Age of Sigmar Unboxing and initial thoughts

Here's my unboxing video showing the contents of the Age of Sigmar Warhammer starter set.  Probably not much new in there, so I'll add some thoughts and opinions below.

First off, its a nicely packaged starter.  Much more of a starter than previous GW offerings, in that you can actually play full games with the models and rules supplied.  The previous ones were sort of half baked in my opinion, because you needed the army books to play the full game, and didn't really have enough models to have a proper force.  This one seems different in that sense, so is more catered towards the first time gamer than the long time neck beard.

As for the sprues, of course the details are amazing and all of that, but the thing I've noticed is that the good and evil guys are totally separate on the sprues.  You can easily split the box without clipping anything.  The sprues are either completely one side or are divided down the middle and can be snapped in half.  This is a great design, and will make splitting with friends that much easier.

In terms of the new faction (Sigmarines), I can't say that I'm thrilled by them.  I don't particularly like painting space marines, and that's what these guys feel like.  One of thing things I like about fantasy are the troops and their smaller scale, so these guys are basically the opposite of that.  I'm also not keen on the round bases, but we'll have to see how that works out with game play.  I'm not about to rebase all of my guys yet, but maybe I will if I get indications that the round bases are the way to go in the long run.

For me one of the key things about a gaming system is that it is supported and living.  This means an active player community and new releases.  I think the approach GW has taken will allow give them the opportunity to have successful releases for a long time, and allow the game to flourish.  Sure, it needs some sort of mass battle set of advanced rules, but that's secondary to having a game that can support continual releases and a large catalog of miniatures.  Maybe Kings of War will be the competitive rule set for tournaments.  Maybe GW will release something even better.  Who knows.  All I care is that Fantasy remains profitable so GW keeps producing models.