Last year’s General’s Handbook mixed things up for Warhammer Age of Sigmar by changing how exactly matched play missions worked with some brilliant new missions and Battle Tactics.

Up for pre order today is the latest General’s Handbook 2026-27, and in this full review we’re going to be checking out what has changed, what’s new and taking a dive into the new Battle Tactics and Missions in this year’s new pack!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us this over to check out on the site. If you would like to support the site then why not order your Age of Sigmar goodies through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

That’s not the only Age of Sigmar review we have up today through, as we have also checked out the new Slaanesh Battletome and model releases too! Give into temptation with our full review here!

We’ve also filmed a full unboxing of the new Slaanesh kits, which you can see just below or over on YouTube

So without further ado, let’s dive into the new GHB 26/27

General’s Handbook 2026-27 Review

I was a big fan of the last GHB. It made some great moves to mix up the game by adding some interesting new mechanics, giving some of the core rules a mid-edition refresh and giving us a fresh batch of missions.

The 2026-27 edition of the General’s Handbook doesn’t make such a big change, instead keeping the same idea in battle tactics structure but refreshing them with new ones, changing the core season mechanics and mixing up all the scenarios.

This time around we have traveled to Aqshy. Following on from the continuing storyline of the Skaven invasion of the Great Parch that has acted as the spearhead of Chaos’ plan to shatter the forces of Order we are now fighting in an environment of fire and rage.

Season Rules

This flows nicely into the Season Rules for the GHB 26/27. Much like the recent heatwave, everyone is very hot and it’s making them very angry! Each player has a Fury Level that runs from 1 to 7. At the start of the battle if you are the attacker your Fury is 1 and if you are the defender your Fury is 2 – this again makes it matter which role you are, as the abilities you get from your Fury level are pretty cool.

At the start of each Battle Round you get Rage Dice equal to your Fury Level – these can be spent one of two ways. Firstly, you can use them at the end of a turn in order to do some extra attacks with a chance of splash Mortals. You can pick to spend 1-3 dice, and these give you attacks with a chosen weapon – though note any critical abilities do not work, instead you do D3 mortal wounds to every target you are in combat with on a roll of a 6 – but you also increase the Fury level of the enemy by 1 for each 6 you roll. There’s a risk to this though too, as each 1 that you roll does D3 mortals to your own unit, and wards can’t be made for these!

The other way of spending Rage Dice is by using them to shrug damage – before allocating damage you can choose to roll a number of dice, and for each 3+ you ignore 1 damage.

I really like this, as you’ll see a real back and forth between players as they decide how is best to spend these dice – do you go for extra damage with the risk that you might end up giving your opponent more dice to use next turn, or save them to counter incoming damage (especially since some battle tactics are all about dealing damage in multiple phases)

The only downside to this addition in the General’s Handbook 26/27 is the fact that this will cause a little book keeping – you’re going to want some trackers or dice for each player to keep tabs on Fury Levels (I believe there is an edition with a tracker included, which would be handy!)

Battle Tactics

The other big draw to the GHB is a full set of refreshed Battle Tactics!

While we had an assortment last time round, I always felt I drifted towards the same ones time and again – so it’s nice that we get a full refresh of them here!

Blazing Onslaught is the first one – this has your opponent select a piece of terrain in their territory to be their “Hideout”. You start with having to do damage to a unit in 3 phases (which can be tricky with the ability to use Fury Dice to negate damage) – but you have lots of options here and I feel this will be a fun one to do. Next you have to control the Hideout, followed by destroying 2 enemy units while holding the hideout. I like this one, and feel it would be fun to do with Slaanesh.

Siege of Ashes is a nice defensive one that suits armies like Nurgle – You start with two units just outside of friendly territory, then control an objective with one unit that has not moved and one unit that has charged, and finally you need 3 units in the centre of the board. This really suits a slow army like Nurgle and let’s them plod up the board slowly but still be able to get Battle Tactics.

Flanking Firestorm is pretty much the opposite of this. You start off with 2 units tagging objectives or terrain more than 6 from your territory, then 2 units must be within 9 of the enemy corners of the board and finally you need a more units in enemy territory including a hero. The hero requirement is pretty specific, but there’s lots of fast units who can do this.

Smokescreen is an interesting one, it has you start by controlling an objective contested by an opponant, then by having more friendly units destroyed before finally controlling each objective in enemy territory. This is a little odd as it gives the opponent an incentive to try and not kill your units when the second part of your tactic is up, and I feel a smart player would just try and deny you this. That said, send up some cannon fodder and the enemy has to either give away objectives or give you the battle tactic.

Burning for Vengeance is a fun one. It has you select an enemy hero to be the Fugitive. First part is having a unit in every board quarter, then you have to have either 3 units within 12″ of the Fugitive but not in combat (or the fugitive is dead) and finally you have to have 3 units in combat wth the fugitive, or if they are dead 3 units on the same objective. Think this will be another one I’ll give a go!

Legend of the Parch is the final one, and this screams Slaanesh to me too – You start of having to have an enemy unit killed by a friendly one who has charged, then have all heroes within 9″ of an enemy unit (with no heroes getting killed), and finally take an objective you didn’t have with a hero. The middle step has the biggest potential to go wrong, but really like the idea for an aggressive hero filled army!

I feel there’s a better mix of defensive and offensive tactics this time, and some good choices for even slow armies!

This time around there’s fewer changes to the core rules, but we do still get some tweaks – Place of Power for example can now be used to gain 2 rage dice and increase the fury level by 2 – however places of power now always cause you D3 mortals on the roll of a 1!

There’s 12 new Battleplans in the new General’s Handbook, and we get a nice mix of different scenarios and map layouts. There’s some interesting ones with split deployment zones, or even layouts with the deployment zones in the centre of the board with no mans land being on the long board edges. There’s some fun gimmicks in some of these missions too, such as hidden tunnels between terrain pieces that allow you to jump around the board, and a really cool one where there’s a chance for each objective to be destroyed the more people are contesting it – you can have the possibility on this one that every objective is gone by the end of the game!

The new GHB also contains a framework for stringing together a number of thematically linked battles into a mini campaign – this is pretty light, but a really nice way of putting together a tournament with a linked narrative theme running through it, which is pretty nice! There’s options here for 3 linked games, 5 linked games or even the ability to play through every mission in the book in order!

Summary

So what do I think of the latest General’s Handbook? While it doesn’t make as many sweeping changes as the previous book, I do still think this is a strong release for refreshing the pool of missions and Battle Tactics and making sure that games still feel fun and different! Rotating missions are important to the game, and this is a great update to the pool we have available.

The General’s Handbook 2026-27 is up for pre order today and is released on Saturday 4th July.

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