Path to glory and summoning

[Greasygeek]

Hi all

so I am about to start a path to glory campaign with my group since we long to stray (a bit) away from the path of matched play. However we have in our group a Maggotkin player (me) and a Legion of Nagash player too. Naturally we like to test the new rules for summoning but have yet to try them out of matched play. So before we go into the whole narrative part of the campaign I was wondering if the summoning needed adjusting.

1. Is Legion of Nagash and Maggotkin summoning rules fair/fun in a path to glory? Please note that we are NOT looking for a perfect balanced system as many seek to find in a matched play however from that one time I watched a path to glory tzeentch battle with unristricted summoning it became clear that some kind of nerfing or aggrement is needed. 

2. If yes on 1. Then how does those summoning rules work for us when we also have armies like serraphon and Tzeentch that at least for now is un the unristricted hey lets spawn a  ton of units every turn rules for summoning. Say serraphon met Legions of Nagash, Serraphon would dominate summoning in an instant.

So to all the narrative and Path to glory fans, how does everyone deal with this?

Thanks in advance.

 

[someone2040]

So I think it's important to disinguish between the special grave yard deployment (Stuff in your list) vs summoning dead units (Stuff not in your list) for Legions of Nagash, the former isn't really summoning.

That being said, in general summoning for free tends to imbalance games. This is why matched play has such harsh restrictions on summoning (requiring reinforcement points). I know that in particular in the path to glory my local group are playing at the moment, summoning units is outright banned (but I assume summoning wyldwoods/gnarlmaws is probably fine although hasn't come up yet).

 

I think ultimately though, it's just something that's a part of the game and every group has to figure out if it's something they want to play around with. You could take cues from matched play, and set aside some of your units in reserve to be summoned in later. You could suggest that only people with less glory points can summon (and only up until their glory is equal with their opponents). You could just leave it uncapped and leave it up to players to control what is the right amount.

 

I guess one thing to keep in mind, is that in general Path to Glory I think is meant to be a 'army building' league. By that, I mean to suggest that if everyone is starting new armies, they might not actually have a ton of excess models they can summon anyway.

[Lightbox]

One way my group tried to balance summoning was that for every wizard you had you could attempt to summon 1 new warscroll in. And you could only attempt that warscroll once per game. So basically each wizard got 1 shot at summoning a new unit each game it made it not too bad because you couldn't swarm foes with summoning and if you tried to do nothing but wizards then sure -some- units would get summoned in but you're also gimping yourself by your entire army basically being squishy wizards who are really reliant on lucky summoning.

[MachinaMandala]

The problem with summoning (especially in the past) was that it allowed a utility knife system with absolutely no downsides.

I'd personally say that summoning something should cost an extra 25% of points (especially if the player has lots of different options to pick from), as it allows you to cater to different changes in the game.

[Ahriman]

One thing that I am looking to try in some campaigns in the near future is to allow summoning, but with a risk involved in it and a benefit to your opponent.

What I'm thinking is before the game the player who wishes to summon decides whether they will or not for this game. If they choose yes their opponent will receive a random 'ruse' card from the open war deck to give them a slight edge.

Then the summoning player will roll a dice, multiplying the result by 100 (3 = 300 for example), this is the number of points the summoner can summon that game. They have to decide the risk of possibly rolling a 1 compared to a 6 and giving their opponent the ruse advantage.

Long winded to write out and untested, but hopefully it gives players the best of both worlds!

[hellalugosi]

the way i balance it is that if a person loses a battle in which they use unrestricted summoning they lose a glory point as their costly use of magic sets them back. if they win however, they earn glory as normal.

its not 100% balanced but it allows players to guage risk reward in summoning without having to insert more restrictions.

[Greasygeek]

On 28/4/2018 at 1:32 AM, hellalugosi said:

the way i balance it is that if a person loses a battle in which they use unrestricted summoning they lose a glory point as their costly use of magic sets them back. if they win however, they earn glory as normal.

its not 100% balanced but it allows players to guage risk reward in summoning without having to insert more restrictions.

I like this version. Btw we had a few PtG games by now and so far we had free summonings for Nurgle and Death. Meaning that they follow the rules  of their battletomes. We think that it had proved fair. The contagion points/grave systems seem to work.

[Dez]

We only allow 5 warscrolls per battle, but you can summon back a warscroll that was destroyed in the battle. Seems to work.

[Luke82]

I played a ptg campaign last weekend, my orcs against FEC. The summoning wasnt particularly damaging, but a lot of this is because my opponent used it sparingly and didn’t hammer it every turn.

I’d say the real damaging  issue in the PTG games is rolling for priority,  the smaller amount of units meant being on the recieving end of a double turn was pretty much an instant game over.

[Kramer]

53 minutes ago, Luke82 said:

I’d say the real damaging  issue in the PTG games is rolling for priority,  the smaller amount of units meant being on the recieving end of a double turn was pretty much an instant game over.

I felt the same in the first couple of games when the armies got bigger it became more like a normal game. Most of the early games ended up with one big brawl in the middle. Some lucky rolling for saves had the same effect as the double turn to be honest. I think it's because we both tended to choose charts and then rolled and ended up with bigger melee units. (him Skaven, me dispossessed).