Review: General's Handbook

Yesterday I laid my grubby hands on a fresh new copy of the General's Handbook.  I wasn't one of the folks who was excited about playing with points, I've been much more interested by the Narrative section (which lucky for me seems to have most of the content!).  This book is solid content.  It has a few stories in it, but is mostly just rules for making AoS the game you want to play.  So now that I've had a chance to settle in and peruse it, I'll give you a quick rundown of what you'll find in it, and my personal take on it.

Open Play (3/5)
This section is really just about multi-player battles.  They've split multi-player into two types, "Coalition of Death" and "Triumph and Treachery".  These are team battles and every-man-for-himself type battles respectively.  The book has two "Coalition" battleplans and four "Treachery" battleplans, but there is a catch; two of the "Treachery" battleplans have these funky battlefield layouts that arrange the seven Realm of Battle tiles that you've obviously purchased in a sort of circular pattern.  These two battleplans do not really seem like they can be played handily without such shenanigans, so I think for a lot of players they simply won't be used.  This leaves four other battleplans for us to throw down with, so it's not like it's a waste or anything, but it was a little disappointing that they went there.

Narrative Play (5/5)
As I mentioned, this is the section I was most hyped about, and I can say for a certainty that it did not disappoint.  In this section, you will find:
- 4 narrative battleplans (lopsided and wacky things like completing a ritual, fighting a monster, making a heroic last stand, and summoning a thunderstorm)
- 2 historical battleplans (complete with historical army lists for you to use)
- Path to Glory warband tables (I'm sure you've seen plenty about this, but it has tables for creating and maintaining Chaos, Death, Ironjawz, Fyreslayers, Skaven, Sylvaneth, and Stormcast warbands)
- 2 Path to Glory battleplans (these seem fairly niche)
- 3 different campaign types (map, tree, and matrix)
- 6 more battleplans to go with the campaign rules

That's a bunch of stuff.  I honestly can't say I've read all these battleplans, but from what I've seen, they look like fun and I'm looking forward to playing through their tree campaign (which is what the battleplans go with ostensibly).  If you wanted to play in a Path to Glory campaign with Gutbusters or Freeguild or anything not on that list, you'll just need to make your own tables, there is no support for anything not on that list (which is a surprisingly comprehensive list, but could have perhaps used entries for Destruction and Order).

Of the three different campaign types two (map and tree) can be used as stand-alone campaigns.  The third (matrix) is really more of an advanced technique for organizing a specific battle in a fun way.  I can imagine using it along with a single well-written battleplan (like Clash of Empires or one of the Pitched Battles) to run a two-player campaign, but it is not as robust as the other two campaign types.

The Narrative Play section is a huge step up in support for campaign players from basically any prior attempts at GW to get people to "forge the narrative".  I think that including this in a book that will be purchased by nearly every AoS player will generate a lot of creativity and fun in the community at large and will probably be more important than the next section (Matched Play) in the long run.  Speaking of which...

Matched Play (4/5)
So I'll confess, the first thing I did when I got this book was hand it to my brother so he could write an army list.  After he was finished with that, we played a 2,000 point game using the "Border War" Pitched Battle battleplan.  Points and Pitched Battles have been absolutely the most hyped part of this book.  While the Pitched Battles seem like really fun and well-designed battleplans, the points and force org left a little to be desired perhaps.

By a merely surface inspection, the points don't seem to add a lot of balance.  They add structure for those who need structure, but don't seem to finely tuned with some clever mathematical formula or anything.  Compare (for example) the new Kurnoth Hunters to Ironguts:

Ironguts - 3 models for 220 pts
4 wounds per model; 4+ save
2.18 damage per action per model 

Kurnoth Hunters - 3 models for 180 points
5 wounds per model; 4+ save
2.22 damage per action per model (with the Scythes, which have the same 2" range as Ironguts)

Take a look at the warscrolls and make up your own mind, but I don't feel like this is going to be the comp to end all comps.

There is also an Allegiance section of the book.  I think this will be a lot of fun and is another open ended section that provides stuff to do with what we will.  Specifically, it has an allegiance ability for each of the Grand Alliances.  These are fun, but I think are mostly balanced for Matched Play.  The Command Traits and Artefacts, however, are pretty cool.  Command Traits are special rules you can use to customize your general (think warlord traits in 40k), while Artefacts are magic items that can be carried by the heroes of your army.  I think that these will see a lot of play in both one-off games and campaign type situations.

All told, I think that Matched Play is a great addition to AoS.  It really opens up the game to a whole additional community of players and a new way of playing.

Overall (4/5)

They don't figure into the score, but:
Artwork - this book is full of little illuminations and decorations, but only has a few pieces of full-page artwork.  Spreads are in general reserved for photography, of which there is a pretty large amount.
Fluff - In the narrative section, there are a few fluff bits that go with the historical battleplans, but for the most part there is not much fluff in this book.  This is definitely a rules book.