Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin – The First Hands-On Preview

ign.com:

I've been nerding out over Warhammer Fantasy and 40K since before I could drive, but my relationship with Age of Sigmar, Games Workshop's most recent plane-hopping, epic fantasy spinoff has been mostly at arm's length. Realms of Ruin is an upcoming RTS that reached out a gleaming, armored fist to pull me in a bit closer. And the fact that it looks a lot like Dawn of War, aka one of my favorite RTS series of all time, made me all the more eager to reach out and grab it.

If you're not up to speed on what exactly Age of Sigmar is, I'll do my best to break it down for you quickly. The world of Warhammer Fantasy, the one we see in the Total War: Warhammer games, was completely destroyed when the ravening forces of Chaos finally won in a divisive story arc called The End Times. But not all was lost, as many key characters survived and the setting was reborn as it is in Realms of Ruin: humans, dwarfs, and orcs, mostly renamed to something Games Workshop can legally copyright but still recognizable in style and attitude, battle across a large variety of themed fantasy realms connected by giant portals called Realmgates.

The centerpieces of this new setting are the Stormcast Eternals. If they look oddly like fantasy space marines, that's because that is precisely what they are. The chosen warriors of the big Lawful Good god, Sigmar – the very same one worshiped in the Empire in Warhammer Fantasy, except he's a manifested character you can meet and interact with now – these fallen mortals are reforged by holy magic over and over, giving them incredible abilities, but slowly winnowing away their humanity each time they are resurrected from the battlefield. If you're one of the Free People trying to make a living in the Mortal Realms,