathi-Khaine. This all culminates in the Era of the Beast, the basis for the game's Third Edition.
• When Trees Attack: The Realm of Life, ruled by Alarielle, is inhabited by tree folk known as the Sylvaneth, stated to be beings reborn from the souls Alarielle stored after the destruction of the Old World. Unfortunately, because of Alarielle becoming a tad bit xenophobic, the Sylvaneth are quite hostile to outsiders.
• Worshipped for Great Deeds: Kragnos is an ancient, centaur-like warrior who has grown infamous for his strength, savagery and bloodthirstiness. He has crushed countless armies and civilizations in his time and seems to have become immortal, putting him on the edge of Deity of Human Origin, and as such has come to be worshipped as a god of war and earthquakes by the great hordes of orcish barbarians that follow him around in hopes of sharing in the slaughter and battle he brings with him. Sigmar also started out as this in Warhammer, but has since become an actual god, thus handily disqualifying him for this trope.

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