It’s a common thread that I’ve seen in a lot of early-GHB list discussion: which Battle Tactics do you reckon I should take in this list? Which ones do you like? Which ones are a trap? And as people have started playing games, it’s one of the biggest talking points: how did the BTs go for you? Would you take the same ones next time?

The fact that it’s driving the conversation should already tell you that they’re very well-judged. We can all have opinions on which ones we like and when, but there’s not yet any true consensus on which are “the best”. History shows that if you get GW to write a list of six of anything, there’s usually two that are clearly the best, two that are laughably shit and will never be taken, and a couple of somewhat-valid hipster choices if you want to try something different or go easy on a mate. Gloriously, that’s not the case here, and I think it’s worth considering why that’s the case.

Champagne and foot massages

I’d argue that there are two main factors that make a Battle Tactic powerful:

• How easy or hard it is to achieve
• Whether it rewards you further for doing what you already wanted to do

The first point speaks for itself. The second point revolves around the nature of what secondary objectives are here for. At its core Age of Sigmar, like most modern wargames, asks you to do two things:

• Put models on primary objectives
• Kill your opponent’s models, to prevent them scoring points

Some Battle Tactics, which are supposedly secondary objectives, are really just bonus VPs for completing those core goals. If you get extra VPs from your Tactics for scoring primary objectives or killing your opponent’s units, are they even really a secondary objective at that point? It’s certainly advantageous if you can divert all your resources – and mental energy – towards doing those two things, rather than having to walk and chew gum at the same time.

That’s all well and good, but do you have a graph?

Sure do! Well-designed Battle Tactics – like the ones we have now – just need to avoid the two Danger Zones, where they’re either strong or weak on both axes. Or to put it another way: the more they reward you for simply killing and capping, the harder they should be to accomplish.

We’ll run through the new Tactics to illustrate the point, but I believe that this is exactly why they’re such an intriguing set of options – and it’s a step-change in design quality from the last lot.

When BTs fell over under the last GHB, it was usually because they landed in those Danger Zones. That is to say, some BTs were both easy to score and rewarded you further for fighting and taking objectives; others were both hard to score and asked your list to do other things. That’s why Chaos’s were fantastic and Destruction’s were shit.

By way of illustration:

Ordained Charge just wants you to charge a couple of units and take an objective from your opponent – well within the scope of what you’d already want to achieve in a normal turn. While Offering of Carnage is literally just free VPs for killing stuff. Talk about being rewarded for doing what you wanted to do anyway! Both of these land in the Top Right “Danger Zone” of our grid above. It’s not so much that they’re too easy – it’s that they’re both easy and rewarding you for doing basic wargame things.

By contrast, let’s look at Time to Get Stuck In, easily the biggest stinker in the last GHB:

Yikes, that’s a lot of criteria. Start wholly within your territory and end wholly outside it and fight with all of them and it has to be 3 separate units. And don’t be fooled by the presence of that Fight keyword into thinking that it’s rewarding you for simply playing the game. In the context of all the other chores attached to this one, fighting with all three units is just another hoop you have to jump through on top of an entire Battle Tactic’s worth of positioning. It feels pretty stiff.

So when I say that the new batch are better designed – this is how and why they are better. I’d argue that none of these packages fall into either Danger Zone, and that’s why they’re so well executed.

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The new ‘uns

So let’s take a look at the 6 cards to see where they might fall on that grid. As FuryThrow2 pointed out in our Discord, you could almost think of these as Tactic -> Tactic -> Grand Strat in old money. Almost all of the 3rd options are easy if you have complete domination of the board, but near-impossible if you don’t. So it’s the first two that are the real separators.

I would argue that there are two of these cards that are easier, but ask your list to step outside of fighting and capping; two that do reward you for fighting and capping, but are harder to achieve; and two that contain individual tactics that fall into different quadrants, so they land in the middle overall.

Scouting Force

Raiding Party: Forces you to move stuff forward. Very easy to achieve, but that might not be what you want to do.

Bold Explorers: Control objectives and terrain features in enemy territory. You would already want to control the former regardless of this card.

Courageous Adventurers: Again very easy to score (especially for a third BT) but pulls units away from the fight / objectives.

Verdict: Very easy, but 2/3 are not directly linked to scoring Primary or winning the fight (indeed they can pull resources away from that).

Wrathful Cycles

Defiant Surge: Control more objectives, badda bing.

Daring Resurgence: Fight with half your units, but you have to be Underdog.

Master of Strategy: Might as well read “Table your opponent”.

Verdict: Perhaps the hardest set to assess, because of the requirement to be Underdog for Stage 2. Might be best considered as “Double Turn” insurance, whereby if you do get doubled, you get the choccies; and if you don’t get doubled, you’re probably happy about that.

Restless Energy

Water with Blood: Take an objective from your opponent. Yup, that’s what we like to do.

Invasive Species: Very much what we like to do, but getting all of them is bloody hard.

All Roots Entwined: We like scoring objectives, but you’re only getting the clean sweep if you’ve already tabled them.

Verdict: Perfect example. All it wants you to do is take objectives, which is great, but 2/3 make that hard by asking so much of you.

Attuned to Ghyran

Sacred Centrality: Getting to the middle of the board (and out of combat) might be what you wanted to do anyway, especially if there’s an objective there, but more often it’s pulling your units away from the fray.

Fey Strikes: Similar to above: situationally you might already want to do this, but it’s more likely to be an impost.

Purification Rites: Another “table them” deal.

Verdict: Another good example, but in the opposite way to Restless Energy. The first two are quite easy, because they are positional and you usually have significant agency over where your units go. But quite often you’ll have to redirect resources away from fightin’ and cappin’ to do that.

Master the Paths

Cut off the Head: Yup, we like killing Heroes. They can be hard to reach though, especially in a world of Obscuring terrain.

Seize the Paths: A tricky one to assess. 8/12 Battleplans have neutral territory, 4/12 Battleplans don’t. As such you’d only really consider this one in an army with lots of units on the table, but it’s certainly going to ask you to put units in places that aren’t objectives.

Envelop and Strangle: Spread the fuck out all over the board. One of the easier Domination (i.e. Stage 3) tactics to score, but asking you to have a lot of units in a lot of places that aren’t objectives.

Verdict: A real blend. The first part is purely about killing but is tricky, placing it Top Left. The rest is asking you to be in places that aren’t Primaries, with Stage 3 being Bottom Right as far as Domination tactics go.

Intercept and Recover

Kill your opponent’s three toughest units. You definitely want to kill stuff, but your opponent chooses which ones (which will usually be reinforced, often with a decent save and a 5++ ward).

So it’s rewarding you for doing what you want to do – kill stuff – but taking out the hand-picked toughest units (which can then take all the defensive buffs and/or run away) won’t be easy. I know a lot of people have already started out with this card and now sworn off it.

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Bring it on home

So this is where I reckon we’ve landed:

No tactics card feels so bad that it’s unplayable, nor do any feel like an auto-take. In the top-left quadrant we have tactics that pay out extra VPs for doing the stuff you already wanted to, but the payoff is that they set the bar pretty high. In the bottom right, we have two cards that are less punishing in their difficulty, but draw resources and mental energy away from the core task of killing stuff and standing on circles.

Master the Paths is a mish-mash, and really we could spread out the individual steps from that one right across the sections. I think it’s fair to assign it to the middle as a weighted average. We’ll also assign Wrathful Cycles to that section, since it’s a blend of things that play directly into your standard win condition (scoring Primary), things that don’t (being double-turned) and a “Win More” Step 3 that you’ll only score if you’ve brutalised your opponent. As a total package, it’s neither too easy nor too hard, but I do think it will be popular simply for the 5 easy VPs that will fall into your lap from the first step. Maybe that’ll be enough in a lot of games?

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Better all around

Overall these Tactics are a huge win for AOS, and have really got things cranking again. My own favourite change is how they are scored at the end of your turn, so we’re no longer wasting time scratching our collective arses in the hero phase. I also appreciate that they are weighted lower now, so the focus is back on scoring the Primary.

But it’s also worth noting and recognising that the Devs have done a really neat job on crafting 6 cards that have all seen some early play. I’m sure the cream will rise and I wouldn’t even be shocked to see one or two cost 20 points in a future update. But that’s the circle of life in a competitive wargame. I think the important thing is that we’ve got a great starting point to explore the new GHB and the questions it asks of your army – and, as a Destruction player, it’s nice that we’re not locked into having the shit ones this time around. Long may it last.

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Cover image: Jamie Elliott takes a screamer. On ya, Jamie.