Patrick Dangerfield will slow down and have less impact on AFL games. Tariffs will make the American middle class rich and stick it to the foreigners. Shooting is dead in Age of Sigmar’s new GHB. Life in 2025 is full of big, hollow promises, but it’s that last one we’re here to examine today.

What’s the cloud hanging over shooting?

The new GHB is of course all over the internet by now, and I’d recommend Rob’s video if you haven’t seen it yet. I won’t regurgitate the whole book here but the key difference for shooting is that Obscuring terrain now blocks line of sight:

The key thing to note here is that there’s no requirement to be behind that obscuring terrain. As long as a fraction of your base is within 1″, you’re hidden:

Every table has loads of Obscuring terrain on it right out of the gate:

…But what’s more, you can use Places of Power to either switch over yet another piece of terrain (including Faction terrain) – or better still, an objective:

Who cares about Obscuring Objectives though? Objectives are only 40m wide.

Yeah, they’ve thought of that. The blackspot includes the “control zone”, which is to say the whole pie plate blocks LOS. Check out that last paragraph:

So in summary: huge parts of the board can block line of sight, including those circles we all love standing on, as long as every model is within an inch of that terrain or wholly on those big juicy circles.

It’s not just shooting

Line of sight will also hobble a few other things, notably our dear friends Kroak:

And Bela’Kunt:

There are loads of other examples: Magic generally needs LOS to hit a target, and plenty of other abilities do too. The game is going to slow a bit in the short term as you’ll really need to check a lot of things your opponent is doing, to verify that they still work. The impact is profound.

Sux 2 B KO

So is that it? Shooting is dead in AOS4? Nah, let’s not get carried away. There’s a few reasons why I think it still has its place.

1. Some very important units can’t hide

Monsters stand out straight away – you’ll still be able to blast Kragnos off the board, and that’s a big deal. But what’s easily forgotten is that while you can easily hide elite infantry on an objective (once activated), you might struggle to hide them near certain terrain.

Cavalry or 5-man elite units can string out and tag terrain without worrying about coherency. But 10-man units like reinforced Brutes or Chosen will find that their back row is >1″ from the front. And if you try to fan them out, you will break your 0.5″ triangles.

So depending on the terrain available, anything 40mm bases that wants to run in 10s and upwards might struggle to tag Obscuring terrain in the early game. You’re relying on that terrain having a footprint or “base” that they can get up onto slightly, and lots will – but not all.

Same goes for Bela’Kunt, by the way. Units like Kragnos or 10 Brutes, which are exactly what you want to shoot off early, and also exactly what he likes to interfere with. It’ll still be pretty common to have one or both as legitimate targets.

2. Glass hammer meta

Loads of the biggest Scourge of Ghyran reveals were glass hammers: units that are fragile, but deliver extravagant damage for their cost. Examples that spring to mind are Kairic Acolytes and the Carnosaur. Being able to deal with them outside of combat rather than trading will be immensely valuable.

3. You won’t always be able to stay near Obscuring

I mean, you just won’t. In round 1 you often won’t have been able to activate a POP yet, so you’ll be reliant on huddling around terrain as much as you possibly can. Once you have activated a POP, and switched on objective over to Obscuring, you’ll still want to contest other objectives that haven’t been switched over yet, and spread out all over the board to score Battle Tactics. This GHB wants you to run a lot of units and spread them out, so there will often be a whole bunch of juicy targets. People won’t be able to just sit there in their deployment zone, hugging terrain the whole time.

4. You will sometimes fail the 3+ roll

In fact, I’ll stick my neck out and speculate that will happen roughly one third of the time. We’re all guilty at times of running through gameplay scenarios in our heads where it all just happens how it “should”, so be prepared for the howls of indignation when a crucial 3+ roll fucks someone hard, and they get shot to shit. All I’m saying is keep your earplugs handy.

5. Nerfs to AOD

Remember waaaaaaaay back, what, a week or so ago? When we learned that AOD has been nerfed, so that it only protects you from the first salvo in a given phase? That’s still a nice little tickle for shooting, since you can bang away with your second and third units and the target won’t get any benefit to their save. So when they can be targeted, they’re likely to cop it harder than ever.

Winners and losers

As mentioned above there’s a shadow nerf to units of 10+ models on 40mm bases (which is a lot of units). It’s situational based on the footprint of the terrain on the table, but it’s there. As a side note, bear in mind that this could be a factor in the the roll off to choose sides, if one side has terrain with a lip to stand on and the other doesn’t.

There’s also a shadow buff to Not Monsters, i.e. Big Things that don’t have the Monster keyword: Katakros, Glutos and buff wagons of all shapes and sizes can hide in plain sight. This makes no sense whatsoever and is a rare dumb decision by the current Dev Team – in a lot of cases they’ll be far bigger models than a Monster who can’t hide.

This just creates haphazard winners and losers. A model’s size is quantitative and it should have been treated as such – which is to say, the exception to Obscuring should have been based on Health characteristic, rather than the qualitative Monster keyword.

And a bit more speculatively: Fights First tech effectively gets a bump as its natural competitor for dealing with glass hammers has been hampered², and I’ve got a pet theory about dedicated “Predator” units.

Is there any bullshit?

You mean other than Katakros benefitting from Obscuring terrain? Sure.

I’ve been looking for an opportunity to hide the Frazzlegit Shaman since this rule came out:

Tag the Obscuring with your Shammy and project your aura of unshootability. Can’t target him, can’t target his mates either. Divine.

We’ve mentioned the timing of activating a POP (Start of Turn, not during the Hero Phase), so you can’t move up in the Hero Phase to activate one that’s in the DMZ. What you can do though is get there first with a Pregame move. My beloved Bonesplitterz have gone to the Great Hunt in the Sky, but keep an eye out for Heroes with Pregame moves, and they could have the opportunity to step out and reach a POP on Turn 0, ready to switch it on regardless of whose turn is first.

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So no, I don’t believe that shooting is dead. It’s gone from being a Win button³ to being more situational, and I’m still writing lists with strong shooting components that I’m confident could do well. There will be times and places where it’s hobbled – which is something that combat has to deal with too – so it’s a useful tool in your army, with opportunities for skill expression and counterplay. Which is another way of saying that AOS4 is a better game for these changes.

Sure. I will add though that our guy ROCKMAN has been hitting some AOS 4.5 reps already, and he’s independently reached the same conclusion: if 80% of your army is dakka then you’re setting yourself up for frustration. But a strong shooting component still has its place, especially if you can back it up with a combat hit squad to rush in and smack what needs to be smacked.

Addendum: 32mms can still hug terrain

Thank you to https://bsky.app/profile/ajali.bsky.social for demonstrating that 32mms bases can remain coherent and within 1″ of a plane (such as a vertical wall). That’s good mathing!

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1. Will this be the first modern GHB where Be’Lakor isn’t in every list? ↩︎
2. I’m not saying shooting hasn’t been nerfed, it certainly has. I’m just saying it’s not completely dead. Keep reading and you’ll see what I mean. ↩︎
3. I have no axe to grind here. In fact I say this as a person who played a lot of Kunnin Rukk back in its day: shooting armies have been skiing downhill for years in Age of Sigmar. As a mechanic it’s had things far too much its own way, and there’s plenty of scope for it be trimmed back without becoming “bad”. ↩︎