It feels like quite a long time since we’ve had a new fully Path to Glory narrative book for Warhammer Age of Sigmar. 

In fact, the last one, Ravaged Coast, Matt reviewed back in January. (I do have to mention at this point that the book encourages you to utilise Ravaged Coasts when running your own campaign from this book).

The older I get, the more I’m getting into Narrative gameplay instead of competitive gameplay, so I’m very much looking forward to getting stuck into this one. 

Path to Glory: Blighted Wilds is up for preorder right now. Our thanks to Games Workshop for sending us a copy to review for you folks. You can save some pennies vs RRP by preordering your copy through our affiliates over at Element Games. You’ll be doing us a solid at the same time too!

Without further ado, let us find out if this book is worth your pennies.

The Lore

Ghyran is a pretty busy place right now, with various factions vying for control. It’s not somewhere I’d book my Summer holiday too, that is for sure. 

Ghyran is the focus of Blighted WIlds, and you learn a lot about the realm, it’s history and key locations in the lore for this book. I go on a lot about how good the writing is in Codex and Battletome reviews, but I always feel they turn it up to 11 when they do a new narrative-focused expansion, and Blighted Wilds is no different. 

The spotlight army for this narrative supplement is the Maggotkin of Nurgle, which GW have timed perfectly with the impending arrival of Warhammer Quest: Darkwater and the upcoming Maggotkin Battletome and new minis. Whilst a large proportion of the book concentrates on Papa Nurgle’s forces, it also features 3 other factions. They are the Cities of Sigmar, Gloomspite Gitz and Soulblight Gravelords. 

Whilst the story and subsequent narrative missions and rules reflect the conflict between these four factions, you can of course run the campaign with your own Sigmar armies. 

The lore section of the book also features some stunning art, and I particularly liked the vibrant maps of Ghyran.

Path to Glory Battlepack: Blighted Winds

By the time we get to some rules we are already 28 pages deep into the book, which gives you a great idea of the amount of lore in this book.

The Battlepack kicks off with some housekeeping. If you have never tried playing Age of Sigmar using a Path to Glory Battlepack then have no fear, as this book alone will help you select your Force and set out on your narrative adventure. It recommends you start with a 1,000 point army, which I fully agree with. It details how to keep track of your progress through the campaign.

The start of the battlepack helps you breakdown your starting 1,000 point force, advising you on how many none-unique units you should take, etc. Personally, when it comes to narrative campaigns, it’s less about the big names such Nagash, Archon and Teclis, and more about that little Lord of Blights, who may be just a plain lord now, but once this campaign is over you’ll be re-telling his exploits long into future gaming sessions.

The next section advises you on how to play through your campaign, and gives you a tech tree of the ideal way of playing through your missions. It recommends you start with either the Forest Fortress or Thyria’s Bounty Batlleplans, before following the tree down to the next selection of missions. You can, of course, create your own path of missions, and as the book encourages, you could in fact mix and match in one or two from the previous book, Ravaged Coast, should they fit your narrative tone. 

You’ll notice two different markings when it comes to traversing the map. These are explained next. Thyrian Paths are discovered as soon as you have a battle, whilst Concealed Paths are only discovered once both players have won a game in that battleplan. 

The rules then move on to a cool Path to Glory mechanic called Contamination and Remediation. This involves your battlefield becoming contaminated and some terrain features may cause damage to your units. You can make your units heal a terrain feature.

Whilst playing your games in the Blighted Wilds you can have access to three new unique abilities. The first being Blighted Water, which can be used once per turn. You randomly select a contaminated terrain feature. Should it be in the process of being remedied, then it has the chance to either do mortal wounds to enemy units within 3 or make them Strike-Last.

The second, Purify the Land, which allows a unit within 3” of a corrupted terrain feature to attempt to remedy it, but it only goes off on a 3+.

Boon of Vitality is the third and final ability, which can be used on a unit within 3” of a remedied terrain feature. You roll a dice and potentially gain a reward:

• 1-2 Does Nothing
• 3: +1 to Run and Charge for your turn.
• 4: Subtract 1 from Wound rolls that target the unit
• 5: Unit gets a 5+ Ward
• 6: Free use of the ‘Rally’ command, with 3 additional D6

Whereas normally when you finish a game that’s it until your next one, it’s very different for campaigns, as you have a whole ‘Aftermath’ phase to contend with.

This is a key part of the campaign, as this is where you’ll total up glory points, heal your injured units, etc. You can also obtain Battle Scars during this section, as your unit’s wounds take their toll. This all helps to tell a story as your campaign plays out. 

All-in-all, the book contains all the rules you’d need (outside of your army rules and warscrolls) to successfully run a campaign with your friends. 

Battleplans

It’s all good having the rules to run a campaign, but the strength of a campaign can be told by the games you play within it, and I am very happy to report that this book has 12 (yes 12!) narrative battleplans. 

In competitive play you have to contend with Battle Tactics, but not so in Narrative games. Instead, all of the battleplans in this book contain unique objectives to complete as you play the game, mixed in with some interesting game mechanics and fun deployment maps, as well of course victory conditions. 

Each battleplan feels unique and interesting to play, and when played consecutively the lore and mechanics behind each mission feel like they’ll flow nicely, regardless of the factions involved. Matt and I are starting a Blighted Wilds campaign soon, and I cannot wait to try some of these battleplans out.

Hero Tech Trees

As I’ve mentioned previously, a major draw to playing narrative is about taking your little, unknown heroes, giving them a name and a purpose, and watch their story unfold on the tabletop. 

To help with this, this book contains 4 tech trees, which allow you to ‘level up’ your characters. You simply choose one of the trees for your characters, and then progress down the page as your hero gains ranks. This allows your hero to unlock cool new abilities. Each rank gives you a choice of two abilities. 

To give you an example, let us take a look at the Path of the Sacrifice Master tech tree. Once your hero who has decided to lock into this tech tree gains the Aspiring rank, they’ll be able to choose from one of the two following abilities:

• Willing Sacrifice: Add 1 to Wound rolls for this unit’s combat attacks, so long as their are no other friendly units within its combat range. 
• Seize New Offerings: Add 1 to Hit rolls for the unit’s combat attacks that target an enemy unit that has no other enemy units within combat range.

Universal Enhancements and Lores

How about some Ghyran-flavoured Enhancements to add to your Heroes? This book has you covered with some really fun and flavoursome (yet no overpowered) enhancements to choose from instead of the ones in your Battletomes or Faction Packs.

Let’s take a look at the Heroic Traits first of all, I mean check out some of these:

• Arcane Disruptor: Pick a Manifestation within 6”, roll a D6, and on a 5+ the Manifestation is banished. 
• Resolute Builder: While this unit is within 3”of a friendly faction terrain feature or a terrain feature wholly within friendly territory, this unit has a 5+ Ward save. 

In total you have 6 Heroic traits to choose from.

Fancy some cool Artefacts to equip? Again, 6 to choose from, including…

• Princeling’s Bow: Pick a visible enemy unit within 18” and roll 3 dice. For each 4+ you deal a mortal wound. Cannot be used if the bearer is in combat.
• Jadecurse Stave: Ward rolls cannot be used when being damaged by this weapon.

And of course, you get some brand new Spell and Prayer lores to add into the mix, such as Awaken the Carnivores, which reduces an enemy unit’s save by 1, Forest Walk doubles your movement characteristic and how about the prayer Rooted Delusions, which can grant an enemy unit Strike-Last (or on a prayer roll of 8+ minus 1 to wound too).

Landmark of Ghyran

One brand new feature that we haven’t seen in Age of Sigmar is the option to build your own piece of faction terrain. Similar to the Anvil of Apotheosis that allowed you to create your own hero, this section allows you to work out your scenery’s flaws, origins and abilities. 

To help point how much your terrain costs, you can use the below chart:

Once you know the size of the terrain you want to build you can then spend your destiny points on abilities (such as adding positives to control scores, subtracting 1 from shooting attacks) or gaining back destiny points by choosing a flaw (such as preventing friendly units from setting up within 6” of this terrain feature).

Whilst the Anvil of Apotheosis was really cool, I cannot see Landmarks being as popular, but it is an amazing reason to build your own unique terrain feature. 

Custom Regiment of Ghyran

Regiments of Renown have been a popular addition to this edition of Age of Sigmar. I’m also a fan, as it’s a more balanced way of bringing in allies to your army. 

So Blighted Wilds goes a step further, allowing you to create your very own custom Regiment of Ghyran. 

Now this section goes into a lot of detail, and it has my imagination running super wild.

In the same manner as the Anvil and the above Landmark rules, you build your unit using the Destiny Points system. It breaks down the Regiment into two sections. Firstly you pick and create your Regimental Hero, and then you create a unit to hang out with them. What is super cool is the book gives you a variety of units you can pick from, each with their own Destiny Point cost. You’ve got Warriors, Guardians, Beasts…even Monsters, Gargants and Chariots! You can even mount your hero and his units!

Wrapping it all up, you get a large chart of buffs for your units, again at the cost of Destiny Points, as well as a large choice of abilities you can ‘pay’ for. 

Summary

Right at the start of this review I mentioned that I was leaning more and more into the narrative game systems compared to playing competitively,

This book further locks in that narrative is the way to go for me. If you love converting, or designing and making your own minis or terrain, then this book has your back thanks to the Landmark of Ghyran and Regiment of Ghyran sections. 

Speaking of which, making a Regiment of Ghyran is now for sure a hobby project for me going into 2026…

I’m struggling to pick a hole in the book. It has a great amount of high quality of lore and background, a wide variety of different battleplans, a solid campaign structure and lots of additional content, such as heroic traits, enhancements and spells.

Really hope Warhammer World have a narrative campaign weekend with this in use next year!

Our thanks again to Games Workshop for sending us a copy to review.

Published by David Jennings

Born and raised in Crewe in Cheshire, Dave is a geek through and through. Enjoys designing and managing websites. View all posts by David Jennings