The Age of Sigmar is taking a sharp turn in direction with the release of the General's Handbook with points, and it's three ways to play. So just where does the game go from here? Will point levels be addressed in future Battletomes? The future of Campaigns? Lets take a look at the latest.
Please take these as rumors.
via an anonymous source on Faeit 212
Make no mistake, Age of Sigmar second edition starts right now. The new Sylvaneth and Bonesplitterz books are going to set the standard for the next wave of army books, in much the same way the Decurion set the standard for Warhammer 40k.
The Battletomes are going to have a significant spike in power, and therefor necessity for most players, as GW piles on more special rules, spells, relics, and battalions. Army specific spells and magic items will be limited to their respective army (to maintain both balance and flavor), while battalions will have an additional point tax, but allow for more mixed and matched armies to retain some of the cool faction specific abilities. The best and most restrictive of which will force you to take specific magic items and command traits, but include rules to make them somewhat more powerful. The cross faction battalions will be the exception that proves the rule to “more specific armies get the best rules”. Larger battalions will essentially be framed as armies in a can, with some very fluffy rules and units that are designed to attract players who are into more narrative play.
There is no plan yet to include point costs in the battletomes, GW want to push the general’s handbook as AOS version of the BRB, but they’re trying to create a roadmap for new plays to become more “hardcore”. The idea is that the ‘start collecting’ armies and/or a bunch of random dudes little timmy picks up at the shop are on one level of gameplay, which gets progressively more complex and intricate as you buy more books.
First you buy a few models to play with your friend, then you buy your armies battletome to see what kind of cool abilities they have, then you buy the generals handbook once you want to start playing more balanced and competitive games. The BRB as it is will become a fluff and campaign book, with the bigger coffee table books being released every once and a while to act as the base line for whatever the current story line is about, while smaller narrative books (see the realmgate wars series) will release with every major wave to keep the story chugging along. The narrative books will never be as necessary for games as battletomes and general’s handbook, but GW still wants them to be fun and fluffy for narrative players, as well as reference the current state of the setting and tease contents of future battletomes.
The General’s handbook is going to have a few gaps in it that will be filled by the next wave of battletomes, but expect a new one every once and while with updates and newer rules.
The current General’s handbook is going to last the entire summer, covering every major AOS update between now and whenever the next wave of 40k starts (Some say early September, some say late, but there will be a 2 week buffer between AOS summer and 40K
winter).
Then after the next wave of 40k, AOS is going to pick up where the summer campaign left off, with a new BRB coffee table book covering the events of the summer campaign and covering the groundwork of the new lore.
It’s not going to be called second edition, and the exact title of the book is subject to change based on the outcome of the campaign, but expect everyone to call is AOS 2.0. No word yet on who exactly will be featured
In the second edition starter set, but if I were a gambling man I’d say it would be Sylvaneth Vs. Rotbringers, with some neat missions to “Recreate the final days in the battle for the realm of life”.
Then another series of mini campaign books will launch and the cycle will begin all over again. The realm of life summer campaign is going to play a huge factor in whether or not GW brings campaigns back, but expect another AOS campaign before we see a 40k one. GW wants to try and pretty up the current state of 40k with the next edition before it gets its own special campaign books
and summer campaigns.
