Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay vs Warhammer Age of Sigmar Roleplay

[Weiley31]

If you want Grim Dark gritty: Warhammer Fantasy Rpg 4E.

If you want Fantasy MCU, where your already powerful Fantasy take on the Ultramarine Character, uppercuts a Chaos Demon Lord through the ceiling and then proceeds to jump up, grab its body, swing it down and comet crash into a horde of lesser Chaos Demons with the impact causing an explosion that could level a good chunk of the area Dynasty Warriors style: Age of Sigmar.

 

[MGibster]

Once of the things I disliked about Warhammer Fantasy was the low powered characters you were typically stuck with initially. While the idea of playing a Ratcatcher with a small, but vicious, dog was hilarious, I didn't want to play that character or a toll collector, or a bandit, etc., etc.

 

[Dire Bare]

As I expected, more than a few jabs at the newer setting, Age of Sigmar, from some old-school players. I think it's important to note that Age of Sigmar exists for a reason, and has more than just a few fans. Even a few fans who've been around for a while!

Old-School Warhammer Fantasy, both the miniatures game and the RPG, are very grimdark . . . pretty sure Warhammer is where the term "grimdark" comes from. It's very heavy metal, but with an gritty, grungy, 80s, British aesthetic . . . not surprising since it was first published in the 80s, in England! The old-school RPG has a pretty hardcore, enthusiastic fanbase, and for good reason. Old-school Warhammer is the setting for the Total War and Vermintide video games, among others.

New-school Warhammer, Age of Sigmar, has a lot in common with it's predecessor, but has a very different tone and feel. It doesn't totally leave grimdark behind, but is much more high fantasy. It's REALLY high fantasy, the "highest" I've come across. It's also pretty heavy metal, but more high-brow, almost surrealistic, maybe more prog-rock than heavy metal . . .

As mentioned above, Age of Sigmar isn't a typical fantasy setting like the old-school Empire, where you have adventures on the mortal plane. Rather, it's more of a planar campaign where you adventure across multiple, fantastic planes of existence. Each plane has a theme like fire, life, death, beasts. light, metal, and shadow. But unlike D&D's planes, each is a "mortal realm" where the humans, elves, and dwarves live. The planes are connected by gates, and the major conflict is between the forces of law and the forces of chaos.

Which is better? Both! Neither! Whichever one seems the most interesting to you! Like any fandom, there's a lot of old-school crankiness aimed at the newer setting, but ignore all that. Both settings are pretty awesome places to adventure within an RPG, or a mass-battle miniatures game!

Personally, I was in middle school when Warhammer first became a thing . . . and the grungy grimdark setting turned me off and I never had any desire to try out the miniatures game, or later the RPG. I still don't really care for the style and tone of old-school Warhammer (strangely, however, I do enjoy Warhammer 40K, the space fantasy version of the game). I dig the Age of Sigmar setting a lot and play the miniatures game. I haven't picked up the new RPG yet, as I'm not usually into fantasy games that are close to D&D, but aren't D&D . . . I would love to check out a fan-design of AoS ported to D&D 5E!

 

[MGibster]

Personally, I was in middle school when Warhammer first became a thing . . . and the grungy grimdark setting turned me off and I never had any desire to try out the miniatures game, or later the RPG. I still don't really care for the style and tone of old-school Warhammer (strangely, however, I do enjoy Warhammer 40K, the space fantasy version of the game).

I prefer the original Warhammer Fantasy setting but I have to acknowledge that I hardly ever purchased any models for it and I was unlikely to purchase more in the future. But I've spent quite a bit on Age of Sigmar. I don't really care about the setting but I think they're making some fantastic models across the various factions. I think GW's Age of Sigmar models are far more interesting than what they've been churning out for Warhammer 40k.

 

[Retreater]

For me, the Age of Sigmar miniatures battle game is hard to get into because stuff is just so ... weird. When I was playing Warhammer Fantasy Battles, you just had fairly generic concepts like dwarves, elves, humans, undead, etc. Now to create a solid IP, GW is giving us things like undead sea elves riding on the backs of giant sea turtles, immortal angels inhabiting suits of armor, etc. It's hard for me to wrap my head around the narrative.

 

[Ixal]

Imo the semi historical background of Warhammer Fantasy was the biggest draw. Thus AoS threw away its biggest asset.

 

[Mercador]

Archives of the Old World #1 would allow me to read a bit on High Elves, anyone got that book?

Thanks @Dire Bare for your opinion, you wrote it even if it was crosscurrent from other answers, I really appreciate it.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

How High Fantasy is Age of Sigmar?

 

[MGibster]

How High Fantasy is Age of Sigmar?

This is Yndrasta who is a leader type figure for the Stormcast Eternals. From Wikipedia, "Each Stormcast was once a mortal that, upon death, had their soul taken to Azyr and subjected a series of trials in a process known as "reforging", granting them great power. This comes with effective immortality, as when they are killed, Stormcast souls are instead sent back to Azyr to be reforged again. This comes at a price, however - upon each reforging, the Stormcast loses a certain aspects of their personality, ranging from memories of their mortal life, certain emotions, or even changing physically." It's pretty high fantasy.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

This is Yndrasta who is a leader type figure for the Stormcast Eternals. From Wikipedia, "Each Stormcast was once a mortal that, upon death, had their soul taken to Azyr and subjected a series of trials in a process known as "reforging", granting them great power. This comes with effective immortality, as when they are killed, Stormcast souls are instead sent back to Azyr to be reforged again. This comes at a price, however - upon each reforging, the Stormcast loses a certain aspects of their personality, ranging from memories of their mortal life, certain emotions, or even changing physically." It's pretty high fantasy.


View attachment 141701

Hmm, yep. That's pretty high fantasy.

Cool mini. Did you paint it? It's a lovely paint job.