Warhammer Age of Sigmar is a game of combat: kinetic clashes between mighty heroes, twisted monsters, and warriors tempered in the fires of a thousand battles. The melee is the core element of the game, and the rules for fighting at close quarters have been tuned for the new edition to make these conflicts feel more epic than ever before.
The changes to commands mean that Counter-charge and Power Through are powerful new tools to turn the tides of battle. We’ve already seen that every miniature now has combat range in a 3” radius – and this simple change has plenty of far-reaching ramifications that result in a smoother and more satisfying Combat Phase.
Combat in the Age of Sigmar
Players familiar with the current edition will find the new process very similar: units still charge into combat and fight, but these now also work as abilities with clearly defined declaration and effect steps.
The order of operations is generally much clearer in this edition. There are no more ‘start of phase’ or ‘end of phase’ subphases: in each phase the active player uses any of their abilities in whichever order they want, and then their opponent can do the same, like the Ardboyz’ Shield Bash and the Blood Sisters’ Crystal Touch.
The Combat Phase has one significant difference to other phases: after both players have resolved any of their other abilities for this phase, they then take it in turns to activate units to use FIGHT abilities, starting with the active player. Strikes-first and strikes-last effects are still very much in the mix, occurring on either side of the standard fight timings.
Coupled with All-out Attack and All-out Defence, the Combat Phase remains a tense and strategic affair. Units cannot make shooting attacks if they are in combat, unless their weapons have the Shoot in Combat ability, so tagging a missile unit is a great opportunity for counterplay.
A unit can perform a pile-in move as part of the FIGHT ability, allowing models to move up to 3”. Every model in that unit must end the move no further from the target unit than it was before piling in, and must still be in combat with every unit it started the move engaged in combat with.
Fight, Fight, Fight!
The process of working out combat will be familiar to players, with a few key changes. Unmodified rolls of a 6 are now critical hits, a term that can trigger a range of new effects on attacks, while mortal wounds have been renamed mortal damage.
Overall, rend has been reduced throughout the game, and while you can still positively modify your save profile with All-out Defence, this remains capped at +1. Most factions lack any other tools to further increase a unit’s save profile, so “save stacking” – the process of negating rend by adding extra save – is largely a thing of the past.
There’s a slight change to the way damage is allocated. Instead of allocating damage points to a model in a unit, damage points are now allocated to the unit as a whole. When the total of damage points allocated to a unit equals the Health characteristic of that unit, the commanding player removes a model from that unit, but they must stay in coherency.
This greatly speeds up how damage is totted up, and stops you from losing track of which model was injured, or absent-mindedly allocating that first damage point to your unit Champion and coming to curse your past self.
Unit Roles
With combat range gone, you might have some questions about how a warrior with a hammer is set apart from one with a spear. This has been handled by further differentiating the role of each unit on the battlefield. Weapon and warscroll abilities now provide units with specific roles – take the bristling spear-wall of Stormcast Eternals Vindictors as an example.
They have Anti-charge (Rend +1) as a weapon ability, granting additional Rend when they are charged, while they have the opportunity to strike first if they successfully Hold the Shield Wall.
Greater combat range and no battleshock makes seething hordes of Clanrats and Crypt Ghouls more dangerous, but monstrous infantry like Kroxigor love to cut a bloody swathe through these teeming mobs. Their Anti-Infantry (+1 Rend) devastates armour, while the Brutal Blows passive ability can pulverise four bodies in a single swing – and they get four attacks.
Coherency Range
All that moving, charging, piling-in, and general jostling around is also tied into coherency, which represents how units move and fight together. The coherency range of units is now ½”, and models must remain within range of at least one other model in their unit.
Models in units of seven or more fighters must remain within coherency range of at least two of their comrades, while certain units (especially those composed of large models like Stormdrake Guard) have a larger coherency range noted on their warscrolls. Coherency is measured horizontally, which means height differences don’t matter.
Retreating
Battleshock has gone because to fight in the Age of Sigmar is to fight for the fate of the Mortal Realms – armies engage in battle with utter conviction and battle to the bitter end. But Retreat is now an ability used in the Movement Phase, a tactical decision that comes with a cost of D3 mortal damage, though some wily units may be able to use special abilities to slip out of combat without reprisal – including certain Skaven.
On Friday, we’ll be unrolling arcane scrolls, brushing off our dogma, and pondering orbs both thaumaturgical and theological as we unpack how magic, prayers, and manifestations work in the new edition.