Ohhh baby this Scourge of Ghyran has got me so RILED UP!

Cities is a new army for me, one that I was getting excited to paint and play – a more laid back option for your classic filthy meta chaser¹ and now good old Gee Dubs has decided to make it super powerful right around the time I will start playing it. What a shame!

A new scheme focusing on entirely OSL². I swear I painted this before seeing the warscroll changes.

This Scourge of Ghyran update has killed any hopes and dreams I had of Cities keeping any dwarves or elves around for the next book. Considering this entire update basically neglects them – I’d say that this is GW’s way of telling us that it’s all over for the short and pointy-eared.

The Humans though are looking HOT in this new update, getting some spicy new tech and a buff to one of my favourite units – I am very keen to be back on this bandwagon.

Battle Formations

CANNONS, CANNONS, CANNONS. The new subfaction Veteran Cannoneers is all about cannons and I couldn’t be happier³. Giving these bad boys the ability to reroll either their hit, wound or random damage is HOT. This greatly increases their consistency and allows you to just shred your opponent from 24″ away. When paired with everyone’s favourite Ogor with a crow’s nest on the top, I think on average you force about 5 saves with the rerolls from three cannons⁴.

Fearless Exemplars is okay? Giving +1 Rend to two specific types of units’ mixed arms is whatever. If you are taking cannons you may as well just see above, and Human infantry units that benefit from this are like what? Steelhelms?

Now you could get a 20 blob of these guys on the charge up to 81 attacks (3s and 3s, Rend 1 Damage 1) using the new artefact, the charge phase Order and Thalia’s once per game ability, and that can certainly do some damage. But it’s a major investment to effectively end up playing Clanrat x Vizzik spam – which is probably better left to the psychotic Skaven players.

Heroic Traits

Draw Steel feels very strong. +1 attacks while on the charge for your Human unit, what’s not to love? It does have the issue of needing to charge a Hero into combat alongside your unit, and Cities doesn’t have a lot of Human Heroes that can chain out generic “fight one after the other” bullshit, so you can lose a bit of value with the forced inclusion. Still good though.

Cosmopolitan Leader looks to be decent and giving Humans +1 to wound on a 3+ is pretty nice. Those buffs for the dwarves and aelves are fucking useless though⁵. Not only do Humans get the best buff, you get to pick 3 targets – this is just out and out Human Privilege.

Astute Tactician feels the weakest of the three to me – there might be some superfast combos to unlock, but it feels almost redundant considering how fast Cities of Sigmar can already move.

Warscrolls

You are about to see everyone and their mother and their mother’s mother running this new Pontifex Zenestra warscroll because by Sigmar is it cracked.

First up Word of the God-King is an Any Hero Phase ability (letting you do it in both players’ turns). Banishing a Manifestation on a 3+ is great and similar to Archaon’s Tzeentch head, the wording gets around the Krondspine’s Wild Form ability. Alternatively, you can just attempt to throw D6 MW at an enemy Wizard or Priest every hero phase because why not?

Now if that wasn’t good enough, the biggest buff is her new Prayer Sigmar’s Will. First up – being able to reroll it on a 1 has already got Pat moping about his average Khorne Priests that get no special rules⁶. Similar to her previous ability it’s got 3 choices and if you cast on a 10+, you get to pick two of them:

• Hallowed Ground can prevent enemy units finishing a normal move within 5″. Now notably this doesn’t trigger against Run or Retreat abilities – so that does limit its usefulness.
• Fervent Prayers allowing Humans throw around some on-death mortals on 6s is pretty irrelevant.
• The absolutely CRACKED tech is in Salvation which lets you pick up to 3 Human units (boardwide) and set them up again wholly within 12″ of Zenestra and not in combat, and then that unit can’t charge. Notably, they do not need to set up 9″ inches” away from enemy models!

So using this ability on a Magical Intervention can set up some really nasty combos. For example you can smash in with some Cavaliers and then teleport everyone back to home base. Another use with your cannons (in their own new Battle Formation) is to teleport them out of combat and fire away. So having some banked Prayer points for your opponent’s turn is going to be pretty nasty – and oh, did I mention you can reroll 1s⁷?

They simplified her combat profile and she’s still a Power 2 Priest with a 4+ ward. Overall this is a substantial upgrade from the last warscroll, and she’s definitely going to see more time on the table.

Freeguild Cavaliers: An updated warscroll for the new Cavaliers was no surprise⁸, and this one is also pretty spicy considering the combos you can get off. For an extra 10 points compared to the old version you get a base of 3+ to hit (compared to its previous 4+) but at the cost of having one fewer attack per model:

Now this does lead to slightly lower output overall:

But it’s their new ability The Red Work that’s the real differentiator. You lose the ability from the old Cavaliers to punch out approximately 5 MW on the charge (from a Reinforced unit), but what you get back is the flexibility to count as having charged way more often.

This can combo nicely with some of the other buffs built into this army: it allows you to use the charge phase Order to issue +1 attacks to the Cavaliers and with the new artefact Draw Steel, you can add another +1 attacks. And if that wasn’t juicy enough, with a helpful Cavalier Marshal you can Fight First and smash your enemy in their own turn!

With the full buffkake your output catches right back up, because you get more value from those additional attacks when they’re hitting on 3s base:

Just as importantly you should be hitting that level in real-world situations more regularly. That extra flexibility to count as having charged means that you will probably see these new Cavaliers being taken a lot. These changes are thematic, keep true to their lore and differentiates Cavaliers from most other cavalry. So happy days!

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Overall these are some nice changes. I think you can run almost anything Cities related effecitvely – as long as its not the old Dwarves and Aelves

I’ve heard through the grapevine about people spamming cannons and Cavaliers, mass Steelhelms or Flagellants, and even the occasional crazy person wanting to run combat Fusiliers…. it’s all a bit nuts, and it all centers around Zenestra’s prayer being absolutely broken. Not that I’m complaining.

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1. That would be me ↩︎
2. Shoutout to Will Knight and Justin “Halfway Finished Models” Clarke for their tips. Please don’t stop. ↩︎
3. Considering I just bought three of them, I don’t chase the meta – the meta chases me. ↩︎
4. I didn’t know how to do the math on this, so I just rolled it out a few times 🤷‍♂️. ↩︎
5. Again, the writing really seems to be on the wall here. ↩︎
6. Unsure if anyone said it but… Pat’s a wee bit upset about this ↩︎
7. Always worth mentioning it one more time to cheer Pay up. ↩︎
8. Certainly not to the smart people who read my last article. ↩︎

Credit for cover image to GW