Warhammer 40:000 Wrath & Glory: Blessings Unheralded Is Out Now & Free (For a While)

Normally I don't do "pure" reviews without significant analysis under the Loreshaper Games brand, but I'm feeling a little under the weather today and I haven't finished the other stuff I've been writing, so this is what you get.

The introductory adventure for Wrath and Glory is out now on DriveThruRPG. Somewhat controversially, they're asking five bucks for it, but you can get it for free with a discount code through the end of July (I've applied it to that previous link, so you should get the deal without any extra hassle).

With the digital purchase you get four PDFs; a map, which is quite pretty and very Warhammer 40:000 with a giant Aquilla at its center, a 34 page booklet of rules, 6 character sheets including everything from a guardsman to a Space Marine, and printable "blips". There's no concession for online play, so you're either printing everything or figuring out how to get the icons into your virtual tabletop of choice.

The words "Grim Darkness" feature only once in the PDF, and surprisingly not in the opening blurb.

I am ambivalent about this, despite my long-term fervor for the Emperor.

Barring that, the booklet functions like any other quick-start guide. It leads with a super-brief description of what you'll find within, then moves into the rules section.

The core mechanic is simple; I like d6-pool systems, and it's very evocative of something like Shadowrun or Degenesis. Actually, scratch that; I think it's functionally almost exactly like Degenesis.

The system is simple; each die result corresponds to a result (nothing for 1-3, an "Icon" for 4-5, and an "Exalted Icon" for 6), and then you compare the Icons you get to the difficulty of the action, spending any excess Exalted Icons (which otherwise convert into Icons if you didn't get a success without them) for a boost in performance.

There is a special mechanic involving a "Wrath die"; a 6 gives players a point of Glory (for the whole group to share), and a 1 adds a complication.

Wrath also exists as a player resource; they may reroll failures on rolls, heal, or add an element to the scene with it. It can be awarded in the usual ways for such things; good roleplaying and getting stuff done in the story.

Glory gives bonus dice, increased damage, and allows players to move first in combat. There is a counterpart, Ruin, for the GM, which functions similarly.

Combat doesn't have rolled initiative, which I think is fine; players choose the order they move in and GMs move their creatures in response in a one-by-one exchange, with rolling as a fallback.

Otherwise, the general conception I have of Wrath & Glory from Blessings Unheralded is that it's intended to cover much the same situations as the FFG Warhammer 40:000 games do; functionally you have a game that doesn't do anything particularly bold and distinguishing.

It's worth noting that it does have a few unique twists. It's definitely lighter (though that's not to imply that it's a particularly light system) than something like Only War, but it's by no means simple. The best comparison I can draw in many ways is to 4e/5e Shadowrun, in terms of how a lot of the complex systems seem to interact with the core mechanic.

That brings me to an important point: Blessings Unheralded doesn't offer anything novel. There is some novelty in what it combines, and it's certainly got a good blend of cinematic and crunchy elements in its rules (if you consider the Genesys system, it has similar resource mechanics, but no threat dice).

As the first real mechanical exposure we get to Wrath and Glory, there are a few things that need to be considered about Blessings Unheralded. Obviously it's not 100% complete with regards to the rules of the game, but we can get the general thrust.

And that general thrust is, I think, positive. Ulisses North America has, in my opinion, a good idea of what makes Warhammer 40:000 work narratively and what makes games tick on a fundamental level.

I would switch from my FFG product line to Wrath and Glory without hesitation when I roleplay in the Warhammer 40:000 universe. I think that the system's a lot faster and more storytelling oriented, and that's something that's lacking in the FFG 40k games.

However, it's not ground-breaking in the industry. There's no mechanic in Blessings Unheralded that I don't think can be clearly traced back to another game.

That probably sounds more negative than it should; the best masters have stood on the shoulders of giants, and Ulisses has taken a lot of lessons well and synthesized a lot of different things into this. The uniqueness of the system comes in the elements it chooses to blend together, rather than the individual pieces; it's like cooking breakfast with eggs and hashbrowns. You can add a few pinches of seasoning to the hashbrowns, cook the eggs a vast multitude of ways, and get something that comes out unique. And much like our example, the quality can vary a lot.

Blessings Unheralded, and by extension the Wrath and Glory system overall, takes a bunch of things that work well together and builds them up. It's not earth-shattering, and it's not fulfilling some incredibly special niche need. With that said, I feel like this would be the system that you could see the adventures of Ciaphas Cain unfolding in. It's a lighter take on the setting, but not so much lighter that it loses its core.

However, I'm not sure I would actually recommend buying Blessings Unheralded. In print, it could be nice as a little reference booklet, but there's also going to be a Starter Set that holds similar contents, and the Rites of Instruction, a comic-based illustration of the game rules.

As a result, Ulisses North America has kind of shot themselves in the foot. I suspect Blessings Unheralded will wind up going free once the system is released, but if it doesn't there's going to be a hard sell involved in going for it.

This brings us to an awkward point where I think Blessings Untold is great as a peek into the future, and it could be a good experience, but it's definitely not worth the cost. While it does offer something you can't get elsewhere in its franchise, it's a $5 quick-start guide in PDF format, and that's a little difficult to justify when you can get a lot of good one-session experiences in the form of free quick-start guides.

If you're a Warhammer 40:000 junkie who can't wait for the full release of Wrath and Glory, or you are getting it for free while the discount code still works, it's worth checking out. It's got a lot of systems that work well together, and it's set in what is probably one of the best game universes ever. However, it's going to be outcompeted by other products in the same product line come September.