First thoughts on Path to glory. What are yours?

[Kramer]

Hi all, I read through the rules of Path to Glory just now and a couple of things stood out. I wanted to share them with you and would love to hear your first impressions. 

So in general:
- The story (no spoilers): I love the fact that the story reads like someone has played the campaign and wrote out how all the additions came to be and how the protagonist rose to power. 
- Lovely art and warband pictures

Set-up:
- Although not much has changed in the basic structure you can now also win from having a big enough warband. Which I like very much as we used to roll for either additions and upgrades thus preventing one player getting a massive army before the deciding battle. This ruling helps the armies keeping 'the warband feel'. 
- Summoning is allowed. As this is not matched play as far as I can tell this can lead to a lot of shenanigans but will have to see how that goes. Maybe it's fine as the units disappear after battle and wizards tend to start with a smaller warband. 
- It looks like adding new follower addition will always mean a new unit. 'Your followers need to be organised in to units. the follower tabel tells you how many models the unit has. Follower units cannot include additional models, but they can otherwise take any options listed on their warscroll....' . Which makes sense with triggering the deciding battle on unit count but size bonuses will be a rare occurrence. 
-The battleplans look fun, the monolith and lair of the beast make a return. But more on that after I've played some.

The armies: (I only looked at the factions that were relevant to me  ) 
- You choose your army from a allegiance. If that means you can switch your rolls between warbands within that allegiance... I don't know. Won't be playing it that way myself anyway but the story suggests it could. 
- You roll for hero's, followers and Elite/behemoths as normal but certain tables cost Glory points or multiple rolls. Which is great and simple way to limit elite units in a small game. 
- Slaves to darkness offers no option of staying undicided. 'Your champion must worship one of the chaos gods'. 
- The follower reward tables are very cool. From a teleportation move once a battle to 'Cornered rat' doing a mortal wounds if a rat flees on a 4+. 
- If playing an order warband you can choose to roll on Aelfs, human or Duardin and mix and match. Very cool system and it allows you to choose a 'type' of aelf. For example on a 3 you choose between 10 Dreadspears or 10 Glade Guard.

The Path to Glory supplement looks Ace! Can't wait to try it. Great set up, great content and it finally looks to be made for inter-faction battle instead of just the same factions against each other. And much more complete than the Skirmish supplement. Well done GW! 

The one thing I have a problem with is the extra glory points table for some of the battleplans. In essence the table offers extra glory points if you win as order vs chaos etc. So every match-up is shown in that table. But.. if you are playing Destruction, you get +1 glory point against other allegiances but if you lose.. they don't get any bonus. Might be great for club play with multiple tables but if playing one on one it just doesn't make sense. Playing order vs chaos for example just means you get double the glory points and halve your play time. Feels weird to me outside of club play. 

Thanks for reading and would love to hear your first thoughts! 

[bottle]

I also think it is ace! GW have done a stellar job and I can't wait to play it. I think moving forward this is how I will build every army to 1000 points, and it might even become my main way to play (I am really excited about starting a campaign with a friend soon).

It'll be interesting to see how summoning plays out, especially with Arkhan. There are lots of ways to balance it though. You could say each summoner starts with 1 summoning scroll, meaning one attempt per game, and to increase their scrolls you have to use a champion/follower reward.

I also think it'll be more fun to roll on the rewards table, otherwise I foresee everyone going for additional units and the campaign only lasting 6 games (after which someone wins through 'Might').

(PS, triple duplicate thread is impressive! Haha)

[Kramer]

8 minutes ago, bottle said:

It'll be interesting to see how summoning plays out, especially with Arkhan. There are lots of ways to balance it though. You could say each summoner starts with 1 summoning scroll, meaning one attempt per game, and to increase their scrolls you have to use a champion/follower reward.

 

Yeah, it's definitively easy to limit. But i will try it first because scenarios do matter with summoning. So curious to see how it works out. 

 

13 minutes ago, bottle said:

I also think it'll be more fun to roll on the rewards table, otherwise I foresee everyone going for additional units and the campaign only lasting 6 games (after which someone wins through 'Might').

 

True and to be fair the fun of a path to glory is the randomness (at least for me). So I will roll for it as well. Also a lot of the follower rewards are very fitting narratively but also offer a big advantage. 

16 minutes ago, bottle said:

(PS, triple duplicate thread is impressive! Haha)

Well i'm nothing if not competitive  

[bottle]

Quick question: Are allegiance abilities in use or not? Can't find any reference to them in the book.

[Guest]

20 minutes ago, bottle said:

Quick question: Are allegiance abilities in use or not? Can't find any reference to them in the book.

As someone pointed out to me recently, Allegiance Abilities are actually in the Matched Play section of the GHB, and Path to Glory is in Narrative. So I would guess that the answer is no by default.

[bottle]

39 minutes ago, Jamie the Jasper said:

As someone pointed out to me recently, Allegiance Abilities are actually in the Matched Play section of the GHB, and Path to Glory is in Narrative. So I would guess that the answer is no by default.

Actually I think it's not part of Matched Play, or any of the 3 ways to play. It has its own section outside of them, (called 'Grand Alliances of the Realms') with a full 2 page introduction image and a bolded title on the contents page like any other seperate section. What do you think?

I would say Allegiance Abilities should work fine in Path to Glory, although if you go outside your faction you have to default to the general alliance one (and lastly if you get a 'beast' from the Beast's Lair battleplan it should be UNALIGNED) and simply exempt from your allegiance ability if it falls outside.

Its just odd because Skirmish specifically talks about Allegiance Abilities whereas this one does not.

[Kramer]

I think they are left out (I also assume this is because GW might want to be true to their three ways to play promise). But on the other hand.... why not. No reason not to include it if you feel it fits. 

ps. I can't find any reference to it either so the above is my personal assumption. 

[bottle]

Yeah, I've spent most the morning flicking through this book, with all the rewards you can earn you probably don't want Allegiance Abilities on top making it hard to keep track of everything. Plus you'd need to figure out what would happen if you had a faction allegiance and then went Grand Alliance. Would you have to hand back your artefact,spells and prayers or get to keep them? - I guess I am worried about factions like Destruction taking too much of a hit losing Rampaging Destroyers.

The one thing it is a shame they didn't include is any rules on how to transition your Skirmish campaign over to a Path to Glory. Would have been nice to have some concrete rules for that.

[DynamicCalories]

As someone who hasn't played PtG or had the chance to grab the book yet: how does it work? 

Can you pre-pick your armies or is it all on dicerolls? I only ask cos a buddy of mine has Stromcasts and I have some chaos/Kharadron and we are thinking about trying to get some games and I think PtG will give us some more structure and reason to play... but I don't particularly want to be building up to a 2k army yet, especially since I kinda hate painting arkanauts now  

[wayniac]

I am excited over the concept, but I already can hear the gnashing of teeth over "no points" and no restricted summoning.  I am hopeful I can find some people to partake of a campaign because I love the idea, but if I open the floodgates to everyone who wants to sign up there's going to be problems immediately as people are going to try and game it ASAP.

[Kramer]

37 minutes ago, DynamicCalories said:

As someone who hasn't played PtG or had the chance to grab the book yet: how does it work? 

Can you pre-pick your armies or is it all on dicerolls? I only ask cos a buddy of mine has Stromcasts and I have some chaos/Kharadron and we are thinking about trying to get some games and I think PtG will give us some more structure and reason to play... but I don't particularly want to be building up to a 2k army yet, especially since I kinda hate painting arkanauts now  

Sounds like it could be the thing for you then. You select the lord you want then choose different classes to roll on. After every battle you have a 1 in 3 chance to add followers, give your champion an rule upgrade or a current unit a reward. You can also choose everything but to me thats less fun. If you haven't got an addition you can just re-roll. As you can limit it to a certain amount of units you will never get that to 2K if you don't want to. 

2 hours ago, bottle said:

The one thing it is a shame they didn't include is any rules on how to transition your Skirmish campaign over to a Path to Glory. Would have been nice to have some concrete rules for that.

 

1 hour ago, Auticus said:

I also second the request to move skirmish over to path to glory, but i think that can be arranged fairly easily enough via fan updates. 

Me and a mate started a skirmish campaign where we use Hinterlands upgrade system for the champion and two luitenants. After a couple of games we will be moving into PtG. For the champion he will keep his upgrades (or roll for a new one if a Skirmish upgrade does not fit). The lieutenants will be charged to lead a unit of their type. For every level gained in the Skirmish games we roll a follower update for that unit. We are not on the change over yet but so far I don't see any big problems. (we play skaven vs skaven)

[Kirjava13]

4 hours ago, Kramer said:

(we play skaven vs skaven)

Truly the purest and best Warhammz. 

[Sleboda]

9 hours ago, bottle said:

It'll be interesting to see how summoning plays out, especially with Arkhan. There are lots of ways to balance it though. You could say each summoner starts with 1 summoning scroll, meaning one attempt per game, and to increase their scrolls you have to use a champion/follower reward.

Your enthusiasm is fab, but why do we,  as gamers,  feel this crazy need to want to "fix"  professionally created games the instant they hit the shelves without even playing a few dozen games first!?

?

[bottle]

29 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

Your enthusiasm is fab, but why do we,  as gamers,  feel this crazy need to want to "fix"  professionally created games the instant they hit the shelves without even playing a few dozen games first!?

?

For me a good game is one with strict defined limits and room for creativity within those limits. In Age of Sigmar I've played lots of games with uncapped summoning to know it can derail good games and make them non-games instead - on the flipside I love the idea of summoning and often feel unsatisfied with the Matched Play restrictions. My personal philosophy towards game design is the limits should be clearly defined and no-one should be left questioning themselves during a game wondering "Is this cool, or am I taking it too far?".

For these reasons I am going to be limiting my own summoning with some hard rules that allow for choices and growth. Plus I think it is cool for a lowly Necromancer to only have enough power to summon once per battle and for that power to grow through the campaign should I choose to invest in it. I like adding rules to games ?

[Sleboda]

 Don't get me wrong, creativity and mods are neat, I'm just *very specifically* commenting on the general urge ppl have to fix a problem before they actually know it's one. Who knows?  Maybe in this context,  summoning will be fine.  If we don't try at least,  we'll never know.  :shrug:

[bottle]

Feel free to try. I am not being prescriptive in the slightest  For me, as mentioned before, I've played enough games of AoS with uncapped summoning to know I prefer it to have defined limits. 

[MrCharisma]

As a Human player,  I loved seeing the old Empire reunited and I'm praying that a combined Human battletome is the way forward. 

I think I'll randomise all of my unit selections to shake up my current competitive view on the game. 

[Sennyo]

i havent manage to pick up the book yet but can someone please tell me exactly what faction seem to be included in the beast of chaos tables. im guessing its mostly the factions that make the old beastmen book

[MrCharisma]

20 minutes ago, Sennyo said:

i havent manage to pick up the book yet but can someone please tell me exactly what faction seem to be included in the beast of chaos tables. im guessing its mostly the factions that make the old beastmen book

Dragon Ogor Shaggoth, Doombull, Beastlord, Great Bray-Shaman, Ungors, Ungor Raiders, Gors, Tuskgor Chariot, Bestigor, Bullgor, Cygor, Ghorgon, Dragon Ogor, Chaos Gargant, Slaugherbrute, Mutuality Vortex Beast, Chimera.

[eekamouse]

I will likely play with no summoning. I could be off base, and I'll need to think more about it, but summoning seems a bit against the spirit of PtG. Similar to Skirmish, it seems it should be more of a Kill Team style game, and the units won't have the necessary "resources" to gain the notice of their Gods or Lords etc...

It also keeps things simpler for a format that should stay simple (to my mind).

[Greasygeek]

Since PtG isn't Matched Play then what about abilities that brings new models, Like Pink Horror splitting models turned to Tzaangors, etc. Is that a Go or no go?

What does the rules say and how will players do?

[Kramer]

2 hours ago, Greasygeek said:

Since PtG isn't Matched Play then what about abilities that brings new models, Like Pink Horror splitting models turned to Tzaangors, etc. Is that a Go or no go?

What does the rules say and how will players do?

Strictly speaking those abilities do work. I will play them that way because it's just fun! (and balance is already out of the window due to the randomised set up and thats a good thing!)

12 hours ago, Sleboda said:

 Don't get me wrong, creativity and mods are neat, I'm just *very specifically* commenting on the general urge ppl have to fix a problem before they actually know it's one. Who knows?  Maybe in this context,  summoning will be fine.  If we don't try at least,  we'll never know.  :shrug:

It's the feeling of ownership. We all invest amazing amounts of money and time in this game which is set up in such a manner that you can modify it. So when I read the rules I see things that could be exploited to a point it would ruin my experience. So yes I will give it a couple of goes and decide then but summoning as is will probably hurt my game experience .

[Sleboda]

16 minutes ago, Kramer said:

It's the feeling of ownership. We all invest amazing amounts of money and time in this game which is set up in such a manner that you can modify it. So when I read the rules I see things that could be exploited to a point it would ruin my experience. So yes I will give it a couple of goes and decide then but summoning as is will probably hurt my game experience .

I'd give it at least a dozen games, against various foes in different scenarios, but at least you are gonna play a few before changing the rules.

[Azlak the Damned]

Allegiance abilities are in PtG as one of the Khorne Champion rewards is to gain one Blood Tithe point. Which is the allegiance ability in the Blades to Khorne Battletome.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

[bottle]

4 hours ago, Greasygeek said:

Since PtG isn't Matched Play then what about abilities that brings new models, Like Pink Horror splitting models turned to Tzaangors, etc. Is that a Go or no go?

What does the rules say and how will players do?

I would definitely recommend playing with all those rules! I think Matched Play can be a bit strict on random events creating new units (which is fine as a catch all, I guess), but Path to Glory feels like the perfect chance to let all those kooks and quirks shine.