AoS: Forging Heroes for a New Age – The Anvil Of Apotheosis

With the General’s Handbook comes massive changes to the Mortal Realms. Here are my thoughts on the Anvil of Apotheosis.

The General’s Handbook for 2020 is coming out next weekend, and it’s bringing lots of big changes for the Mortal Realms. Point updates, new Realm rules, all sorts of great new additions to Age of Sigmar, but the one I’m most looking forward to is the Anvil of Apotheosis. This new feature will allow players to build their own characters to lead their armies, and allow generals who enjoy a bit of story to create a thematic leader for their army. Here’s the top three reasons I’m excited about the upcoming change.

Old Fantasy Throwback

Back before the world broke, heroes were constructed by buying their equipment from a list and paying points for it. The new AoS system is much more streamlined and palatable, but I do miss being able to build exactly the hero I want to lead my army. With the new rules, I’ll be able to build the hero I want, and maybe fill in some holes in otherwise awesome armies. (i.e. why does Lumineth not have a non-special combat hero?!?!?)

Narrative Play

As a player who loves to add story to all the armies I build, and all of my heroes have a written out personality. With the new rules, I’ll be able to bring in the heroes I designed closer to the way I imagined them. Also, I’m hoping that other races can sub into new armies, like Chaos Aelves or a Vampire fighting for Destruction.

Matched Play Rules

Last but most certainly not least, these new heroes you design can be brought into Matched Play games (with the OK of your opponent of course) by multiplying their Destiny point cost by 10. Of course this will not always be the case, and it’s likely it won’t see much tournament play, but if you’re only playing casually, or if you have a TO that just wants to have a good time, it will still be fun to bring these heroes to a balanced game setting. I’m very excited to see the new heroes people design, and will personally ALWAYS be OK with facing custom heroes, even if I don’t bring any myself.

Will you be making your own heroes?

Author: Clint Lienau

From North Carolina to Texas and back to North Carolina again, Clint lives the life of a traveling artist. An avid gamer, writer, actor, pyrotechnician, and general nerd, he has finally turned his love of EDH into a career. When not busy being a clueless cowboy, Winterfell Bannermen, or whatever else acting life throws at him, he enjoys reading folklore from around the world, writing narratives for his Wargaming armies, or running D&D 5e games as a professional DM. Look for his storytelling podcast, By the Dancing Fire, or find him on Twitch at FeybornPhyrexian, where he produces MTG content.