Salamanders Later, But Right Now We’re Talking About AoS Obscuring Rules
We had one of those classic hobby chat moments: one person mentions Salamanders, someone else asks if that just means “more Marines again”, and then suddenly the whole conversation swerves hard into rules discussion.
So yes — Salamanders are apparently also on the horizon. But the bit that really grabbed our attention this time was Age of Sigmar and the new wording around obscuring terrain.
The rule that made us stop scrolling
The key takeaway from our chat was this:
- a whole unit has to be within 1” of obscuring terrain
- and that means every model in the unit
- if that condition is met, the unit is not visible, apparently regardless of which side you’re looking from
That leads to a very funny visual. You might be able to “clearly” see the unit because the wall is technically behind them from your angle, but if they are all within that 1” distance, they still count as unseen.
On the other hand:
- if even one model in the unit is more than 1” away from that terrain
- then the entire unit becomes visible
Which, as we immediately noticed, makes the terrain feel a bit transparent in a very game-rule sort of way.
Places of Power got interesting fast
The second part that got us excited was the interaction with Places of Power.
From what we were discussing:
- Places of Power can give the obscuring rule to objectives
- so if a whole unit is standing on that objective, it can become invisible
- and apparently even non-obscuring terrain can become obscuring too
- if it gets affected by the right Place of Power spell
Honestly, that sounds pretty spicy.
It adds a lot of positional play and opens up some very weird-but-fun situations on the table. Objectives becoming defensive tools is already interesting, but making visibility hinge on that tight 1” bubble for the whole unit feels like something that will create both clever plays and at least a few arguments over model placement.
The kind of rule we’ll want to see in practice
At first glance, this feels like one of those rules that is easy to summarize but will probably get much more dramatic in actual games.
That “every model within 1"” requirement is doing a lot of work. It creates a clean condition, but also means movement and coherency are going to matter even more when trying to keep a unit hidden. One model sticking out too far and suddenly the whole squad loses the benefit.
We’re very curious how this will feel on the table:
- will it reward careful positioning?
- will it make objective play more tactical?
- or will it produce glorious nonsense where everyone can physically see a unit but the rules say “nope”?
Probably a bit of all three, if we’re honest.
One screenshot, many questions
We also had a rules image in the chat while trying to parse all of this, which definitely helped fuel the discussion:
Final thought
So the hobby status update is roughly:
- Salamanders: yes, later
- Space Marines discourse: inevitable
- Age of Sigmar terrain rules: unexpectedly the main event
And honestly, we’re into it. Weird terrain interactions, magical objectives, and rules that make us reread the sentence three times? That’s proper new-edition energy.
If we get some games in with these rules, we’ll definitely want to come back and write about how absurd or brilliant they felt in practice.