It’s a whole new season for Age of Sigmar Fourth Edition and it’s time for the second General’s Handbook. We wave Good-Bye to the battle tactics, battleplans, and Honour Guard rules (Rest in Piss, Bodyguard) and say HELLO to a revamped way of scoring and a surprising number of other changes. As always, the Thank You to Games Workshop for providing us with an advance copy of the rules to review.

Core/Advanced Rules

Alongside the new battle tactics and battle plans (more on those in a sec), there are a few tweaks to some of the key concepts of the game, which we’ll go over here.

Terrain

Given that fighting is shifting to the overgrown wilds of Ghyran, perhaps it isn’t too much of a surprise that Obscuring terrain has changed in this GHB, seemingly an attempt to simplify and move away from the confusing “ignoring parts of the terrain within combat range” rules. Much more simple now: while every model in a non-MONSTER, non-FLY unit is within 1” of Obscuring terrain, it is only visible to enemy units within its combat range. There’s a catch however – in return, the range of all of its shooting attacks is halved. This feels much simpler to play, and like it suitably evokes the tangled vines and hanging leaves of Ghyran. The range debuff is a nice touch, and shows that the design team have given at least some thought to trying to avoid armies of static shooting castles that can’t be seen in return.

Places of Power have changed too, with a choice of three effects instead of one now. First up, and most similar to the previous rule, using Tap The Ley Lines a non-wizard hero can gain an unbind or banish. Gone though is the +1 power level for existing wizards, there’s no benefit here for them. 

Alternatively, your hero can attempt to roll a 3+ with Rapid Sprouting, with a success letting you choose an objective or visible terrain piece within 12” of the hero. It gains the Obscuring trait for the rest of the battle.

Finally, you can attempt to summon forth some Cauterising Pollen. On a 3+, all units (both friendly and enemy) wholly within 6” of this place of power Heal (2). Situationally great! On a roll of a 1, however, you’ll be doing 1 mortal damage to every unit (friendly and enemy) within 6” of any Place of Power on the board! Love this, funny when it happens but rare enough to not feel too bad hopefully.

Commands

Two changes here, to All-Out Attack and All-Out Defence. On the defence, the command now only lasts for the current fight ability, after which your saves are back to normal, so there’s an element of choosing the right timing to maximise your benefit. All-Out Attack gets an impactful change, semi-inspired by the Path to Glory: Ravaged Coast rules. Your unit gets +1 to hit, as before, but they also get -1 to their saves for the rest of the turn. This is a huge change, and having played a test game with these rules, the decision making feels very impactful. Sure, there are still going to be times where an All-Out Attack on your key hammer unit is going to make sense. After all, -1 to your save doesn’t matter if there’s nobody left to hit you back. But in multi-way fights, or strung out grinds, it starts to become a real agony of choice. It’s also really punishing for those do-everything units – suddenly if you buff their shooting, they’re at a disadvantage in the subsequent combat phase.

This feels like it might be one of the biggest changes in the book in terms of how the game is going to be played, really leaning on risk versus reward to make your combats more engaging and up the brainpower required to maximise your units’ effectiveness and survivability. 

Sacred Rites

A new generic and unlimited prayer ability for all priests. When a priest uses Sacred Rites it still counts as a prayer usage, but you don’t actually choose a prayer to chant. Roll D6 chanting points, but if you roll a 1 your priest only loses 1 point instead of D3. This feels like an answer to the fairly regular situation where people say “I’m going to roll a prayer but it doesn’t matter which one, I’m banking the points” – it’s now codified as a separate option, with an upside to boot. Good add.

Manifestations

These have had a full re-write to make them more clear. Instead of having a very long list of bullet points of when and how Manifestations work you get a list of ways they work regardless of their move characteristic then a further list split down between those that move and those that don’t. 

Largely these have not, actually, changed but they are much nicer to read and be sure of! The biggest change I see is that manifestations that have a movement value are treated as units for the purposes of movement, combat range, being in combat, and setting up terrain features, other manifestations, and other units. So no more setting up manifestations within 9” of an enemy manifestation (if it has a move value)! Being able to block out Set Ups with large manifestations like the Gravetide and Purple Sun is fantastic and in a season where your positioning is so important you can expect to keep seeing this in many lists.

There’s also a change to the Banish Manifestation ability. You can now use this in place of a spell or prayer ability when using Magical Intervention, meaning you can banish in your opponent’s turn. A minor wording change prevents you from banishing manifestations that were set up this turn, saving your opponent from apoplectic levels of rage. This wording update has also removed the stipulation about only having one attempt at banishing, so if you want to spend all of your wizard and priests’ output on getting rid of a pesky manifestation in your turn, go nuts. This is a nice quality of life change, and having a chance to banish the manifestation that is about to move/float/swing/teleport into charge range of your units is definitely a welcome extra tactical building block.

Season Rules

Ghyranite Objectives

The General’s Handbook does objective markers a little differently this season. Each objective marker has a symbol on it, with two pairs of two and two unique ones. These have names (Gnarlroot, Oakenbrow, Winterleaf, and Heartroot with the first two being your paired markers and the other two being the unique ones) that will be referenced in the battleplans. This does mean if you got your handbook second hand or don’t have the official markers for whatever reason, you’ll need a way to differentiate between the different types of marker. 

Paired Objectives

Any time a mission references “A pair of objective markers”, it refers to either both Gnarlroot ones or both Oakenbrow ones. Some missions have you try and hold pairs or have rules that affect certain pairs. This adds an extra dimension for the designers to play with to make new missions.

Obscured Objectives

Sometimes objectives can get the Obscuring rule. If this happens, the rules adjust such that you get the Obscuring benefits while in range of the Objective Marker instead of within 1”.

Battle Tactics

Overview

Probably the biggest overhaul of the game in this GHB, there’s a whole new system for battle tactics. This is exciting! The old system had been around for a while and was pretty flawed – particularly in the way it could slow down the hero phase whilst a player would flick through their list of options to try and make the optimal selection. That opportunity for mid-game analysis paralysis is gone and these are now part of your list. You pick two battle tactic cards when you’re writing your army list and need to try to score them throughout the game. Needing to do this before you know which battleplan(s) you’re playing and what you’re playing against can make it very difficult to choose some of them and is going to require you to either build your list around scoring these tactics or simply throwing caution to the wind. 

I do, broadly, think that while these will drive some armies to write lists differently to accommodate them better, some armies will still simply go on murder sprees and try to win games by removing their opponent from the board and scoring on primary instead. 

Your battle tactics score you up to 30 victory points across the game. Each card you pick has three tactics you need to complete, in order, before you can move on to the next. The nice part about three tactics on each card means you don’t need to be scoring these in every single turn to complete them; you get a five turn game to score them across. You can only complete one tactic on each card per turn, but note that a lot of the tactics don’t have timings on them so if you meet the conditions of multiple tactics on a card in a turn you can ‘bank’ them for future scoring.

The ones that I don’t like here are the ones that just feel like Win-More tactics. The biggest offender being Restless Energy below where for the last step you score 5VP if you control every single objective on the table. If you’ve gotten to, at the earliest, turn three and you’re sitting on and controlling every objective you’re probably already in the kind of lead where those 5VP aren’t going to do much for you. 

Restless Energy

1. Control an objective that was controlled by your opponent at the start of your turn.
2. Control every objective within enemy territory (or if there aren’t any, every objective that was controlled by your opponent at the start of the turn).
3. Control every objective.

As I just said, this is really Win More. Both players are going to be taking these objectives back and forth, but getting to all of the enemy-territory ones to control them, and then control all points, is going to see you at a point where you’re already winning big. The only case where this may not be true is for any very-fast, high control score, glass cannon type armies where you’ll be able to get there, kill enough stuff off points to control them for a very short period of time, and then die horrifically in return. Some Daughters of Khaine builds, for example, or cavalry heavy Ossiarchs or Chaos possibly. 

Overall I think we’re going to be seeing a lot more MSU and less reinforced bricks due to the nature of these tactics. 

Master of the Paths

1. Kill an enemy Hero.
2. Have more friendly units in neutral territory than enemy units (or no enemy units in friendly territory if there is no neutral territory in that battleplan).
3. Have three or more friendly units each wholly within 9” of a different corner of the battlefield with only one of those being in friendly territory and no more than one of those units was set up this turn.

This is just so incredibly matchup dependent that it will be pretty difficult to build around. If your opponent only has Heroes that benefit fully from the Guarded Hero trait and wrap them appropriately with their units (they will when they know this is your tactic) it could be turn 2 or even 3 until you score step one of this tactic. Needing to have so many units in corners of the battlefield is going to be tough for a lot of armies as well; especially so late in the game where you’re less likely to even have that many units left. 

Intercept and Recover

An interesting bit of design here in that at the start of the battle your opponent gets to pick 3 of their own units to be carrying treasure and the battle tactics themselves are:

1. Destroy an enemy unit carrying treasure.
2. Destroy an enemy unit carrying treasure.
3. Destroy an enemy unit carrying treasure.

You get the picture.

A curveball here is that if you ever take a double turn your opponent gets to remove a treasure from one of their units, effectively denying you 5VP permanently (unless you’d already completed it). 

Another aspect to consider is that your opponent can only pick units on the table at the start of the battle to hold treasure, so if they set anything up in reserve then that can’t be selected. In terms of things you need to do to score this is potentially the easiest battle tactics card there is, but with a couple of honking great downsides. I like the design here, there’s a bit of punish for an early double (but from initial testing, you’re still going to take those “I win the game” doubles and eat the 5VP loss) and there’s an element of influence on the listbuilding metagame. Sadly, the influence is “take at least 3 tough to kill units”, which is kinda doubling down on the meta we were hoping to escape. 

Wrathful Cycles

1. Control more objectives than your opponent
2. Be the underdog, have a unit on the board and half of your units (rounding up) use a fight ability.
3. Have a different unit wholly in each large table quarter and you control more objectives than your opponent and there are no enemies contesting any objective you control

The initial tactic aligns with what you already want to do in a normal game of warhammer, but it starts to go off the rails a bit from there. If you’ve scored this by controlling more objectives then you’re very likely ahead at the point you need to be underdog, so this either delays your scoring or relies on your opponent taking a double. Table quarters is pretty easy for some armies, but the two additional clauses on the last tactic take us back into “you’ve already won the game” territory.

Scouting Force

This was shown off by Warhammer Community a little while back and I think might be a popular choice. All of your non-Hero Infantry and non-Hero Cavalry units wholly within friendly territory a the start of the game becomes a scout unit. Importantly that means units that are set up off the table are not. 

1. Three or more scout units wholly outside friendly territory
2. Three or more objectives or terrain features that you control, in any combination, are being contested by friendly scout units. They need to be at least partially in enemy territory. 
3. A friendly scout unit, that was not set up this turn, is contesting a terrain feature that you control that is wholly within enemy territory and also more than 6” from friendly territory. 

This is probably the easiest one to actually build around. Some armies might struggle with it (Fyreslayers, for one) but many will be able to score these all by the end of turn three with relative ease. Step two will be fairly easy, just go and get to some terrain features that your opponent isn’t hugging (or get to them with higher control than they have). Most armies have light cavalry or similar cheap options that can run around doing these. Of course, those units will become a prime target for your opponent to lift so don’t just take three, probably. I like that you don’t need to have many units past turn two for this, a bit more realistic of games of Age of Sigmar. 

Attuned to Ghyran

1. At least two friendly units are within 3” of the centre of the table. 
2. At least two friendly units use a Retreat ability and then two other friendly units use a Charge move and at least one of them ended in combat with an enemy unit that you retreated from earlier. 
3. No enemy units within friendly territory or neutral territory. 

This one is pretty easy for the first two points, with the third being more difficult to score. Simply table your opponent, though, and the third is automatic, easy! This is one that I’m eyeing up for my Gitz army that mixes both Rockguts with Squig units; I don’t have any Gitmob but yes obviously those would be very good for this, don’t come at me. You’re going to want tough-enough units as anvils that will be able to survive combat long enough to make Retreat moves then slam into your opponent with glass cannons. I like that this one has a very natural flow to it, compared to some. 

Battleplans

Overview

All of these missions are weird in one way or another. They really lean into the new labeled objectives in interesting ways. There’s no particularly straightforward mission in this set, each has a new, weird interaction associated with it. 

Passing Seasons

Four objectives in a square, with player territory restricted to opposite corner quadrants. There are only Gnarlroot and Oakenbrow objectives, with the Oakenbrow ones being in the player territories. 

The twist is that in battle rounds 2 and 4 the underdog gains access to a once per battle round ability that heals every friendly unit contesting an Oakenbrow objective and grants friendly units contesting a Gnarlroot objective +1 to ward rolls (or a 6+ ward if they lack one). In battle rounds 3 and 5 the underdog instead has a passive ability to get +1 to wound for combat attacks by units contesting a Gnarlroot objective. Both of these are pretty spicy, but if you’re aiming to be the underdog, battle round 3 looks like the time to do it.

Scoring with this battleplan also changes based on battle round number. In battle rounds 1,3, and 5 you get 5VP per Gnarlroot objective you control and in 2 and 4 you score 5VP for each Oakenbrow objective you control. That’s it, no other primary scoring at all. The placement of the Gnarlroot objectives outside of your territory is an obvious incentive to actually take the first turn if your army cant contest both & have something hefty enough to potentially hold one, as falling behind on that early Gnarlroot score could be heavily punishing. 

Total potential score here is 50 VP, but that would represent an impossibly perfect game and I’d expect to see this one trend a bit lower on primary score.

Paths of the Fey

Five objectives laid out like 5 pips on a dice. Player territory is the strip in the middle of the board so only the central objective sits in player territory and it straddles both. 

The twist here is the underdog is forced to use a once per battle round ability to pick two objectives anywhere on the board and all units within 6” of those objectives get removed from the battlefield. Then, starting with the underdog, both players alternate setting those units back up wholly within 6” of either target objective and more than 3” from enemy units. Each model has to be as close to the objective as possible and can’t then move in the subsequent movement phase. If you end up in a situation where a unit can’t deploy, it stays off board until your movement phase when it can come on a battlefield edge. This is wild, and will reward armies that have enough units to keep on the objectives, as if there’s an underdog this ability will be happening. 

Also notable is the deployment. It’s a 2×2 square on each side of the table for the territories. With you being unable to deploy within 9” of enemy territory this makes for a pretty tight deployment and with the objectives being in neither players territory off to the sides, players will likely scatter their armies from the jump, often moving away from the enemy army.

For scoring it’s blessedly simple: 5 VP for holding 1, 3 VP for holding 2 and 2 VP for holding more. 

Roiling Roots

A long board edge deployment with 6 objectives in two diagonal rows. That already makes for a pretty complex fight, so the rest of the battleplan is lighter on the crazy additional rules that came before. Still, the underdog here gets an ability to pick a pair of objectives and hand out strike-last to all units (friend or foe) contesting those objectives.

Scoring is 5/3/2 VP for holding 1/2/more objectives.

Cyclic Shifts

Another long board edge deployment with 6 objectives in two diagonal rows, though the direction of the diagonal is flipped from Roiling Roots. Scoring is 5/3/2 VP for holding 1/2/more objectives, and the underdog gets to pick a pair of objectives and immediately remove any player’s control of them, plus make them impossible to control for the rest of the battle round. Note you can still contest these objectives.

Surge of Slaughter

Long board edge deployment with five objectives, one in the middle and two wholly in each player territory. Normal 1/2/more scoring and an underdog ability that makes you pick a pair of objectives and your friendly units get +1 rend to their melee weapons whilst contesting that pair.

Linked Ley Lines

Are you sensing a theme of long board edge deployments? This one also has five objectives but this time in a much tighter diamond formation, with 3 in neutral territory and one each in player territory. 

The twist here is that the underdog gains two passive abilities: Strike-first for friendly manifestations and Anti-Manifestation (+1 rend) for melee weapons of friendly unit that is contesting an objective you control and on a linked ley line. This obviously favors casting armies. If you see this in the player pack for your upcoming tournament, be sure to bring a wizard if you weren’t already for some reason.

You can form a linked ley line if you hold all of the objectives in a line (long edge to long edge or short edge to short edge). If you control all of the objectives in a linked ley line you score 2 VP, otherwise it’s normal 1/2/more. 

Noxious Nexus

Super weird battleplan setup! Player territories are quadrants, but are opposite each other rather than diagonal to each other. This splits the board in half down the middle of the long board edge with one half being neutral and the other half having both player territories. There are 3 objectives in a line running short edge to short edge, so one is fully in neutral territory and the other two fall half in each territory.

The underdog gets to pick an objective and do 2+ d3 mortal damage to each unit contesting it, or 2+ d6 mortal damage if it’s the objective in neutral territory. This can be brutal towards the end of the game when you’ve got a few units with a few wounds left bullying over niche objectives, especially if it’s the no man’s land one, since you score more at the end of the game for holding it.

This is not normal scoring and instead you get 5 VP for controlling the Oakenbrow objective, 3 VP for controlling Gnarlroot and 2 VP for controlling Heartwood (the one in neutral territory). It seems weird to set up the punish for the objective that scores the lowest, but the player holding Heartwood at the end of the battle scores an extra 10 VP.

The Liferoots

We’re back to trying to make Knife to the Heart work, with a two objective battleplan that has a huge pile of obscuring terrain running diagonally across the board.

The underdog gets a potentially quite sexy ability to return 1 slain model to a friendly unit that has all of its models within 1” of a terrain feature. Notably there are absolutely no restrictions here. Sure you can get one Clanrat back, but you can also get an entire Stormdrake Guard model. Bringing units of big dudes will help a lot here.

You’ll want to be hugging terrain, because you get 1 liferoot point at the end of each turn for each terrain feature you control. You score 5 VP for holding one objective and another 3 VP for controlling two, but the crux of the matter may come down to the terrain here as there’s another 2 VP for having more liferoot points than your opponent. Potentially a big one for fast armies.

Bountiful Equinox

Another five objective on a long board edge deployment, with four places of power and four bits of obscuring terrain on the board. This time the underdog gets to pick an objective and heal (3) everyone contesting it, which is kind of them. This includes enemy models, so there’s some real choice on whether or not to use this. 

Scoring here is 5 for holding one, 3 for holding two and a twist in that you only get the other 2 VP for holding one of each type of objective.

Lifecycle

What if battle for the pass was also shifting objectives. Four objectives, one of each type, and the funkiest scoring we’ve seen yet. 

At the start of the second battle round the underdog (or if you’re drawing, whoever wins a roll off) gets to pick one of two objectives to be the primary. At the start of each subsequent battle round, the next objective clockwise becomes the primary. The objectives next to the primary in the cycle are the secondary objectives. 

Scoring is mad. 4 VP for holding any objective, 2 VP for holding more objectives, 4 VP if you hold both Oakenbrow and Gnarlroot (but only in the first battle round), 2 VP for controlling the primary and 1 VP for each secondary. There’s a lot going on here, but I think we’ll see games where players compete to be the underdog in that first battle round as it’s important then and never again.

Creeping Corruption

Six objectives on a long board edge again, and we’re back to standard scoring. The gimmick here is that the underdog can pick an objective they control and draw a line between it and any other objective and then choose one of two effects. Propagation gives +1 to cast, chant and banish to each unit crossed by the line whilst Corruption inflicts d3 mortal damage to each unit crossed by the line. There are likely ways to hit your opponent’s entire army with the mortal wounds, meaning you can potentially snipe out squishy support heroes with this over a few turns.

Grasp of Thorns

Four objectives with normal scoring. The underdog gets to pick an objective and roll a dice for each unit contesting it, and on a 3+ every model in that unit which is contesting the objective becomes Entangled. Entangled models can’t move off the objective for the rest of the battle round, and a unit containing entangled models can’t be removed from the battlefield. Armies that rely on out of sequence movement or even just movement to keep out of sticky situations will have to be careful with this mission.

Final Thoughts

Overall, this feels like a season that is going to cause some pretty big changes to how the game is played. Some things will remain true, of course: reinforced hammers are required, high quality shooting is still valuable, and high-volume rend 1 damage 1 attacks will murder almost anything. Updated commands feel like they’re going to change the push-pull of the game though, and we might be looking at a return to multiple small units over few reinforced blocks to better set players up for battle tactics.

Speaking of battle tactics, they’re going to be a key differentiator in list building. It’s going to take some time for the hots and nots to shake out, and we’re expecting some to be more popular than others. For the player that can make the most of their positioning on the board, though, this season is going to be incredibly rewarding.

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