Warhammer 40.000Wrath \u0026 GloryGrundregeln by Ross Watson

Warhammer 40.000Wrath \u0026 GloryGrundregeln Reviews

• 
  Taddow

  I am a big fan of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Many years have been spent painting and playing the miniatures game, playing the Dark Heresy RPG, playing various related computer and board games and reading its huge selection of fiction. So naturally I was excited when Wrath & Glory was announced following Fantasy Flight discontinuing its Dark Heresy RPG. I will admit that I am a little bias with my favoritism of Dark Heresy. Despite the system’s flaws (especially at the higher levels of play), I think that Dark Heresy has some great game mechanics and does well at capturing the grim dark horror and violence of the Warhammer 40K setting. It was such a great system and setting that my gaming group played a decade long weekly campaign before retiring it (some of the group hope this is only temporary). I was hoping that Wrath & Glory (which also utilized the talents of Dark Heresy developer Ross Watson) would be just as good, if not better.
  
  Pros:
  • I liked how Wrath & Glory tries to standardize inflicting and taking damage with rules that give nearly every weapon the potential to cause damage. There was some frustration with the Dark Heresy system where a lowly lasgun had no chance of hurting someone due to armor or Unnatural Toughness (which rose to maddeningly levels of game breaking resilience with the right combinations). This is the standard weapon of the Imperial Guard, but rule-wise was hard pressed to deal with a lot of the foes that the Guardsmen were going to face. Of course, fluff-wise, this made sense for many of the tough creatures that a lowly servant of the Imperium might have to fight (Carnifexes, Chaos Spawn, etc.) but it quickly became near-obsolete against foes in carapace armor and even flak armor at times if a character had decent Toughness. The Wrath & Glory system adjusted these damage output and soaking discrepancies pretty well. The ability to shift icons (high rolling die rolls) for extra damage was great idea.
  
  • The inclusion of rules to play a variety of different human and non-human archetypes. To name just a few, you can play a Guardsman, or an Unsanctioned Psyker, a Space Marine (loyalist or Chaos), including a Primaris, an Eldar or an Ork. A lot of options for playing more than just human agents are nice (some of these non-human options, such as Orks, were included in Fantasy Flight’s Rogue Trader and were Dark Heresy compatible) for a group that wants to try a non-Imperial group. Of course, personally I’m not a big fan of mixed species parties (reminds me of the start of a bad joke, “A Space Marine, an Ork and an Eldar walk into a bar…”) and ultimately its up to the gaming group if that’s the type of mash-up they want to play or not. I think having rules available to make up a party to represent an Eldar strike force is pretty cool though.
  
  • The dice mechanics (which uses six-sided dice) are an interesting concept. Basically, skill rolls and damage rolls are done rolling a number of D6s (determined by your skill, attribute stats and any modifiers) and trying to gain a target number of successes based on the difficulty of the task. Rolling “4s” and “5s” each count as one success and rolling “6s” count as two successes. Players also roll a different colored d6 as part of their test that is called a Wrath Die and rolling a “6” on this can grant additional bonus effects (such as extra damage or a positive benefit in a social interaction) and rolling a “1” will cause a Complication which will negatively effect the encounter (running out of ammo for example). Players can shift “6s” rolled toward gaining extra effects if they already have enough successes to complete a test and it sort of reminds me of the Legend of the Five Rings (L5R) RPG “roll and keep” mechanic or Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars or Genesys systems where dice have the potential to be used for more than just raw numbers of pass or fail.
  
  Cons:
  • The book is plagued by typos. They are bad. Even with the most up to date errata, the book still has numerous inconsistencies in rule sections or points used in character creation examples that just don’t add up. This causes confusion over what the rules are trying to say and I would have thought that many of these should have been caught during the proof-reading phase.
  
  • While the dice mechanics are intriguing, they start (in my opinion) bogging down some of the play as you have different effects that are trigger by “1s” or “6s” on the Wrath die and different die pools, “Ruin” and “Glory,” that the GM and players use. While I don’t think these are as bad as what you find in L5R 5th edition, it will take some book-keeping and cheat sheets to get used to the options available.
  
  • Setting Information is very lacking. The game has the Gilead System as the base setting but the book present very limited information about the Gilead system (most of which are sentences in some of the creature descriptions in the Bestiary). The Dark Heresy rulebook had a nice Calixis system section where it described some of the system planets with brief descriptions. Many of these little descriptions were enough to provide a basic understanding of the planet’s purpose, cultures and possible adventure seeds. You get none of that here. There is Warhammer 40K general setting information, which is nice but I would have liked to see more (even a basic outline) of the Gilead system.
  
  • The book is already getting a 2nd edition to change and address some of the issues with the 1st edition. This book came out in 2018 and in 2020 it is already getting a new edition. Seems a little too quick for my taste (I’m sure part of my discontent is that I went all in buying Wrath & Glory and its accompanying books and items only to find out a year later that it would be getting a new edition with major fixes). I understand that this could happen with any game and buyer beware, but I also think that it points to a rushed and poorly tested system.
  
  After reading the rules I found them bittersweet. While there were some things I liked, I think Dark Heresy is a better ruleset. There are a lot of great ideas in here and I would like to give all this a decent shot with a mini-campaign.
• 
  Matthew Gilliland

  I picked this up and Gencon and read nearly every page cover to cover.
  
  They system is engaging and simple to use.
  
  It is a standard d6 system with a dice pool of attribute+skill and you are looking for 4, 5, 6. If you roll enough you succeed.
  
  Wrath Dice a designated dice that when it rolls a 1 or 6 either a complication happens or you get a critical success. Its simple and it works to add some variety to any task.
  
  The character creator seems simple enough. However, there is some math to spend points to increase stats and buy talents (feats or edges).
  
  It is designed to be played as a mix of Imperial Agents but does give ideas how you could add in Eldar and some of the supplements add in Ratlings and Ogryns. Sadly there doesn't appear to be Squats... Yet.
  
  I have played this game once at Origins as an all Orks group and it was the funnest gaming session I have ever played in!!!
  
  I can see players doing some sneaky intrigue like playing undercover Cultist, Genesteeler Hybrids or Inquisitor Acolytes. Heck I'm going to imply that each of them could be and pull them off away from the group individually to see if they will take the off. Even if they don't the other players won't know the difference.
• 
  Matias

  System is clear and simple enough but with enough options to make interesting combats. The main weakness is trying to convey four tiers in one book. The result is not enough archetypes per tier available for my taste neither enough talents to allow customized chars specially when the same archetype is chosen by more than one player.
  
  Worst some archetypes are missing for certain tiers at least to allow a progression from any. Something that Forsaken tries to solve but is never good to require two books to have a good char creation base.
  
  I hope C7 keep focus on providing good material at good pace, specially on those areas not covered in the first book as vehicles and ships.
• 
  Gary Laporte

  The revised version seems to work much better than the 1.0 one. I feel that there are some odd design choices, where some things are very simple and abstract while others seem on the other hand very detailed and complicated.
  
  Looking forward to the expansions which should flesh out the setting and mechanics.
• 
  Theo

  I love the Warhammer 40K universe and RPG's. This book should have been better. It's difficult to read and difficult to reference for a Games Master. I'm hoping with the new edition from Cubicle 7 they improve these aspects and begin to release content to support playing this game.
• 
  Krell75 (Stefano)

  Qualità manuale (impaginazione, illustrazioni, disposizione regole): ⭐⭐⭐⭐
  (Manuale di alta qualità visiva. Per me che sono cresciuto con i manuali anni 90 con copertina flessibile e interni in bianco e nero, avere tra le mani un gioiellino come questo è fonte di immensa goduria).
  
  Ambientazione: ⭐⭐⭐
  (mi aspettavo una maggiore esposizione sulla strepitosa ambientazione di WH40K, ma ho dovuto accontentarmi di un quadro molto generico e un piccolo approfondimento su un singolo sistema solare).
  
  Sistema regole: ⭐⭐⭐
  (snelle e veloci a pull di dadi).
• 
  nooker

  A fun and interesting looking system. Really lacking in content, but the mechanics seem fun.