Recently, my friend and I started on a 40k Path to Glory campaign. For those who don't know, Path to Glory is a small campaign system whereby each player chooses a small warband of models at the beginning and evolve the warband between games. Warbands are generally randomly chosen from a series of tables by rolling a D6. The campaign is Chaos-centric in the base rules, but I see no reason why people couldn't make random tables for their own armies. I was tempted to do orks for the campaign, but I play orks too much so I stuck with Chaos. My friend also stuck with his Death Guard army, only using models he has available in his collection. Myself, on the other hand, decided to dig out some of my old models and spruce them up a bit, effectively making a new army for the campaign.
I had a plethora of metal sonic weapons from way back in my Emperor's Children days, but as I moved away from Slaanesh and made a Word Bearer army, my stash of sonic weapons went into my bitz box... until now.
We selected our Lords using the normal Path to Glory rules, and randomly generated our warbands (give or take a few units so we could build things using models/parts we already have). You can see our starting warbands below.
My opponent's army consisted of his Lord, armed with a Lightning Claw and the Murder Sword, and wearing terminator armour. He has a second Lord armed with a simple power sword.
For his troops, he has a squad of 10 Chaos Marines with the Mark of Nurgle, and a unit of 7 Plague Marines with free rhino.
For his final roll, he got a Chaos Spawn.
For my army, I chose a Lord with twin lightning claws. He also has an attack familiar, simply because I've had the dark eldar slave models for years and wanted to put one to some use. My second in command is a Sorcerer.
For my troops, I rolled for a unit of Chaos Space Marines, which I gave the Mark of Slaanesh, a unit of Noise Marines, and a unit of Raptors. However, I soon decided to swap the Raptors out for a second unit of Noise Marines.
A squad of havocs rounded out the force nicely. I converted them to look like Noise Marines themselves, just for flavour, but count as being armed with 2 missile launchers and 2 heavy bolters.
Opening Skirmish
We opened the campaign with a mission rolled for in the main rulebook. We rolled a Dawn of War deployment, with The Scouring objective. During the game, my Noise Marines held 2 of the objectives in my deployment zone, while the 10-man Death Guard unit held one in theirs. In the middle there was a large scrap between my Lord, my 10-man unit, the Plague Marines and both enemy Lords. Somehow the Slaaneshi marines held against this onslaught just long enough to win me the game. My sorcerer also got involved, but due to me not knowing his Force Staff was only AP4, his impact on the battle was lackluster at best. He did, however, manage to get off some powerful Psychic Shriek attacks.
For my victory this game, I got 2 glory points, while my opponent got the 1.
Game 2
When rolling between games to expand our warbands, we both rolled for a vehicle. I got a Maulerfiend, which is handy because I already had one in my Word Bearer army, and my opponent got a Defiler.
For our second game, it was much more of a close game, a veritable bloodbath which is how we like it. This time we had an Emperor's Will objective (an objective in each of our deployment zones). My Maulerfiend got stuck into the Plague Marines and lesser Lord early on, and held them up for nearly the entire game. He slowly mashed his way through them, being lucky to avoid 90% of their meltabombs, krak grenades and power fist attacks.
The enemy defiler, however, was a bit more destructive, turning the 10-man squad of Slaaneshi marines into mush in turn 1 with its battle cannon, leaving only the Lord and a few guys alive. But even this devastating attack was not enough to stop the remainder of the unit marching forward and contesting the Plague Marine objective.
Later in the game, however, the defiler finished the job from its firing position on a ridge to one side of the battlefield, and even managed to rip apart the Maulerfiend in close combat into the bargain.
Midway through the game, the Nurgle terminator Lord Deep Struck into my side of the battlefield to claim my own objective, but my Havocs and Noise Marine squads managed to keep hold of it until the bitter end.
After seven turns (Nurgle's favoured number indeed!) I still held my objective, and Nurgle did not hold theirs as their backline had been decimated by my Sorcerer some time before, and victory went to the followers of Slaanesh for the second time.
As for glory points, I rolled 3, giving me a total of 5 to my opponent's 2.
Rolling for new units, my opponent got another character in the form of a Warpsmith, while I rolled another vehicle. This time I got a predator, but I swapped it out for a Chaos Vindicator as I already have one of those in my Word Bearer force.
In all, the campaign has been very interesting. I quite like the random nature of warband creation, but only wish I had the funds to stick to it and build the army I actually rolled for, instead of swapping out some options for ones I already have.
My Lord is somewhat lacking in terms of his damage output. I gave him lightning claws in the hope he would be very killy and choppy, but he doesn't do much, and his attack familiar is yet to cause a single casualty in both games! My sorcerer, while pants in combat, is pretty destructive with his psychic powers, and I look forward to seeing what he can do in the future.
I stand by my opinion that Sonic Weapons are a mixed bag. I am glad that Path to Glory doesn't use points values because I find sonic blasters verging on useless for the amount of points they cost. I've probably killed, maybe 2 models in total with the sonic blasters. The blastmasters, on the other hand, are brutal. A strength 8, AP 3 blast is nothing to scoff at. Like large boyz mobs are to the nobz that lead them, I feel like the rest of the Noise Marine unit is just a delivery system to keep the blastmaster alive while it works its magic.
