Age of Sigmar: General’s Handbook 2021 – 3 Things You Might Want To Know About
The new General’s Handbook 2021 has a quite a few interesting things – here’s three that we think are going to be super important.
If you didn’t get your pre-orders in for the forthcoming General’s Handbook you might want to get on that. If you’re curious about what’s inside, we’ve got that covered already. That said, we wanted to take a closer look at a few key call-outs from the book itself, so with that in mind, we’re going to dive right in.
New “Seasonal” Model
The new General’s Handbook is it’s own Battlepack with its own specific rules. You’ll find that most of these rules line up perfectly with your new Matched Play armies. But one of the more interesting notes here is the long term look GW is taking with the General’s Handbook. This one, for example, is being treated as a “season” and is set in the Ghurish Heartlands. Moving forward, it seems like GW will update the GHB and provide a new setting along with all “new grand strategies, battle tactics, realm rules and battleplans.”
We like this change as it adds some narrative flavor to the changes to the Battlepack besides just rules changes for the sake of rules changes. There’s no reason you can’t also use these rules for next season, but after a year of playing with them, you might be ready for some new ways to tackle Pitched Battles.
New Realm Rules
There are quite a few new realm rules included in the GHB. Here are just a few to look at. If you’re using this Battlepack and playing in an event that is using these rules, you might also want to know about these specific rules.
- Predators and Prey: Once per battle round, you score 1 additional victory point if any enemy Monsters were slain in that battle round.
- Seismic Shift: At the start of the third battle round, after the players roll off to determine who has the first turn, the player taking the second turn in that battle round can pick 1 objective marker on the battlefield and remove it from play.
Both of these are pretty game changing and the Battleplans included in the GHB are designed with these conditions in mind. Remeber, you’re only supposed to use these rules if you’re using the GHB’s Pitched Battle Battlepack. Will players confuse these rules with Matched Play? Possibly – which is why you really should clarify that before you start.
Coalition Units
Again, this applies if you’re using the Battlepack for the GHB’s Pitched Battles – but this is an additional restriction vs the Matched Play rules.
Coalition Units are units that can be included in your army that do not prevent you from using your army’s allegiance abilities. The important part here is that they do NOT count towards your Battleline units in your army. They DO count towards limits on Leader, Behemoth, and Artillery in your armies. That’s kind of a big deal.
Specifically called out in the side bar are units like Chaos Warriors in a Blades of Khorne army or Stormcast Eternals units in a Cities of Sigmar army. So keep that in mind when constructing your lists.
Matched Play Variant or Something Different?
There are more tweaks and changes to your “typical” Matched Play games found in the GHB 2021 edition. In fact, these rules in the GHB are really geared for events like Grand Tournaments and such. The Matched Play “Contest of Generals” Battlepack from the Core Book is more suited for “pick-up” matched play games.
Although it’s explained in more detail in the GHB, it might be easier to think of this more akin to an additional mode of play – you’ve got Narrative, Open, and Matched play. Now you also have the GHB Battlepack Pitched Battle play, too.
Soon we’ll march to War and Ghur is our battlefield!
