Age of Sigmar: The First Look At The New Warscolls
Games Workshop has just dropped the first two warscolls for the new edition of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. What’s changed and what’s the same? Time to break it down!
The new edition of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar is coming soon and there have been hints that the warscrolls were getting a massive revamp. We’ve been wondering what those changes would be and now we have our first look at them!
First up, how about those new double-hammer Liberators? Interesting… Anyhow, let’s get into the warscroll.
Warscroll Breakdown
The top part looks almost the exact same. But there’s two big changes. “Wounds” has been changed to “Health” now. That’s probably to help with some of the confusion between causing wounds, to wound, the wound stat, and whatever else the word “wound” was being used for. Frankly, it’s about time. Changing it to Health just helps things be a tad more concise.
As for the other change, Bravery is gone and has been replaced with a “Control” stat. This is a stat that determines how well each model in the unit can contest objectives. Oh, and there’s one other “less big but still notable” change — the “Save” stat is now color coded with a green background.
Moving on from there, we get a look at the new format for the Weapon layout. Stat-wise, it’s all the same basic info that we’re used to seeing. The number of attacks, the to hit roll, the to wound roll, the Rend (which is now just a number and not a “negative” number), and the damage. But more interestingly, we also see the new “Ability” section with a new “Crit(Mortal)” ability. What does that mean?
“Liberators hit hard for basic troops, especially given their Crit (Mortal) ability – one of seven universal weapon abilities. It has a simple effect: an unmodified 6 to hit counts as a Critical Hit, and this ability turns Critical Hits into Mortal Damage.”
But what are Critical Hits? If I had to guess, I’d wager they are unmodified 6s to hit. There’s probably going to be Critical Wounds as well…just a guess though.
Also note the lack of any range for these melee attacks. That’s due to one of the previously mentioned changes where the combat range has just been moved to a simple 3″ range.
“…every model can now fight within a 3” combat range in melee. It’s a simple change, but one that will streamline pile-ins and combat resolution. “
Anyone who’s played in the current edition knows that’s the current combat engagement range. It’s going to mean lots of folks are going to be used to it. However when we do get to the actual combat rolls (in theory) we should see more models get to fight when the combats happen. Keep in mind that this is melee attacks. Ranged attacks will still have ranges greater than 3″ in the new edition.
One more note about this section is the change to Abilities. Each Warscroll has at least ONE Ability. That helps each unit have some type of combat role. In this case, the Liberators are really good at contesting an objective wholly within friendly territory. And we see the section is color coded as well.
And last but not least is the unit’s keywords. They are where they were previously at the bottom of the warscroll. Much like the current edition Keywords are used for lots of different things. I’m sure we will see various effects trigger off them in the new edition, too.
So far, so good. This is functionally similar to everything we currently have. It’s not a monumental shift, but there are changes. But those changes are fairly easy to follow.
Color Coded Turns?
Now, how about those color coded things? GW has a chart for that:
We also get a look at some of the new standardized icons for different abilities. Pretty neat.
Okay, now it’s time to test your new found knowledge. Here’s a look at a slightly more complicated warscroll…
We’re just going to leave that there and let you chew on it.
What do you think of the new warscoll layout/update for Warhammer: Age of Sigmar?
