AoS Battlescroll Shake-Up: cheaper admirals, cheaper monsters, and a very silly Skaven cannon idea
AoS Battlescroll shake-up and instant list-brainstorming
Games Workshop dropped a fresh Age of Sigmar battlescroll, and naturally that was enough for us to immediately stop whatever sensible hobby planning we had and start rebuilding army lists in our heads.
The update we were looking at was this one from Warhammer Community:
And honestly, this is exactly the kind of update we enjoy most: not a giant reset, but just enough points movement to make old list ideas suddenly look possible again.
Kharadron and Skaven both got our attention
For end3r, the immediate headline was simple: the Admiral got cheaper, which means his current Kharadron list now lands at 950 points. That kind of change is small on paper, but in practice it is the sort of thing that suddenly gives you room for one more useful toy, a tweak to a regiment, or just makes a 1k list feel less awkward.
On the Skaven side, Michał noticed that a few units got slight points drops too, and that was enough to send us straight into list-cooking mode.
The biggest moment was probably this one: a list Michał had already been building with two Hell Pits and one Master Moulder had previously come in 40 points over, but after the changes it would now sit at 1990 points.
That is the kind of points update that feels weirdly personal. One minute a list is illegal, the next minute it is basically ready to go.
The dream lives: double Hell Pit
We have a soft spot for lists that are just on the edge between “this is serious army-building” and “this is going to be a complete disaster, but in a memorable way”.
So naturally, hearing that:
- Hell Pit Abomination dropped to 220 points
- Master Moulder got 10 points cheaper
- Rat Ogors also dropped by 10 points
…made that old Skaven monster list suddenly look very alive again.
And if you play enough Warhammer, you know that some lists stay with you purely because they were almost legal at one point.
Then the discussion became much stupider: five cannons
Not content with merely making an existing list work, Michał immediately went in a much more Skaven direction and started thinking about artillery spam.
His Warp Lightning Cannon, which he also uses in Spearhead, now sits at 130 points. Which of course led to the only reasonable conclusion:
what if you just played five cannons in 2000 points?
We love hobby conversations because they so often go from “interesting balance changes” to “okay but what is the funniest thing we can legally put on the table?” in about thirty seconds.
And this one escalated fast.
Sketching the list
Once we started looking at regiment limits properly, the idea became less of a joke and more of an actual experiment.
The rough version Michał sketched out looked like this:
- 2-drop list
- Warlock Galvaneer and Warlock Bombardier as leaders
- In the general’s regiment: 3 cannons and 60 Clanrats
- In the Bombardier’s regiment: 2 cannons and 2x40 Clanrats
That came out to roughly:
- 980 points in the general’s regiment
- 970 points in the second regiment
- leaving 50 points spare in a 2000 point army
Which means this nonsense is not just possible — it is surprisingly tidy.
There was also a brief attempt on our side to imagine similarly silly swarm ideas elsewhere. end3r mentioned thinking about a Kharadron list with a huge pile of Arkanaut units and basically one general, but that dream died quickly once the regiment restrictions and movement realities caught up with it.
Probably for the best.
Would it actually work?
That is a different question, and much less important than whether it would be funny.
Michał pointed out that into Vampires it might be a bit awkward, because those skeletons just refuse to stay dead, and in that matchup the Warpblaster might be the better tool.
Which is exactly why we want to test ideas like this in actual games instead of only admiring them in list-builder form. Some armies punish gimmicks immediately. Others let them shine just long enough to become a story we keep bringing up for months.
Either way, five Skaven guns on the table sounds like an experience.
Also: painted Skaven artillery always helps sell the idea
The best part is that this wasn’t just theoryhammer. Michał shared photos of the artillery, and honestly, painted nonsense is always more convincing than unpainted nonsense.
As end3r said in chat: it looks really good painted by Michał. And that definitely increases the chance that this list will eventually hit the table.
Our favourite kind of update
This is basically the perfect kind of balance pass for us:
- some units get just a little cheaper,
- old list ideas become legal again,
- new weird list ideas suddenly appear,
- and within minutes we are already planning test games.
We are especially curious how much these little points changes will matter in practice, and whether league play will adopt them immediately or not. But regardless of timing, the update already did its job: it got us excited to build lists again.
And really, if a battlescroll leads to double Hell Pit and five cannon Skaven being discussed on the same afternoon, that sounds like a successful update to us.
Now we just need to actually play it.