We’ve seen Skaventide, the massive launch box for the new edition of Warhammer Age of Sigmar – but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. From tomorrow, we’ll be taking a look at every faction in the game, starting with the Stormcast Eternals.
With so many changes, the Warhammer Studio took the opportunity to fully re-index the entire game. This meant assessing every single warscroll to refactor and rebalance.
One of the key goals for the new edition was to make sure that the rules really reflect the Mortal Realms. This meant ensuring that characteristics are consistently applied, reflecting the lore and the look of the miniature.
Each type of creature was assigned a set of characteristics which would serve as a baseline across factions. A basic human hits on 4+ and wounds on 4+; aelves are more accurate but no stronger, so they hit on 3+ and wound on 4+, while orruks are no more accurate, but are stronger, so hit on 4+ and wound on 3+.
Elite warriors and brutes – or ill-trained fighters and weaklings – can modify these baselines, but the archetypes provide a strong and consistent core. A similar approach was taken amongst heroes, helping to differentiate a combat hero from a priest or wizard.
More hard work came when deciding how to clearly represent the Health and Save characteristics. Hundreds of miniatures were lined up to compare, with Health largely defined by their volume, and Save largely defined by the amount of armour worn. These were then grouped together to help decide where brackets for each characteristic would start and end.
After these base characteristics had been determined, the aim was to ensure that every unit had its own role to play on the battlefield. These would be realised by abilities that helped to define their strengths and unique traits.
Each faction in Warhammer Age of Sigmar has its own specialties and preferred tactics, but internal balance is also important. Where an army has access to multiple types of infantry or cavalry or war machine, the rules team took pains to help differentiate them – perhaps giving one unit a focus on holding objectives, one unit better positional play, and making another unit better at countering specific threats thanks to a carefully-chosen weapon ability.
As a result of this role-determining process, the way Rend works in weapon profiles has changed. While Rend has been reduced overall, there are many more units with Anti-X abilities, meaning they’ll hit much harder against their preferred targets. Of course, combat in the Age of Sigmar is brutal – so don’t expect all Rend to go away. Rolling loads of dice only to inflict no wounds isn’t that fun or exciting.
The final step was to try and even out the complexity of each faction’s Battle Traits, the army rules that govern how they play. This has resulted in bigger changes for some factions than others, and a reduction in the need for tokens when playing factions like Lumineth Realm-lords or Cities of Sigmar.
As we start to reveal snippets of each of the 24 factions, you’ll undoubtedly see things that don’t look as powerful as they were in the previous edition. Don’t take these in isolation – literally everything has been refactored, so if a particular unit seems weaker, the chances are that similar units have experienced comparable changes, or its niche has become more valuable.
The full Faction Packs contain Battle Traits, Battle Formations, Heroic Traits, Artefacts of Power, and various Lores, as well as the Spearhead Battle Traits, Regiment Abilities, Enhancements, and all the warscrolls you’ll need. They will be available to download as free FAQs on or around launch, and to buy as physical card packs shortly afterwards.
We’ll begin our faction focus series tomorrow with the immortal warriors of Sigmar, the Stormcast Eternals.