The Age of Sigmar team have dropped the latest in their string of more-or-less monthly light-touch updates to the game, including updates/errata to the Gloomspite Gitz and Orruk Warclans Battletomes. This isn’t a Battlescroll-level update, just some minor tweaks. We’ll break down the main changes here.
Core Rules
Prized Beast gets clarified that it works for both your normal weapons AND your companion weapons.
Simultaneous ability triggers now must be declared one after the other and if you fail to use an ability you can’t go back after another ability is used. The example they give is All-Out Attack being declared, then the other player chooses not to use All-Out Defence, and then the first player uses a Faction ability on the attacking unit. In this situation the defending player cannot then decide to use All-Out Defence. This may trip players up, so make sure you know every buff your opponent can throw on a unit before deciding if you want to use All-Out Defence.
It’s also been clarified that you can use move abilities before teleporting, just not afterwards. Stormreach Portal enjoyers continue to rejoice.
Maggotkin of Nurgle
Gurtrot spume gets a small fix that closes a loophole that let you deploy some units from his regiment before using his Master of the Slime Fleet ability.
Skaven
Masters Moulder can now join Regiments as an Overclaw unit, a nice little bonus for Skaven lists looking to squeeze them in. In addition, Verminlord Warbringers can now bring a Clawlord or Clawlord on Gnaw-beast. Also nice to have but a bit odd they couldn’t previously.
Sons of Behemat
Gargants get a clarification to their Gargant Charge rule that clears up that yes, you can in fact use the ability on every gargant that charged.
Soulblight Gravelords
Vargskyr can no longer get a control bonus from Belladamma’s First of the Vyrkos ability. This was effectively the case before since the Vargskyr’s Beast ability would cap it at 1 anyway.
Gloomspite Gitz
Some simple changes for the Gitz!
- Webspinner Shaman down to control 2 (it was a good 15 minutes in the sun).
- Kragnos now only adds a dice when charging in your own turn, so not on the counter charge.
- Droggz’ Time Ta Scarper ability is now once per turn instead of once per battle, and triggers after the target unit’s fight rather than when it is targeted by an attack. Still only on a 4+, though.
- Droggz’s Gitmob Army of Renown gets the Stick Em And Run trait updated to reference the character chariot’s ability rather than the one on the Sunsteala Wheelas, so now it actually does something.
- Da King’s Gitz gets an update to The Moon And The Loon to include the aura buff from the Malevolent Moon manifestation as well as Skragrott and the Loonshrine.
- Some minor regiment changes – Skragrott and Kragnos can take a Top Dog (both flavours of Snarlboss) as a sub-commander, and the Loonboss can take a Doom Diver Catapult.
Interestingly, there’s no correction to the Dankhold Troggoth’s Wade and Smash ability here, which as written lets the model move into combat from 6″ away in the combat phase. Lots of people assumed this would be immediately FAQ’d to only happen when it charged, or only when it was in combat to begin with, but it survived unscathed for now. Of course the Battletome isn’t yet on general release, so its impact has been limited so far. Don’t expect this to be a guarantee of it surviving forever.
Orruk Warclans
With a bit more clear air since the book release, the Orruk Warclans have been hit with a bunch of minor cleanup changes. Up first, the Kruleboyz’ Sneaky Sneakin’ ability returns to triggering in the movement phase, meaning that you can once more buff up a unit with Venom-Encrusted Weapons in the hero phase before teleporting it off to cause some mischief. The Snatchaboss on Sludgeraker Beast also has it’s Sludgeraker Venom effect broadened, now back to affecting all attacks rather than just combat ones. Bolt-Boyz rejoice.
On the Ironjawz side of the family, Gore-Gruntas’ Grunta Tusks are thankfully improved to hitting on a 4+, a big improvement on the miserable 5+ the tome lumped them with. They’re still suffering from a terminal lack of rend though – don’t expect this to be a game changer.
In the Rules of Renown section, Big Waaagh! gets a lengthy clarification to its roster options. Heroes can now only take units of the same keyword as themselves, and Kragnos can only take either Ironjawz or Kruleboyz units, not both. But whichever he chooses, he counts as a hero from that faction for the purposes of balancing the heroes between Ironjawz and Kruleboyz. The single spell in the Big Waaagh! lore, Two Headz As One, gets the Unlimited keyword. In Da Kountin’ Krew Regiment of Renown, the Snatch ‘Em Up ability gets a couple of clarifications. It’s now slaying one model from a selected unit, rather than a specific model, which is consistent with similar abilities on things like the Stardrake, and it also gets a timing clarification for wording consistency.
Finally, the Gork-Roara manifestation gets an extra line in its Bellowing Waaagh!-cries ability, adding that “Friendly units can be affected by this ability multiple times and the effects are cumulative”. As best I can tell, this is because persistent effects of active abilities count as passive abilities (Core Rules 28.1), and units cannot be affected by the same passive ability more than once at the same time (Core Rules 5.3). As this ability (if you roll two 5+’s) technically applies a +1 to charge twice, that would be falling afoul of the above. In reality I doubt anybody had caught that out in the wild, but I’m glad the writers are striving for consistency at least.
One small Path To Glory update, too! On the Path of Da Most Kunnin’, the Disconcerting Stare now turns off commands if the user has a higher control score than the attacking unit, rather than trying to beat it on a D3.
That’s it from us this time! Keep an eye out for future AoS rules updates as and when we see them.
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