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.
It’s the turn of the perfectionist aelves. They’d best be pleased with their new rules, or you just know they’ll be posting on the aether-forums.
Heroic Traits
A new table of heroic traits for the Lumineth here, the Aspects of Enlightenment.
Flawless Commander
A passive, this one adds 2″ to the move characteristic of friendly Lumineth INFANTRYÂ units whilst wholly within 12″ of this unit. That sounds familiar, doesn’t it! In some cases the Scourge of Ghyran rules seem to be designedto ensure the loss of current season rules isn’t felt too keenly, and this would seem to be one of those cases. For armies relying on big blocks of Wardens, or especially slow as heck Stoneguard, to do their heavy lifting, this will be a boon.
Aetherquartz Requisitioner
A once-per-battle trait, not always a good sign. This one gives +3 to the casting roll for a Lumineth WIZARDÂ in combat range of the bearer as a reaction to them casting, once per game. Given that the “declare” step includes actually making the roll, you can use this to get a crucial spell over the line, or make it harder to unbind. Just remember Teclis’ casts can’t be modified, so you can’t make him cast on a 13. That caveat probably means this isn’t seeing the table most of the time, but if your game plan is heavily reliant on a spell then keep it in mind.
Martial Perfectionist
In any combat phase, pick a visible enemy unit within 12″ that is either damaged, or had any models slain this turn. On a roll of a 3+ on a D6, add 1 to wound rolls for Lumineth INFANTRY‘s combat attacks against the target. Another tool to help your Stoneguard and Bladelords get some extra damage through, although having the damage condition is a bit of a pain. Nothing earth-shattering (pun intended).
Spell Lore
A new spell lore enters the minds of the Lumineth. This isn’t something I’d have said they needed, as the Lore of Hysh is perfectly cromulent. This lore is interesting, though – all three spells are unlimited, and benefit from stacking them multiple times. All of these have a casting value of 6.
Beam of Hysh
an 18″ mortal wound zap, which can’t target the same unit multiple times and gets 1 higher in casting value each time it’s cast in a turn. When it resolves, though, it deals D3 +X mortal wounds, where X is the number of times it has previously been cast this turn (to a maximum of 3). If you have enough wizards to chain this across enough targets, that’s a decent chunk of damage to be doing to your enemy’s army. Lumineth also have a few ways to guarantee cast rolls at certain values, so on a key turn you can probably make this pop off. If I have one criticism it’s that you probably want Teclis to be casting the fourth time for that guaranteed 10, and you might then struggle to build 3 other wizards into your list without leaving yourself critically overexposed in the actual fighting units department. If you can make it work it’ll be fun though.
Small point of order, X increments with every time the spell has previously been “cast”, rather than successfully cast, which is what happens when a spell goes off without being unbound. Given that you “pick a […] Wizard to cast this spell” (emphasis mine) in the declare step of the spell, plus the wording of Unseen Force being much clearer (see below), I’d currently be ruling that this increments whether or not the previous attempts were successful.
Unseen Force
Pick a visible enemy unit within 18″, they cannot use RUN abilities until the start of your next turn. If they’ve already been picked as the target this battle round, they also get -1 to hit in combat. This is a superb option for a magical intervention to prevent your opponent’s crucial objective grabbing/tactic-scoring runs. The wording is clear that you get the additional effect if the enemy unit has previously been the target, not only if the previous cast was successful.
Beacons of Protection
No target, just a 2D6 casting roll. If successful, until the start of your next turn ignore the first damage point allocated to non-MONSTER Lumineth units each phase while they are wholly within 9″ of any friendly Lumineth WIZARD. You can also add 3″ to that range for each additional time the spell has been cast this battle round. If you can afford the extra wizards this synergises well with the Protection of Teclis aura, and either way offers some good defence against chip damage that can start to limit the effectiveness of your infantry blocks quite quickly.
Scourge of Ghyran Warscrolls
Two updates for the Lumineth, and they’re both foot heroes.
Light of Eltharion
Eltharion wasn’t exactly a battlefield regular before Scourge of Ghyran, but I wouldn’t have said he desperately needed a new scroll either. Regardless, here it is.
The Light of Eltharion gains an attack on his Fangsword of Eltharion, while the Celennari Blade stays as it was. He also retains his Supreme Swordmaster ability with no changes. What he does lose is the ethereal Spirit Armour, which made him a pain to shift, although his ward is improved to 4+ in compensation. In place, he gains Eternal Light, a once per battle ability. If he’s been destroyed, you can choose to summon him instead of an endless spell when a wizard successfully casts the spell to do so. Usual caveats apply, he’s got to be 9″ away from enemies and wholly within 12″ of the caster, but he comes back at full health.
This is really fun, and also thematic, which is a nice combination. You can really envision the hollow armour reassembling itself off of the floor for another go, much to your enemies’ dismay. It comes at a cost though – 250 points, a whopping 40 point increase on his previous iteration. That might be a hard sell, outside of the fun factor.
Vanari Bannerblade
A nice simple update for the Bannerblade, who gains one extra attack but is otherwise unchanged in profile or points cost (130). The Bannerblade had a moment of mortal wound dealing glory in third edition and felt a bit punished in the AoS4 faction pack, relegated to upping friendlies’ Control scores with its World Banner. This is now replaced with Defend The Banner, which adds 1 to save rolls for VANARI INFANTRY units while they are contesting the same objective as this guy. Still situational, but this feels a lot more impactful and could make those Wardens tough to shift!
Final Thoughts
Overall, this doesn’t feel like a hugely impactful set of changes, but does seem like it’s consistent in trying to nudge players away from Teclis with blocks of cavalry and towards infantry armies supported by multiple foot wizards. The Bannerblade, the new spell lore and the Flawless Commander trait will all be of value to that kind of build, so overall it does feel like this update successfully unlocks another build to play even if it initially feels light-touch, so against that metric I’d declare it a success.
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