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And when you brought a big infantry block at low point levels that was basically your entire army. So you had very limited options on both sides with what to move around.


Old World at the time needed its own dedicated small game format rules and as Killteam has shown; those rules need marketing on their own not just including in the back of the main rules. Games like Killteam, Warcry, Underworlds all fill that roughly same slot of getting people playing with the army models for low cost. You then build upon that foundation and steadily take them up into meeting engagements and more as they rise up toward that "2K standard".


Heck I'd argue GW aren't doing enough with Warcry and really need to put aside yet more chaos forces for it and give each race their own self contained boxed set for it

Well, at least until 6th, cannons and most other seige weapons affected larger units more, through the use of templates (cannons impacted in a straight line, so unless flanking a target pretty much just hit one model per row).

Also, I'm pretty sure most of the massive units started after 6th due to changes to flanking and rank bonus.

I don't think magic missiles, regular archers, cannons etc pushed people to take bigger units. MSU after all was common enough before 8th. Sure a unit of 10 is quickly reduced to 5 - and the aesthetics of 5 man units running across the table may be a bit sad. But the rules still work. And if they are only facing off with rival units of 10, who are reduced in a similar way, it's not so bad.

It was more that in 8th at least bigger units ate smaller ones, mainly I think due to the concentration of buffs (magic, magic items, characters etc). I.E. 20 Halberdiers with 10 attacks (2*5) kind of a joke. 40 Halberdiers fighting in 3 ranks for 30 attacks (3*10) kind of add up a bit. 40 Halberdiers with Wyssan's Wildform (+1 S & +1 T) are starting to be a hammer unit - and the buffs can keep on rolling. (Not to claim Halberdiers were the terror of tables - but as an example).

If you charge 20 Halberdiers into a unit of 40 White Lions, Grave Guard, whatever they are just dead and likely achieved almost nothing in the process.

Well that, and 8th adding in a rank of attacks combined with the earlier removal of first rank models that died didn't fight at all. Infantry in most of 4th/5th were ablative wounds for Champions and Characters more than actual fighters.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

 Shakalooloo wrote:

 Geifer wrote:
There is no point in the Imperial timeline where you would struggle to insert Tomb Kings,

No, just the problem of justifying why a band of Wood Elves have ventured into Khemri. Or how a group of Tomb Kings have profaned a sacred elven woodland. As with Lizardmen, it's not their lack of existence that requires a bit of a thinking to justify, but their geographical isolation.

Boats. I can't see how it's THIS difficult for people to understand.

Don't even need boats. The Wood Elves can travel through the worldroots of the Oak of Ages, which are spread all over the world.

https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Worldroots

Likewise, the Lizardmen have an entire system similar to the Webway to points all over the planet.

And there are more jungles than just Lustria. There are jungles in the Southlands below the Badlands with Lizardmen. From there they can reach Khemri, the World's Edge Mountains etc.

 Paymaster Games wrote:


Lets just say for the sake of argument that the first source book for The Old World would only be limited to the Old World, you would have the Empire (Possibly 3 different armies for each Emperor), Brettonia, Kislev, Tilea/ DoW, Vampire Counts (They did rise to power during this period), Skaven, Greenskins, Dwarfs, Norsica, Chaos and Wood Elves. So that would be 11 armies to start, and two of them would be completely new with new models. Not a bad start.

GW made sure to point out the High Elf colonies in the Bretonnia teaser, so expect them for sure.

 Overread wrote:

Old World at the time needed its own dedicated small game format rules and as Killteam has shown; those rules need marketing on their own not just including in the back of the main rules. Games like Killteam, Warcry, Underworlds all fill that roughly same slot of getting people playing with the army models for low cost. You then build upon that foundation and steadily take them up into meeting engagements and more as they rise up toward that "2K standard".


Heck I'd argue GW aren't doing enough with Warcry and really need to put aside yet more chaos forces for it and give each race their own self contained boxed set for it

Technically, Warhammer Battle had its own dedicated small game format rules...first Mordheim and then some skirmish rules that were more or less inspired from it. But they were never really treated like Warcry or Kill Team recently, more like a spin off of their respective edition of Battle rules.

The main issue with new GW games is that their business model / production planning makes it not fast enough to have "enough material" for the long term : different factions the size of Warhammer Battle at its peak, for example. That can only be built over the years, and that's why this new Old World project will unavoidably suffer the comparison with its revered ancestor when it will launch, IMHO.

They simply can't (or won't allow to) release everything at once on the day of release of the game.


TBH, that's a model that is actually quite fitting to how the Hobby is made : collecting, building and painting an army takes time, and it's best to start small and gradually build it over the months. Which goes against the modern way of having things fast and the current continuous flow of new stuff released by GW, IMHO.

This Old World project is about nostalgia and taking the best parts of previous editions of Warhammer Battle, as it was revealed in the previous articles. It will also have the paradox of using old rules design but adding new things to make it more "modern". I'm honestly curious to see the result in the end, but I definitely do not believe it will be the resurrection of Warhammer Battle back to its Golden Age in terms of success. Time has changed, players' needs too. If it is like Horus Heresy, it's already good enough from my point of view.

One of the things that funny about wargamers is that people playing a high fantasy game with a fairly loose time scale have very strong opinions about what an "immersive" game looks like.

Meanwhile, historical games will build campaigns out of a single odd occurrence or experimental vehicle.

 Polonius wrote:
One of the things that funny about wargamers is that people playing a high fantasy game with a fairly loose time scale have very strong opinions about what an "immersive" game looks like.

Meanwhile, historical games will build campaigns out of a single odd occurrence or experimental vehicle.

Well historical games I think have an easier time of doing "simulations" because they can base things on real world events, numbers and such. Heck some of them will go to insanely detailed lengths of historical accuracy and research to achieve that. Thing is once you're into that system the "my guys VS your guys" on the battlefield is less of an element. Winning is still good, but at the same time you've more scope for "You will lose, but you're going to do your best to see what happens and how well you can make the enemy hurt and such".

Fantasy and Sci-fi don't have any historical real world basis for battles. So its much harder to setup inherently imbalanced situations and simulations. It's most certainly not impossible, but I think its just a bit harder to get everyone to the table to agree on such things. So the game tends to err closer toward win and loss in straight battles. Layer on top that the only real reverences are films and that those tend to be on the epic side for inspiring people and people get a rough idea of what they want from a much more restricted scope of references.

Heck I'd wager many historical armies have people build whole waggon trains, campsites and the lot. Meanwhile in fantasy you get some of that in the 6-20mm market (eg Battle Valor did a whole line of waggons, carts and camps); but the 28mm+ stuff doesn't really have any concept of that. Even in many fantasy stories waggon trains and supplies are poorly displayed in many stories, if at all (and GW notoriously tends to ignore them completely - armies march troops alone in full armour everywhere).

a Skirmish game as entry game does not really work for R&F

Warcry works for AoS because both are Skirmish and AoS can be played at lower points

for an R&F game, having a 10-20 model Skirmish as entry level game, and the next step are 2k R&F with 120 models does not work

 Dawnbringer wrote:
Well, at least until 6th, cannons and most other seige weapons affected larger units more, through the use of templates (cannons impacted in a straight line, so unless flanking a target pretty much just hit one model per row).

Also, I'm pretty sure most of the massive units started after 6th due to changes to flanking and rank bonus.

And you would be wrong. Very rarely would you see a unit pass 20 models.


And yeah, war machines still used templates with the exception of cannons amd bolt throwers, and cannons could still fire a grapeshot template.

 kodos wrote:
a Skirmish game as entry game does not really work for R&F

Warcry works for AoS because both are Skirmish and AoS can be played at lower points

for an R&F game, having a 10-20 model Skirmish as entry level game, and the next step are 2k R&F with 120 models does not work

AoS is still very different to Warcry or Underworlds.

You aren't going to get rank and file with 10-20 models. But you can certainly keep models on square bases and use them in a skirmishing game. It's not so much about creating the same experience at each level; indeed trying to do that is why earlier models for scaling down failed. The idea is, instead, to provide a dedicated solid gaming experience of its own that works with very few purchases. The idea being that it gets people to the table playing quickly. Even better if its push-fit as then you can get someone from buying to playing in 20mins.

Once they are playing with their models, once they've a game they can play and get reward from that experience, then you steadily up the purchasing more easily. A second box of troops for variety in their skirmish game; then a 3rd - now they've got the startings of a small army; got some building and painting experience and got hooked on the hobby. Now that 500-1000-2000 point army is no way near as daunting. They can also work on building up to that big game 2K army and keep playing the skirmish game all the while.

The key is getting people to the table to play; socialising with the club and other players and getting more and more involved in the game.


Layering a core game with staged tiers of play; each with its own marketing, products and focus; is an ideal way to build players up.


Long long term players don't need this because when many of us started the number of models on the table was way way less than it is today. So we already grew our armies slowly over time. Indeed the increasing army size is as a response to GW releasing more models and people already having bigger collections and wanting to use more at once. Most wargames grow in scale over time and how they handle the transition is important. Some - eg Infinity - managed by keeping the core game small and fragmenting big factions into smaller grouped niches; others like Warhammer cope by increasing the model count so you can add more units to your army and bring more to the table.

If you do the latter you have to build in ways for newbies to work their way up

there is a reason Warcry Band got AoS rules, not for AoS players to buy more models, but to get Warcry players making the step to the game

and if you would need another 50 models to play with your Warcry models in AoS less people would do it

getting a Mortheim Band as intro to Fantasy does not work out if the next step are 2000 point games
that is not a Skirmish game and you cannot use your Warband 1:1 but those 10 models need to be distributed over different units does not help either

having a Warcry type game would not change that

I always felt the infacto Warhammer skirmish game Mordheim was more a type of game that you could play with models you already had in your full size army, or at least pile of shame. Rather than you building an army after getting a 15 model faction in Mordheim.

On the other hand, it was a great gateway game into whfb for non-wargamers.

 Just Tony wrote:

 Dawnbringer wrote:
Well, at least until 6th, cannons and most other seige weapons affected larger units more, through the use of templates (cannons impacted in a straight line, so unless flanking a target pretty much just hit one model per row).

Also, I'm pretty sure most of the massive units started after 6th due to changes to flanking and rank bonus.

And you would be wrong. Very rarely would you see a unit pass 20 models.


And yeah, war machines still used templates with the exception of cannons amd bolt throwers, and cannons could still fire a grapeshot template.

Umm, explain where I'm wrong? I was arguing that until at least 6th edition (never really played 7th) cannons and warmachines worked better against larger units, thus not encouraging units 30-40 models in size, which was being argued above my post.

I also stated the large units started after 6th, now perhaps it went from 20 for 6 and 7, then suddenly jumped to 40 at 8th, but I suspect it was more gradual than that.

 Dawnbringer wrote:
I also stated the large units started after 6th, now perhaps it went from 20 for 6 and 7, then suddenly jumped to 40 at 8th, but I suspect it was more gradual than that.

no, it was a jump from 20 to 40

not that a lot played the minimum size outside of elite as ~25-30 was common to keep the full bonus after you were charged, but Infantry got a buff with 10 wide and high unit strength, so 40 was the minimum to get all and 50 to keep it after being charged

8th changed the core rules such that massive blobs become not only viable, but ideal. Previously only a minority of factions could justify the 30+ size let alone 40+. 7th did see a creep with ranks going from 4 to 5, but that was incremental (16-man becoming 20, etc). 8th was where body count went up double or more.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

xenofexx wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
In the context of one game or even one campaign it really isn't an issue--one can come up with SOME reason to be there. But it gets old when having to be done repeatedly, which for some armies definitely happened. Each successive reason for why Tomb Kings and Dark Elves are in the region of Kharak Eight Peaks, or Dwarfs and Lizardmen are fighting it out in Norsca, feels a bit less authentic and more like a thin excuse to cover real word practicalities. A few years of doing that and narratives which would have worked before feel like repeating asspulls.

Compare to factions like Wood Elves, Skaven, BoC, etc. Where they can easily be showing up anywhere and focus on involving themselves in the local narrative. It is a factor--not insurmountable, but it exists in a not-insignificant way.

Agree with all of this. Yet I still prefer it to the portal shenanigans of AOS. The whole «anyone can show up anywhere at any time» just makes it impossible for me to care about the setting. It’s just a bridge too far for my suspension of disbelief.

It's just Stormcast, Seraphon, and Skaven that can show up (more or less) anywhere. Sylvaneth have similar shenanigans but only in/around the Realm of Life. Everyone else is stuck using the Realmgate portals, which are preexisting and factions have no ability to control where they link to*. I think it strikes a nice dynamic between regionally locking armies down and giving total freedom, and the lore has appropriately managed these portals as the massive strategic assets they are.

*Though it is possible for Chaos to link them directly to the Warp. At that point they can only be destroyed, not recovered.

 Dawnbringer wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

 Dawnbringer wrote:
Well, at least until 6th, cannons and most other seige weapons affected larger units more, through the use of templates (cannons impacted in a straight line, so unless flanking a target pretty much just hit one model per row).

Also, I'm pretty sure most of the massive units started after 6th due to changes to flanking and rank bonus.

And you would be wrong. Very rarely would you see a unit pass 20 models.


And yeah, war machines still used templates with the exception of cannons amd bolt throwers, and cannons could still fire a grapeshot template.

Umm, explain where I'm wrong? I was arguing that until at least 6th edition (never really played 7th) cannons and warmachines worked better against larger units, thus not encouraging units 30-40 models in size, which was being argued above my post.

I also stated the large units started after 6th, now perhaps it went from 20 for 6 and 7, then suddenly jumped to 40 at 8th, but I suspect it was more gradual than that.

War machines were still templates in 7th and 8th and indeed 8th added whole unit save or die spells, the problem was large units got so many attacks as well as being necessary to absorb those levels of attacks they became necessary.

Unit size went up from 16-20 to 20-25 with 7th (in both cases giving max ranks plus one as ablative wounds).

In 8th however:
1) you fought in 2 ranks rather than one and if you struck second everyone still got to attack rather than being reduced by casualties (in 6th/7th it was common for only characters and champions to be able to attack if you lost too many models).
2) if you were 10 wide (‘horde’ formation) you got to fight in 3 ranks rather than two, meaning 40 was the minimum for both max attacks and max ranks.

The additional effect of these was anvil units also needed to be similarly massive to absorb the sheer number of attacks put out by these units, leading to the 5x8 ‘bus’ formation as a 20-25 sized unit would just get deleted by the sheer volume of attacks.

 Overread wrote:
I think the other angle is time. There really isn't a chronological system in place. We have events happening in an order, but its really hard to date things. This makes it really hard to understand the importance of territory changes because you've no idea how it really settles in the story unless its near to major landmarks - like the NecroQuake. Even then you have a hard time working out if two characters you know are alive or dead at the same time. Or place a network story like the new Gotrek stories in any kind of order - has Gotrek really managed to spend perhaps decades being drunken between books or is it just a few months and if so that means a lot of major events are happening very fast etc..


It's "messy" to say the least. Visually its amazing, but it needs some kind of overlord to put order to the Chaos.

Agreed. While I don't care for precise year-by-year dating having some better guidelines to work off would be a big help. Stuff like the approximate length of different eras, or at least which century things happened in. It is simply impossible to figure out how different timeliness and chronology of certain events link up beyond the most vague level.

WHFB was great about having a cohesive timeline and IMO that added quite a lot to the appeal and depth of the world. While somewhat in the background I also feel that without its well defined history the Old World would not have been nearly as popular a setting.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Overread wrote:
I think the other angle is time. There really isn't a chronological system in place. We have events happening in an order, but its really hard to date things. This makes it really hard to understand the importance of territory changes because you've no idea how it really settles in the story unless its near to major landmarks - like the NecroQuake. Even then you have a hard time working out if two characters you know are alive or dead at the same time. Or place a network story like the new Gotrek stories in any kind of order - has Gotrek really managed to spend perhaps decades being drunken between books or is it just a few months and if so that means a lot of major events are happening very fast etc..


It's "messy" to say the least. Visually its amazing, but it needs some kind of overlord to put order to the Chaos.

Agreed. While I don't care for precise year-by-year dating having some better guidelines to work off would be a big help. Stuff like the approximate length of different eras, or at least which century things happened in. It is simply impossible to figure out how different timeliness and chronology of certain events link up beyond the most vague level.

WHFB was great about having a cohesive timeline and IMO that added quite a lot to the appeal and depth of the world. While somewhat in the background I also feel that without its well defined history the Old World would not have been nearly as popular a setting.

Yeah agreed - the only time stamps being the major events does make it hard to work out whats going on when and where. There are coccassionally bits and pieces about this took place a hundred year ago but there are few and far between and sometimes contradictory.

Yep plus the lack of timelines makes it very hard to work out who is alive at what time. Now granted a LOT of characters are pretty long lived - in fact humans are almost exceptional in the setting in how short lived they are.

Most other races have either a natural long life or can be enhanced fairly easily in the lore.

Which actually makes it harder. When you've elves in the Cities of Sigmar who are already considered past their first century and yet don't recall any time before the Age of Sigmar this suggests the age has been happening for a few hundred years; and yet other stories and parts or the lore make it feel like the Age of Sigmar started last week. Yet others have huge cities that grew to vast size with generations born within who don't even recall Chaos which suggests even more time passing.

It gets messy and I think the lack of a formal dating and time system holds authors back in being free to create within an infinite setting whilst having a sense of impact.

Another thing that having a solid timeline for events does is allow for connections between events which doesn't need to be explicitly said. That in turn drives community engagement with the setting.

For example, lets say the elves are having a massive civil war over on ulthuan and their tampering with the magical vortex unleashes a massive magical backlash which shatters part of their island in an enormous earthquake and tsunami. That happens on X date.

Meanwhile, in the dwarf book you have an entry on X date about an enormous earthquake that cut off huge swathes of their empire from other parts, and resulted in an enormous greenskin incursion or somesuch.

Nowhere do you need to explicitly say that the shattering of ulthuan caused the trouble in the dwarf lands, you just leave the clues in the dates or other details, such as a particular astronomical event which is observed from different places etc. Maybe the dwarfs saw boiling skies, flashing with magical energy, to the west prior.

That kind of storytelling and lore is like crack for nerds. Just look at the ridiculous number of videos people have made trying to piece together the disparate snippets of lore for the Dark Souls games, or the years/decades long speculation of the Horus Heresy before GW decided to just begin telling everyone every minute detail.

That also requires a shared world to work, so even if AoS did get a real timeline (impossible due to the realms where they don't even share a day/night cycle, let alone anything resembling years which could be unified), you still couldn't really do it as some event happening in Realm X is not going to impact Realm Z in any way that allows for that kind of naturalistic linking of events. GW seemingly went out of their way to create a setting where you just cannot create interconnected lore without it needing to be linked to specific characters. The only thing it can easily facilitate is standalone stories with no bearing on anything else within the setting, because you have no mechanisms for any impact on other areas of the setting as everything is disconnected both temporally and physically.

Not only that but it also allows new authors to come on board and quickly orientate themselves to your setting. I still feel like AoS was riding for a long while at BL on the skills of Josh Reynolds and since his departure I've felt that they've had distinctly less books for AoS. Esp once you take out the product paired books and short stories.

Getting skilled new authors into your setting means orientating them in the setting; having it totally open and free is really crippling for creative thinking because it means they've got to keep coming back to check if the ycan do certain things or not; or trying to work out some kind of order.

When did Morathi take that newest city; where is it; what political and geographical elements changed as a result. How does it relate to Nagash's actions in another realm etc..
Honestly AoS feels like a setting made by a non-creative manager. It's so loose and open its hard to have ground rules to build up from

 Overread wrote:
It's so loose and open its hard to have ground rules to build up from

It's a setting where you can tell any story, but those stories have no real weight as they cannot impact the setting in any real way.

If the Skaven dropped a moon on the realm of metal, would that affect any other realm? If not, why should we care?

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Overread wrote:
It's so loose and open its hard to have ground rules to build up from

It's a setting where you can tell any story, but those stories have no real weight as they cannot impact the setting in any real way.

If the Skaven dropped a moon on the realm of metal, would that affect any other realm? If not, why should we care?

Totally agree here. Maybe because so much of Warhammer Fantasy was grounded in history and well-known fantasy (Moorcock, etc) it was just easier for me to "get it", and get excited by it.

I've always thought of Age of Sigmar as being akin to something like Magic: The Gathering in terms of lore. Different planes of existence/dimensions, pretty effortless to jump around between planes, so much focus on the planes themselves leaving all the finer details vague and undefined. It's just not as interesting for me.

It's why I quit reading comic books. Constant reboots, power levels forever being raised into the stratosphere. It all feels so inconsequential.

True that's another issue, esp since a lot of the AoS story focuses on the Gods more than the mortals. The stakes keep getting pushed up and that means its harder and harder to identify with the common person when their impact and potential impact on the world is so so so tiny.

GW I think needs to invest more into the AoS setting and firm it up some. I'd even accept a kind of soft reboot. Perhaps split the Age of Sigmar into two ages, with the early age being full of mystery that was never quite sure of itself; and then followed by a more structured age.


I think for AoS it doesn't help that its already the 3rd age. Thousands of years have technically passed already for the Age of Myth to have arisen and then the 500 year Age of Chaos. In theory by AoS the Old World should be something almost impossible to have heard of unless you are very old or very well educated and even then in exotic elements of history so insanely far back and on a world that there is no evidence of. In theory only Stormcast should really have any true understanding being as they herald from a realm that has a chunk of the Old World as a captured moon lump.


And yet almost every commoner in AoS seems to have quite a lot of understanding that the Old World was a thing

Not sure that last bit is true. The few "common folk" perspectives we see from time to time generally only know and care about a specific period they live in. The Soulwars novel for example only really concerns itself with things that are happening at the time with little nods to some of the short stories on WarCom (a disgruntled Freeguilder who sows the seeds of the fall of Glymmsforge eventually becomes one of the main Nighthaunt champions for example).
The thing with AoS is that (much like 40k) we tend to get the people who live through all of these conflicts, ages, and periods giving the perspectives i.e. Gods, Stormcast, Aelves. The Average Jurgen isn't getting a say because GW hasn't focussed on it so far outside of small side stories on WarCom because it doesn't sell as much as the main "cast". 40k has the same problems.
GW wanted AoS to be a sandbox like 40k and it is, the problem is that 40k also has 35 years of history where people have been telling stories whereas AoS has 7.

That being said, I still think a lot of people are looking at AoS and want to not like it. The events that happen do have an impact on the setting and do have consequences, people just don't want to see it because it's not the thing they used to like.

I think a larger issue than timelines in AOS is how formless the world is, specifically because it's not a world. With WFB you knew where everything was (for the most part... things to the east got a little hazy at times). AoS presents these realms and gives maps for areas with which we have no grounding, recognition, or attachment. Part of that is being a symptom of being a new setting created out of nothing, but beyond that the rest of it ends up just being visual noise most of the time. It ends up being as arbitrary as the fluff itself.

Sarouan wrote:
Funny part is when you look at 8th edition miniature prices now with AoS, you'd actually wish you could still have them at that price then. Inflation is a bitch...

Heh. You think GW's price increases are driven by inflation.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Overread wrote:
It's so loose and open its hard to have ground rules to build up from

It's a setting where you can tell any story, but those stories have no real weight as they cannot impact the setting in any real way.

If the Skaven dropped a moon on the realm of metal, would that affect any other realm? If not, why should we care?

So like Fantasy then? Dwarves lose a hold, no one cares. Chaos invades from the north and razes a few towns and cities, no one cares. Ulthuan gets invaded by Naggoroth? Oh it's Tuesday.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Overread wrote:
It's so loose and open its hard to have ground rules to build up from

It's a setting where you can tell any story, but those stories have no real weight as they cannot impact the setting in any real way.

If the Skaven dropped a moon on the realm of metal, would that affect any other realm? If not, why should we care?

So like Fantasy then? Dwarves lose a hold, no one cares. Chaos invades from the north and razes a few towns and cities, no one cares. Ulthuan gets invaded by Naggoroth? Oh it's Tuesday.

If Nuln fell to Skaven we'd have understood the impact.

Its was a research and technological region that developed the Empires weapons of war. If that city fell we'd have a date it fell and we'd be able to establish what the impacts of that would be on the Empire in the story of the game itself. GW could tie to to new models or even models being changed in rarity. Eg seeing black powder become more expensive points wise. Story wise we'd have location, dates, key figures and elements. Yes the Old World had a lot of regions where war could have almost no impact - the Border Princes could lose and gain ground for generations and it would have no effect on the main narrative; however we'd still understand why that was the case and where they were and what might happen if one started to unite or conquer all the others.


The problem with AoS is that losing or gaining things is harder to put into context - we've had morathi take over a City of Sigmar; a massive undertaking in the setting. But we don't have a date for it so we've no idea how that correlates to the events in other regions. We've no idea of the political fall out or the loss of this city to the greater whole of the Cities of Sigmar. We've not even see it actually have any real game change for Cities of Sigmar - though Daughters of Khaine could take an allied force now under an expansion book (which is another thing - it was contained in an optional expansion)

GW is trying, the issue AoS has today is the legacy of its own creation.