SR2013 Beta is out but only Pressgangers have a copy (BOOO!) and they've been instructed not to post them online this year (BOOO!) which is probably a bit painful for those running a tournament with the rules pack as they are supposed to do but last year there were issues with people people confusing the beta rules for the final rules and a lot of stupid questions on the Q&A forum. That said the pressgangers have made the gist of the changes known:
4 out of 12 scenarios have killbox and killbox has changed again. Now you die if you are completely within 14" of a table edge at the end of your turn. You can measure the closest table edge once per turn to check for example during your caster's movement. This is no doubt because of Lylyth3, as she is on a huge base it's pretty unfair the way it is (where the closest point on her base could not be within 10" of an edge) meaning she had to be almost 4" closer to her opponents than a small based caster.
There are more ways to score and the points required to win a scenario have gone up. You can now score by "dominating" the closest flagjective to you with your caster. Generally you score one point for doing that, 2 points for controlling the zone closest to your opponent and 3 points for dominating that flagjective. However you need 4-5 points to win.
Radials scenarios are gone. Reinforcements are now optional rules (along with flank deployment) so there are no longer scenarios with reinforcements but you can still play tournaments and casual games with reinforcements. The rules are still there.
Casters can no longer contest zones. So you can no longer just park Terminus/Venethrax/Vindictus/Butcher in the zone on full focus camp and completely stop your opponent from scoring.
That's all I know so far so until I can con/bribe a copy of the beta rules from a pressganger I don't have much more to add.
What does this mean for the game?
Not much. Killbox is creeping forwards and is in more scenarios with disadvangtages to the squishier higher focus casters, they also won't like going forward to dominate zones. Harbinger, Severius1 and Haley2 in particular like to spend most of the game in their own deployment zones so this may hurt them a bit. In the end though I still see them dominating. It's not enough to make them bad but it will mean playing those casters requires more skill, their control shenanigans may even be more effective with more ways to score points. It also hurts the midline casters, at least the beefy ones that like to get forward as they can no longer contest and force their opponents into dodgy assassination runs. That said they are still going to be tanks and now they can sit on their own objective and score while their army does its job. If there is a winner it's the assassination casters. Caine2, Siege, Kreoss1, Stryker2, Vlad2, Asphyxious2... they are going to be able to force the opponent to choose between risking assassination or giving up scoring on the closest objective. Fast armies are going to be at a premium too, if you can get forward into your opponents flagjective early and pin them back you may be able to win the game that way. That means theme forces may see an upswing. In particular Absyonlias, Kroess2, Constance Blaize, Grissel1 (there are a lot more but those off the top of my head) can get a substantial chunk of their army on the other side of the table before their opponent has even moved. Again though it's not a huge difference, with the extra points required you are still going to have to take the far objective if you want to win a game so I'm not sure how big a difference it will make.
The other thing to note is this is still the beta. There are going to be a bunch of tournaments run on this package all over the world and it's going to be pretty thoroughly tested and will no doubt be changed before it gets finalised.
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