The Dawnbringer books aren’t just crucial chapters in the continuing Warhammer Age of Sigmar narrative, they’re also substantial rules supplements. They contain major expansions for Path to Glory, as well as unique Regiments of Renown and Armies of Renown, each providing new opportunities to field exciting forces.
With four Armies of Renown available to players in Dawnbringers: Book II – Reign of the Brute, and four more coming in Dawnbringers: Book III – The Long Hunt, we spoke to Matt from the Warhammer Studio about what the intent behind these new army rules was, and what we can expect from them in the future.
Warhammer Community: What exactly are Armies of Renown?
Matt: At their most basic level, Armies of Renown are a self-encapsulated set of rules that are designed to give you a thematic way to play an army. They’re heavy on theme, taking inspiration from how a faction battles in the narrative, or representing the personal retinue or army of a mythical hero.
From a design standpoint, they were designed to explore new patterns of play without stacking additional rules on top of a battletome. They wholesale replace the existing allegiance abilities, and in that way, they’re designed to be a little more accessible. All the rules you need are either right there on the page, or available for free on the Warhammer Age of Sigmar App.
WarCom: How do you envisage them being used by the players?
Matt: Each Army of Renown has a strong narrative hook and theme, so they’re great for narrative play, but we also designed them to be used in matched play. What we hope is that they create new ways for players to look at using an existing collection of miniatures. For example, you might already have a Mercenary Mega-Gargant, and now King Brodd’s Stomp in Reign of the Brute provides you with a curated set of options that you can explore with new miniatures, without going all in on a battletome and all the options that entails.
The intent is not to replace the core way a faction plays but to explore new avenues of play without layering lots of rules on top of each other. It’s important to note that while they are meant to be competitively viable from a matched play perspective, we don’t intend them to be the dominant way to play that army. The strongest builds should still be the result of a player analysing the full array of choices in a battletome, and putting together a list that uses those options in a clever way, but we hope Armies of Renown will put in a decent showing.
We are tracking data for them, and we’ll be making balance adjustments and releasing errata as we go forward.
WarCom: Can you talk a little bit more about some of the inspiration behind these armies and the challenges they presented?
Matt: Warhammer Age of Sigmar is already at its best when its rules support its narrative, and a lot of people already play theme-heavy armies. We took inspiration from people who were already playing troggoth-heavy armies, lists of multiple Magmadroth, Stromdrake Guards etc, and tried to put a new spin on them.
They might give someone the spark of inspiration to try something new with their collection without having to weigh up a lot of different artefacts, command traits, and spell lores. A lot of players like that level of granularity, but others might prefer a little direction.
In that respect, my favourite is probably Trugg’s Troggherd. People have been playing trogg-heavy armies for ages, and Battletome: Gloomspite Gitz supports these, but the Troggherd is a more focused version. It also recontextualizes Trugg, turning him from a powerful lone agent in a Gloomspite Gitz army to a nexus of power surrounded by an entourage of troggoths who can all benefit from the army-wide application of his ability.
WarCom: What do Regiments and Armies of Renown mean for Warhammer Age of Sigmar going forward?
The current set were all playtested with the General's Handbook: Pitched Battles 2023-24 rules, so they’re designed to be relevant for this whole Andtor season. In terms of the future, we see battletomes, Regiments of Renown, and Armies of Renown as some of the building blocks players can use to build their collections in Age of Sigmar.
Regiments of Renown are totally self-contained, just like Armies of Renown which means we can tinker with their points and abilities in a more nuanced fashion. We want to be able to give people more and easier ways to integrate their collections into the game with new rules, in a slightly more discrete way that we can control with updates based on data we take on from matched play. You’ll just have to stick with us to see what’s next!
Thanks Matt for taking the time to talk about Armies of Renown. Command an army of Magmadroths led by Vulkyn Flameseekers or recreate The Evergreen Hunt with Dawnbringers: Book III – The Long Hunt which is available to pre-order tomorrow.