Well folks, we're damned close to the release of the General's Handbook, and all indicators suggest the game is going to get a healthy influx of new blood.

So I say 'Welcome one, and welcome all'. I've been dabbling in AoS since the beginning, and I thought I'd flag up some of the stuff you may have overlooked, particularly by comparing to Warhammer; The Game of Fantasy Battles, on the not entirely baseless assumption you may be a player of that fine system too.

First off?

There's Ranks Jim, but not as you know them..

Yep. We may not be stotting about in squares and oblongs in the Mortal Realms, but such things can and do exist. There is of course no formal rank bonus, but by adopting a similar deployment pattern, you can help maximise your attacks - particularly if you have a heavily armoured unit as your front 'rank', and some wags with 2" melee range behind them. Because you don't have to be engaged in HTH to strike, just within your melee range

It's really easy to over extend yourself - sometimes less is more

One of the biggest changes from Warhammer to AoS is the combat phase. Gone is Initiative. Gone is 'Always Strikes First'. Instead, the player whose turn it is picks a unit. They lay into the enemy. Then your opponent picks and lays into you. Rinse and repeat until all eligible units (and as above, that's not necessarily just people who've been charged or were in combat last turn!) have given the enemy six-nowt.

This brings serious risk to your battle plan - if you over-commit to combat, you might see one of your main units take a bit of battering before it swings it's own blades. Choose your order poorly (as happened with my opponent in my very first game), and you can easily see your characters picked off, whether or not they're in a multi-unit melee (you see, I don't have to attack with the unit you just attacked...)

It's far, far harder to roll up your enemy - and your Deathstar isn't that great anymore

Any experienced Warhammer general will be able to regale you with glorious tales of breaking not just an enemies main unit, but as a result their entire battle line - sometimes so spectacularly even their opponent waxes lyrical about it to this day.

But AoS doesn't handle Leadership and Break Tests in a way that's familiar to you. Oh no. AoS has Battleshock. And Battleshock can be an absolute killer. Why? Well, in Warhammer, you only took a break test if you won the fight. In AoS, every unit that fought in combat takes Battleshock. Every single one of them. In essence, nobody actually 'wins' a combat - you just come out in slightly better shape.

I cannot stress enough how much of a game changer this is for those familiar and used to Warhammer. Death Stars are so much more vulnerable, as you can't rely on Ld10 with a re-roll and Stubborn to keep you indefinitely in the fight. Instead, you die death by degrees. Extra model lost here. Extra model lost there. And if you've picked your combat order poorly, you might see a particular unit hideously overwhelmed, and all survivors head for the hills.

Now, of course there are ways to mitigate it. It's a rare army without at least one way to ensure a target unit ignores Battleshock...but then, you need to be in the right place at the right time to really benefit those abilities.

And that's just for starters

I'm heading home now, so I'll leave it at just the three. Everyone else feel free to chime in with your own pointers