by Peter Atkinson

LEAKS BABY! We’ve got more leaks than a Welsh allotment. Very much an “Eye of the beholder” vibe for these minis, bringing some Grimdark Blanchitsu to the Mortal Realms. Not everyone is gonna like it, and that’s fine – that’s art. Age of Sigmar is not about settling for beige, never has been.

All images are credit to Games Workshop via the kind soul who leaked them; so if you’re ready, shall we take a look?

The Minis

Major Faith-Militant / Sisters of Battle influences here. It does also mean that your old models will look completely jarring next to them, so although you don’t have to move your collection across, it’s likely that most people will want to over time, as the new aesthetic expands. I’ve been through something similar with my Destro collection, where I got sign-off from the local crew to run Gitmob as other Grots if I wanted, but then when push came to shove I chose not to.

The Warcrolls

Finding Command Abilities on the warscrolls of these shitty little heroes in modern AOS is like finding good coffee in England. She’s exactly the same, except she can no longer make her underlings run and shoot / charge. Oh she hits on 3s now? Whatevaaaaaaaaah. The Word of Pain is “Legends”, which is where I suspect Darkling Covens may be deposited in another cycle from now.

Ah the humble Battlemage on foot. Has historically come with an entire spell lore on his warscroll, but that’s been trimmed back to their own version of a Big Name. I suspect you’ll most often see +1 to cast being the pick to force through spells – which is what they’re there for – but keep an eye on the Battletome rules to see if you can kit out a specialised Unbind beast. Fucking hats off to you if you take the aggro version with 3 shitty melee attacks instead of one. Run six of them as a frontline Herohammer combat squad, I dare you.

Oh you sneaky gits! Learning from the car crash that has been the Kruleboyz launch, GW has kitted this girl out with a Battalion-friendly 9 wounds (as opposed to the 10 that famously cripples the Gnashtoof Boss). But won’t that make her less survivable? NOPE because they slapped a 4+ ward on there too. An effectively 18-wound Hero that slips into the Battle Reg or Warlord in a little foot hero slot – you’ve been looked after there.

Unbinds with +1, ostentatiously bad in combat but the whole schtick is that she’s a Priest, with a selection of suitably kickass prayers. Nice little design touch is that you Pray first and then select the effect, so if you roll the 1 or 2 you don’t have to bother fucking around and scratching your head while deciding what to do.

If you’re looking at Call Out Evil, and thinking you’re going to spam these things to nuke an entire Lumineth army turn 1, remember you can only attempt each Prayer once – and that the Prayer in this case is the over-arching Vessel of Sigmar, which is slightly stiff. Boardwide mortals is wild though, so you’re probably running one of these in a Human-centric army; no more, no less.

It does shootings. Broadly similar to half an Ironblaster, and if it doesn’t move you trade a less volatile damage characteristic for giga-rend. Grapeshot is less devastating than the Ironblaster equivalent at point blank range, but it’s still pretty good. Let’s see what they look like in the right City: Hero Phase shooting in Greywater Fastness, perhaps? In which case be prepared to get blasted by entire batteries of these things.

Urgh, this thing. The model is a scruffy piece of shit that should have been Legended long ago, but often sees way more table time than the mini deserves because whenever Cities are good, it tends to be OP. Similar-ish to the old warscroll, and now with an extra wound and it doesn’t bracket.

The exact mechanics have shifted, but fundamentally it’s still there to dump ranged mortals on your opponents and give entire Gunlines +1 to hit. In one major buff – and thanks to Phil Kartaev for flagging this one up – Storm of Shemtek not only starts weaker and gets better as the battle goes on, but it’s “the” hero phase (i.e. it happens on both players’ turns). So if the incentive of not having to look at the bloody thing any more wasn’t enough, there’s another reason to smash it off the table as rapidly as possible.

Chain Lightning is the same, Comet of Casandora is gone…and so is the +1 to cast bubble. None of that will be of any comfort, though, when the bloody thing kills your heroes in your own hero phase.

Hopefully they bin the damn thing when the next book rolls around and replace it with something that looks significantly less crap.

Of the two builds, I despise this one less, because the same dumb horse and carriage thing is offset somewhat by the magnificently bonkers, gigantic magnifying glass on the back. On a 2+ it does D3 mortal wounds to everything in a frankly rude 30″ beam, and has another damage spell that isn’t the best-best, but might stand in reasonably well as like the 8th damage spell you cast that turn.

It might not look like a hero-sniper, but with all the D3 MWs this army can chuck around, that final poke to kill off a few dudes with a couple of straggling wounds will be very welcome. And like a lot of Cities stuff if bypasses the new targeting rules. Must confess I have a weird soft spot for this thing: life, like art, is complex.

Warden King is a rugged little bastard, with an extra wound sitting behind that 3+ save, and some rend -2 on his melee profile. Has a cool little ability if you make him your General that you can Grudge an enemy unit, and all Duardin hit rolls of 6 into that unit wound automatically. Also has the back-to-backtivation of a Savage Big Boss, so you can have a bit of fun chopping away with a bunch of these sequentially. He’s lost the Zero Battleshock bubble and no longer dishes out a pip of rend though, which was kind of his whole thing, so he’s shaping up as more of a flavour choice than super-competitive perhaps?

Longbeards are pretty solid little troops. A major quality of life change here is that the Shields put them on a 3+ base save – i.e. it improves the characteristic, where it only added 1 to the roll before – so you can often get them down to a 2+ in practice now. Both melee options have a pip of extra rend taking them to rend -2 or rend -1 (as opposed to rend -1 or rend 0 on the old scroll) so they’re pretty cool. With that rock-solid Bravery 8 (+1 for the Banner) and their anti-Battleshock ability, my first thoughts are “tarpit mode” rather than “choppy-choppy mode”. If the price is right, these are looking like a great core unit.

Overall Thoughts

The Craic House is extremely divided on the aesthetic, but for what it’s worth, I’m a big fan. The humans have now got a real visual identity, and I’m all for it.

Just for fun, what I’d like to see in the next book (in 2026 or whatever) is young apprentice wizard troops – the whole Jedi / vow-of-poverty monk look, with the hooded cloth robes and rope around the waist. They’d be a 6+ save fragile Battleline unit who shoot relatively feeble lightning bolts as a missile attack, doing mortal wounds if they hit lucky, with the whole thing of getting more powerful together when they gather in convocations.

Back to these leaks though. I’m not sure how much fun competitive Cities builds are going to be to play against: Blast them with MWs from the Pontifex, blast them with MWs from the Luminark, blast them with MWs from the Celestial Whackydoo. In many cases completely ignoring targeting restrictions.

If you want to zap your opponent from across the board, don’t let me stand in your way – frankly, I’ve done worse myself – but what I would say is, don’t expect anyone to thank you for it. I guess we’ll cross that bridge once we’ve seen the whole book.

Anyway, what’s the verdict? Well, this one isn’t my release – I’m not a Cities guy – but I do appreciate the sculpts. Big tick. The warscrolls are generally quite interesting, and I’d be keen to put a Pontifex in most armies, with Longbeards also being a bit of a surprise hit.

I’m super keen to see the rest of the rules because although I keep saying this isn’t my army, I’m gonna have to play against it, and the aesthetic is awesome. Humans have grown up and grown into the Mortal Realms with these sculpts.

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