General’s Handbook 2022-2023, the Sylvvaneth and Skaven tomes have come and given time to sit in the meta a bit, which means an FAQ was coming soon after. In addition we got a few updates to the core rules and Broken Realms: Be’Lakor. Are these good, bad? Lets take a look.

Core Rules

Two rules clarifications here, the first is most important generally speaking. In the last rules update a rule decision was made that any rule that changes a damage characteristic (rather than adding to it) such as the Akhelian King or charging Fulminators would overwrite any bonuses, such as from Flaming Weapon or Bounty Hunters. In short: Always take the most recently applied bonus. The rule has now been changed to say all the bonuses stack. Personally I didn’t completely hate the, it made some sense RAW and I could understand either interpretation. However, it was probably the more confusing interpretation to understand what exactly was “most recent”. It’s best to just say they all stack.

The other should probably have gone into Battletome: Sylvaneth but it’s possible they wanted to future proof for any other similar rules. In short, if the Awakened Wyldwood is destroyed, it can still be used for other rules such as Places of Power. The Warscroll no longer works, but any rules that interact with the terrain do.

General’s Handbook 2022-2023: Season 1

Mostly clarifications around missions that had rules that coud be misinterpreted. First, Battlelines Drawn which shirks tradition by not including objectives and instead treating battlefield quarters as objectives. Some had questions if you could put down anything that had to be a certain distance away from objective markers (Terrain features and Soulblight Gravesites specifically called out), as the entire field effectively becomes objectives. In short, yes, as they aren’t objective markers so it’s fine.

Another mission that caused confusion was The Lurkers Below which requires players capture objectives in succession. In case there was any confusion you cannot capture more than one objective per turn, so it will take at least 2 turns to push into the last point. Pace yourself.

In The Prize of Gallet the scoring states you needed to capture 1, 2 or more objectives as normal. However the mission requires objectives be “turned on” first, and its a valid read that if it doesn’t say it requires objectives be activated to score then you might not need to. The ruling has changed to say activated objectives, removing any confusion.

A rules change in In the Presence of Idols now states that Kroak and the Krondspine cannot be idols. Which is a fair change, because due to their mechanics they cannot be slain in conventional ways. Since they both are removed during the Battleshock phase, Kroak cannot be slain by an attacker but by his own mechanic and the Krondspine is simply “removed from play”. It would require a niche situation like Nagash’s Hand of Dust to be able to kill them outright.

On non-mission specific questions, Gaze of Ghur, the packet exclusive spell, failed to include an expiration. Most agreed it would be until the caster’s next hero phase, and this is confirmed as accurate.

The other stuff has to do with some confusion of Galetian Veterans. In short, the following things do not stop someone from becoming Galetian Veterans:

1. Gaining extra wounds, this is most notable in Nurgle where a spell can grant them extra wounds, and Blightking champions have 5 wounds. As the Warscroll says they have a wound characteristic of 4, it counts.
2. Adding units later on as battleline still count. Galetian Veteran keyword is not bestowed in the listbuilding phase, but at any point they meet the criteria.

Finally, the least exciting change is that the book didn’t outline coalitions as intended. They do not count as your battleline requirement but do count against your limit of other roles. It’s fine, same as last year.

Battletome: Sylvaneth

The notes here are kind of amusing, it looks like a lot but about half of it surrounds the Lady of Vines. In short, she has an ability that allows units within 6″ to act as if they are within range of an Awakened Wyldwood. However there was a bit of lack of clarity, and the short version is that it only affects battle traits and warscroll abilities and you must be next to her when the ability is utilized. So while you can teleport away from her, you cannot jump next to her.

Some other stuff involving the Places of Power ability including needing to have a unit within range of the same Overgrown territory or wyldwood (can’t use overlapping auras to hit the same unit) and Awakened Wyldwoods still count as Wyldwoods for rules purposes (i.e. they block line of sight for units under 10 wounds and grant cover) which is how the ruling worked before, so most were doing that anyway. No real surprises there.

Battletome: Skaven

The Skaven tome had a lot of tricks to bend how the game operates, so its not surprising that there was a lot of confusion around them. One of the most fun mechanics, the Brass Orb states that if for some reason an opponent cannot put their unit back on the field in their deployment, it is slain. Could be some fringe use in missions with small deployment to try and block them out.

The Lumbering Behemoth trait for Hell Pit Abominations makes charge rolls a 7 with no roll. The errata clarifies that modifiers to charge, positive and negative, still apply. So treat it as if you rolled a 7.

Warpstone Addiction cannot be rerolled, as its not a casting roll. The syntax technically said that only he 3D6 could not be rerolled, not the remaining 2 dice. Fair enough. Similar syntax issues existed with Strength in Numbers, where it says you may add 1″ to weapon ranges to a maximum of 3″. What they really meant was that the cap was 3″, not the amount you could add. Sorry, no 5″ weapons.

Grey Seers needed some slight clarification, you can’t give them a prayer as they don’t have the priest keyword from the start, and Thanquol being a unique character technically couldn’t take spells. Problem no longer.

Always Three Claw Steps Ahead clarifies charge rolls to use the unmodified roll, meaning you cannot stack bonuses on one unit, get the good roll then pass it on to the rest. This also means no using Chronomatic Cogs or CP reroll to game the system, sorry.

The rest of the rules are a lot of stuff about Heavy Weapons Teams so lets lump that together. The jist is that as written you could put one of each heavy weapons team in a single unit if you wanted to. This gone and you have to pick one to go in. If you’re curious,  they also do not count as one of your deployments, if you put them inside a unit you simply just don’t set them up and leave your opponent to wonder.

Broken Realms: Be’Lakor

Just a quickie here, as written the extra subfactions for Nighthaunt were technically still usable. While you would have a hard time arguing the Emerald Host could still be used, as the new tome has their own version of the rules, Reikenor’s Condemned had no such contradiction. Both are stricken from the record, which is a bit of a shame as Reikenor’s Legion was rather unique. Maybe a future supplement will revisit it.