Hello! Welcome back to #MortalRealmsMonday. As mentioned last week, we’re in the final stages of playtesting for Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound. We’ll be discussing more of our playtests, but first we wanted to share some insight into how combat works.

Put ‘em Up

Before we get into things, if you haven’t read our posts on how tests work in Soulbound, you can find them here and here. Read them? Cool, let’s get to it.

In Soulbound, characters have three major combat traits: Melee, Accuracy, and Defence.

Melee is how effective you are in hand-to-hand combat. It is derived from your Body and your Weapon Skill. When making a Melee Attack, you make a Body (Weapon Skill) Test.

Accuracy represents your marksmanship and ability to pick out a target. It is derived from your Mind and your Ballistic Skill. When making a Ranged Attack, you make a Body (Ballistic Skill) Test.

Defence is how hard you are to hit, and how adept you are at avoiding danger. Defence is derived from your Body and your Reflexes Skill.

These traits are rated on a scale we call The Ladder. Ratings range from Poor right up to Extraordinary. When you are making an attack, you compare either your Melee or Accuracy (depending on the type of attack) with the target’s Defence. This determines the difficulty to hit. If you are evenly matched, say with a Good Melee versus a Good Defence, the difficulty to hit is 4. This means any result of 4 and up counts as a hit. If you are one step higher on the ladder, say Good Melee versus an Average Defence, the difficulty would be 3. If you are one step lower on the ladder, say Average Melee versus Good Defence, the difficulty would be 5. If you are two steps or more higher the difficulty is 2, and if you are two steps or more lower the difficulty is 6.

This means that defence and attack aren’t static, and are instead determined by the effectiveness of the combatants. It also means that even the tiniest Grot has a chance of hurting a towering Kurnoth!

Pokin’ and Stabbin’!

Weapons have different traits and damage ratings, but the successes on your attack are always added to the total damage. If the target is wearing armour, the armour rating is subtracted from the damage dealt. Whatever is leftover reduces the target’s Toughness.

Pushing and Shoving!

As well as making a basic attack, there are plenty of other things you can do on your turn in combat. You can charge, make a called shot, grapple, help and ally, hide, dodge, improvise, or even try to talk to calm things down (not advisable when a Rat Ogor is barreling towards you).

Combat in Soulbound is quick and dynamic, and encourages creativity from players. It allows you to feel like a powerful hero while also providing a constant threat of imminent death — just the way it should be in the Mortal Realms.

That’s it for #MortalRealmsMonday this week. Be sure to keep an eye on our website and social media channels for more Age of Sigmar: Soulbound updates.

Art by Kim Van Deun.

Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd.© Games Workshop 2020.