In this article, we will go through all mechanisms available in the fourth edition of Age of Sigmar to ally units from other armies in your own, but before that we will need to see how the new warscroll impacts the faction abilities. We will also look into how these mechanisms changed from the third to the fourth edition of Age of Sigmar.
By the end, you should know everything about these core concepts of Age of Sigmar Fourth Edition.
A note on rules in Age of Sigmar 4.0: In this and other articles, we take an in-depth look at how Age of Sigmar 4.0 is played. In doing this, we often refer to the Core Rules of the game. Those rules are available as a free download from the Age of Sigmar website here.
What are the Grand Alliances?
Each model in the entire range of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar belongs to a faction. Each faction can be recognized because they have a Pitched Battle Profile described either in their own battletome or in the General’s Handbook (whichever has been published later).
At a high level each faction belongs to a Grand Alliance. There are four Grand Alliances: Order, Chaos, Death and Destruction. At the bottom on the warscroll of each unit you will see different keywords, including to which grand alliance and faction they belong to.
- Order consists mostly of Duardin (Dwarves), Aelfs (Elves), Humans, Seraphon (Lizardmen) and Stormcasts Eternals (the chosen warrior of Sigmar).
- Chaos consists of the armies of the four Chaos Gods (Nurgle, Khorne, Tzeentch and Slaanesh) plus the Skaven whose god, The Hornet Rat, reached the Chaos pantheon, and the Slaves to Darkness (the uncommitted warriors of chaos).
- Death represents undead beings and not, with armies led by vampires, ghosts, bone constructs or ghouls.
- Destruction is everything else that wants to smash, for example Orruks (Orcs), Grots (Goblins) and Ogors (Ogres).
If you want more details on the factions available in Age of Sigmar you can consult our Age of Sigmar army overview article.
A note on keywords and warscrolls
Earlier we mentioned keywords and warscrolls. Warscrolls are the rules for each model or unit in Age of Sigmar. You can find them in the latest Warhammer: Age of Sigmar app or battletome for that faction. The warscroll includes how the model attacks, its defence, movement and so on. Basically, the warscroll is the set rules for the specific model or unit. On the bottom of each warscroll is a collection of keywords.
Keywords are important to understand the synergies in the army as many abilities may require the target unit to have one or more keywords. Sometimes faction abilities will affect only certain keywords.
The Grand Alliance keyword, that is usually the first one in the list, is used in the same way but most of the time has no other relevance, at least in Matched Play.
Warscrolls in the fourth edition
Warscrolls received a great lift-off in the new edition, with some smaller changes like Wounds being renamed Health and Leadership being replaced by Control. With the battleshock phase now gone, the Control score identifies how much each model is worth while contesting an objective.
But the biggest change is how abilities work. Now each one will have a clearly defined moment in which they can be used, usually a specific phase, a Declare step and an Effect step. If you are familiar with card trading games, then you are familiar with the different steps that allow reactions to be played by the opponent after the Declare step. This makes the game much more interactive without big turns in which the other player passively observes their opponent.
Abilities also have keywords that can be referenced by other rules. For example it is possible that you can use only a type of ability per turn, or an ability precludes another like running abilities that cannot allow you to charge in the same turn.
Finally, even Core abilities like move, fight or charge are coded the same way with the Core keyword and only one Core ability can be used per phase.
Changes go even more in depth, with colour-coded phases, symbols next to the title that represent what type an ability belongs to, range of melee weapons gone, command abilities costing a variable number of command points, etc. but for now this is enough to understand the other concepts in this page. Warscrolls and abilities are described in detail in section 4.0 and 5.0 of the core rules.
What are Faction abilities in Age of Sigmar 4.0?
All factions in Age of Sigmar were rewritten from the ground up in the fourth edition. At launch, they were provided with a free PDF that can be downloaded from the Warhammer Community website containing all the rules that you need to play that faction, including the faction abilities, the warscrolls and the Spearhead rules. These PDFs are also called indexes. In time, each index will be replaced by a battletome that will supersede the index.
The faction abilities, previously called allegiance abilities, are a set of rules which explain how to play that army. There are two types of faction abilities: battle traits and enhancements.
Battle traits are abilities that can be used by the models in your faction. Example of those would be The Celestial Realm that allows a Stormcast Eternal unit to be put in reserve during the deployment phase, or The Blood Tithe that gives Khorne players a blood tithe point each time any unit is destroyed. As you can see these abilities can be passive (like Khorne’s one) or used only at a specific time.
Aside from battle traits, you can also choose a battle formation. These replace the sub-factions and provide a single ability that usually favours a particular play style or type of units. As they are now just an extra rule, they are completely unlinked from the colour scheme you use from your favourite subfaction.
Enhancements are specific rules that can be given to a specific unit of your army following certain restrictions, for example Unique units cannot be given any. You can only pick one enhancement per type available to your faction, and even if there are abilities that allow you to take more than one, you cannot give to a unit more than one enhancement of the same type and you can’t pick the same enhancement more than once.
The most common type of enhancements are heroic traits (replace the command traits) that can now be given to any hero and artefacts of power, also wielded by heroes. In the core rules are mentioned also mount traits, that we assume are coming soon.
There are also different lores available to each faction, but your ability to use them will depend from the inclusion of a wizard or priest in the army composition list. The spell lore is a lore of magic spells that can be cast by any wizard in the army. Unlimited spells can be cast multiple times in the same phase but by different wizards, while all other spells can be cast only once.
A prayer lore allows priests to chant and obtain different effects. Chanting changed in the fourth edition, so that now each prayer has a more powerful effect if the chanting roll reaches a higher threshold. There is also an unlimited prayer that can be chanted by all your priests.
Finally you can pick a manifestation lore that allows your wizards (or priests) to cast a powerful physical spell with attributes like health, save roll, attacks and movement. If your faction doesn’t have a set of “endless spells”, then you can pick one of the generic manifestation lores created from the first boxes of Endless Spells released.
All enhancements, including the manifestation lore, are free, i.e. you don’t pay any points for them. While you can choose to not pick any, there’s no reason not to. Universal enhancements are also gone, so now you just have to look at your battletome/index to see what you can use. You can find more details in the Army Composition section of the Advanced Rules.
As the game is structured to be modular, if you are playing matched play, you should be aware that the general’s handbooks introduces seasonal changes to the modules, including adding new abilities, like Honour Guard in 2024/25, and in future it’s possible they could add also new enhancements.
Armies of renown, a different way to play your army
While the standard way to play an army is to use its faction abilities, especially in matched play, it is possible to play also alternative set of rules called Armies of Renown. Those are more thematic lists with roster restrictions that provide a different set of battle traits and enhancements. They are legal in matched play, but they are not always the “best way” to play an army.
The first armies of renown were introduced in the Dawnbringers saga, but you can find the current rules within the indexes in the download section of Warhammer Community. Each battletome seems also to be introducing a pair of armies of renown that enhance different traits of that faction.
But where can you find all those armies of renown? We created a simple table that we will keep updated which contains:
- The name of the army of renown
- The faction they belong to
- Where to find them, i.e. an index or a battletome
- The main theme of the army (example of restrictions)
Regiments of renown, how do allies work in Age of Sigmar 4.0?
In the previous versions of Age of Sigmar each faction had a list of allied factions they could incorporate in their army to a certain point limit. Some armies, mostly chaos, had also the option to add some coalition units that behaved slightly different.
In the fourth edition this system has been greatly simplified. Now there are a list of prebuilt regiments that can be included within your army. These are called Regiments of renown. You can only have one in your list, and they use one of your spots of regiments available. They count as a drop during the deployment phase as all other regiments.
The regiments have their own rules that specify also in which faction they can be included, usually it’s all factions of the same Grand Alliance except the one they normally belong to. For example, Neferata’s Royal Echelon can be used in all other Death armies except the Soulblight Gravelords, Gotrek Gurnisson can be added to any Order army, and some Mega-Gargants like One-eyed Grunnock, can be used by any Chaos or Destruction army except Sons of Behemat.
The regiments of renown were introduced first during the Dawnbringers saga, but you can find their reviewed rules within the indexes in the download section of Warhammer Community. Each battletome seems also to be introducing a pair of regiments of renown to be used in other armies.
But how can you find which regiments of renown are available out there? We created a simple table that we will keep updated which contains:
- The name of the regiment
- The faction they belong to
- The Grand Alliance that can use them
- The number of models
- The units that are included
- Where to find them, i.e. an index or a battletome
