Credit for all images to Games Workshop

BAM! GW has dropped a bomb this morning with the first teaser for the upcoming Handbook. You can check out their post here, but we’ll be running you through what it means, what to watch out for and some early combos that jump out:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/06/12/generals-handbook-2023-24-warhammer-age-of-sigmar-prepares-for-a-new-season-in-frozen-andtor/

We’ve got some wild educated speculation here to fill in the gaps, and an initial run through the potential winners and losers. Ready? Let’s go.

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Let’s start with the headline news: 12 months, baybee!  The single biggest wish I had for this Handbook was a return to the 12-monthly cycle.  I can see why GW wanted us to dip into our pockets twice as often, but on this occasion it’s massively backfired.  I’ve had so many conversations over the last 12 months or so with people who have jobs, and kids, and just jumped off the carousel because it’s too much to keep up with.

These are people who were dedicated Sigmarites, and the game has lost them.  Tournament attendances are generally holding up because people clear out the time for them and it’s a chance to see their mates and actually get some games in, but anecdotally I know that loads of people are playing significantly less outside of events.  Day to day, week to week they’re not living the life any more, and that’s just sad.

A big factor is that people can generally handle losing games due to making a bad decision with the options they have available.  That cut and thrust is what we’re here for.  What sours people on the game is when they lose games because they don’t even know what their options are.

The number of times I have to tell people that they get two Heroic Actions in their own hero phase when they go second is off the charts.  They aren’t familiar with the Battleplans either, and by the time the whole thing gets embedded, the $84 book goes into the recycling and GW is picking our pockets for another one.

The 6-month cycle is only one of many reasons why a lot of people aren’t quite feeling the buzz right now (despite a healthy meta); but it’s a big one, and an easy fix, and they’ve done it.  This will help us all enjoy our hobby that little bit more, so well done GW for taking on board the community feedback.

What’s not in there

Note that it still refers to the book as a “matched play resource”, which is pretty sad news.  I’m a big fan of Warhammer Weekly, and while I don’t agree with everything they say (be a bit weird if I did), I’m with Vince on this one – the book has lost its way since it became Matched Play only.  Vince waxed lyrical recently about the multiplayer options in GH17, and just the week before that we’d been playing a 5-player Triumph and Treachery game locally, using the GH17 rules.  Truth is, the scope of the book has been brutally hacked back into a matched play supplement, and it’s lost its soul along the way.

I was hoping that the 12-monthly cycle would bring back some broader content celebrating the whole hobby – even most people who exclusively play Matched Play like to know that it’s there.  It’s part of what made earlier GHs a joy to buy rather than a resentful tax, and all I can say is that I hope that the full year’s breathing space until the next one brings us a proper GH again.

What’s the hook this time?

Now, with the big news covered, let’s circle round to the details and the reckless speculation.

OK, so it’s magic vs anti-magic.  That sounds pretty cool – I could get on board with that.  It’ll be interesting to see what the anti-magic aspect is: in the past we’ve received extra VPs for killing Monsters, and a Battalion to hunt hordes.  There’s a lot of ways they could do it, but the hints we have in the article mention only “nullstone artefacts” that blunt the effects of magic.  So from what we know, it looks like you get ways to stop magic rather than bonuses for murdering wizards or anything like that.

Who’s in scope?

Basically, GC Wizards.  There’s no mention of a Mount stipulation, so small mounted Wizards like the Maniak Weirdnob seem to be in scope; but they need to be 9 wounds or fewer and crucially, not Unique.  So Teclis, Kroak, Nagash et al might find they’ve got a bit of welcome competition.

What does it do?

Well then.  First thing we do know is that it gives you extra casts and unbinds:

Note that it’s another one of those things tied to going second in the round.  And that you can just take a CP instead if you don’t have a little foot wizard (or just really need the CP).

The really interesting thing is what was left dangling there: Primal Magic.  We’re not given much in the way of details, but it sounds highly impactful:

Those two little sentences raise three big questions:

• How does it boost the rolls?
• How does one “earn” them?
• What is a Primal Miscast?

The first question is pretty straightforward: it sounds like roll one dice and add D3 or D6 to the overall casting roll.  That sounds like an absolute arms race in terms of casting at +7 and dispelling at +9!

The second part, in terms of how you get these bonus dice, is anyone’s guess.  In our Discord this morning, Pat was speculating that everyone gets a little pool of them at the start of the game, like mini Destiny Dice for all.  A couple of other methods could be that you have to earn them by completing in-game tasks, such as achieving a Battle Tactic; or maybe you “earn” it by using a bespoke heroic action?  This one is anyone’s guess, really, but it’s a little nugget tucked away in the article that shapes to be a real defining feature of the Handbook.

Finally, what’s a Primal Miscast? I’m guessing that rolling a natural 1 on your extra bonus dice borks the whole casting attempt. That would be a far higher chance than rolling snake eyes for a classic miscast, and the first time you drop a Primal Miscast onto what would have been natural box cars, the howls of nerd rage will echo around the world. Sounds wild – I’d love to see it.

We get a whole Spell Lore

Instead of just one Realm Spell…makes sense for the Little Wizard Handbook.  And they’ve picked out an absolute banger for the featured spell in the article:

Wow.  Every chat I’m in has been buzzing with ideas for this, and a few that stand out early on are:

• Anything with a bad To Hit roll suddenly got gud. Gatebreaka Mega Gargants hitting on 4s?  Not any more (well not when you take the Merc version in an army that can help him, at least). Roll a 1 or 2 on your D3 and they’re hitting on 2s.  Same applies to Squigs, let’s gooooo!
• High volume of attacks with zero rend is looking good all of a sudden.  Bonesplitterz in general spring to mind, and there’s a specific wombo-combo that you can pull off with Glowy Green Tusks to buff the shit out of them.  Set the rend to -3 with Hoarfrost, then improve it by -2 with Glowy, for rend -5 Tusks.  Glorious.

Calvin was quickly onto this one in our Discord, and PRAISE GORK they made it melee only!

Worth a mention is that neg 1 to hit is proliferating in this game currently, so rolling a 1 on your D3 is still a lot better than rolling a 2, to keep those natural 2s hitting into debuffing units.

Note also that you have to pick the unit and then roll the D3, so you can’t see whether you hit high or low and then choose Hit/Wound or Rend as appropriate.  Some units can benefit from both: Stonehorns for example would love to boost the Hit rolls on their Tusks, but could also jack up the rend on their other profiles if not.

So what happens here is that you’ll carefully craft a list that gives you productive use of any roll: a spread of options that normally hit on 4s in case you roll low, as well as other profiles with high volume of attacks to benefit from the extra rend.  And then you just get blasted off the board by some useless flog running Lumineth or Seraphon, because some things never change.

Early Winners and Losers

Winners

Those plucky underdogs Seraphon: Well the Slaan has come out smelling of roses, hasn’t it?  Sitting pretty with its 9 wounds, and pointed at a level where it slots in easily as an Ally to a whole bunch of Order armies.  Barring a huge points hike you’ll be seeing plenty of this prick around.

Magic Subfactions: Time to wombo-combo that Magic up with additional bonuses, and overwhelm the resistance. Badsnatchas from Gloomspite stands out as a subfaction that’s probably been underplayed, and could be ready to jump up the agenda.  Just remember to stay back out of range of all those super-powered Unbinds whenever you can.

High casting-value triggers:  Some tricky spells with a big pay-off just came within reach: looking at you, Levitate.  But beyond that, we have some spells that trigger a bonus on a certain casting value:

• The Wurrgog Prophet warscroll spell is a great horde killer if you can jack it up to 10+ with your Primal Magic dice
• Nikkit Nikkit from the Gloomspite spell lore has a great chance of stealing an arfetact now.  Chuck in a Badsnatchers reroll and fill your sack with loot!

Murknob Belchabanners:  I actually wrote a Patreon-only article on these guys quite recently that you can see if you sign up.  I won’t go back through the whole thing, but as a dedicated anti-magic piece they could be well-placed to see some table time, and don’t forget that the 5++ spell ignore does stack if you can squeeze in a couple of them.

Anti-Magic in general:  People will be building strats and combos around this stuff, and being able to shut that down will be critical.  There’s quite a bit of talk about extra Unbinds in here, so units with buffed Unbinds will be in a great position to get extra mileage from having more of them.

In this space, Khorne with their Hexgorger Skulls and those various Duardin with their cheeky buffed Unbinds are sitting pretty.

Combat Units That Hit on 4s: As mentioned above, Squigs, Stonehorns and Mercenary Gatebreakers spring to mind as a couple of units that will love Hoarfrost.

Combat Units with high-volume, low-rend attacks: Again I won’t dwell on this one which we covered above, but I’m excited for my Bonesplitterz in general and their Glowy Green Tusks in particular.

Armies that combine magic and anti-magic: what we’ve seen so far is that there’s a lot of benefits to Unbinds, both in volume and bonuses.  The article tried to present that as a bit of candy for the armies left out of the magic arms race, but based on what we know so far, I’m gonna say that’s way off the mark.  When you’re getting more and better casts and unbinds, the armies that have existing bonuses to both just disappear over the horizon.

To illustrate how the rich get richer, think about this.  Jacked-up Unbinds are exponentially more powerful in the hands of Seraphon, who can do it boardwide.  And good luck unbinding a Slaan casting at +6 with your Gatebreaker unbinding from scratch.

Losers

Endless Spells: Flowchart stuff like jumping over the Bridge will be fine, but more and better Dispells spells trouble for the ones that need to linger on the table.

Think about the impact of adding the Primal Magic roll to Dispells: duelling Casts vs Unbinds is one thing when they’re both escalating in tandem, but Dispells are based on a static number, so it should be a lot easier to piss off an irritating Endless Spell like Soulsnare Shackles next season.

Sons of Behemat: Yeah this sucks.  They’re far from the only army with no Andtorian Locus units, but they’re one of the few with no dedicated anti-magic to make up for it.  A second consecutive Handbook where they are frozen out of the main “thing” is an absolute insult to their player base, who waited patiently through the 6 months of GCs.  There better be some love for them that we haven’t seen, because the Hand-Carved Nullstone Icon is nowhere near enough.

Foot Heroes: Haven’t we all enjoyed them not getting sniped off?  It’s going to be a rude awakening when that rule disappears.  I think the consensus is we as a community would like to keep it.  In the same way that Gally Vets fighting in two ranks slightly unfucked the core coherency rules, and we got it back as a Battalion, I’m hoping we get to keep the Gally Champs targeting rules as a Battalion in the new book too.  Here’s hoping.

Narrative Players: This Handbook is signposted as still being just a competitive matched play supplement.  For shame. 

And today was definitely a good day overall, so let’s sign off with one last winner…

The Whole Age of Sigmar Community: because it’s a 12-monthly book.  Rejoice!

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