The General’s Handbook has been a longstanding supplement to Warhammer Age of Sigmar since it first arrived to create matched play rules in order for players to have balanced tournament style games. We got our first General’s Handbook for 4th edition at the launch of the game, but now after a year of this edition we get a brand new release – and this time it’s in a box…

In this full review we’ll be taking a look at the new General’s Handbook 2025-2026 and discovering what has changed, what’s new and just what it brings to the game. We’re also going to be discussing the accompanying Scourge of Ghyran series of rules releases and how Games Workshop have added something new for each and every faction to tempt people back to the game.

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us over a digital copy to review, if you would like to support the site then why not order your copy through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too!

We’ve also got a whole host of other reviews up on the site today including the new Spearhead box Sand & Bone, the Beastmen Arcane Journal and a look at a whole host of Middle-Earth models!

So without further ado let’s dive into the pages of The General’s Handbook

The General’s Handbook 2025 – 2026 Review

So just a little disclaimer here before we go any further – this review is based on a digital copy of the rules, I’ve not seen the physical components yet, so can’t speak to the quality of them and I’ll update this review once I have my hard copy version! At the time of writing I do not have the RRP for the box either.

In a change from previous incarnations of the book, the 2025-2026 edition comes boxed with a number of different goodies.

First up we get 13 double sided warscroll cards for the universal manifestations. What’s really nice about these is that they have a “Summoning Reference” section on each of them listing the casting value needed, ranges and any other set up rules. What always bugged me previously about Manifestation cards was that you still needed to have the manifestation lore on hand to use them – with that all now being contained on the same card it makes life much easier!

I cant spot any changes from the rules for them in the previous Handbook, but they are much easier to use rather than having to flip through the handbook itself.

You also get 6 double sided Battleplan cards, with the map, territories and terrain layouts all on a single page – I’m really glad these are still in card form rather than being in the book itself, as again makes it so much easier to pop it on the table to set up. We’ll chat more about the battleplans later!

You also get 6 Battle Tactic cards – Now, Battle Tactics have changed a great deal since the last General’s Handbook, and we’ll be digging into those in a bit more detail later in the review. One of my concerns here was that if you only get a single set of 6 cards then if you are playing against someone who is new to the game and doesnt have a General’s Handbook then it’s going to be less then ideal to share them if you have both picked the same ones, but thankfully these are also printed within the book too making this a little easier! I really like that these are not double sided too, as means you can pick whichever two you want and lay them down on the table, as you’ll often be referring to these during games.

As with the previous few editions there are no points values in the book – instead an update will be coming to Warhammer Community with all the new points values and changes. One thing to note is that Enhancements, Traits and Manifestations now have a points value – for the majority of options this will be “0” however it now means that Games Workshop can price the more powerful or popular choices with a higher points cost to try and encourage others to be used. general points cuts look to be for non-caster heroes and chariots, two things that are under represented in games at the moment. All of the Scourge of Ghyran stuff is also included in this document making it the one stop shop for playing Age of Sigmar

So what about the General’s Handbook itself? So gone is the hardback and spiral bound format and instead we see a softback 76 page book – I really liked the hardback and spiral bound format of the last few, but that was really most useful in order to have the book open on the battleplan you were using. Now with the battleplans all being in card format this feature is a little redundant and has now been removed.

This season the action is moving to the realm of life Ghyran, and we get a couple of pages of lore to give us some flavour to what is going on. In a really nice touch, Warhammer community have been putting out daily articles on the run up to the new General’s Handbook with each day covering the new rules that each faction has got. In addition to this we’ve also has videos with the narrative of events, which is very cool – but personally I’d love to have been able to read these rather than watch videos for them, especially when it comes to trying to glean bits of new lore!

Season Rules for 2025-2026 have changed, and that sees the removal of the old Honour Guard rules. These were cool, but I’m glad they are getting retired for something a little different. This time we get 6 physical objective marker disks that are illustrated with 4 different symbols – Oakenbrow, Gnarlroot, Winterleaf and Heartwood, with Oakenbrow and Gnarlwood duplicated. This means that for some scenarios you might have a pair of Oakenbrow, a single Winterlead and a single Heartwood, or maybe a scenarios with two of the two paired ones. All of the objective markers are colour coded too, so if you’re not too hot on the names of various Sylvaneth groves you can simply refer to them by colour – shouts of “We’re scoring the red ones now, not the green ones” became common in our practice games!

This new way of marking objectives makes for some really fun scenarios that we havn’t seen before, and they are all given a really nice Sylvaneth theme too – one battleplan has the objectives you can score switch between red and green every battle round, with the underdog getting the option to increase ward saves or heal units that are on the current colour. Another has units that are near objectives at the end of a battleround get sent into the spirit paths only to walk back onto a board edge the following turn, while another gives you bonus points for controlling one of each type of objective. They are very very fun, and has breathed new life into the game for me, which is something that the General’s Handbook should be trying to do each year. In particular, the underdog abilities are quite powerful and should lead to some closer games too, with things not always running away with the leader.

The other big change this year is with battle tactics. Last time we had Grand Alliance specific lists that you picked your battle tactic from each round. While initially being fun, this did tend to dictate your list makeup a little as you had to make sure you had units that could achieve those battle tactics – if you built an all comers and lore-friendly list you might find that you didn’t have the mobility in order to achieve some of these. Now at the top end of play this isnt really an issue as everyone would tailor their list to ensure all battle tactics could be scored, but for more casual play this really did leave beginners and less competitive players a little disadvantaged.

Now, players get to pick 2 out of 6 battle tactic cards. Each card has three different tactics that have to be achieved in order, an Affray, a Strike and a Domination. Each battle round you can score one tactic from each card, but you have to do them in order. So for example “Master the Paths” starts with you having to kill a hero, then have more friendly units than enemy ones in neutral territory, and then finally have 3 units within 9″ of different corners. You have all 5 battlerounds to try and achieve them all, but they do have to be done in order and only one per card can be scored (You can score one off each card though!)

In the previous pack, you sometimes had the odd situation where you didnt want to kill something in your opponants turn as you wanted to get credit for it in your turn – this has been fixed now with those kind of tactics being worded like “You score this at the end of a turn if an enemy hero has been destroyed this battle”, so even if you killed it in a previous enemy turn you still get the credit, which is nice.

I really love this system for two reasons. Firstly it means you can pick battle tactics that suit your play style and suit your army. You can quite easily lean into “kill all the things” style tactics if you want a no nonsense murder fest, but equally there’s lots here that are all about movement and positioning and are easily scored without having to engage the enemy at all. With these being picked during your army list writing then it means that these are all public knowledge and you know what your opponent will be trying to do in later turns too, with smart players making sure to dedicate some units to trying to stop them from scoring – so with the example earlier with Master the Paths your opponent will know that you want to have your units in the corners at the end of the latter half of the game, so can use some careful positioning to make this difficult.

the other thing I love about these Battle Tactics is that it reduces the analysis paralysis that we often got in the previous season along with the sinking feeling that you’re going to struggle to be able to score any. With this new set up you might have a really bad game and only manage to kill a hero turn 5, but at least you’ll still get 5vp for it rather than having “wasted” that battle tactic earlier in the game. It’s going to take a few more games to get the feel for all the different battle tactics, but there’s a nice mix that will appeal to everyone and I feel this is a much slicker way of doing things.

The last 50 pages of the book are dedicated to the core rules and summary sheets and there’s actually quite a lot here that has been updated. Not massive changes to the flow of the game, but there’s a lot of important tweaks to the rules. All Out Attack for example now gives you a penalty of -1 to your save for the rest of the turn. Now as you can imagine that’s a massive risk to use in combat as you have to weigh up the fact the enemy will hit you harder in return, but you also have to think about it’s use for ranged units too, as if you end up getting counter charged you will still have that -1 save on you until the end of the turn.

In a similar move, All Out Defense was a little too powerful allowing +1 save against all attacks that phase, now it only works for a single fight, meaning you’ll have to time using it correctly to get the most benefit.

Places of power have had a big update too, with them now giving you the choice to unbind an extra spell, heal all nearby units (with a 1 in 6 chance of wounding everything instead) or to make n objective or terrain get the “Obscuring” ability. Obscuring is an interesting one now, as it means you cannot target non-monsters within an inch of them unless you are within 3″ of that model. This is huge and pretty much gives you a way to hide from any firepower. As a balancing act, if the model in Obscuring terrain has any ranged attacks then the ranges are halved. It will be interesting to see if Sylvaneth get any bonus to go alongside this when their Battletome drops.

The General’s Handbook is only really half of the story though, as Games Workshop have put out so much Age of Sigmar content for this season through their Scourge of Ghyran series – probably the biggest collection of free Age of Sigmar content since the release of the new edition, and I love that all of the factions are getting support with this! Essentially what they have done is given them some “season rules” – new traits, artifacts, spell lores and even warscrolls. For the Warscrolls they have taken under represented units and given them a brand new profile (with it’s own points cost) in order to give them more utility and to make some of them more likely to be picked in a game. What’s nice here is that the warscroll isnt replaced, instead you can pick which of the two you want to include in your army. Sometimes points changes work to make things more appealing, but new profiles always interest me, especially when you have the conversion opportunities of making the new Warscroll look different too in model form!

I’ve really enjoyed this General’s Handbook and can’t wait to play some more games. We’re all heading to the Scourge of Ghyran event at Warhammer World soon, so we’ll be reporting back on how the event went and what the community thinks of the new content

General’s Handbook 2025-2026 is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 14th June

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews with a free copy for review purposes.