10 Years of Age of Sigmar, Part 6: Thematic Legacy and Design Philosophy

This article is part of a retrospective series marking the 10th anniversary of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. From the shattering of the Old World to the rise of the Mortal Realms, we’re exploring a decade of mythic storytelling, strategic evolution, and community transformation. Whether you marched with the first Stormcast or joined the fray in the Age of the Beast, this series is for you: the generals, the lorekeepers, the hobbyists, and the dreamers. Welcome back to the Mortal Realms.

Series Contents:

1. Introduction: The Storm Breaks
2. The Shattering of the Old World
3. Editions through the years
4. Factions and Icons
5. Community and Culture
6. Thematic Legacy and Design Philosophy (you are here)
7. The next 10 years

A Game of Myths, Not Maps

From the beginning, Age of Sigmar set out to be something different. Where Warhammer Fantasy was grounded in pseudo-historical realism and traditional Western fantasy tropes, AoS embraced the surreal. The Mortal Realms are not continents; they are concepts. Realms of fire, shadow, metal, and life, each shaped as much by belief and magic as by mere mundane geography.

This shift wasn’t just aesthetic, either; It was philosophical. Age of Sigmar is a game of mythic resonance, where armies are avatars of ideology and battles are clashes of cosmic will.

You see this symbolism in the game’s factions, too. They aren’t just collections of units; they’re expressions of themes:

• The Stormcast Eternals are divine trauma made manifest.
• The Nighthaunt are grief incarnate.
• The Seraphon are memory weaponised
• The Gloomspite Gitz are madness given teeth and fungus.
• Chaos is a force of entropy.

Each army is built around a central idea, and that idea permeates everything: the lore, the rules (particularly in Path to Glory), the models, even the way they should play on the table. This design-by-archetype approach gives AoS a clarity of identity that few games can match.

This all has a strong impact on the all-important tone of the game. Indeed, one of AoS’s most distinctive traits is its tonal range. The game can be :

• Tragic, like the slow soul-death of the Stormcast.
• Epic, like Teclis battling Nagash in the skies above Shyish.
• Absurd, like a squig-riding goblin launching himself into a godbeast’s nostril.

This tonal elasticity allows for deeply personal narratives and grand cosmic sagas to coexist. It’s a setting where a single duardin’s grudge can matter as much as a god’s decree.

AoS’s rules have increasingly reflected these themes. Here are some example developments that did not exist when the game first came out, but were added over time to flesh it out and reflect the setting and tone of the game as it stood at the time:

• Heroic Actions and Monstrous Rampages make characters feel larger than life and give them a consequential presence on the battlefield.
• Path to Glory allows armies to grow and change narratively, echoing the reforging of the realms themselves.
• Endless Spells and Realm Rules make the battlefield feel alive and unpredictable.

Even the way factions interact – like the Skaven’s self-sabotaging brilliance or the Ossiarch Bonereapers’ bureaucratic necromancy – reinforces their narrative identity.

Perhaps AoS’s greatest thematic strength is its openness. The Mortal Realms are vast, undefined, and intentionally incomplete. This invites players to:

• Invent their own cities, gods, and realms.
• Create personal mythologies for their armies.
• Explore moral ambiguity; there are no “good guys,” only competing visions of order, freedom, and survival.

In this way, the Mortal Realms are not just a setting; they are a framework for collaborative myth-making. The release of the AoS RPG, Soulbound, has given players more opportunities to explore the setting.

After ten years, Age of Sigmar has carved out a unique identity in the world of fantasy gaming. It is bold, strange, and unapologetically mythic. It challenges players to think not just tactically, but thematically. Its legacy is not just in its rules or models, but in the stories it inspires and the myths we create together.