In Shyish, the realm of death, Nagash the Great Necromancer forms the souls of the deceased into his personal army. Cursed with new forms that reflect their mortal sins, he creates countless wailing, suffering souls known as the Nighthaunt. Then he sends them all to take over my bloody lookouts.
When this real-time strategy game set in the legendary fantasy universe of Warhammer Age of Sigmar was announced, only two of the game's four factions were revealed: the brilliant warriors of Stormcast Eternals, and the evil swamp-dwelling Orruk Kruleboyz. As I play through two of the game's campaign missions, I encounter a third mission, which is not a friendly introduction. As I try to achieve three goals - the rules of the spectral chains I need to break to retrieve a powerful artifact - the Nighthaunt hurls themselves at the heroic Stormcast in relentless waves.
That seems to be what Realms of Ruin is about at its core: objective control. Although the two campaign missions I play are conceptually very different - one, rushing into territory controlled by Uruk, the other withstanding the aforementioned barrage of ghosts - both are primarily aimed at capturing and holding ground against repeated enemy attacks. With little to do in building bases or managing the economy, other than being able to place one of a limited set of structures on the points you control, the focus is not on how you create your armies, but rather on how you use them to take control. battlefield.
The result, at least in these campaign missions, is the feeling of constantly putting out fires. You can only have that many troops in the field at any one time, and dividing them up across every point means distributing them very thinly. But any point left unprotected is vulnerable - if you don't have some backup ready to pounce on it, it will soon be lost. There are constant ebbs and flows of battle, and your goal is to make sure it goes more for you than against you.
There is a lot of real tension in these missions. The enemy keeps you under pressure, you can never rest on your laurels or resist an invasion. But in most RTS games this can be a grueling test of your speed and micromanagement skills, Realms of Ruin's slower pace puts the focus on your tactical choices above all else. It can take a long time for a unit to get from one end of the map to the other, or between two vital points. And that goes double for the massive, heavily armored Stormcast. This means you have plenty of time to choose who goes where when the alarm goes off that a point is under threat - but it also means you'd better make the right decision, because if you don't, pivoting won't be quick or easy.
specter of opportunity
I'll be the first to admit that I'm no expert when it comes to RTS games. I've been playing it since Warcraft 2, but I'm never really good at it—a fact that became all too clear when the game's PR person had to jump in mid-mission to offer some desperate advice about my predicament against the undead. But despite my blunders, it's clear that Realms of Ruin is much easier to get to than you'd normally expect from this genre. With a modest number of units to control, and the time to really think about where they are needed at any given moment, I never felt like the hole in my strategy was simply not being able to click fast enough or not knowing the exact correct order of units to execute.
This fits the feel of Warhammer Age of Sigmar, both with its very deliberate board game gameplay, and also the style of the setting. Where the most famous setting of Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000 emphasizes the apocalyptic absurdity, in Age of Sigmar a light of hope burns in the darkness. The actions of small groups of heroes - or horrors - can change the course of history, and it sure feels like that in Realms of Ruin when a handful of troops deploy decisively at the perfect moment, and hold the line long enough to win you over. the game.

Authenticity is the main goal of Realms of Ruin. While Age of Sigmar may not be familiar to you as a PC player - it's one of the newer Warhammer Creator Games Workshop settings, which launched after Warhammer Fantasy's official demise - it's clear that Frontier Developments has gone to great lengths to be as faithful to the settings as possible . Small, chunky units look straight out of a fighter's shelf, battlefields look like art out of a military book, and I've even spotted trees that evoke specific combinations of Warhammer's terrain.
Being hands-on gives me more time to tackle another key part of this equation: the story. At the start of my quest are cutscenes that follow the Stormcast Eternals and a sorcerer ally as they search for a Force artifact in the swamps of the monster world. While the characters explain and joke, the dialogue is both serious and a bit cliché - and honestly, that feels like the right approach. Such a grand, wild setting need not undercut it with wry commentary or knowing remark, and the melodrama suits mythic fantasy better than nuance.
Once the wizard starts talking evil about harnessing the Force and delving into the mystical ruins, you can also stamp the words "I'll turn evil later" on his forehead, but while the characters aren't subtle, they're likable - especially the Stormcast leaders, who, despite their They look like fictional Space Marines, with a lot more personality. One particularly notable is the company's sign bearer, who looks like a shadowy figure of Jason Statham as he suggests that exploring spooky ancient ruins might not be the best idea. Simple threads also allow plenty of room for effective presentation, letting newcomers rush through Mortal Realms in a way that will stay true to the source material for die-hard Age of Sigmar fans.
hammer time
That authenticity certainly extends to Nighthaunt, too. Although I can't play them myself, my battle against them reveals that they are a surprisingly versatile and resilient horde, much like backgammon. Far from a mere horde of generic ghosts, they are deformed, bent monsters, each warped into a shape pleasing to Nagash. From the Guard of Craventhrone pulling bows too large for their feeble arms, to the huge and repulsive Mourngul pushing his legless torso with only his long arms, to Awlrach the Drowner, a sinister navigator rowing his ethereal ship across the battlefield, they are all utterly charming in their awfulness, and each It plays an obvious role in the faction's strategy.
As they attack my control points, I am constantly forced to adapt. Clanking Chainrasps come at me in swarms, blocking my elite units - at first they were constantly slowing me down, until I was informed that an AOE attack with the Attorney General's Hammer was the perfect way to knock them out. Grimghast Reapers come in smaller numbers, but when they hit my line, machete swings cause utter mayhem - crossbow fire from the Vanguard Raptors seems like the best way to soften them up before attacking.
Counterplay in Realms of Ruin is kept pretty simple - there's a handy stone-and-paper-scissors mechanism that makes each of the three wide-ranging infantry types good against one type but poor against another, and it's relatively easy to get a sense of what each active ability is useful for ( Even if you need some hints). Implementing this is the tricky part, especially when dividing your forces across your territory makes it difficult to get the right units in the right place at the right time.
Conquest tasks

In the final game, due for release on November 17, your tactical prowess will be put to the test across an entire campaign - playing with multiple factions, not just Stormcast - as well as against other players in multiplayer mode. Frontier also revealed to me a third mode: Conquest. This replayable single-player mode puts me in my mind almost like a roguelike. Each time you play, the game procedurally generates a simple campaign map for 1v1 battles. Along the way, random modifiers switch things up—I've given examples of drastically reducing units' sight distance, speeding up unit movement, or a strict time limit. It forces you to win as fast as you can. While I haven't been able to try it out myself, from what I've seen it seems to be another smart move towards accessibility - meaning that for those like me who are less adept at playing RTS, there's ongoing single-player content to play and it's a lot less intimidating than facing off against other players In a multiplayer game.
It's touches like this that make Realms of Ruin feel like more than just a throwback to the golden age of RTS. Fans of this genre are sure to feel some nostalgia, especially those who enjoyed the Dawn of War games. But there's a modern vision here, too, one that specifically aims to make the push-and-pull war game the star of the show, something even newcomers to the genre can enjoy.