AoS Spoilerific Background Discussion.

[ElectricPaladin]

Definitely mortals.

Humans are mentioned, but in terms of photos there's so far only a War Altar, Warrior Priests and Flagellants shown.

Their situation, beyond being hunted by various Chaos forces isn't particularly elaborated on. For my money, they're being 'saved up' for a future volume, reflecting the newly restored order of the Age of Sigmar. I'm expecting them to keep the general Empire aesthetic. And then expand from there.

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Seraphon are the Lizardmen - seemingly no change to their appearance or background.

I know the Seraphon are the Lizardmen, but... what? They haven't been doing anything?

[Cap'nSmurfs]

There isn't much background on what any of the races have been doing, outside the forces of Chaos and the Stormcast Eternals. It's what subsequent books will be for.

[Path Walker]

This is such a nice book, really well laid out with some brilliant art work. Its the start of a whole new world, there is a lot more to come but I'm really happy with this book, the missions and extra rules for different realms (including more flavoured Triumph tables) are really cool and I'm looking forward to starting a campaign to fight back against Sigmar and his filthy followers

[Erik Setzer]

I'll probably have my book tomorrow (had it sent to the local GW for free, but Saturday I was at a con with some friends), so I'll give it a proper read then. But I'm still not impressed with what I'm hearing. Some of it sounds like it's not really been planned out and they're rushing a background together. The justification for the setting feels flimsy.

It's like this:

There was a bustling world full of interesting, varied races and gods, who had their own civilizations, all kinds of good stuff. Then one day Chaos won and blew it up. Only Sigmar survived.
Sigmar was so insanely powerful that not only did he survive a reality-destroying rift, he also brought back all the Incarnates, called them "gods," but forgot to mention they're not really gods. Some seem powerful enough to challenge gods, others are so weedy they get killed by their fellow long-dead Old World characters (hi, Nagash and Archaon!).
Sigmar also set up a bunch of interconnected realms, and plopped people down on them all. He created new life! Lots of it!
Oh, but then Chaos showed up, and it kicked his butt, and he ran off to hide and gather a new army. Meanwhile, Chaos has the ability to rampage through these realms for hundreds of years, destroying the magical civilizations that sprang out of Sigmar's mind and into reality, but Chaos, even while triumphant, doesn't blow up the realm like they did the old world. Because somehow triumphing before made Chaos weaker?
Sigmar made billions and billions of people from his own power, which is why millions can be slaughtered but there's still some people alive. Somewhere. Just off-camera. We swear they're there. But, you know, you're hear for war, right? So shut up and stop asking about the civilizations that would be required to exist for all this war to happen in the first place and just believe that Magical Sigmar creates new life to fight. This is WARhammer, not anything else, people are magically made out of thin air to fight in unending WAR that has to end in stalemate, even though we swear there's already been a back-and-forth.
And then Sigmar bursts back out onto the scene, after hundreds of years, to save what should no longer exist. And, judging by the terrain and pictures, he's saving realms that have long since been obliterated by Chaos, which, with the End Times, we've established is exactly what would have happened the moment he fled.

So... yeah. They'll find people who will love anything GW does and won't find all these holes in the story, but so far I'm not hearing even the GW fanatics explaining away those holes. And since I'm not a child, I want some actual background and a more "realistic" (such as it is) explanation of what's happening in the world, not, "This is WARhammer, so WAR is all there is." 40K is much more interesting because there's civilizations and pockets of peace and all kinds of stuff. AoS so far is just "ONLY WAR!!!!" and there's no way to have bodies to still feed into that, especially as it's already been past its own End Times, unless they're now saying the End Times was a fluke that happened just so they could blow up the world to make Outland and populate it with... I'm not sure yet.

I really need that book. Even being the limited edition, I'll read my copy, just because I can't imagine they wiped out 30 years of background for something so juvenile.

[Erik Setzer]

I will say that my opinion definitely could change if I get the book and find out that no one's relaying important bits of fluff. Holding off "final judgment" for that.