Age of Sigmar: Death Needs A Hand
Order, Chaos and even Destruction are getting love these days in Age of Sigmar – Nagash needs some help.
Since the Age of Sigmar was launched, we can all agree that Order has gotten the love. The entire Stormcast Eternals faction arrived like a bolt from the blue, taking up the vast majority of the initial “Summer of Sigmar” back in 2015. We’ve seen golden swordsmen, golden archers, golden rangers, golden paladins, golden Skeletors, golden angels, golden dragon riders (both small and large) and then some. On top of that we’ve gotten a large percentage of the old Warhammer Fantasy ranges such as the Elves and humans being rolled into the Order faction. Their Grand Alliance books is thick indeed.
Chaos is the next Grand Alliance to feel the love of Nottingham. The Chaos range was always large, and the combination of mortal chaos followers, daemons Skaven, and Beastmen give them just as mighty of a faction. Khorne and now Tzeentch have received exhaustive attention before you throw in the stunning hallmark kits for the faction like this guy:
Destruction, was off to a shaky start, but slowly but surely found it’s feet. Orks & Goblins, plus Ogre Kingdoms is a strong base, and the addition of IronJaws and Beastclaw Raiders have given the faction some real teeth on the tabletop. The factions isn’t the largest but it can punch above it’s weight.
Then we come to the sad state of Death. Ok, they have Nagash – let’s get that out of the way. He’s GIANT, and really mean. But do you really want to hang your entire faction on having to bring out the big guy to the tabletop each time and wrap your army around his model? The loss of the Tomb Kings range leaves Death with only the remnants of the old Vampire Counts minis with the “Nagash & Dead Friends” additions from the End Times expansion. To be honest it’s not enough. During the Age of Sigmar Summer Campaign Death was rarely seen. They had practically no effect and I can’t blame the players.
The range is tiny and aside from a handful of models, old and uninspired. At it’s core it’s the standard halloween gaggle of skeletons, ghouls, ghosts and vampires. Flesh Eater Courts was admirable from a fluff point of view, but a band-aid on the faction at most. I have every faith that GW can create evocative highly stylized kits for a particular faction. One only needs to look at the Sylvaneth to see how they can take an old trope like “wood elves” and make them awesome and wholly their own.
less this…
more this…
But the undead of the Age of Sigmar desperately need to become something wholly unique to the 8 Realms. Players need to see a range of the dead that can’t be replicated by generic models available from competitors. In short the forces of Nagash need to dig their way from the grave with a big helping of GW digital sculpting style.
I have no idea what inspiration GW could borrow from, but there are volumes of unique and chilling undead folklore out there from cultures the world over. We need more spine chilling units and concepts. Things that would put fear into deamons, and less “Ghosts & Goblins”.
~In the end everyone becomes servants of Nagash. Now if only GW can push some players his way…
