Is Path to Glory considered well balanced?

[Dreadmund]

Me and a friend have decided to play a path to glory campaign together while we both slowly paint up our new forces. I felt pretty good with my rolls on the follower tables until I saw what he got. In matched play his warband would be worth almost double the points of my warband. Perhaps I'm underestimating the abilities of my units and overestimating his but it still seems pretty intimidating. He has more bodies, way more wounds, more damage potential...

Is Path to Glory considered a balanced, fun way to start new armies? Or should I prepare to get my ass thoroughly kicked for the whole thing?

[Jetengine]

I'd say its not well balanced imo. 

[Luke82]

Probably not to be honest. I think you have to agree to be pretty flexible with your opponent if you want to play the PtG. Things like summoning, double turns, and big multiwound monsters are much bigger issues in smaller games. It’s not enjoyable stomping someone for the campaign either so your pal will probably want to balance it out a bit too.

Is your friend playing death by any chance? The LoN Path to glory lists are crazy compared to the others. I played the campaign as Greenskinz, and got demolished in every game by a death player.

 

EDIT: That said I do think the path to glory is perfect for what you want, small growing games as your paint and learn new armies. Just be prepared to spend a few games finding out the right balance.

[Dreadmund]

6 minutes ago, Luke82 said:

Is your friend playing death by any chance? The LoN Path to glory lists are crazy compared to the others. I played the campaign as Greenskinz, and got demolished in every game by a death player.

Yes! I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks they're crazy. He has 2 Mortis engines...

[Luke82]

You can probably pick up the old Path to Glory book on eBay for a few quid, the death lists in there are much more reasonable. If your pal doesn’t wanna back down from his Mortis Engines though then Path to Glory is probably not ideal ha ha.

[Ninelives]

I think the game is great in principle, but needs house rework to actually be viable if balance is sought after. 

For a narrative game showing the imbalance in armies, it probably works out of the book. 

[Dreadmund]

Thanks for the perspectives guys! We've talked about it and we're going to do a slow grow campaign similar to path to glory but based on matched play points instead. That way we get to have a slowly escalating series of games like we wanted but hopefully it will be more consistently balanced.

[Icegoat]

Path to glory is in my opinion a waste of GW time and effort. It already plays like a house ruled campaign for fun. I don't understand why it is taken so seriously in the battle tomes those pages would be much better served with a kill team esq game. It's too niche 

[kenshin620]

1 hour ago, Icegoat said:

Path to glory is in my opinion a waste of GW time and effort. It already plays like a house ruled campaign for fun. I don't understand why it is taken so seriously in the battle tomes those pages would be much better served with a kill team esq game. It's too niche 

We have Kill Team! It's called AoS Skirmish!

A game thats also...not exactly well fleshed out and balanced.

[PJetski]

Path to Glory can be fun... just don't let anyone play Beastclaw Raiders

[Reuben Parker]

Nope not at all balanced some armies will end up with about twice the points of others on startup. 

You can use their structure and advancement table but I think would be better to just play an agreed number of points. Start 750 add 250 or 500 per month kind of thing. 

[Kramer]

6 hours ago, Dreadmund said:

Is Path to Glory considered a balanced, fun way to start new armies? Or should I prepare to get my ass thoroughly kicked for the whole thing?

No, yes, and change the rules if that happens. 

Path to glory is a narrative campaign. It’s all for the fun of the players. Give yourself an extra unit roll. Play unbalanced scenarios change it up to have fun. 

It’s not meant to be balanced, it’s meant to be fun 😊

[Taketheskull]

While we are ragging on Path to Glory, I just can't stand were they put the rules in the Battletomes.

Right in between the faction army rules and the Warscrolls! And the worst thing is, as people point out, it is so unbalanced (and not in a fun narrative way) that these pages of inconvenience are effectively junk.

Phew! Got that off my chest.

[Kramer]

Nope, not junk. Amazing basic recipe for fun! 

Not ideal to start with as it requires some adaptation on the fly. I just can't, can't stress enough how amazingly fun it can be. Just needs some small help on the players part. Don't see it as a pure do's and don'ts but helpfull hints for your own campaign

J

[Kramer]

6 hours ago, Icegoat said:

Path to glory is in my opinion a waste of GW time and effort. It already plays like a house ruled campaign for fun. I don't understand why it is taken so seriously in the battle tomes those pages would be much better served with a kill team esq game. It's too niche 

I know I’m just basically playing devils advocate because I agree with that’s it not balanced but I’m going to defend it. It’s not a waste of time. You are right in not understanding its taken seriously... It shouldn’t be. It’s the ultimate beer and pretzel campaign. Just dont judge it as something it isn’t. 

It got me into the warhammer fantasy  back in the day, it’s how I teach friends the game and it’s a great fun way to just roll up a warband for a one of game. 

I also agree with you that’s it’s niche, but so is killteam. And both deserve the time killteam got. Just like skirmish. They should have done it better before releasing it.

but still... so much fun  

and now I’ll stop defending it. If you want some help on the campaign just ask, I’ll be happy to share my experiences and tips (I learned through mishaps 🙈)

[FlatTooth]

With some house ruling it’s a lot of fun. We never just roll on the war and tables. We roll on the advance tables though. Since we choose our units we can make sure they aren’t too absurd. I also write out mini-campaigns for  us to use.  Winner is whoever has most glory points at the end of the campaign rather than the current system. 

[amysrevenge]

18 minutes ago, FlatTooth said:

With some house ruling it’s a lot of fun. We never just roll on the war and tables. We roll on the advance tables though. Since we choose our units we can make sure they aren’t too absurd. I also write out mini-campaigns for  us to use.  Winner is whoever has most glory points at the end of the campaign rather than the current system. 

Yeah this.  We did a couple of these, with 15-20 players even.  You just have to all be on roughly the same page, and be willing to deliberately hamper yourself if necessary to make it more fun for the whole group.  If you can get a group of like-minded people together, who are willing to take the ruleset as a guideline and not a straightjacket, if can lead to a very enjoyable time.

There is a subset of players who are not willing or able to do this (and I'm not judging them - it's just a different way to play, no better and no worse).  For those players, PtG is a waste of time and has no value.

[kenshin620]

1 hour ago, Kramer said:

I know I’m just basically playing devils advocate because I agree with that’s it not balanced but I’m going to defend it. It’s not a waste of time. You are right in not understanding its taken seriously... It shouldn’t be. It’s the ultimate beer and pretzel campaign. Just dont judge it as something it isn’t. 🙈

I love the idea of PTG but I agree with the other poster on the BIZARRE placement of the rules.

 

Lets be real here, the vast majority of people buy battletomes to look at Allegiance Abilities and Matched Play Profiles. So why does it make logical sense to put a very much niche narrative game rules IN BETWEEN the Allegiance Abilities+Magic Items+Spell Lores section and the Battalion+Unit Warscrolls section.

To me it would save a lot of extra page flipping if the PTG rules were in a different position. Sure it might reduce visibility on PTG but I think at this point unless GW makes a major push for PTG, it will be a game type that you probably already are very interested in rather than flipping through the book and going "hey whats this Path To Glory thing".

Though props to GW with sticking to their guns on PTG, Skirmish isnt even in the battletomes!

[Kramer]

46 minutes ago, kenshin620 said:

I love the idea of PTG but I agree with the other poster on the BIZARRE placement of the rules.

 

Lets be real here, the vast majority of people buy battletomes to look at Allegiance Abilities and Matched Play Profiles. So why does it make logical sense to put a very much niche narrative game rules IN BETWEEN the Allegiance Abilities+Magic Items+Spell Lores section and the Battalion+Unit Warscrolls section.

To me it would save a lot of extra page flipping if the PTG rules were in a different position. Sure it might reduce visibility on PTG but I think at this point unless GW makes a major push for PTG, it will be a game type that you probably already are very interested in rather than flipping through the book and going "hey whats this Path To Glory thing".

Though props to GW with sticking to their guns on PTG, Skirmish isnt even in the battletomes!

Yeah agreed on the placement and the props . But I think they just wanted to combine them with the battle plans most tomes contain. I wouldn’t really know where else to place them. If you design them for the first time reader it’s the right place. If you design it as a reference book. It’s indeed a bit weird. Can’t think of anywhere where it would fit better. Maybe after the points page, but that’s definitely in the right place together with the scrolls. 🤔

[Taketheskull]

3 hours ago, Kramer said:

Nope, not junk. Amazing basic recipe for fun!  

Sorry, you’re right, I was in full rant mode and was getting a bit pejorative.

 

[Greyshadow]

I am really keen to play Path to Glory after my war band completes the Skirmish campaign. I do realise it won’t really be very balanced (it is a narrative play expansion after all) and will likely just house rule lots of things to try to make the games as exciting as possible. 

I do hope it sticks around. I haven’t bought it yet but might soon just in case it goes off sale and isn’t updated with a new version. I remember it was pretty fairly priced.

[Baron Wastelands]

I am playing in a PTG campaign involving 10 different armies, but all taken from the lists in the PTG book, rather than the battletomes. Interestingly, in terms of points, although we only calculated points afterwards, they are reasonably balanced (within max 80 points of each other, and all around 500). 

This doesn’t mean they are balanced, of course, and I don’t think PTG is meant to be matched play worthy. For example 1 army is a “gorechosen” army, and started with a mighty lord of khorne and 4 bloodhound heroes. It isn’t very good, of course, but it’s a cool idea and can pull off some fabulous synergy.

I think that’s the point of PTG, you can take what you like and mix it up a bit. The campaign has been great fun so far.

[Kamose]

PtG is not balanced at all. In the 'matched play' sense, it completely lacks any balancing mechanism of any kind. Armies are determined randomly and in isolation if you just roll from the tables.

But...(and it's a big one 😁)

...that is absolutely and completely by design! The balance in a PtG campaign comes entirely from the players, their mission choices, added special rules, and win conditions, but not from list construction.  In my opinion, this makes PtG both very interesting and a great way to introduce players to narrative gaming.

My advice for starting AoS with PtG would be to grab some of the Open War cards. Be sure to make frequent use of the Ruses and Sudden Death cards as these go a long way to helping a smaller force achieve victory. It also helps new players learn there's more to AoS than simply matched play games.  Asymmetrical battles can be loads of fun and something that simply does not exist in matched play (not intentionally, at least).

After building up your armies, you might also try out Firestorm. It's a great campaign system and, once again, pairs really well with the Open War cards.

So don't dismiss PtG just because it's unbalanced. That's by design! Embrace the imbalance and enjoy the story of your armies that you're both building! 😊

[kenshin620]

1 hour ago, Kamose said:

So don't dismiss PtG just because it's unbalanced. That's by design! Embrace the imbalance and enjoy the story of your armies that you're both building! 😊

I mean, you could say that about warhammer in general! 🤣

[Kramer]

1 hour ago, kenshin620 said:

I mean, you could say that about warhammer in general! 🤣

Yessir, only not by design... I think 🤔 😂

2 hours ago, Kamose said:

PtG is not balanced at all. In the 'matched play' sense, it completely lacks any balancing mechanism of any kind. Armies are determined randomly and in isolation if you just roll from the tables.

But...(and it's a big one 😁)

...that is absolutely and completely by design! The balance in a PtG campaign comes entirely from the players, their mission choices, added special rules, and win conditions, but not from list construction.  In my opinion, this makes PtG both very interesting and a great way to introduce players to narrative gaming.

My advice for starting AoS with PtG would be to grab some of the Open War cards. Be sure to make frequent use of the Ruses and Sudden Death cards as these go a long way to helping a smaller force achieve victory. It also helps new players learn there's more to AoS than simply matched play games.  Asymmetrical battles can be loads of fun and something that simply does not exist in matched play (not intentionally, at least).

After building up your armies, you might also try out Firestorm. It's a great campaign system and, once again, pairs really well with the Open War cards.

So don't dismiss PtG just because it's unbalanced. That's by design! Embrace the imbalance and enjoy the story of your armies that you're both building! 😊

This is amazing advice. The total war cards with sudden death cards do work very well. Maybe do a quick point check or even glory point check and if the difference is X amount give the player that’s behind a sudden death. You can even do that within the existing scenarios  

also the open war generator in the Genrals Handbook ‘18 has a list of sudden deaths you can roll for if you don’t have the cards. (And randomise the whole scenario of course)