The inside of the battlefoam case all the models are kept in becomes a luxuriously large manor/hangout, except all the surfaces are black and have the texture of foam (they make an onsen by laying down “Shallow Water - Difficult Terrain” templates on top of a “Fire Spray” template)
Dread Necromancer Thanata has a spell that, if it kills an enemy model, raises it as a revenant on your side. for our hero’s army, this is represented in the “on the battlefield” view as her jumping off her base, running to the enemy model, tapping it on the shoulder, and saying “Tag! You’re on our team now!”
Nurugaru, The First Shadow Assassin has a special rule allowing her to begin her movement from any table edge or any smoke cloud template, because she appears from nothing. This means that she is the source of a lot of jokes that could also apply to Ursarkar E. Creed – open the black foam silverware drawer, BAM! Nurugaru jumps at you with a couple of knives! Lift a piece of paper off the ground, BAM! Nurugaru! Peek behind where Nurugaru is standing, BAM! Nurugaru!
they know there’s fluff, but they don’t actually understand it, and fabricate their own mutually-incoherent stories about “what’s going on in the world” where their faction are the good guys (maybe the real enemy is the army of giant fish that even now controls 70% of the coasts! and see, we’re the last hope of the world, because we live in these glowing green fissures here and it’s hard for the fish to get in.) then of course we reveal there’s been so many retcons and edition changes that none of the players know what’s going on in the fluff either
“None of the players know what’s going on in the fluff,” you say…
I casually assume that one of the major arc antagonists is a little kid who runs the game setting’s Shining Noble Hero faction, the Stormcast Eternals or the Bretonnians or whatever, and whose army doesn’t seem to be in on the kayfabe – they’re super serious about themselves, and super into Cleansing the Land of Evil, etc. [Probably they chalk up the continued reappearance of the hero’s army to the most sinister of necromancies.] Turns out, surprise, the kid who runs them is really into the game fluff that most of the players ignore, and in his imagination games he’s been raising his guys on a steady diet of You’re Actually Paladins. He’s the only other player who seems to Believe in the Heart of the Minis, but his obsession with the fantasy fiction is troubling both on and off the field. How will our hero deal with this strangest of frenemies?
If you’re going to be playing around with a Toy Story concept respin, at some point you gotta have Buzz Lightyear.