COVER FEATURE Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin
In 2015, the Warhammer world ended. You know, that place you fight over in Total War: Warhammer and Vermintide 2? Games Workshop blew it up. From its ashes rose a new setting, in a new era: the Age of Sigmar.
Such a dramatic move, driven by business realities more than narrative passion (it’s complicated, but basically Warhammer Fantasy models weren’t selling) inevitably upset huge swathes of the fanbase. Many of them have turned their nose up at Age of Sigmar ever since. But in the years since, the new setting has grown into a wonderfully rich, mythic and exciting universe of its own, where gods and their armies war over eight Mortal Realms formed out of pure primordial magic. It’s a fresh canvas for Games Workshop’s biggest and boldest fantasy ideas, with a rapidly rising popularity among players.
Videogame adaptations, however, have been thin on the ground. It’s had a smattering of mobile games and smaller titles, but nothing remotely on the scale of something like Total War: Warhammer. With its new RTS Realms of Ruin, developer Frontier is hoping to fill that void – and introduce gamers to a whole new world of Warhammer.
LIGHTNING FAST
Straight away as I’m shown is a real-time strategy game in the traditional mould – you build units, send them into battle with a click, advance up a tech tree and activate abilities in the fray to try and get the edge. Its grouped up squads and focus on capturing objectives put me in mind of another game: the classic.
