In just two days, you’ll be able to pre-order the Cities of Sigmar Army Set – which contains the first miniatures from this magnificently baroque new range. In celebration, the Warhammer Community team and the Warhammer Studio set out on their own Dawnbringer Crusades, meeting on cursed ground by the light of the bad moon. Once the ancient twin oaths of single combat and a round of tea were fulfilled, the two tribes sat down to discuss everything that went into designing such a hotly anticipated new release.
The round table continues today. The Grand Conclave explain how the design of the rules reflects the miniatures and background, so armies may thoroughly evoke the character of the Cities on the tabletop.
Seb – Miniatures Creative Lead: When creating fantasy humans, it’s easy to feel like everything has already been done. We decided to look on a more macro scale for the Cities of Sigmar – how do they fight against superior aelves and orruks? Perhaps by banding together, they can catch them unaware through strategy.
They’re all about claiming ground, moving forward, and building makeshift walls with shields and cannons – and so we came up with a few sketches of what eventually became the Castelite formation.
Max – ’Eavy Metal Lead: One of the things that struck me on the Castelite formation was that it really worked alongside the idea of the Cities as islands in a sea of darkness. Humans in real life have had to adapt to what the world throws at them, and it’s shaped our architecture and culture. In the Age of Sigmar, people have a reason to seek out the cities and travel long distances through Realm Gates for these safe havens.
That brings lots of opportunities for variety across the range, but it also introduces the idea of what happens when they have to leave that relative safety to go out and retake what’s been lost… We realised they’d want to take the safety with them – so they bring the city and its walls along. That helped the Cities of Sigmar become an idea that can be represented on the tabletop completely uniquely.
Phil – Lead Writer: It essentially unlocked the whole project on some level.
Ben – Product Developer: A lot of factions “castle up” in game terms, but they don’t literally look like a castle when they do it! Early conversations really keyed us into what the army would want to look like on the table – the Fusiliers as the castle wall, the Fusil-majors on Ogor Warhulks as the tower corners, and then the Cannon wheeling forward to let the Knights go charging through, acting essentially as a gate. As has been said, this image stuck with us all when it first came up, and it ended up being a key thing that the artwork and the photography hung off, so it had to be in the rules. A lot of design starts with miniatures on the table, without hard and fast rules in place, so having that faction identity really nailed down is very important. We play with the miniatures and determine what would feel right for a faction.
With the Sons of Behemat, for example, we played and went “what would happen if a Mega-Gargant could just pick up a monster and smash it into the ground, and actually move the miniature?” After you’ve got those visceral ideas worked out, you can work on the technical writing later, but it has to feel right.
The Castelite formation provided such an evocative image we instantly knew it had to play slow, defensive, and rigid. But we also needed something else to show that these were underdogs working together, which is where the orders system came from.
Partially inspired by the detachment abilities in old Warhammer Fantasy Empire books that let them Countercharge and Return Fire, it also captured the idea that if a single human comes up against a massive Chaos Warrior… sorry human, but you’re going to lose! But if an army with the right weaponry, tactics, discipline, and orders comes up against a horde of daemons, or a rampaging Waaagh!, they might have a chance if they work together.
Phil: There’s a real strength of the people there, their commonality, that’s really appealing.
Ben: The orders were quite a squirrely idea which really grew into something over time, and it defined the Cities of Sigmar as a cohesive force. It's easy to imagine each city specialising in their own way. Because we’re all people who love playing games and the paraphernalia that comes with that, we also created a token sheet for the orders that comes with every copy of the battletome.
It’s a really tactile way of enacting these orders on the battlefield, and the visibility of the tokens and limits on what can be issued provides a guideline for the Cities of Sigmar player. It also allows for some bluffing from a canny general, but their opponent also has a chance at counterplay. After this had been nailed down, the army needed some fantastical leaders to hand out those orders.
Sam – Miniatures Design Manager: Right from the beginning of the project, we knew we needed something to show the crazy mendicants and the religious madness of the Warhammer world. We had many wild ideas for zealots but knew we needed to do soldiery, so Pontifex Zenestra is where we added that special brand of Warhammer piousness.
Seb: Everyone was keen to get that religious aspect of the Cities of Sigmar working, and we left a lot of open doors again with the miniature – the wheels everywhere, the bifold nature of the Matriarch herself and the skeleton at the back, even the people carrying her.
Phil: She let us really get the idea of the Great Wheel in there, attrition, inevitability, and the influence of the Cults Unberogen.
Ben: The narrative aspect of a character like Zenestra also unlocks ideas with rules. As discussed earlier, some clearly do what they say on the tin, but others are a little stranger or are entirely new ideas. When fleshing out a new range like the Cities of Sigmar, we could say we need a unit that rewards you for moving forward instead of staying castled up.
So then we have a miniature like Zenestra and a few roles that need fulfilling. She’s the Matriarch of the Cult of the Wheel. The miniature tells a story about religion in the Cities of Sigmar, so she has to be a priest, but beyond that her design space is open. This lets us apply some ideas to her, and in concert with the narrative, we’ve got this idea of the Great Wheel always turning and Zenestra always needing to be carried forward. As a unit on the tabletop, she buffs nearby units and gets better at doing this if she’s in enemy territory. Suddenly, you’ve got the miniature, the lore, and the rules all working in concert, making her doubly exciting for the player.
Sam: As we’ve discussed, Tahlia Vedra came from our desire to have a big centrepiece character model for the new range. We quickly realised she was a mercenary, and Phil and his team continued to help flesh her out.
Phil: She gave us a way of keeping people’s old Cities of Sigmar armies valid – they’re the traditionalists – and the modern Hammerhal colour scheme developed by ’Eavy Metal could be the new headline faction that formed after what is essentially a military coup. She’s the favourite of the troops, and she’d rather play cards with them in the mess but has found herself burdened with responsibility.
Ben: It lets people who were already invested in the faction have a reason to be interested in why there has been a change, and it leaves the door ajar for people who have built and painted their army a certain way. When we made the decision to retire some miniatures from the range, we tried our best to leave options open for some of those units to be used to represent the new units.
People who want to run duardin and aelves, can do just that. Orders, command traits, and artefacts in the battletome all support it. Ultimately, they work best in a supporting role – a solid anchor of duardin for sitting on objectives or a flanking force of Darkling Covens to strike out.
In order to cover the incredible diversity of settlements that make up the Cities of Sigmar, we've included rules for 11 different Cities, from the industrious Greywater Fastness to the zealous Vindicarum. Some of these cities include exciting opportunities to incorporate allies from other factions, such as Kharadron Overlords units in a Tempest's Eye army, Sylvaneth units in The Living City, or Lumineth Realm-lords units in Settler's Gain.
This array of rules also provides a wide range of effects to choose from if you want to represent a city of your own creation, using the transfer sheet and coming up with a colour scheme to make something truly unique.
Ben: The rules are here to show you a framework on the right way to do it, only for you to make what you want.
Tomorrow Max from ’Eavy Metal will be downing his paint brushes for a few minutes to explain how he and his team worked tougher to define the Cities of Sigmar through myriad paint schemes, which all work in concert with the iconography for each city.
