An Introduction to the Age of Sigmar

By Titus Villanueva

This story has been told time and time again, but as new players come in and more and more people get interested in the hobby, it’s an important story to be told. Age of Sigmar is a tabletop wargame developed by Games Workshop. It’s one of the two settings in the Warhammer franchise.

A lot of people remember Warhammer Fantasy Battle which was popularized by several videogames including Vermintide and Total War: Warhammer. Long story short, the forces of Chaos won and that world ended.

A new world emerged called the Mortal Realms. Its earliest known history involves an age of Myth where gods walked the realms alongside mortals. Even the God King Sigmar (we have a lot of returning gods and characters from Warhammer Fantasy) ruled his own realm of the heavens. Among the realms were the realms of, fire, beasts, life, shadow, metal, death and light, all connected to each other through the realm gates, portals that allowed beings to move between realms.

In another separate plane, the realm of Chaos, the four Chaos gods (the same ones from every Warhammer setting) played their Great Game, a never-ending power struggle between the four. In an attempt to gain the upper hand over each other, they invaded the Mortal Realms and took control of several territories.

In response to this, the opportunistic Nagash, the Supreme Lord of Undeath, makes his own move, betraying the realms and raising the dead to accomplish his bidding. Sigmar isolates himself in his own realm as Chaos begins to dominate the world in age known as the Age of Chaos.

The titular Age of Sigmar begins when Sigmar returns after some time with a massive army of super soldiers (eerily similar to the Space Marines from Warhammer 40k) called the Stormcast Eternals. They drive back the forces of chaos and death as the Mortal Realms remains trapped in a world of eternal war.

Well, the game isn’t called Peacehammer after all. It’s a hyperfantasy setting where magic is extremely powerful. It’s as over-the-top as you’d expect from a Warhammer game.