After a year of destroying the Warhammer world piece by piece, Games Workshop called an official end to the game’s 8th edition a few weeks ago by releasing the rules for “Age of Sigmar” online. A substantial departure from all previous versions of Warhammer, Age of Sigmar isn’t so much a 9th edition as it is a replacement for a retired game that it happens to share a thin sliver of continuity with.

Gone is the rulebook five hundred pages long, replaced with a 4 page PDF that contains all you need to play except stats for individual units. Gone too are the 15 standalone armies, trimmed down to a mere 4 factions. A radically different set of mechanics have transformed Age of Sigmar into a skirmish game rather than a mass battle system. Perhaps most controversial of all, units are no longer assigned points costs, a measure that historically ensured players selected armies of equivalent power for a balanced encounter. Instead, now players just use the figures they want to play with.

The reaction of the game’s established fanbase, has been… hostile. Continue reading →