Five rules you may not have notice or misread.

[The Madman]

DISCLAIMER I am not a competitive gamer, I have never entered a competitive tournament and I play for fun and for background. While my after thought may be my own opinion this is not to cause a flame war or a reason to insult other players. Fun is subjective and many in fantasy got fun from playing it competitively; that is all.

On the opening day of Age of Sigmar, my friends and I played a total of ten games; four of which were using the models provided in the starter set whilst the other six games where using our own models. Of the six games we played two had no restrictions whilst the other four we restricted to thirty wounds each. Through out games we came across things we'd either missed or automatically assumed with the same across the board. In no particular order here are five rules you may not have notice or misread.

1 - You stop when you feel like it.

Set-Up - third paragraph
"You can continue setting up units until you have set up all the units you want to fight in this battle, or have run out of space. This is your army."

This one is probably what people may have noticed but not taken into heart exactly what this entails. Usually (especially with our ten games) we informed our opponents on what we were taking; a common courtesy but one that isn't enforced. If players played by how the rules were written this would happen.

So the first player (the one who got to choose the board side) deploys his first unit, say a Giant. The second player seeing that there is a giant reaches into his army case and pulls out an Empire Cannon and upon seeing a cannon the first player them pulls out a Flamespyre Phoenix.

This will continue in a form of cat and mouse play until one play feels he has enough models on the table. But what happens if one of these two opponents is a fifteen year veteran with a buck load of different models from different factions? The player with the smallest collection could be out-countered with every unit deployment. To my knowledge both 40K and fantasy have always had players agreeing to certain terms (I.E points limit) before writing their list but now you don't have limits or lists; you just bring what you want to the table and other then refusing to play your opponent will have no say in the matter.

2 - Your general can be anyone.

Now this was something we didn't notice in our games but afterward when reading, discussing and lamenting on the previous battles.

The General
"Once you have finished setting up all of your units, nominate one of the models you set up as your general. Your general has a command ability, as described in the rules for the hero phase opposite"

This means your general can be any model in your army not just those who were once allocated to the Lord and Hero slots. This means my Warriors of Chaos could if I liked be commanded by a Slaughterbrute or Warrior amongst my unit of thirty Warriors of Chaos; Hell I could have a single famous familiar as my general. This means you could grant the inspiring presence command ability to a unit, however this would sacrifice your other command abilities in your army. This brings me up to my next rule

3 - Only your general has command abilities.

The General
"Once you have finished setting up all of your units, nominate one of the models you set up as your general. Your general has a command ability, as described in the rules for the hero phase opposite"

Command Ability
"In your hero phase, your general can use on command ability. All generals have the Inspiring Presence command ability, and some may have more on their warscroll."

One of the cleaner cut of the rules, this means that only the General can use command abilities. So all those heroes you may have taken with command abilities hoping to use them to boost your forces was for nothing as there can only be one general; so choose wisely.

4 - You can shoot all the time.

Shooting
"In your shooting phase you can shoot with models armed with missile weapons."

"Pick one of your units. You may not pick a unit that ran or retreated this turn. Each model in the unit attacks with all the missile weapons it is armed with (see Attacking). After all of the models in the unit have shot, you can choose another unit to shoot with, until all units that can shoot have done so."

This means unless the unit has run or retreated you can shoot whenever and at whoever you want.

For example a unit of hand gunners is charged by a unit of warriors, during their own shooting phase they can choose whether to shoot the warriors in combat with them and then attack again in the melee round or choose to shoot someone else entirely. Likewise, units looking into combat can shoot into it as well.

This is when I found that Ratling guns are incredibly over powered. Whilst my unit of eight chaos knights were engaged in combat with a unit of rat ogres, the ratling gunners moved up and fired into the combat with 4D6 each worth of shots (there were four of them by the way). So now with no restrictions or penalties to moving, shooting, charging, or being in close combat Age of Sigmar has tilted in favour of the Bow rather then the Hammer.

5 - Single Models are Fearless.

Battleshock Phase
"In the battleshock phase, both players must take battleshock tests for units from their army that ever had models slain during the turn."

While this is obvious that single model units never take the tests, it also means that units reduced to a single model don't either. While this wouldn't normally be the case for single wound models when it comes to things like cavalry, ogre-sized units and elite soldiers; those guys who have been fleeing in droves over the past two or three turns are suddenly the most sturdy of them all. Being reduced to the last man standing seem to have the opposite affect the opponent would expect, suddenly that lone state troop has stopped all panicking and is ready to die if it means keeping the monstrous ogres from leaving the combat.

BONUS ROUND - These aren't mention in the rule booklet but they are things we picked up on during our games.

6 - Unit commands do different things.

Now I don't mean the difference between champions, musicians and standard bearers I mean the difference from one champion to another. Lets take Warriors of Chaos for example.

Aspiring Champion (Warriors of Chaos)
"The leader of this unit is the Aspiring Champion. Add 1 to the result of any hit rolls for an Aspiring Champion."

Marauder Chieftain (Marauders of Chaos)
"The leader of this unit is the Marauder Chieftain. He makes 2 attacks rather than 1."

It's not just the champions either some standards have options whilst others don't (the musicians seem to be stream-lined) leading to a level complication that while isn't big (small actually), it doesn't gel well with the stream-lining they've done with everything else. So be sure to check your rules twice because my friends and I thought it was the same for everyone.

7 - "You're Karl Franz? I'm Karl Franz too!"

Nowhere in the entirety of the rules or the warscrolls does it restrict you from using multiple characters with the same name. So if you own both the metal and the plastic version of Karl Franz you can field him twice.

8 - Bloodthirsters can't summon Bloodthirsters.

This one is one people all jumped to but upon reading the rules closer, you notice this;

"Chaos Wizards know the Summon Bloodthirster of Rage spell, in addition to any others they know."

Now when it means chaos wizards it means that models with the Chaos and Wizard keywords know this spell if a bloodthirsty is present on the battlefield. They don't mention this at all but I believe it's how the rule was meant to be interpreted.


Afterthought

After playing so many games it came apparently clear that there was no testing put into this game. Even on a casual level (as competitive is non-existent even with restrictions) there are just so many ways to cut the game short or turn it from the fun narrative experience they aimed for into something that's... not. And I feel that these rules were catered towards the Stormcasts as the win/loss ratio was heavily in their favour as many of them could move, shoot, charge and melee themselves to victory whilst the chaos forces had only melee to deal the damage.

Overall the rules are a waste of paper; I know Games Workshop are not renowned for their rules but you'd think an entire games studio could write four pages of well worded and/or balanced rules that don't make the players feel like their rolling off to see who wins.

I myself will be sticking to 40K as it was always my first choice but my friends, they want to continue 8th edition but that's up to the community they play in to decide. They might play Kings of War or just pack up entirely if that isn't the choice. After pushing me out of Battlefleet, Mordheim and now Fantasy with discontinuation or in the latter case rules. People can comment that I could keep playing the older systems (which I can) but they seem to not realise that the discontinuation of a game means few to no new players will enter the scene and as the player base dwindles so does the number of games one can get out of it before the whole thing is relegated to the back of a closet or onto an Ebay auction.

40K is where I will make my last stand on table top gaming and if they change make 8th edition 40k what fantasy has become I'm done.