Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Strongly considering this game, as my favorite FLGS is planning some manner of escalation league for it. So as I am quite fond of fluffy, heavily customized armies, I would like to ask questions/run some ideas by you guys for advice. I want to be very familiar with the fluff to have a good idea of what army I want to run, and what I would want to grow it into.

Anyhow, My questions first:

1) How many realms are there, and how big are the reams that there are? I would want to take creative liberty with my little 'empire' as it were, I have a lot of ideas for essentially nation-themed armies.
2) Do people make up there own realm in your experience, and does the fluff support fanfare like this? Would it be like 40k and planets?
3) Where can I read more about the setting? I want to know as much as possible before diving in!

Finally, mind if I ran my ideas by you all? I need to know which one would be the fluffiest. I'll order them by how much I want to build them.

1) Orruks: If I ran them, I think I would like to make mine a bit more 'civilized' then what I understand so far, which seem to be just like 40k Orks (I already play those!) My Orruks would have more of a dark roman and/or gothic Mordor vibe. I guess I'm imagining Orcs 'Grown up' to be on par with other nations technologically. Again, I wouldn't want to run mad max-ian Orruks because I already collect and play Orks in 40k. I want to collect something new, but Orcs are my favorite bit of fantasy so I'm a touch worried I'll regret spending my money on something I'm not 100% sure I'll love, y'know? Also, I kinda want them to be more grey-green: can that happen?
2) Harpies/Sirens: Are they still... 'in existance'? I always wanted to try something like this, but I'm not sure what faction could do a 'bird-woman' army. I know the old world had 'em, though.
3) If I'm gonna run an army that's out of the box, I'd say my favorite AOS faction from looks with a getting-started kit is Beastclaw Raiders, those Ogors on mammoths (or whatever those are) I like them enough that I might start with those. But How expensive is AOS: If I choose ogres, and like the game enough, how much would it hurt to start another army? - I mean, I know the mini's are pricey, but how much plastic would I actually need for an ordinary game?

Thanks for reading this, Hope you guys can help me!

1) the below:
Azyr - heavens
Ulgu - shadow
Shyish - death
Aqysh - fire
Hysh - light
Chamon - metal
Ghyran - the jade kingdoms of life
Ghr - the realms of the beast
Khorne's realm
Tzeentch's realm
Nurgle's realm
Assuming slaanesh had a realm
The undercity and the horned rat

How big are they? It is said that you could never walk across one in a lifetime. There are no maps but they are supposed to be huge.

2) do people make up their own realm? Never heard of anyone doing that but I'm sure you could if you wanted to. It wouldn't be following official canon though.

3) The various novels in black library. The setting is still really not fleshed out very well. The malign portents book gives some incite into death. The realmgate wars give you some stories in various realms like azyr, chamon, and ghyran as well as aqshy.

How expensive is AOS? its a gw game. Its fairly expensive. It also depends on the size of your games. If you are around 1000 points then its not bad. At 2000 points its about $500 - $800 retail per force.

Reading BL on the setting would be a great idea for me, for a variety of reasons. I'll give it a go!

And given how big you quoted them saying the realms are, I'm sure a home-brewed realm is not necessary.

I really want to turn this into a world-building exercise, make a home-brew nation and draw maps, make terrain... But we'll have to see, by the sounds of those prices it's another 40k price-wise and I'm not sure I can swing that anytime soon! ...Well, *maybe*.

If you are running 2000 point tournament standard, then yeah its comparable to 40k.

You also have a ton of room for world building in AOS, much like 40k.

This should provide a little background on the Mortal Realms.

Cool, thanks for the video, Ghaz, that was quite helpful!

Can anyone give me any info on the feasibility of those ideas for armies? the Orruks are my top pick, if they're possible to 'civilize' like I was hoping. (I really don't need a second Orks army to paint!)

I am also considering buying into AoS finally. These Daughters of Khaine look incredible.

Speaking on Orruks and Beast claw Raiders. They both belong to the same Alliance "Destruction", so you could ally them. And if you don't want to spend much Beastclaw Raiders have about 800 points in the Start Collecting box. And you'd want two SC Boxes because the units in it will make up the most of your force. Beastclaw is a very easy to build army as well, not very "Civilized" however.

Here's a question; How do orruks live and reproduce? Do they release spores like in 40k, or do they have genders or even some other way? (Unlikely from what I've seen, but just curious)

Are Orruks at all different from their 40k counterparts, and how, if I may ask?

harpies are still in the game they are aligned with the chaos alliance. I'm not sure how you could make an entire faction with them but they'd be theme pretty well within a chaos beastmen army so Warherd or brayherd subfactions.

Orruks are basically clones of 40k for all real purposes to be honest, Spore babies without genders etc.

 Lazzamore wrote:
Here's a question; How do orruks live and reproduce? Do they release spores like in 40k, or do they have genders or even some other way? (Unlikely from what I've seen, but just curious)

Are Orruks at all different from their 40k counterparts, and how, if I may ask?

I think biologically they're very similar though I'm not sure the lifecycle/nature of the Greenskins has been fully expanded upon in the Mortal Realms as of yet. Still basically spores though, I'd guess they fell off of Gorkamorka or one of the other gods after arriving in the Realms.
I suppose the biggest change over 40k Orks is the presence of the Ironjawz (kind of akin to the Prime Orks from The Beast novels), massive Orruks who due to constant success have grown bigger than the other Orruks and thus have achieved something of a "leadership". By this I mean when the Ironjawz go to war other Orruks flock for miles to their sides, almost on instinct, to join in on the fight. Ironjawz fashion their armour and weapons out of captured scrap metal with their bare hands and the closest thing to "civilisation" they have is their capture of Gruntas (massive boars, as belligerent as their riders) and Maw Krushas (swole wyverns whose shout can tear skin from bone). The general Orruk thought on buildings is why build walls at all if you're not going to tear them down.

There are also the Savage Orruks, who do exist in 40k as the Feral Orks, but these guys are a full faction in the Mortal Realms. Basically they follow "da' old ways" and go into battle nekkid, wearing only tattoos and bone fetishes. These of course are effective defenses due to the power of the Waagghh channelled by their shamans.

 Lazzamore wrote:

1) Orruks: If I ran them, I think I would like to make mine a bit more 'civilized' then what I understand so far, which seem to be just like 40k Orks (I already play those!) My Orruks would have more of a dark roman and/or gothic Mordor vibe.

If you like Orruks with a Roman-vibe, check out this blog on TGA. It's exactly that:
http://www.tga.community/forums/topic/11818-the-legions-of-morximinus-thrash/

Adding to what was mentioned above, the Realms are, for all intents and purposes of the narrative, infinite, and therefore full of room for experimental ideas like these. They're also described as being attuned to their relative magical aspect but not to the exclusion of all others, and not to an extent that's uniform across each realm. So while there are areas in the realm of fire that are all exploding rocks and volcanoes, there's still verdant farmland and bodies of water and so on.

At least that's what I've gathered.

I think the wikis, Lexicanum I particular, do a good job of cataloguing the general information we have about the Realms so far.

As for your army ideas:

1) I rather like this idea. Would take a lot of work, but I think it'd narratively make most sense coming out of the Realm Hysh. With an invasion of Orruks eventually dawning upon otherwise alien concepts like the cunning brutality of conquest and the brutal cunning of politics.

2) The new Daughters of Khaine have some units that look this way, it's not across the whole range, so you'd need to modify some units and go without some others. By and large they're kind of heavy metal aelves.

3) Price of a new army is actually influenced pretty hard by whether the army you're building can easily be made using the discounted boxes. For 85 bucks USD the star collecting be as law raiders can make just under 800 points of stuff, while the iron jawz have a start collecting box that makes closer to 400 points of stuff. The fact that some of their bundles aren't actually discounts doesn't help picking them out, but I'd venture a 2000pt beasclaw raiders army could cost you around $220, not counting the books, if you built it entirely with two star collecting sets and one other kit. Likewise, at 2000pts you could field everything in a start collecting box, two weirdnob warband boxes, a megaboss on mawkrusha and have enough points left over for another unit or a warscroll battalion and that's $325 without the books, I think. Even then it's more of a grab bag of options, I don't actually know what kind of play works for Iron jawz.

I always figured that Orruk Brutes were the fantasy equivalent of 40k Nobs.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I always figured that Orruk Brutes were the fantasy equivalent of 40k Nobs.

You could be right, it's hard to scale them but in my head because they're bigger than Black Orcs ('Ard Boyz now) I put them as bigger than your average 40k Nob.

Sort of like this:

Boyz == Orruks < Nobz == Black Orks < Warboss == Brutes < Ghaz / Mega-armour Warboss == Megaboss

Of course 40k Orks could just be on the small side at the moment. You could probably just sub in Yoofs at the start and gak all the 40k stuff one step to the left.