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It’s an interesting one for me to review, the 4th edition of Age of Sigmar. I can’t say I’ve really “played” the previous editions. I played a little of 3rd, but not a lot. It was fun but didn’t grab me away from other interests. Then along came 4th edition and I was like, huh, that’s nice for AoS players, but I best get back to painting these MCP miniatures. Then Spearhead caught my eye, and I’ve already given my impressions on that so I won’t expand here, but it pulled me in enough that I started looking at the rest of the edition and really liked what I found. 40k over the years has become very bloated. They do what they can to fix this and have certainly made improvements, but it still ‘feels’ hard to balance. I’m convinced it’s the guns, it’s almost impossible to balance a game with that much ranged firepower. So in steps AoS with its minimal guns (that you can make strategic use of) and a primary focus of combat with a bit of magic on the side. I think there is something special here, so let's dive in.
The book
The book itself it’s very high quality as we’ve come to expect from GW. It’s sturdy, looks amazing, and the pages aren’t easily tearable. Inside there is plenty to chew on, some of which I’ve only skimmed and will have to read in depth again as it’s quite interesting. There is a full history of the realms and plenty of other bits of lore added on, including some nice stories poking their head up from the pages. There are absolutely stunning maps of the realms, which in particular I think are a nice touch, as it’s harder for people to imagine the Mortal Realms than it is, for example, random planet X in 40k. It also gives you an overview of the lore of each faction, which will be handy when choosing which to play if you’re a lore head like me. When it comes to the gaming side of it, it contains the core rules, advanced rules, battlepacks and path to glory, all of which we’ll go into.
Core rules
So I could sit here and go through every tiny detail of the core rules, but that would be boring and to be honest, doesn’t sound like fun to type out. So let’s stick to the highlight reel instead. So what is cool…
Wounds are gone and health is in, and honestly, with all my heart, thank you Games Workshop. This is by far one of the best changes you have made in a long time. It seems like such a small thing, but before when weapons did wounds that could be saved, and then you did damage, that took off a unit's wounds, but wait, aren’t wounds what the weapon did before save and damage? Yes exactly, it was needlessly confusing when you had a perfectly good word right there. Health. Thank you.
Making their way over from 40k, control scores are in. These were a good addition in 40k and an even better one here, because of how much you tend to have battles in combat over objectives. You want it to be as easy as possible to see who is currently controlling and objective and what you’d need to do to tip the scales, and giving each unit a control score does exactly that. Great change.
Keywords aren’t anything new, they’ve been around for a long time. They got a bit crazy in 40k, so they got stripped out, then added back in a more manageable way. That’s what we have here, keywords that aren’t over the top and are only used for really common things like Ward (6+) or Champion.
The abilities and phases are something I never would have considered, and took me a good few initial reads to get my head around. But once I did I was like, ‘well this is obviously the best way to do this, why haven’t we done it before?’. Instead of having units with abilities but also some general ‘stuff’ like movement rules and combat etc, then having to cope with how the different sides interact, they have just made everything an ability. You want to move? Use the move ability. Activate your champions warcry? Use the warcry ability on their warscroll. All the phases (hero, movement, shooting etc) that each ability works in are clearly marked (in colours and symbols for all comers), and it’s just a slick way to achieve what might have been confusing in the past.
Well done on this one designers, it must have taken a spark of insight to think of stripping those basics out and building it all up again.
If you are with 3” of something, you are in combat with it. Done. Much simpler and clears up some much confusion, especially as in the past units had weapons with different combat ranges on them. This is just straight forward. You can’t move inside combat range, only charge, and you know when piling in not to get too close to that monster hovering to the side, otherwise it’ll be within 3” and be able to attack you.
We also got some universal weapon abilities like 40k. Like Crit (Mortal), where if you roll a crit (6+ normally) on hits, the weapon just does its damage as mortal wounds straight away. Or Anti-charge (+1 Rend) where you get +1 rend on weapons when the unit is charged. They have kept them easy to read, remember and make sense of. We have just the right amount so no need to add any more.
Morale is gone. Yep. Gone. Your first instinct might be, “hold on, morale is…like…a core part of the game”. If that is the case, just take a minute and think about it. What DID morale add to the game?......It’s not a lot, is it? Generally it just gave you one additional thing to worry about. Plus it felt bad to lose a unit to morale. These are meant to be the greatest warriors in all the realms, why are they running away? Honestly, having played some games in this edition now I can safely say that morale is in no way missed, good idea GW stripping that one out, it’s not needed. I do wonder how much of a hard sell that was behind the scenes though.
Advanced rules
Command points are pretty straightforward, you get 4 per battle round to use as you like. There are 10 different generic command abilities available, which is just enough that I think I’ll make use of most of them fairly regularly.
There isn’t anything too magical going on with general terrain, but the rules are fairly well written so I doubt there'll be too many arguments on how to interpret them. However the key change is faction terrain. These items are now free so you’ll want to be using them consistently (which creates the awkward need to own them pretty soon when you start a new army), plus they have health! Yes, terrain can be destroyed. But considering it’s now free this makes a lot of sense. Some faction terrain can cause a lot of problems, so targeting it for elimination is a good strategy.
Magic I’m not going to delve too deeply into as I’m not sure how it compares to previous editions, but I did want to mention 2 things. First, priests. As a Fyreslayer prayer we kind of rely on priests and they have a bad habit of not being devoted enough in their prayers. Now if a prayer fails, the priest stores the number on the dice as ritual points which can be used to bolster future rolls. This is an excellent change as not only does it produce more reliable faith casts, but it means you can more easily boost your casts to their higher tiers and get better results. Of course, this didn’t stop my priest rolling three 1’s in three turns in my first game, classic. Second, manifestations. This is the name for both what priests and wizards can summon now, and guess what? They are free too! So I anticipate seeing a lot more of these popping up on the battlefield, which must be fun. Oh and like faction terrain, they have health now so can be killed as well as banished.
Building your army has become quite straightforward. You make it up of regiments, each led by a hero. In each regiment you can have 3 non-hero units, and some heroes will only be able to have specific units in their regiments. You can have up to 5 regiments and any extra models you want to take are auxiliary units, so as you can see there is plenty of freedom here. So what’s the catch? Two things. The first player to finish deploying (you deploy whole regiments at once) gets to pick who takes the first turn, so having fewer regiments is in your best interest. Second, the player with less auxiliary models gets an extra command point at the start of each battle round. So there are certainly things to consider.
Command models have appeared in a variety of forms over the years, but now they just have general rules across the board and that seems like a sensible idea. What are command models? Champions (like your fancy unit leader), musicians (should be easy to spot) and standard bearers (again, they kind of stand out). They each have their own buffs to the unit and you’ll likely want to avoid getting them killed too early if you can help it.
Capturing objectives is all well and good, but games of that can get a bit samey. Have no fear, battle tactics are here. These are a generic list of achievements you can try and complete each battle round, or more specifically, you pick one each round to try and complete before moving onto a new one. They add a bit of spice to your strategies and I’ve found them quite fun to work with. An important note though, do you remember the dreaded double-turn in AoS? Well it still exists, but, if you choose to take the double turn you cannot pick a battle tactic for that round. Therefore you are giving up the chance to score more points for a potential chance to kill some more models. Will it be worth it? Only you can decide.
Battlepacks
Finally, let’s talk about battlepacks. These are the scenario rules, outside of the core and advanced rules, that you’ll need to play games. Things like how to set up the board, what the objectives are in this mission, and are there any twists. The twists are something I especially like. I first saw them in Spearhead games but also realised the matched play First Blood pack has them too. These keep things fresh, without doing anything too crazy in a matched played scenario. There are only 3 missions in this basic battlepack, but those are enough to get you started, and the General’s Handbook, which has also been released, contains many more.
But what if you’re after a more narrative experience? Then there is no need to worry, just turn the page and you have the Ascension Path to Glory battlepack. Personally, this is what I’m in the game for, the stories. Sometimes those are from books, sometimes it’s just crazy tales of games that happened between your friends, and sometimes it’s narratives crafted around an ever expanding force and their command. Armies in Path to Glory start off small, 1000pts, but expand over time with new units and new abilities for your existing units. You’ll earn experience through battles and completing quests, which will let you upgrade your commander and units, taking them down several possible paths. Are they an attacker or defender? You decide, and as the new battletomes come out these will be expanded with more faction specific content. There are 6 different battleplans for you to try, so plenty to keep you going until then.
Conclusion
Do I like Age of Sigmar 4th edition? Yes. It’s well thought out, has got rid of a lot of the more frustrating interactions to focus more on the epic feel of the battles, and made things as smooth as possible to learn (in a game system this size). I’m no rules lawyer or competitive player, so I can’t say how balanced it is, but I can say that it feels fun and I can’t wait to play more of it. Now, who can I find to start a Spearhead League with…
