This month is bringing a massive host of updates to Age of Sigmar as the setting transitions to Ghyran, the realm of life. Each army is getting two whole pages of additional rules and optional alternative warscrolls for you to use in your games and we are very excited about all of it! Before we get stuck in, a thank you to Games Workshop for providing us with these rules as an early release to review.
The Flesh Eater Courts have been ever-present in the meta since the beginning of the edition. That said, almost all the competitive lists that have popped up are some combination of Morbheg Knights, Ushoran, and some number of Crypt Guard to go with them. The roster for the courts is deep, and hopefully these rules help bring out some of the less played warscrolls.
Battle Formations
First up is Impassioned Serfs which gives you a command you can use in the Combat Phase, allowing you to select a Serfs unit that didn’t charge this turn and an enemy in combat with them to turn off Pile-ins for that unit for the turn. This can be a massive disruption to your opponent’s gameplan as they crash into your screens, allowing you to limit the incoming attacks significantly.
Your other pick is Questing Courtiers which gives your heroes a 5+ ward if they kill a unit for the rest of the battle. As someone who’s been looking for a way to make the Vargulf work, this might be how you do it. What’s probably more potent with this though is the Terrorgheist/Zombie Dragon Heroes, giving them enough durability to maybe hang for a bit. Your foot heroes are very squishy and a 5+ ward is unlikely to stop them from dying if they get charged by a significant enough threat so it’s unlikely to help them a ton.
Monstrous Traits
Monstrous Traits make a return from 3rd, allowing you to augment a monster in your army. All the FEC monsters (Besides Ushoran), heroes or otherwise, have not seen a ton of play this edition so this may be a good way to get them on the table. First up we have Revered Monstrosity which gives +1 to hit to Companion weapons for non-Unique monsters wholly within 12”. This is a strong buff if you can get stuff bunched up, but with the ~5” bases that these monsters have, that can be a tall order. It also doesn’t buff the monster you picked which makes it a bit of an odd trait.
Savage Abomination is up next which adds 1 to the attacks characteristic of the unit’s Companion weapons. This can be great on a Terrorgheist, allowing you to get another chance to fish for that 6 on the jaws.
Lastly there’s Horribly Resilient which heals the monster D3 at the end of each turn or 2D3 if they’re not a hero. This feels like an odd choice to separate them out, but it may be because the Hero versions have more wounds and can now get a 5+ ward? Either way this is a great way to keep your big guys in the game.
Warscrolls
There are two new Warscrolls here, both for Heroes. First is a new Ghoul King, which gets two new abilities. First is The King’s Court which gives nearby non-Monster Heroes an extra attack and they gain an attack to a max of three for each nearby. He also has Long Live the King which gives nearby FEC units Crits on 5’s and Crit (Auto-Wound) when the Ghoul King dies until the start of your next turn. The first ability is something you can kind of build around. It’s a super strong buff on something like a Vargulf if you can make it work and a trio of Ghoul Kings with 8 attacks each is definitely interesting, but probably not interesting enough to try. The other ability has some awkward timing, since odds are your Hero will die in your opponent’s turn and you won’t have a lot of time to benefit from the buff. Maybe there’s a way to throw your King into certain death to give some Terrorgheists Crit 5’s but that seems like a stretch.
Abhorrent Gorewarden is the other Hero to get a glow up. He now gains a 5+ Ward and +1 damage on the charge if he ends that charge within 3” of a Knights unit from Glorious Charge. In addition, once per turn per army at the end of your opponent’s turn you can remove him from the battlefield and set him up outside 9” of enemy models and either wholly within 6” of a battlefield edge or within 3” of an objective you don’t control. There is no restriction on him being in engagement range either, so he can get charged, barely survive and teleport out of harm’s way if need be. You also get a movement phase after if you’re going second which can be great for positioning tactics.
Final Thoughts
Overall this is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand there’s absolutely some winners here. The new Gorewarden is a fantastic objective play piece and Questing Courtiers can potentially have some interesting builds, but there’s nothing really here to help FEC fight their opponents. The Monster sheets need more help than the traits here, maybe an errant Terrorgheist may show up with an extra attack, but you can’t really build around these. The Ghoul King changes are neat, but an extra attack isn’t gonna make up for the fact that your Heroes will evaporate if they don’t kill what they go into. The rules here want you to be scrapping but the output on the warscrolls they’re asking for you to take is generally anemic and this doesn’t really get them there. I expect we’ll still see Morbhegs and Ushoran after this release.
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