If you’ve been wondering about all the new changes to Age of Sigmar from the 2020 Generals Handbook, we’ve got you covered.
Hello everyone, sorry for the inconsistent writing this spring and into summer. But like everyone, I ‘ve had to adjust my time frame to meet the new normal that is taking place right now. However, even though everything is different, one thing that does not change is the yearly General’s Handbook that GW releases every summer, as a sort of new season for Age of Sigmar.
2020 General’s Handbook
After finally managing to go through it we are going to break it down and investigate all the new changes
2020 Generals Handbook Brings Changes to AOS
First, we will start with the general changes and things that apply to all factions.
Open Play:
The new season of open play takes place in the skies over the mortal realms. Which is a continuation of the white dwarf rules that were released a while ago. It is a fun mini-game that can be added to your routine with arcs, velocities, etc. They include battleplans, a campaign, and even rules for ground troops taking shots at the flying monsters. It’s all well done. If you are bored with matched play this could be a great way to get back into the game and have some fun. They even include unique warscrolls for the “flying heroes” in the game so they obviously put some time and effort into this campaign.
They also added a new Open play Coalition of Death which is focused on battles that have 3 or more players. This is also a good addition, as sometimes gaming groups have 3 or more players and fun if you have an odd number of people. Nobody wants to just sit around and wait for a game to end, nor does anyone want to feel obligated to play two games in a row to make sure everyone can roll some dice that night.
Narrative Games
Narrative Games are introducing “team battles”. And introduce the fog of war, alliance and betrayal rules, and the game master. The fog of war rules are very interesting in that it forces players to use handwritten notes. And take a risk if they want them sent through the air, but it could also slow down the game quite a bit. Alliance and Betrayal rules add some fun to being able to backstab your partner or team up against the strongest player. Backstabbing tends to lead to arguments and sometimes hard feelings in campaigns, so just be aware you may run into some of that.
Finally, the game master would be the campaign organizer who drives the narrative as well as plays as a neutral entity. There are some cool rules here, but it would be hard to be the GM as you just must sit on the sidelines and watch the people play. However, they added a built-in campaign. It could be a great way for an FLGS to get new players going. Or even a small group of players using 500 – 1000 point armies to make the games go faster.
There is also quite a lot of pages dedicated to creating your own unique hero’s which could be a great way to start up a mix of RPG / homebrewed campaigns. It almost adds a backstory type of element to your hero’s. And gives them a sort of story as to why they are where they are and how they have specialized in their skills.
2020 General’s Handbook: Matched Play Changes
The reason most people pick up the book is the matched play rules, and this year they shake things up a bit.
- First is the rule that you cannot use more than one dice roll to negate a wound or mortal wound that has been allocated to a model. So no more stacking those ward saves, which is a big blow to the death faction.
- Second is a change in the triumph table. You can only include 3 triumphs rather than 6, which makes it a little bit easier on the record-keeping.
- The third is the addition of Auxiliary Objectives. They determine which player scores a minor victory if neither one gets a major victory. There is a giant list of objectives that each player picks two from before the start of the game and then reveals it to their opponent before the first round.
Battleplans
There are some tweaks to the Battleplans that are used in matched play. With minor adjustments to wording, starting zone size, etc. to the battle plans they are carrying over from 2019. Then they dropped the Duality of Death and Relocation Orb Battleplans all together. Which I think is a good plan, duality of death was tough for the small model count armies to win. As you needed to keep your important heroes in a single location. Relocation orb, while fun, was just too random, and depending on the way it bounced took away a good chunk of the strategy going into the match.
Adding another two to replace them called The Blade’s Edge and Forcing the Hand. With the blade’s edge I really like it as it is objective heavy but it then gives an edge to the person taking the second turn after the first round in that they can remove an objective from the table. This prevents people from turtling and might give someone a pause on taking the automatic double turn. Forcing the Hand is another interesting one. In that, your opponent picks one of their objectives to be a primary objective that changes with each turn. So you are playing a sort of shuffling game alongside the match.
Direction 0f the Game
It is good to see them start making the game more objective related and less I punch you, then you punch me. I especially like in Blade’s Edge giving the person that must go second in the next round a bonus of removing an objective, it could be a real game-changer.
They also remove all the stuff from Malign Sorcery and replaced it with specific realms that come with less randomized rules. Each realm has a realm feature, spell, and command ability. If you choose for your army to be from a specific realm there is only a single artifact, they can now choose from rather then lists that were in Malign Sorcery. While this does hurt some armies in that it makes for less choice. I do like the simpler rules for the realms and that everything is built into the General’s Handbook. It makes for fewer books I need to drag around when I go out and play.
Final Thoughts
Finally, it would not be a new generals handbook without point changes across the board. We will dig into each faction individually but in this article, we will focus on the things that anybody can use.
- Soulscream Bridge goes up 20 points to 100.
- Penumbral Engine decreases 10 points to 90.
The bridge was a no brainer! It is incredibly powerful to a variety of armies that are otherwise forced to turtle or slowly cover ground. Also, it has a huge footprint. Making for a game-changing piece of terrain that armies need to navigate around. The engine I still think is way too expensive for what it does, by 40 points or so.
Really it should be a free piece of terrain that is available for the armies that do not have army specific terrain. But for some reason, GW does not like that idea. Regardless I will continue to use it as a generic terrain piece as I think it is a very cool model just not worth the points.
There you have it. A very brief and general assessment of this year’s changes. Next time I am going to start the faction focus of the point changes in the General’s Handbook.
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About the Author: Travis Perkins
An avid homebrewer and Detroit sports fan (yes even the Lions). I am new to the world of wargamming and very much enjoying the journey. If you have any suggestions or comments feel free to comment on the article or email me at perki116@msu.edu
