Warhammer Age of Sigmar 4th edition released on Saturday, totally overhauling the core rules of the game and the stats for every unit. If you’re worried that there’s too much to remember, we’ve got some good news: artist and game designer Jeff Visgaitis of the Texan Warhammer community ‘Weirdnobz’ has managed to condense the entire game down into a rules reference that fits onto just two double-sided sheets of paper.
“Four pages of rules” feels like a bit of a sly joke for the benefit of long time Age of Sigmar fans who remember the first edition. Games Workshop advertised the original edition of Age of Sigmar as having just four pages of rules – which rather undersold the pages of rules text on the unit Warscrolls from each of the Age of Sigmar armies.
The game has grown since then, and Visgaitis packs in a lot more core rules information to his rules reference than those four first edition pages did. You can download the Age of Sigmar 4th edition rules reference as a PDF from the Weirdnobz community website.
Visgaitis says he’s been “totally blown away” by the positive response to the reference sheet already. “If you find any errors or if there is something you think I should include, hit me up on Twitter/X (@weirdnobz)”, he says, “I’m always happy to chat”.
Visgaitis tells us how he’s tried to maximise the reference’s usefulness for players. “A game aid should walk a player through the game” so that key information is “right there for you in logical order”. Players should be able to “follow the sheet through each phase” and find “all the pertinent rules and information you need to play”. “When you finish a battleround, just start over again from the beginning”, he adds.
He gives an example: “the full rules for Places of Power are under the Start of Turn section”, when Heroes can take the Activate Place of Power action, “so you don’t have to flip to the terrain section to know what that rule is”.
Visgaitis has been creating player aids for a long time. “The earliest one I can remember was for the post-battle sequence in Mordheim” – a legendary miniature wargame from 1999, where post-battle treasure hunting and injury rolls are almost as big a part of the game as the battle itself. If you weren’t around back then, this recent batrep video by Geurrilla Miniature Games is a great introduction:
Visgaitis started making Age of Sigmar aids when the Weirdnobz “ran a city-wide Age of Sigmar league for 100 players”. He explains: “When you have that many people sign up, you need game aids so people can play on their own”.
Age of Sigmar 4th edition is a total overhaul to the game, which posed some challenges when creating a tightly packed player aid. The way that all possible unit actions are encapsulated as abilities created graphic design challenges: “I had to make sure abilities didn’t span multiple columns… it was tricky to make it all fit”. As well, “every ability has an icon, and I had to recreate all of those icons from scratch”.
Visgaitis plays a lot with the Weirdnobz gaming community, and says “I take note of what questions keep coming up so I can include those rules” in the reference document. The Weirdnobz have been active since 2015, growing from narrative leagues into competitive GTs, which eventually “spawned into the Texas Masters series, incorporating clubs from Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio”.
The way that wargamers support one another is definitely one of the most wholesome things about the Warhammer community as a whole. Wargamer’s little part in that is sharing the great community creations we find – everything from the Doomguy as a Space Marine, to Danny Devito the Cybercherub. If you want to be notified of upcoming Warhammer community news, follow Wargamer on Google News.
Source: Wargamer
