Quick army concepts

 I'm in the process of kicking around ideas for what my next Age of Sigmar army will be, so yesterday I set myself a challenge to come up with as many narrative army ideas as I could in twenty minutes. Here's what I ended up with. (Disclaimer: the fyreslayers concept is the only one where I've knowingly drawn on someone else's idea, but it's entirely possible that I've sub-consciously taken inspiration from things I've seen other people do, or just coincidentally had the same idea as someone else. So these probably aren't all original concepts!)

Kharadron Overlords

• A Kharadron admiral who makes a living by acting as a 'safari guide' to the realms, and taking clients on a trip to see the sights of the realms and hunt some monsters. There would be an Ironclad as the main vessel with some Gunhaulers to scout, and a lot of Grundstok Thunderers to ensure survival. Every time I ran the army I'd run them with a different allied Order hero, or one of the mercenary companies from the General's Handbook 2019, who would be their client; so each game or series of games I played with them would represent a different safari trip. The Kharadron would be very clean and smart in a bright livery, and the ships would have monster skulls mounted on them as trophies from previous hunts.

Idoneth Deepkin

• An army based around two leaders who are competing for favour, and their rival households. There would be two distinct halves to the army with a different but complimentary colour scheme for each, and I'd track how each half did during games and build a narrative around that. I haven't thought through what models would be included, but maybe one half could be focused around eels and the other half around sharks, with some Namarti on both sides.

Fyreslayers

• If I were doing another fyreslayers army, I'd take inspiration from Gav Thorpe's excellent short story 'Blood Gold' and do fyreslayers who have been working as mercenaries for a Khorne force and are starting to fall to Khorne themselves. They'd have dark red hair, the odd skull mounted on their belts or their helmets, and blood splattered weapons. I'd use mostly gold for the metals and the runes and try to give it a slightly red tint to suggest it was becoming tainted.

Bonesplitterz

• An army with a narrative built around a leader who all the other orruks think is channelling the spirit of the Waaagh, but who is actually just faking it because he wanted to get away from his clan. Perhaps he's getting power from another god instead, Tzeentch would be an obvious choice. Not sure what this would look like on the tabletop though, it needs a bit more thinking through.

Seraphon

• I really like the new lore around the Starborne and the Coalesced, so I'd do an army of Starborne (the ones based in Azyr) who were teleported down to the Realm of Beasts with their slann to fight a battle, but then the slann died in the battle, so now the rest of the Seraphon are stranded in Ghur and gradually becoming more savage as they meld with the realm. I'd have different models in the army at different stages of this transition, with the colour schemes of the more coalesced ones being brighter and stronger.

Ossiarch Bone Reapers

• An army that has failed its mission, and is now desperately seeking a way to redeem itself before returning to Shyish to face Nagash's punishment. The lore is that bonereapers that have failed are remade into lesser constructs, so I like the idea of the general dreading being remade as a skeleton horse, and everyone else in the army wondering what humiliating thing or part of a thing they might be turned into. The army would have failed to obtain all the bone it needed to repair itself, so some of the models could be missing limbs, or have other obvious battle injuries. 

That's as far as I got. It hopefully goes without saying that I don't make any claim to these concepts, so if any of them speak to you please feel free to use it!