Games Workshop has finally released a stand alone book for Path to Glory. In our initial review for the edition’s launch, we were pretty excited to see what the framework could do. This book gives players a full campaign to play through along with a full suite of rules and enhancements to customize your armies.
We would like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a review copy of this book.
Playing Ravaged Coast Games
Ravaged Coast games differ from normal Path To Glory games in a few ways. First there is a catch up mechanic for uneven games. If one player is playing with over 200 points more than their opponent, the player with more points selects units with points values equal to the difference between the two armies minus 200 points, and those units are Stalled Reinforcements and can only show up in your territory on the board edge on a 4+. You can only attempt to bring in one unit each round in your movement phase, which means there will be games where you don’t get anything in at all. Ultimately this is an interesting mechanic, but I would recommend just aiming to play an even game with your opponent, aiming to bring the same number of points. 200 points is a pretty large delta for no underdog bonus, so I would probably avoid those games.
Next Ravaged Coast games have their own set of twists separated into four thematic tables. The book recommends rolling for which set of twists to draw from, but you can just pick which would be most thematic for the game you’re playing. The twists themselves run the gamut from the underdog being able to do d3 mortals to everything near a terrain feature, to bonuses to gathering the currency for this ruleset (called emberstone, but we’ll touch on that later). None of these seem particularly out of line so there isn’t really anything to avoid here.
Interestingly, there is also a change to All Out Attack. In all games if a unit uses All Out Attack they also make themselves +1 to be hit. Note that this only applies for the phase, so you’re safe using it on shooting units. That said it poses an interesting wrinkle on when you want to use the ability.
Ravaged Coast games also don’t just end on round five, instead you roll to see if it ends on the end of round four, on a 3+ the battle continues and on round five it continues on a 5+. All games end at the end of round six however. To be honest this is kinda beans. Variable game length never feels good and honestly you can probably get away with just saying the game will end on round five.
There are also rules for withdrawing from battles. If you’re getting your teeth kicked in, you can elect to withdraw. If you do, your remaining units don’t count as having been destroyed but you automatically give your opponent a major victory. This is honestly great. There are often games where you know the victor early, and having to stick with a decided game for mechanics purposes is never fun.
Emberstone
Ok so this is the central mechanic to Ravaged Coast campaigns. Emberstone are your mugguffins/currency/bafomdads central to the campaign. Using this currency is how you increase your army limit, get upgrades for your units,and add things to your army.
You collect Emberstone in a variety of ways. First at the end of the battle the winner gets three emberstone shards and the loser gets D3. In addition, at the end of every Ravaged Coast game, you roll a dice for each objective you control and on a 4+ you get an emberstone point. Its worth noting here that of the twelve missions, none of them have more than three objective markers, and there are three with none at all so don’t expect to make bank with this rule. Lastly some missions will have a twist where there is an Emberstone Cluster on the battlefield. You can snag these in the same manner as you hold objectives and if you do, the unit on it holds it for the rest of the game. While they’re holding an Emberstone Shard the unit gets -1 to its save but +1 to wound. If they die they drop the shard they’re holding and it can be retrieved by another unit. This adds a fun mini game to each mission and I kind of wish these were more liberally sprinkled throughout the mission pack.
So what do these points do? Well they basically replace Renown Points and Glory Points in the standard Path to Glory ruleset. When you add units to your roster, you do so by spending a prerequisite number of Emberstone Shards relative to the unit’s point value. In addition if you want to level up a unit, you need to do so with Emberstone Shards. Combining these currencies is an interesting change considering we only just got the core Path to Glory rules and this significantly changes how you interact with that core ruleset. That said it provides an interesting push and pull to the designed system. Do you upgrade a unit? Or do you recruit a new unit so you can play 200 points up in your next game. I think ultimately players will play on the edge of trying to keep their armies just ahead of their opponent’s in the campaign and spending any leftovers on roster upgrades.
Battleplans
Ravaged Coast games take place in a campaign format. Each mission is categorized into one of three mission packs: Scorched Outskirts, Gnaw’s Edge, Hateful Shores, and Hel’s Claw. you progress through the packs in the order above via different criteria. You can always play Scorched Outskirts games, if one of the players have at least 20 Emberstone Shards you can play Gnaw’s Edge games, if one player has won a Gnaw’s Edge game you can play a game from the Hateful Shores pack, and if both players have won a game from that, you can play the climactic Raid on Hel’s Claw. I’m of two minds about this system. It feels like one you sprint to the end of once someone hits 20 Emberstone Shards. That said, I like that with this system you’ll always be in the running to win the whole thing by just keeping up with your over achieving friend.
It’s worth noting that none of these Battleplans have recommended terrain layouts like the GT missions do. I would argue these missions (especially the asymmetrical ones) would be better served with those layouts since bad terrain on these missions can drastically change how they play. Not to mention the fact that recommended terrain layouts would help folks make more thematic tables for these missions.
Most of these missions are asymmetrical with the underdog (the person with the least Emberstone Shards) being able to define which player takes what role. Overall though, none of these missions are particularly mind blowing, mostly relying on the twists to make things interesting. A lot of the missions not having objective markers is a bit odd, especially considering there are plenty of warscrolls with abilities that key off standing on and targeting things on objective markers.
Paths
There’s a ton of paths to put your units on in this book to enhance the way they play. So much so that going through all of them ability by ability would take an entire article. So we’re just gonna run through the highlights.
Most of the paths focus on heroes filling out the roles they want to fill on the battlefield. There’s a few paths for melee heroes, one that focuses on units staying and combat, another focuses on heroes meant to disrupt key units, and another focuses on units that want to be in combat alongside other units to buff them.
Wizards and Priests also get a few trees each. Both get a tree for normal casting/chanting and another that’s more focused on Manifestations. The casting focused Wizard tree is particularly strong, giving you +2 to cast on your first cast each turn, the ability to cast a spell at the end of the turn, and the ability to select two targets for your unlimited spells. I would recommend windmill slamming that on your Wizards early and often.
Non-Heroes also get some love, with Infantry, Cavalry, Beasts, Monsters, and War Machines all getting their own trees. Most do what you’d expect but a particular stand out is the War Machine tree, specifically the ability Veteran Spotter. The ability lets you ignore the Guarded Hero rule which means you can snipe out characters with warp lightning cannons which is very very funny.
The sheer amount of options here are a fantastic feature of this book, really letting you make your army unique and hyper specialized. The only downside is not all these trees are created equally, and there are some major standouts. That said, with this many options it’s hard to balance everything evenly.
Ravaged Coast Enhancements and Lores
You get a suite of six Heroic Traits and six Artefacts of Power to choose from in addition to the ones in your book. On the Heroic Traits side we have abilities all over the map. Spiteful Spark for example just does one mortal wound on a 2+ to everyone in combat with that unit. This is mostly situational but not particularly impactful. Brash and Angry on the other hand lets this unit charge a unit that declares a charge within 9” at the cost of imposing Strikes-Last. This is incredibly strong and can easily win you games by disrupting your opponent’s plans.
The Artefacts of Power on the other hand are more universally bangers. Warpmock Blade is a really fun one that copies all the abilities of nearby weapons in combat except companion which can lead to some very funny interactions. Magmic Key is another strong one, giving you a once per battle teleport. These artefacts are almost all useful in different circumstances and definitely worth giving a look.
There is also an entire spell and prayer lore to draw from for your roster. The lone Unlimited spell, Pyroclastic Repression, imposes a -2 to run and charge rolls which is great for disrupting an early offensive gameplan. There’s also Embody the Blaze which goes off on a pretty tall order of 8, which lets a unit fight in the hero phase but then gets Strike-Last until the end of the turn. This can completely turn a game on its head if pulled off in the right circumstances so it’s definitely worth looking at (especially for those on the Path of the Sorcerer mentioned above).
The prayers on the other hand are much less splashy. Mostly filled with things like +3 to control score, +1 to wound and +2 to charge. There are a couple of bread and butter prayers in here that would be a welcome addition to your roster, but nothing to really write home (or to you all) about.
Emberstone Forge
Another way to spend your hard earned emberstone shards, and one of the headliners of the whole book really, is the Emberstone Forge. For just two shards from your vault you can equip a hero with a shiny new emberstone-enhanced weapon. These come in both melee and ranged flavours and sport similar profiles to start with: both hit on 4s, wound on 3s and have 1 rend and d3 damage. A melee emberstone-enhanced weapon starts with a swingy d6+1 attacks, whilst the ranged version is d3+1 but gets a 15” range.
You then immediately make two forging rolls for the weapon. They key to forging rolls is that when you get them you have to do them, and you have to apply all results. There’s nothing entirely bad, but there are quite a few results that lower a stat whilst improving another (for example, getting -1 attack but +2 rend) and six possible results that just do nothing (a bit of a shame, honestly).
After the first two forging rolls, you can choose to spend more emberstone shards for forging rolls, 1-for-1. The trick here is you have to declare how many shards you are spending before making any rolls, so you can’t spend as you roll one at a time and try to play the odds. Commit, and get whatever is coming to you.
As a mechanic, I think your mileage may vary on this one. Making your own custom weapon for your favourite hero is super cool and exactly what narrative supplements should be providing, but this particular implementation leans quite hard on the ‘narrative=random’ thing that GW love so much, and having no control over how this weapon grows over a campaign might spoil things for players who want more control. That being said, if you want to try to wrest a smidgen of control over the dice, there is a way…
Regiments of Renown
There are four regiments of renown, one for each Grand Alliance, and they all serve the same purpose: making the Emberstone Forge a bit less random, and giving you the opportunity to kitbash a cool hero model.
Each of the regiments are made up of one hero model and all have the same regiment ability: allowing you to re-roll one forging roll during the aftermath sequence. If you’re invested in forging your own weapon of legends, then it’s worth using these for that reason alone. With regards stats, the heroes are all the same with 5 wounds, a 4+ save, a 5” move and a few rend 1 damage d3 attacks. The Death hero gets a 6+ ward as well so is clearly wildly, unforgivably, overpowered.
There are some differences though, and each hero has their own unique ability. For Order, the Realmstone Innovator can try to supercharge the emberstone-enhanced weapon of another hero within combat range – on a 2+ adding 1 to hit rolls with the weapon and on a 1 doing a mortal to them instead. A relatively tame ability, and you are having a slow and squishy hero follow around someone you presumably want in combat, which isn’t ideal.
The Warped Saboteur is the Chaos option and has the most controversial ability here – it can pick an emberstone-enhanced weapon within 6” and permanently destroy it on a 6. A 3-5 instead inflicts d3 mortal damage on the target. This ability has a bit of a Blood Bowl feel to it in the low chance of something permanently bad happening to your opponent, not everyone enjoys this sort of gameplay so potentially one to talk through with your opponent and houserule if needed.
Death have The Sinister Nullifier who has a passive 12” aura of a 5+ ward against damage inflicted by emberstone-enhanced weapons. Super mild, unless you have a regular opponent roll up some monstrous emberstone killer that slaughters your army.
Finally, Destruction receive The Weird-Crafta, which is another emberstone-enhanced weapon buffing piece. Like the Innovator, they need to be within combat range (though in the hero phase, rather than movement) to do their thing. This timing is a bit nicer for supercharging something early doors for it to then zoom off in the movement phase, but might make keeping up more difficult. The buff here is also the strongest, but with the most risk. On a 2+ the target gets +1 damage on their emberstone-enhanced weapon, but every time they roll a 1 to hit they do a mortal damage to themselves. This is fun, but in terms of theming it feels like Chaos and Destruction should have their abilities switched around. That being said this is Narrative Play, baby, and the only thing between you and having whichever ability you want out of these heroes is a few keywords and an understanding friend.
Final Thoughts
Matthew: These days I am a matched play boy, but I spent a happy few years playing a huge amount of narrative AoS and honestly, this book kinda reminds me of those early takes on Path to Glory. The randomness, the kinda duff battleplans, the structure of building to a final battle that anyone can win even if the other person won every single other game leading up to it (am I bitter from personal experience? Of course not, it was narrative. Or something). I had a huge amount of fun then, whether that was a testament to this kind of system or to the power of corner shop red wine with a good friend I will leave to the reader.
I think this book is a good start. I love that they’re doing a pure narrative book and not cramming one matched play thing in to try and entice in a bigger audience, it gives them more room to breathe and it’s a more honest product for it. I hope it sells well enough that we get more within this edition, as I’d be excited to see what the design team can do when they’re more confident writing for fourth edition.
Norman: Overall this book tries to do a lot, providing an insane amount of ways to upgrade your roster and units. That said there are a couple of missteps in my opinion when it comes to the campaign side of things. Stuff like variable game length, the ability for games where you’re 200 points down to be somewhat commonplace, and battle plans themselves being somewhat bland, specifically are things I don’t really jive with. That said, the great thing about narrative games is you can kind of cherry pick rules you do and don’t like for your group to make things work to your taste and there’s plenty here to work with.
The sheer rules writing lift of the Paths, the Forge, all the Regiments of Renown cannot be overstated. There’s so much there and it’s at least worth looking at when making your own campaigns. Hopefully Games Workshop keeps putting these out, because I’d love to see more things to draw from for Path to Glory in this vein.
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