Today we’re going to be taking a look at how to actually play the new Age of Sigmar: Skirmish, and how to get started building your first Warband.
What’s great about Age of Sigmar Skirmish is that it is so fast and much more contained (4×4 table instead of 6×4) in that you can get a game or two in anywhere. Waiting for a table to open up at your LFGS? Grab some scenery, a handful of models, then plop them on a smaller table and your good to go. Beer (soda for you young bloods) taking too long to be delivered at the pub? Grab a booth, plop some models down, and fight around the condiments and silverware. It really is that easy of a game and it can be as short (25 reknown) or as long as you want it (100+ reknown).
Let’s start with some basic skirmish warband building:
- You need to start with a hero and 3 models, but don’t crazy with the hero model. Some games can be lost by losing half your warband, so if you take some push over henchmen they can just stay away from your leader and kill them.
- Magic is pretty powerful. If you have a spell that does mortal wounds (or just use arcane bolt) you can usually kill any henchmen and do some serious damage to a hero character. Just remember your mage is less than idea at combat so, make sure your henchmen are beefy enough to delay the enemy while you mage gets out of range. If you don’t have a mage, you should try and get a hero that has a way to unbind spells to give you some defense against it.
- The movement stat is pretty important! A lot of the scenarios involve holding an objective or getting somewhere first. So even if a particular model is not good at combat its move stat might make up for it. (Looking at you Screamer of Tzeentch)
- Team synergy is important. Having a hero that can buff your henchmen can lead to some pretty devastating attacks. Getting those re rolls or bonuses to rolls is nice because there is such a finite amount of wounds in these skirmishes that every point of damage helps.
- Finally don’t be afraid to horde points for a match and then spend them on what you want. You only got 10 reknown the last battle but need 6 more to hire that Runelord you really want? Save it and try and win out the next round. Even losing nets you 6 reknown so you can afford it for the following round and try and get back into the grove.
There you go just a couple of tips for your warband, of course the beauty of Skirmish is that you can just grab a handful of models that you think look cool and roll with them. If you can bring in a narrative element to the battle even better!
