Don’t miss new AoS Command Abilities, Mercenaries and more points changes that were just spotted in the Generals Handbook!
From faction updates to Endless Spell points, the General’s Handbook has a lot in store for us. It’ll be shaking up the game by also adding Mercenaries. We’ll be going deeper into the points changes but if you missed our first article, be sure to get caught up.
GHB 2019: New Command Abilities, Endless Spell Changes & More
We’ll be getting three new generic Command Abilities to the game usable by Heroes and Generals. These are:
- All-out Attack: Reroll hits of 1 in the combat phase.
- All-out Defence: Reroll Save rolls of 1. (This is literally a Mystic Shield that costs a CP).
- Volley Fire: Reroll all hit rolls of 1 in the shooting phase for a unit.
Keep in mind that these all have some decent range. At 12″ for any Hero and 18″ for your General, you’ll be able to beef up key units without having to bend over backward.
Mercenary Companies
We’ll have ten total mercenary companies to ally in with any of our armies.
The Mercenary Factions:
- Fyreslayers Greyfyrd Lodge
- Flesh-eater Courts Tenebrous Court
- Necromancer & Skeletons
- Algeuzzler Gargants
- Blood Knights & a Vampire Lord
- Freeguild Rough Riders
- Duardin Hired Guns
- Chaos Gargant
- Darkoath Rampagers
- Maneater Gutstuffers
The point of a Mercenary Company is to be able to bring units that you wouldn’t normally be able to under the normal Ally rules. Here’s the lowdown on everything you need to know about fitting them in your games:
- They don’t care about faction keywords.
- They take from the same pool of ally points for pitched battles. That means you can’t take a 400 pt ally AND a Mercenary at 2k points.
Fyreslayers and Flesheater Courts actually made their way into the Mercenary companies list! This is the first time we’ve seen the datasheets on all the different mercenary options. However, the Fyreslayers and Flesheater-Courts essentially boil down to this: You can pick any kind of FACTION unit with the exclusion of some units. For example, the Flesh-eater Courts prevent you from taking a Trrorgheist or Zombie Dragon. (Which is totally understandable).
Looking at some of the other Mercenary Companies that were first previewed, you actually need to fill out certain unit options (similar to a Warscroll Battalion).
Endless Spells Points Changes
Points have been changed significantly for some spells. The biggest one is the Purple Sun of Shyish which is down -50 pts. All of the other spells look to have fluctuated about +/- 10 pts.
As far as the Endless Spells go, the faction ones are in each of their respective sections. However first Endless Spells expansion and Forbidden Power appear seperately as shown above. Which brings us to a theme that was noticed.
Multiple Factions Are Missing Any Kind of Points Change
These factions are nowhere to be found in the GHB 2019:
- Slaanesh
- Skaven
- Gloomspite Gitz
- Fyreslayers
- Flesheater-Courts
The book may have been printed and already finalized at a point where it was too soon to its scheduled release for any changes for these factions to take place. That being said, the AoS community could be seeing a downloadable PDF in the weeks ahead refiguring the points for everything on these factions. If you were going to buy the book planning on seeing any changes for the factions above, sadly, you’re out of luck.
That means we will have to continue to deal with some powerful units in the game until GW drops their official points reworks at some unconfirmed date. Just keep your eyes peeled moving forward.
So what do you think about all of the changes inside the GHB 2019? Is the Purple Sun finally worth its points? Which Mercenary Company will you be taking? Let us know in the comments of our Facebook Hobby Group.
About the Author: Wesley Floyd
