Prepare to witness the battlefields of the Age of Sigmar come alive like never before! In the upcoming edition, endless spells and invocations will surge across the fray – moving, fighting, and charging with the ferocity of mighty units, while armies lay siege to their enemies’ faction terrain.
One of the core design philosophies behind this latest edition of Warhammer Age of Sigmar is to have fewer separate systems to learn, but more tactical choices available within each system. This has had a particularly big impact on endless spells and invocations – collectively referred to as ‘manifestations’ – as well as faction terrain features.
Summoning Manifestations
As mentioned in our previous article, manifestations have now been grouped into thematic lores, and you will be able to pick one of these lores alongside your spell lore and prayer lore when building your army roster. Each manifestation lore provides spells or prayers which allow you to summon the manifestations in that lore.
Factions which have their own unique manifestation lore can choose to pick that lore for their army. Alternatively, any army, even those with a unique manifestation lore, can pick one of the following universal manifestation lores.
Interacting with Manifestations
For the most part, manifestations now work in much the same way as units, which offers more counter-play than ever before. This is immediately apparent when you take a look at a manifestation’s warscroll.
The first thing you’ll notice is that manifestation warscrolls resemble regular unit warscrolls far more than ever before – they can now move, charge, attack, take damage, and use abilities in much the same manner as units – so if you can’t banish those Quicksilver Swords, you can send a monster to bat them down, or a unit to shoot them from a safe distance.
Though similar to units, manifestations aren’t exactly going to listen to commands from a nearby hero, and their shimmering magical nature leads to some key rules differences. Additionally, some manifestations, such as the Prismatic Palisade, have a Move characteristic of ‘-’, and so don't threaten the movement of enemy units around them.
Static Manifestations
While some endless spells roam across the battlefield destroying their enemies, others provide a powerful effect to those around them, such as the Prismatic Palisade, which can help shield your units against shooting attacks.
Faction Terrain Features
The same logic that applies to manifestations also extends to faction terrain features. Like manifestations, these terrain features also have a Health and Save characteristic and can be targeted by enemy attacks, such as a well-aimed cannonball, to demolish them.
Like static manifestations, faction terrain features don’t threaten units around them, so you can freely move up to and away from them – unless they have a hero placed on them, for example in the case of the Skull Altar. Some rare faction terrain features can even move or fight – stay tuned for Faction Focus articles to learn more!
Of course, faction terrain is particularly important for some factions, such as Sylvaneth. These factions now have new abilities to summon additional terrain features throughout the battle, such as the Sylvaneth’s UNLIMITED spell, Treesong:
All in all, manifestations and faction terrain features are now much more integrated into the core game mechanics and are involved in nearly every phase of the game. You’ll also have more counterplay than ever to deal with these threats, instead of being restricted to just banishing them with your WIZARDS or PRIESTS.
Join us the rest of the week as we’ll be covering Spearhead – the fast, fun, and tactical new mode of play for Warhammer Age of Sigmar that is perfect for veterans and new players alike.