Age of Sigmar RTS Realms of Ruin reveals its final faction

Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin, the upcoming real-time strategy game with big Dawn of War 2 vibes, will launch with four factions. We've already seen the heavily armored Stormcast Eternals, swamp-dwelling Orruk Kruleboyz, and undead Nighthaunt, and now developers Frontier have revealed the mutated and magical Disciples of Tzeentch will round out the roster. 

These Hosts Duplicitous serve the Chaos god of change, and count among their ranks daemons like the Horrors of Tzeentch, who begin as pink individuals and annoyingly split into pairs of gribbly blue dudes when defeated, as players of Boltgun will recall. Their flying melee troops are the Screamers of Tzeentch, joined in the air by Tzaangor Skyfires—bright blue beastmen with bows who can detect invisible troops—and spellcasting Magisters on shark-toothed flying discs. Their biggest unit is the Lord of Change, a greater daemon who looks like a skeksis from The Dark Crystal that hit the gym, which can summon an Infernal Gateway to damage and slow enemies in a wide area.

Overall the Disciples of Tzeentch seem like a force focused on ranged attacks, a predominantly shooty horde to contrast with thumper armies like the Kruleboyz and Stormcast Eternals—though they too have ranged options like the fireball-chucking Stormdrake Guard.

This latest video also shows off Realms of Ruin's unit customization via the livery editor, which lets you personalize troops by either choosing from the official Age of Sigmar paint schemes or making one of your own. The color choices seem to come directly from the Citadel paint options too, with names like leadbelcher grey, straken green, and corax white.

Maps can be customized as well, with maps made in the editor shared among players via an in-game workshop. The map editor doubles as a diorama-designer, letting you place units and select poses before going into a photo mode to capture each scene.

Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin is scheduled for a November 17 release, and will be available on Steam and the Epic Games Store.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.