AoS Shorts: Your Essential Guide to Age of Sigmar

GHB2017 – Destruction Day on Warhammer Live

Here you can find all the information on matched play in the General’s Handbook 2017 from the Destruction day streamed live on Twitch, including the game between Flesh-Eater Courts and Ironjawz.   The list is currently a work in progress but will be updated through the day.

If you are subscribed, then you can watch it all back on Warhammer TV.  If you don’t have the time check out my other Twitch summaries: First Blood / Order / Chaos.

You can find all the official information on the Warhammer Community page, Facebook and Twitch collated on my General’s Handbook 2017 page.

 

General’s Handbook 2017 – Interview with Jervis Johnson

  • Jervis Johnson explained his perspective on the development of General’s Handbook 2017 and some of Games Workshop’s motives and objectives.
  • Extensive discussion of open play, narrative play and sieges.  If you are interested in these aspects, watch the stream 🙂
  • The sections relevant to matched play are covered below.

Overall aim for rules development

  • The overall aim for matched play was to balance the freedom of creativity (including in competitive list writing) with removing aspects of unsatisfying play (things that don’t feel quite right or that there is an overwhelming consensus that it is beyond the pail).

Process for point changes

  • canvassed the wider community, consulted external playtesters (including weekend sessions reviewing every unit in the game) – Jervis considered there were not many surprises from feedback (but the biggest adjustments were to battalions).

Battalions

  • The Games Workshop team hadn’t really taken into account the universal rules for battalions when the battalions were originally given points (extra artefact and ability to set up as a single drop and impact first turn choice).  Now these universal rules have been taken into account.  For instance, larger battalions are more useful as a single drop so cost more points.

Allies

  • In developing the first General’s Handbook Games Workshop just wanted a light touch over the main rules.  Now for General’s Handbook 2017, Games Workshop wanted to push the envelope to change the meta and provide greater support for cooler-looking thematic armies (i.e. combining armies across factions according to theme).  However, the team wanted to do this in a restrained way that acknowledged how the armies operate in the Warhammer Age of Sigmar background.
  • The team tried out a range of different points levels for the allies contingent (20-40%) – tried to balance enough points for getting suitable allied options in, without overwhelming the main faction.

New Battleplans

  • While wanting to add new battleplans, the team took a cautious approach to ensure that they were suitable for matched play.  All the new battleplans were tested with the external playtesters across different armies.  The team wanted to introduce new challenges that would allow the 6 new battleplans to sit alongside the existing battleplans.  Games Workshop is intending to add a new 6 battleplans each year.

Allegiance abilities

  • Warhammer: Age of Sigmar has evolved over time with the addition of allegiance abilities.  These add theme.  The rules team reviewed the Grand Alliance books and the model ranges (is it large enough?) and picked the factions that Games Workshop would not be producing a battletome for soon, but that players would want to see.  Then the team considered the lore first to generate some rules that would be suitable for the faction.  What makes this faction unique?  The rules were designed with both the lore and game mechanics in mind (for instance, the name of the rule is intended to tie the rule into the context of the lore).  Further, the team updated the Grand Alliance abilities based on feedback in order to remove the obvious choices.
    • Darkling Covens ability allows units to take into account models from nearby units for receiving benefits from special rules (i.e. the units benefit and support each other when stationed fighting together).
    • Fyreslayers runes – can be activated to give a special ability.  The order of activation is significant.

Rules of One

  • Removed duplicate artefacts because doesn’t feel right to have repeated powerful artefacts.  Wanted to add variety.

Flesh-Eater Courts vs Ironjaws

[to come]

  • In the mean time, read Chris Tomlin’s excellent summary of Ironjawz in General’s Handbook 2017

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