Inq28 meets Age of Sigmar

Inq28 explores the lesser known aspects of the Warhammer 40,000 universe and has been a huge success, inspiring Blanchitsu articles, numerous blogs and countless incredible miniatures. Inq28 has become a term that describes not just a particular game but a whole approach to the hobby: an approach that puts creativity and imagination first.

AoS28 is an attempt to bring that same approach to the Nine Realms.

The Age of Sigmar has the potential for all sorts of stories, and just because we mainly see the epic, cinematic god-battles in the Games Workshop books doesn’t mean there aren’t other stories just out of frame, or just off the beaten path. That’s not to say your warband can’t include a few heroes, just that not every hero has to have a duel with Archaon.

What makes a model AoS28?

Conversions – The Age of Sigmar range contains loads of great miniatures but you’ll probably want to convert them in order to personalise them. This could be a kitbash or a complete resculpt. The important thing is to make the model yours.
Character is essential – you don’t have to write a full background story, but you’ll have to think about your character’s personality, they aren’t just pieces on a gaming board: what are their motivations? How have they survived the Chaos apocalypse? What do they think about the return of Sigmar? What secrets do they have?
Extra grimdark – Age of Sigmar has a distinctive, vibrant style, but there is a lot of darkness that is waiting to be explored. You think 40k has a monopoly on grimdark? The Nine Realms were conquered by Chaos, we are only just beginning to learn about the horrors that were unleashed.

What rules can I use?

We’ll be supporting the Hinterlands rules for AoS28, however your warband could be designed with games of Silver Tower, Mordheim, Realm of Chaos, Frostgrave or countless others in mind – or not for gaming with at all. The focus should be to make models you think are cool, rather than being constrained by points costs or restrictions.

How do I join in?

You’ll need to make a warband – probably between 2 and 8 models – led by a hero. The warband can be based on the theme below, or can be anything else you want to make.

Post in this thread on The Grand Alliance forums, or start a new blog on there or on another forum.

Use the hashtag #aos28 on instagram and twitter.

Join the Facebook group

Or if you have a blog already, let people know where to find it by posting your updates in the AoS28 thread on tga.community or by emailing [email protected]

If you don’t want to make a miniature or two, you could join in by writing stories or making art.

What comes next?

Over the next few months we’ll be showcasing all the best AoS28 models and warbands from any participating blog, as well as our own warbands. We’ll track what everyone is doing with Work in Progress photos and then final photographs in a few months.

There is no real deadline, because AoS28 is an ongoing thing. But we will roll out a new theme every few months, along with a wrap up of everything so far.

In addition there will be a new edition of Hinterlands dealing with AoS28 specifically, posts about background stories and ideas and possibly even gaming events at Warhammer World.

I need some ideas

Without many background or art books to draw inspiration from it might seem more difficult to come up with Age of Sigmar concepts than it is with Warhammer 40k. Age of Sigmar is often regarded as high fantasy, and you may feel that things need to fit this style in order to be suitable, but really you have a free reign to do whatever you can imagine: with infinite realms there are very few limits to what is acceptable. Like Warhammer 40k, Age of Sigmar has room for all sorts of stories of all sorts of genres. You are free to make whatever you want to make, but if you are stuck there is a theme you could try:

AoS28: Witch Hunters

The gates of Azyrheim are open and the Stormcast are unleashed on the Nine Realms. Cities and fortresses, thought lost forever are rediscovered. Lines of communication are rebuilt. And along with the Stormcast there are also other emissaries of Sigmar’s new world order. These Witch Hunters are tasked with rooting out corruption within the so-called Free Cities and the lost tribes, where mortals claim they have managed to resist the apocalypse. They seek the truth of these claims, and hunt the deceivers, betrayers and abominations.

Some travel in disguise and infiltrate the Free Cities, rooting out the corruption where it may otherwise go unnoticed. Some arrive at the city gates at the head of a punitive force, demanding tribute in Sigmar’s name. There are stories of tribes that claim to have escaped the taint of Chaos being put to the sword during these witch hunts. And there are stories of Sigmar’s agents themselves falling foul of the taint of Chaos and instead spreading the very corruption they profess to seek out.

The Shadowblades of the Seven Severed Fingers Cabal use assassins that travel through the Chaos wastes unnoticed, cloaked in the hides of daemons. They fight the horror of Chaos with horror of their own, and are able to strike fear into the blackest of hearts.

The Bitterlight Guild of Azyrheim use blinding, excoriating magic to interrogate those they suspect of corruption, stripping away lies and flesh until only truth remains. Their agents are said to be pure and incorruptable by some, and perverse sadists by others.

The childlike Oracle of Shyish can taste the taint of Chaos in the blood of men and women. Under the watchful eye of her immobile, silent Stormcast guardian, thousands of pilgrims bring her offerings in a hope to prove their purity.

The Knight-Venator Calliostro, tasked with finding tribes that had resisted the hordes of the Blood God, instead came across a Slaughterpriest who claimed to have been cured of the madness of Khorne when he pierced his own skull. The pair formed an unlikely alliance, but so far have been unable to replicate the accidental trepanation, despite the accuracy of the Venator’s arrows and an unending tide of test subjects.

The aquatic Duaradin fortress of Deepthunder has held out against the apocalypse since time immemorial. Under near constant attack, the citizens seal themselves in their hold and flood the city using ingenious mechanical walls and pumps, drowning any invaders. But emmissaries sent to the fortress noticed with some alarm that the barnacles that can be found all across Deepthunder can also be found on the skin of the sallow-eyed, secretive Duaradin that live there.

Eager to establish new alliances in the wake of Sigmar’s return, the crippled Vampire diplomat Malapraktor set out in his iron carriage, a ruinous steam-powered contraption. The vampire’s diligence in finding those whose blood is tainted by Chaos is perhaps unsurpassed by any other, but his manner of creating converts to his cause is more forceful than most.

The Shaii’ik tribe lived unseen by the scrying eyes of Tzeentch, worshipping a frail, masterless daemon. The entity granted them all invisibility from Chaos so long as they protected it in kind. When ambassadors from Azyrheim encountered the tribe the sight of the withered daemon sickened them, and they burned it. After some deliberation, they burned the tribe too.

11 Comments on “Introducing AoS28: Inq28 meets Age of Sigmar

  1. This is a weird one as been looking at Mordheim recently and thinking GW was missing a trick as with the shattering of the world, it would not just have created The Gates and the large realms but their must be city scape’s where fragments of the city, lost villages, towns are floating through the void, with denziems struggling to survive. The old tunnels of the dwarves, the warrens of the Rat kingdoms and the passageways cities and towns must have made an impression, left an indelible mark on the void and chaos.
    So unlike the Large Gates of Azyrheim, these gates would be the small ones local jumps between fragments, a cellar door here and an old alleyway there. So you could be fighting for food, weapons and against those who live and move between these small scale places. Like the old tales from Gormenghast, their might be fragments of buildings now floating through the void all interconnected and several stories tall, with Ballrooms, bedrooms, suites and libraries, while underneath the lower slums courtyards, and The Witch Hunters and chaos agents would also be places where they move hunting, and others who are treasure hunters or adventurism and survivalists.
    It would make for a nice tie between the works of the old WHFRP 1st Ed and the source books and artwork/stories and the newer AoS games.

    The old source books and adventures mention so much more, the old Realm of Chaos books offered rules for Warband creation and advancement, these offered some serious interest and opportunities and something that was popular with a lot of us in an old games club so to see this new project will be great.

  2. I would lie if I said this wasn’t interesting. After creating the Age of Munda guidelines for INQ28 themed games I know how well the system works. WHQ Silver Tower was also something that worked great and still is. On top of that I’ve been looking s lot at Nordic’s Mordheim work as that has that lovely gritty look and feel.

    Now I’d say my tzeentch collection I made last year fits right in but maybe explore the human survivor/cult aspect further could be fun. We’ll see but I’ll keep a close eye on this nonetheless.

  3. I’m really excited to see you take such an interest in Hinterlands and it’s development. I’ll be sure to cross post my warband’s progress in the official TGA thread.

  4. This is an amazing idea, I really enjoyed reading this article; lots of inspiration. A friend and I had been planning something similar recently. We were essentially going to use the old Realm of Chaos books and the AoS rules to play some small connected warband games.

    We wanted something fun and skirmish based, but with the rich, dark atmosphere of RoC and WHFRP 1st ed.

    Thank you for the link to TGA and the Hinterlands rules. I’ve signed up and downloaded them to have a read later.

    One little nit-pick. If you want all the content everyone makes for this to be collated and easy to find on Instagram in the future, you might want to change the hashtag from #aos28 to something a little more unique.

    That one brings up over a hundred personal/holiday pictures on Instagram. I tried a couple of hashtag searches on there and #thedaos28 (The Dark age of Sigmar 28) is completely free, so you could put your stamp on that unique real-estate for the project.

    • Thanks for the heads up about the hashtag, it didn’t occur to me that it would be in use. But 140 pics is not so much, I think we can take it over. I’d like to keep everything tied to the #aos28 tag because the link with #inq28 is really important. I think people would forget any other variation.

      It’s also interesting that you mention the old Realm of Chaos books – they were some of the first things to come to mind when I heard about Age of Sigmar. For some people AoS is new and strange, to me it seems like a great mix of new ideas and some classic concepts – such as the predominance of Chaos.

      • Yeah I understand trying to keep the link strong. If this takes off anything like Inq28, which I think is very likely; then we’ll be swamped by hundreds of awesome pictures in the near future.

        When AoS was released and I heard about each realm being dominated by a different wind of magic I was like “Wait… This is Realms of chaos!”.

        The idea of the material and immaterial mirroring and bleeding into each other just fired up my imagination.

  5. YES!

    so excited about this project! I am definitely going to join in, I have got at least two ideas I want to develop and I believe the AoS28 scale is perfect for this kind of projects.
    Hopefully I will be able to start this week end and involve some friends as well! See you guys on TGA!

    Hagen

  6. propably a bit late but: isn’t all AoS in 28mm? It made sense with Inquisitor scaled down but here?

  7. Hi
    my name is Francesco and I’m a miniature sculptor (here my portfolio and resume: https://francesco.artstation.com/

    I like very much what you did, you solve the ambiguity I had with the new Age of Sigmar, too “clean” for my taste.
    I starting now a Patreon campaign, where I share with my Patrons digital models I sculpt. I’d like to produce something related to AoS28. Let me know if is possible to collaborate together.

    thanks for your time
    Francesco

    • Hi Francesco – thanks for your interest but we have to decline. This is very much a Games Workshop blog and we don’t want to promote alternative miniature ranges – particularly if they are similar to GW IP.

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