Path to Glory

[Mr Mystery]

You posted whilst I was editing

It's well worth the pretty smol entry price just for the core rules. Then tweak away.

No Erik. That's twerking. You stop that this instant, young man.

[Erik Setzer]

Yeah, tweaking might be necessary. That's kind of a big "entry" level, with 5+ units/characters. But hey, tweaking can happen.

Also, I'm not about to twerk... I got it banned at the local GW. (I don't remember the full context any more, but it was really, really funny and totally worth it at the time.)

[Erik Setzer]

Finally had a good look over it... I think for starting players, or even just bringing players into starting a Chaos army, a few tweaks would be better, mainly skipping out on monsters to start with (including characters on Manticores) and cutting unit sizes in half. You'd be able to get two entries out of most boxes, though Chaos Knights might present an issue. Maybe a little editing of the tables.

I think it'd also be an interesting twist to have Fate Points be the currency you use to buy new units or unit upgrades, instead of them being automatic. Then you have to make a choice of whether you want to improve your warband or get closer to the winning goal. Then change the goal to 20 FP, with a caviat that you can't win a campaign with a sub-.500 record, so if you're at 20 FP from hoarding them but have, say, an 8-10 record, you'd still need a couple of extra wins to win the grand prize. But maybe the gods are still kind enough to advance you to a Daemon Prince for sticking it out... so you save up 20 FP to become a Daemon Prince and then just need to hit over .500 (get a winning record) to win. Someone might early in the campaign decide to "drop behind" in FP in order to build up their warband to have a better chance of getting wins and accumulating a winning record in their quest for 20 FP (if you win a game, your average FP should be 2, so with this method, you could increase/improve your warband *and* get one point closer to the goal). Just some strategy added to the campaign, and a better representation of the gods wanting an actual winning champion rather than just someone who could find more games than anyone else and lost 10 games in a row (somehow) and, in the process, manages to win.

Oh yeah, and nix the (sort-of) auto-win for becoming a Daemon Prince. Otherwise you run a good likelihood that in the first days of the campaign, someone rolls good, becomes a Daemon Prince and then just has to win a game and they take home the prize.

[Erik Setzer]

Hopefully they'll release it later at a reasonable price like maybe $35 per game

Hey, what do you know, they did it! $33 per game, has all the gaming stuff (including paint guides) bundled.

And I did indeed grab it. (Well, *them.* I have plenty of 40K Chaos, and it might give me more of a reason to use them.) Only complaint is that it's ePub format, so I have to find a converter to make them .mobi for Kindle. (Also, the only ePub reader I have on my PC makes them look awful, so I need a better reader. If anyone's got suggestions, that'd be great.)

[draco84oz]

And I did indeed grab it. (Well, *them.* I have plenty of 40K Chaos, and it might give me more of a reason to use them.) Only complaint is that it's ePub format, so I have to find a converter to make them .mobi for Kindle. (Also, the only ePub reader I have on my PC makes them look awful, so I need a better reader. If anyone's got suggestions, that'd be great.)

Chrome has an app called "Readium" that reads epub3 pretty well. Might be advisable to go with that to begin with.

I also downloaded the rules because of interest - I was a big fan of the PtG rules that they put in the 270's of White Dwarf (back during 6th ed, IIRC), so I wanted to see how they compared. And...wellllll....its different. Better? Don't really know.

First off, the warbands in the AoS version are much bigger. You get a similar amount of rolls as you would in the WD version, but you get more models overall - for example, in the WD version, rolling up Chaos Warriors would get you D3 warriors that you could then spend points on to purchse, but a roll up in AoS get you 10 of them straight up. It means that the AoS version is more of a small army rather than a warband in the Mordheim style.

Secondly, in the WD version, you can take casualties within your warband, but in the AoS version, you just replace them without penalty between games. This means that your force is constatly expanding, as opposed to the WD version where the growth is a bit slower as you have to replace casualties etc.

Finally, the path to Apotheosis (ie. Daemonhood) in the AoS version is much quicker. Whilst you could get to Daemonhood in the WD version in 4 games if you were lucky or spent the favor points, it only takes 1 game in the AoS version (that said, in both versions, its a 1/36 roll possibility). And on top of that, in AoS, once one of the campaign's champions gets to Daemonhood and they win a game, that's it - the campaign is over.

Personally, this last point is a real bone of contention for me - whilst having a winner for some campaigns is a good thing, for a warband-style game like Mordheim, Necromunda, GorkaMorka or even Blood Bowl, its the open-ended, drop-in/drop-out nature of the campaign that makes it attractive. Sure, newer players will get smashed by more experienced ones, but there are always boosts they get to try to get them up to speed quickly. And a lot of more experienced players will eventually tire of stomping all opposition and roll a new warband just for the fun of it. Plus on top of that, once you get your champion to Daemonhood, you only get to enjoy the power for one game before its all over!?

I can see both working - some prefer a larger style of game, plus I can see the other AoS factions eventually being added to this ruleset. But personally, the lower model count and more open-ended campaign rules of the WD version still make it for me. Plus, you can download the rules for free, and the scenarios (there are 5 plus a multi-player free for all) don't cost anything (as far as I can tell, the AoS scenarios have to be bought in addition to the main rules).

Plus, did you know they did a variant of the WD Path to Glory rules called "Quest for the Grail" that was based around Brettonnian warbands?

[Morgrim]

I presume the rules are very Chaos specific and don't really work for other armies? I'd like some sort of escalation league rules for my Seraphon.

[draco84oz]

I presume the rules are very Chaos specific and don't really work for other armies? I'd like some sort of escalation league rules for my Seraphon.

Most of the rules are chaos-specific, but only in name, really - things like Soulscream (-1 Bravery to all units within 8") could renamed to stuff like Horrendous Visage or Ethereal Aura and have no change in mechanics. The only real thing that may cause issues are the mutations, the snake eyes result that turns your champion into a Chaos Spawn, or the Apotheosis result, but those could also be redone with a bit of thought. As I mentioned above, it was redone for the Brettonnians, with the path to Daemonhood being the path to the Grail instead.

[Mr Mystery]

Yup.

Bit of tweaking would work wonders.

No, that twerking. Knock it off.