My relationship with Age of Sigmar has always been tenuous. I’ve always tried to shift towards it, but the rule set has always had problems.

Things such as the double turn rarely being an actual decision point at a low/mid level table, or your faction being terrible because half of your battle tactics were useless while the other guys might as well have started the game completed. The latter mirroring the worst part of 9th edition 40k.

In addition, list building was kind of terrible. It boiled down to “Can I make this a 1-2 drop army” (Deploying your whole army in Sigmar before the opponent allows you to pick who gets the first turn) and if the answer was no to that question it became “How many regiments can I slam together.”

These are the problems I saw with both the second and third editions of with only several dozen games each edition. I’m sure someone more experienced could go into more depth with the issues within these past editions.

What I’m attempting to express to you my wonderful reader, is that Sigmar is a game I have wanted to love but have found it difficult. The first GW kit I ever bought was some Blades of Khorne models and a bunch of red paint, AoS got me into the hobby, thankfully 40k made it easy to stick around. Oh how little I knew back then.

But that’s enough preamble and speaking of the past, let’s dive into 4th edition and how it as a gameplay experience has been fantastic. So far. (This is going to come back to bite me in a year knowing my luck.)

The Rules: All Things Clear

In the early stages of reveals we, the player base, were told that everything in the game was an ability.

This was a weird thing to wrap ones head around. What does this look like? Is this another common Games Workshop exaggeration?

It was pretty literal. You want to move? That’s an ability. Shoot? Same thing. The most basic actions we’re use to in this game are now broken down to a simple box of text that a child could understand. It tells you:

• What Phase
• If it’s your turn or any turn
• If it’s once per turn, round or battle
• If you have multiple units in your army with the same ability, if they all may use it or just one. The latter being denoted with (Army) written next to the timing.
• How you declare the ability. For example: Pick a friendly unit not in combat to use this ability.
• The effect; again to use Move as an example: That unit can move a distance up to its Move characteristic.

I mean it when I say a child could read one of these blocks and understand what they mean.

Many abilities have tags where it’s important. So any ability that interacts with the Move ability also effects anything that has the move keyword. Such as running or retreating.

“Josh, where can I read about these Universal Core Abilities?”

14.0 in the Core Rules section of the rulebook.

“Is 14.0 the page?”

No, this game was written by people who know how to design rule books. Every rule is categorized via these indexing numbers. So if a new player wanted to know where they can find what you’re talking about when a ruling comes up, you can give them the exact point in the book. Not just a page number followed by a game of “Where’s Waldo.”

Seriously being able to say, “Go to the Advanced Rules section and find 7.2” had been extremely helpful so far. I have Core Rules 28.0 – 28.2 permanently in my head.

Army Building: Restrictions Can Be Good

Games Workshop use to love making you buy useless Battleline / Troop boxes just to troop tax the player.

For those not in the know, and only recently started the hobby: Troop tax refers to being forced to take X amount of a certain role of unit for no other reason than: you had too. In 40k sometimes you would eat a bigger troop tax for more slots in other roles such as Elites or Fast attack type units.

Where as in Sigmar the troop tax just existed to make you suffer. If you didn’t have 3 battleline, you weren’t playing a legal match play list.

Around the end of 9th edition we got introduced to the Arks of Omen detachment, which everyone correctly guessed signaled the end of an old era. The detachment was in essence: “Yeah take whatever, just make sure you have a character, I guess.”

It was slightly more complicated than that, but the troop tax died that day. Come 10th Edition, and they added even less restrictions.

Was it a good thing?

Yes. But actually no.

Being able to spam whatever the new broken unit of the month became extremely easy and consequentially: there is no downside. This isn’t to say that this was not happening in 8th and 9th, but your entire list wasn’t able to be maximized so easily. Dad said its your turn to take 300 points in Intercessors.

So that left us with Sigmar who still had that battleline tax. Was this to go away like it’s sci-fi bestie?

Yes. But again actually no.

List building in Sigmar has some very small restrictions, but they are very good ones.

You build lists in regiments which consist of a character and then 3 slots for other units.

Any units? Sometimes.

The units you can take with that character are thematic to that character. A human Sigmarite soldier bringing some elves with him? Yeah, I don’t think so buster. But he can bring all his human buddies.

Named character can often take whatever they want with them, but if the god of magic tells you you’re coming with him to fight chaos, are you really going to refuse?

Remember how I mentioned that if you finish deploying first in Sigmar, you choose who goes first? Well each regiment can be dropped as one. You’re no longer suffering because your army was physically unable to take a low-drop army like in 3rd, a problem for Mega-Gargants until a White Dwarf update I believe. Don’t quote me on that.

This leads to picking characters very carefully. You can make a very pin-point list able to choose who goes first most of the time but lose out on some utility, or you can build around using all five regiment slots to maximize how many characters you have to support your army.

My first game I went in without a wizard thinking that being a 2 drop would be the way. I’m now almost always a four drop in my Cities of Sigmar list just so I can have wizards. I’m still not sure what the correct choice is, and that’s thrilling.

If I want to spam that 1 broken unit like in 10th edition, there’s a tax in the character.

That’s not to say it’s perfect, if the character is amazing also, is it really a tax? So far I think the tax is “Can I risk letting my opponent pick first turn?”

It’s good.

Army Building: Restrictions Can Be Lame

You know what was really lame in previous editions?

Picking a mighty wizard, wielder of the winds of magic: they who harness the elements of the mortal realms.

Yeah they know like one spell you get to pick from like six if not more. If you’re really lucky, the one on their warscroll is useable.

This just lead to you always using what was determined to be the best or at least the one that was never niche. It sucked.

You know what else blew massive chunks?

Well yeah, it is me January 1st, but in Sigmar it was Endless Spells costing too many points most of the time to ever see use unless they were called Purple Sun of Shyish.

For those non-Sigmar friends reading this (You the real MVPs by the way) Endless spells are spells (duh) which are physically represented on the board by models. They sometimes roam around, other times they just sit where they are hanging out having a drink. They’re a super cool part of Sigmar which has always felt only a part of the game for like four factions.

All of these problems don’t exist anymore. Your wizards? They know every spell from the spell lore you picked, plus their own spell. Those random niche spells you would never use are now options that cost you nothing to have. And they say nothing good is free.

Endless spells? Now called Manifestations. They’re also free. You pick a “Manifestation Lore” and you get all of the ones in that lore. They’re free. You can just take them. Five finger discount my guy.

Sure, there are some Manifestation Lores that are better than others, but I’m not punished via points when I want to try something new, and that’s neat.

This system is pro-fun and spells are just as interactable as ever in this edition.

Playing the Game Together

The strongest improvement to Sigmar overall is just how often you get to play the game and how those chances to interact all feel like important choices.

At the start of each battleround you get four command points. You gain no more until the next battleround, not turn.

What can I do with these? Well, every phase you have the chance to use them both in your turn, and more importantly in your opponents turn.

The game is structured so that the active player uses all of their abilities first, then the inactive player.

So once your opponent, the active player in this case, is done doing everything they need to, you get a chance to do stuff. Man I love how clear that is for ability timing.

But let’s break it down by phase:

In the hero phase, you can spend a command point to heal a unit not in combat and possibly bring some little toy soldiers back to life. Even more crucially you can spend that same command point to cast a spell or use a prayer in your opponents turn with the penalty of -1 to its roll.

You know all those times you didn’t have your defensives up on turn one because your opponent went first and you lost your crucial unit because of it? You get that chance now. Did you want to do both of those abilities? Nothings stopping you from spending half your command points right then and there.

Movement phase? Same thing, one point and you get to move a unit D6 inches.

Shooting phase? Shoot the closest thing.

Want something wild? In the charge phase, you can spend two of those precious command points to charge in the opponents turn. How’s that for important choices.

At no point am I not thinking of what to do. The time you spend staring at your opponent while they tell you to pick up models with no interaction has greatly decreased.

And when you do find yourself in the situation with no command points and fewer ways to interact, you know that it was your doing. The game didn’t make you blow your command points on bad choices, you did that.

This might be the closest thing we ever get to alternating activations and honestly I’m all for it.

Double the Choices

Let get controversial. The double turn still exists and it’s pretty awesome.

How can watching your opponent for 2 hours possibly be awesome?

Well, my sweet little sunflower, we’ve already talked about how you are always playing the game even in your opponents turn. But unlike previous editions, getting the double doesn’t just end games at low/mid-level tables.

When someone chooses (keyword here is chooses) to take the double they can’t take a battle tactic that round. Which for our 40k fans out there is just a fancy word for a secondary you pick each turn.

Each battle tactic is worth 4 points. So across 5 turns that’s 20 out of your 50 possible points in a game. The only points you’re scoring is primary, which only gets harder the higher levels you play at.

Essentially, the double turn is a critical choice. Do you have enough of a lead to take the double and capitalize? If that’s the case you probably have already won. Or do you think you’ll do enough damage to close out the game?

Sigmar 4th has already felt far less lethal than its previous iterations. I’ve had a full army go into me for a double turn and only kill half a unit. I’ve had another game where I was so out of position that it ended the battle round two.

A good player will see the risk and figure out if its worth possibly losing by four points, while a bad player will see the chance to play twice in a row, score a total of two points, and wonder why they lost.

If you survive the double turn, you’re now the player with the chance to take it as turn order has swapped. So again, if the opponent misjudges how much damage they can do or misplays, you can counterpunch back. Or don’t, those 4 points they didn’t take might be what wins you the game.

Then there’s also now the underdog mechanic. If you have less victory points at the start of the battle round you gain an extra CP to spend. In addition, each mission has a twist which the underdog interacts with. The underdog might choose an objective to remove from the battlefield, or make another objective worth more points.

A well played game of Sigmar never feels like you are too far behind. There’s a lot of failure states which can turn the tables on your opponent. And I think that’s pretty cool.

Closing Thoughts: I am 0-6

I haven’t won a game by the way and I am still having a ton of fun. Some of these games haven’t even been close, but I walk away from each one knowing that I wasn’t sitting there doing nothing still interacting the entire time.

I think that’s a good sign.

We’ve all had those games where you’re just so outmatched in 40k and it’s two hours of picking up models and rolling only saves. There’s nothing wrong with that inherently, but being able to react more has made those moments far less painful.

The best part of it all, is that I look back on all my losses and my most recent game I lost largely because I took the double turn, isn’t that something? It’s slightly more complicated, but what I’m trying to convey is that it was an amazing game that came down to a few critical choices. That’s what all my games have felt like.

Sigmar is very good. Give it a try, I really don’t think you’ll regret it.

At a casual level, Sigmar has some really goofy unit rules which are made for the players to have fun. Things like Sigvald’s attacks equaling his charge roll, or a Mega-Gargant kicking an objective marker away 2d6 inches.

At a competitive level, you are faced with constant choice and opportunities to flex your game knowledge keeping both players fully engaged instead of checking their Instagram while 18 meltas eat their freshly painted Mortarion.

Damn.

That’s all I have for today. I’m going to try and get an article out every Thursday going forward. I was pretty unmotivated by these games recently, and it felt like others around me had shown even less motivation to get games in which made making written content hard.

Sigmar so far has me constantly playing games and thinking about things to write about, so hopefully look forward to that.

Or this will age like milk. I hope not.

Anyways, thanks for reading. Be safe.

Hug your dad, shout out to working moms, and drink water.