General's Handbook (2016 Edition)

The Book:

An essential, complete toolkit of rules that you and your gaming group can use in any way you like, the General’s Handbook expands upon the rules of Warhammer Age of Sigmar to create a huge array of different gaming styles to suit any tastes.

The Rules:

Each of these gives you, the player, massive flexibility and choice in the way games are played – they’re designed to make you and your friends masters of your own gaming tables. The different rules have massive scope for overlap; for example if you want to use the multiplayer rules for a tournament, or Matched Play rules for a narrative campaign, you’re totally free to do so.

Open Play:

This is the best introduction to Warhammer Age of Sigmar and the wider world of wargaming in general. Open Play allows you to play unrestricted, even team-based and multiplayer games – all you need is your miniatures, their Warscrolls, the Warhammer Age of Sigmar rules, some dice and a tape measure. The General’s Handbook features a number of great examples of Battleplans that are perfect for this play style, which we encourage you to expand upon with your own collections and even your own rules!

Narrative Play:

The stories from the Mortal Realms are an important part of Warhammer Age of Sigmar – your collection of miniatures is made even more special by the rich history and thrilling tales told about them in various publications, making the hobby of collecting them an even more exciting venture. Narrative Play gives you a way to recreate the epic battles that have taken place in the Mortal Realms. The General’s Handbook shows you how to theme an army for Narrative Play, contains advice on where to find the inspirational stories that fuel the games – and how to build your own stories and play exciting games within them.

This section of the book contains detailed methods for building narrative campaigns – from a few skirmishes over an important artefact to a full Path To Glory campaign, in which your warband will grow and become more powerful, winning rewards from included Warband Tables with every battle.

Map Campaigns, Tree Campaigns and Matrix Campaigns are also detailed – mix and match from the provided ideas to create the perfect campaign for your gaming group!

Matched Play:

Some hobbyists prefer to test their mettle in an equally-matched battle of strategy and wits, in which no advantage is conferred simply by selecting the biggest and baddest miniature in your figure case. Matched Play is the perfect solution – this provides points values for the units available in the Warhammer Age of Sigmar range, allowing you and your opponent to size each other up, decide on a points limit, deploy your armies and go to war on an equal footing.

Balanced armies of course mean that there will be gamers itching to prove themselves in tournaments, and the Pitched Battle rules are expressly designed to get armies matched up and onto the table with a minimum of fuss. Does your gaming group have the whole night to play, or is time of the essence? This book has suggestions and recommendations for various sizes of game; play an epic battle that takes a whole night, skirmish for an hour, or anything in between. Also included are rules for Ladder Campaigns – the General’s Handbook will make setting up and maintaining tournaments easy.

Contents:

Detailed explanations and rules for Open Play, Narrative Play and Matched Play games;

Full rules for no fewer than 5 ways to run campaigns, from quick and simple skirmishes to long Path to Glory wars;

22 brand-new Battleplans, ranging from huge narrative epics to brutal, quick fights;

Full rules for multiplayer and team games of Warhammer Age of Sigmar;

Allegiance Abilities: these are powerful command traits, battle traits and magical items for each Grand Alliance;

Points values for each Warscroll and Warscroll Battalion from Battletomes and Grand Alliance books available in the range at time of printing;

Path to Glory Warband Tables for Chaos, Stormcast Eternals, Fyreslayers, Skaven, Ironjawz, Sylvaneth and Death armies;

Battle Reports and narrative extracts, helping to show how to build your own rules and games, your way.

This softback book weighs in at 168 pages, and will blow the Mortal Realms wide open for you, your gaming groups, and any friends you might want to introduce to the fantastical world of Warhammer Age of Sigmar. Dive in.