The Warhammer tabletop game and strategy video games have a long, sometimes fruitful, sometimes detrimental relationship, and another crossover is on its way.
Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin, a “modernized take on the classic RTS,” was announced during the Warhammer Skulls showcase on Thursday. Frontier Developments, the team behind Elite: Dangerous, Jurassic World Evolution, and RollerCoaster Tycoon, has partnered with Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000 creator Games Workshop to bring the game to Windows PC (via Steam and Epic Games Store), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X “soon.”
Realms of Ruin will take place in the Realm of Ghur, otherwise known as the Realm of Beasts. It’s a “wild and savage” plane of existence that appeared after the destruction of the Warhammer Fantasy Battle tabletop wargame setting in 2015. Its story is being penned in collaboration with Gavin Thorpe, longtime designer at Games Workshop and author of a handful of books in the Black Library collection of novels and graphic novels.
As in “classic” RTS games like Starcraft, Command and Conquer, and Age of Empires, Realms of Ruin puts a strong emphasis on controlling key map locations, gathering resources, and attacking enemy command posts in from a bird’s eye view.
Frontier has four factions planned for release, only two of which have been revealed: the superhuman Stormcast Eternals, and the cunning Orruk Kruleboyz. During a recent behind-closed-doors presentation, Polygon watched a portion of the game’s second campaign mission, in which a battle played out between the two factions. The player, commanding the Eternals, had access to the heroes Sigrun, Iden, and Demechrios, along with a varied roster of superhuman units.
By capturing “Arcane Conduits,” the player progressed through the Eternals’ tech tree, unlocking increasingly powerful units (including Annihilators, Prosecutors, and the Stormdrake Guard), and defeated the Kruleboyz across the map. The battle seemed intense, if a bit slow. Recent real-time strategy games have included a “tactical pause” option to increase approachability without sacrificing intensity, but it remains to be seen whether Realms of Ruin will follow suit.
Frontier has yet to announce a release date for Realms of Ruin, or the dates for planned multiplayer betas. This will mark the studio’s first foray into the real-time strategy space, which, despite its decreased popularity since the “Golden Age” of early-’00s mainstays, has been on a hot streak in recent years. Realms of Ruin will be the first video game set in the Age of Sigmar universe since 2021’s Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Storm Ground, a solid but forgettable XCOM-like.