is available to pre-order on Saturday. This mighty tome continues the tale of the Twin-Tailed Crusade, with rules for a Vampire Lord Army of Renown, six Regiments of Renown for the forces of Death, and the third part of the Twin-Tailed Crusade Path to Glory. It also marks the return of Triumph and Treachery, a multiplayer game mode featuring up to four people vying for supremacy on the tabletop..
Triumph and Treachery brings twists and plenty of opportunities for you to mess with other players: make bribes, offer deals, and backstab other generals – all in the spirit of the game.
Every player starts with 50 Command Points and cannot generate more by usual means. They are spent on command abilities, ploys, or even offered to persuade players to do your bidding.
Deals can be offered at the start of each turn before the hero phase. You can offer up ploys, command points, and victory points… but these are not binding.
With four forces on the field, we need new rules – so the player whose turn it is chooses their enemy, turning the other two neutral. This has all sorts of consequences – you can’t move within 3” of neutral forces, and cannot target them with attacks, alongside other restrictions.
At the start of the round, each player can purchase ploys. Your performance in the game determines how many you can buy, but you can always get more with some clever deals.
Ploys can be spent in that turn or saved for later. There are 26 in total, each with a range of effects, from minor hurdles to strategic upheavals. Here are just a few.
Aetheric Redirection changes the target of a spell – better watch out for that errant Merciless Blizzard. Hidden Pitfalls can reduce cavalry to a canter. Ambushing Fire lets a neutral player twist the rules and shoot. The enemy of your enemy is your friend, so why not offer them Favourable Winds to secure a charge? Neutral players can tip the balance of combat with Hidden Agents who confer the strikes-first effect to a unit of their choice.
The Mad King Rises provides four primary battleplans to use in this mode, and there's a bonus fifth – Contest of the Mortarchs. This emulates the ceaseless squabbles between the Mortarchs, with a special rule that puts one player in the role of Nagash himself.
Nagash keeps track of his Mortarchs’ resources, and they may write him grovelling missives detailing which ploys they wish to purchase. They can try to assassinate their fellow Mortarchs, informing Nagash of their plans, who views this internecine conflict as nothing more than an inevitable culling of the weak. He’ll reveal the results of each attempt, but not who undertook it…
And while the theme is Grand Alliance Death, enterprising players may transpose it onto the squabbles of the Ruinous Powers, Orruk Warclans, or even rival Cities of Sigmar…*
Triumph and Treachery is a fantastic way to play Warhammer Age of Sigmar with a group of pals, and all the rules are in Dawnbringers Book IV – The Mad King Rises. Pre-order it this Saturday, and start your scheming.
* Sigmar knows that it’s hard enough to get on with Aelven monarchs with a taste for godhood…