Today I’d like to spend some time and lavish some far overdue attention on Paths of Prophecy, the deck that never was. PoP didn’t land with much of a splash, didn’t get played a ton at the time it came out, and has largely been ignored from a competitive perspective. The best people really gave it from a review standpoint on launch was ‘there are a few great cards in here for Championship but Nemesis and Rivals players can probably ignore it”. Those things being what they are, Paths of Prophecy is still a valid deck in the Nemesis format and can support a Hold Objective play style for those who want to give it a spin.

I don’t mean to suggest you’ll be running the table and winning a Grand Clash with Paths of Prophecy as it currently stands – the deck does need some Errata to bring a few things up to competitive speed if we were to see it truly shine. Here’s how it currently shapes up looking at the R77 Warhammer Underworlds Statistics Project:

It’s currently the second-least played deck (the impetus for this article) and has a small win rate compared to the other options in the Nemesis landscape at the moment (second worst). Part of that is because it hasn’t been played all that often, and I believe with dedication and practice it can hang with some of the mid-tier decks out there – it just might take a little more work to find the pairing that sings and get the reps in to maximize it for you.

If you’re interested in trying Paths of Prophecy for yourself, I’ll tell you from my own experience it can be a touch tricky to line things up, but you’re well rewarded when it works. Nothing like scoring after an opponent’s power step and then getting to take an activation right afterward. Talk about 1-2 punch! When you play PoP well, it can be absolutely deflating to your opponent (as it has been to me in the past!). Let’s look at what strengths the deck has to offer, where its main weaknesses lie, and how you might go about finding the right pairing for you to read the portents written in the stars.

Strengths of the Deck

• This deck has a couple of incredible power cards to support passive play in general and Hold Objective in particular (Devoted Offerings, Held in A Bloody Fist, Slinking in There)
• Multiple ways to increase card draw and see some more of what you were looking for in that exact moment (Fair Fortune, Pact Sealed in Blood)
• Increased ability to remain on your tokens once you’ve made it there (Deadly Defiance, Protected by the Unseen, to some extent Inconstant Predictions)
• Ability to manipulate objective numbers and allow for beasts to hold if you need help getting enough bodies or the right value. Some Warband decks do care about holding a given number or a certain value/greater than or equal to some value, odd/even etc and this deck lets you get a little creative here.
• Some aggro help that’s always welcome in the form of Guided by Fate (good enough to be restricted for Championship), useful either when standing on a token or when attempting to hit somebody off of a token you want.
• Something that’s been VERY overlooked by the community at large has to do with the upgrade “The Helping Hand” which is an upgrade that allows a fighter to take an action to pick two feature tokens and place them each in the hex they other came from. On its face this allows you to “get the number you want and ditch once you don’t”, which helps you score numbers-based Objective cards and it is pretty nice for that reason alone. That said, Helping Hand has a few spicy extra secrets I believe people haven’t taken full advantage of yet:

1) Per Page 14 of the Wintermaw rulebook in the ‘Advanced Rules’ box – “When a player is told to place a feature token during a round, that player can decide which face of the feature token is face up.”. This means, for the price of an action, you can move two tokens around AND make them into cover hexes if needed, which dramatically opens up your options to score Perfect Harmony. Hold 3 for 5 Glory? Sounds tasty.

2) You don’t need to be holding the tokens with the upgraded fighter (or with any fighter at all) to use The Helping Hand. This makes it substantially more adaptive than the Echoguise from Malevolent Masks or the Storm of Celestus Upgrade that is similar. Is your opponent playing Fearsome Fortress, Rimelocked Relics, Malevolent Masks, or has some faction reason to be holding objectives? Switch out the number they need for Stockpile. Move a token under their Masked or Rimelocked fighter as a cover hex and they’ll have to delve it back (if they even can). Choose a blocked hex token Force of Frost is depending on and flip it! A Seismic Shock player delved a token to help score Claim the Prize, or a Rimelocked is angling for Icebound Defenders by delving? Now it’s an objective again and you can laugh all the way to the prophet’s bank. They are trying to score Far and Wide (or even funnier, Seek the Cure) from Hungering Parasite? Now they’re standing on a cover hex and are staggered by the Bane so they can’t delve it back. Don’t need to hold at that moment but could use a little extra defense? Drop a cover under yourself. Substantial utility available in this card, which may be why the designers made it one use only.

Weaknesses of the Deck

• Conflicting End Phase cards that you can’t realistically score in the same round, since you need to be holding precisely X. You can’t hold precisely 9 AND precisely 5 at the same time!
• Most number manipulation can’t happen midround, so if you want to go up or down 1 to score some of the surges you’ll have a harder time. Your Lucky Day is tempting for 2 glory but is a little too big of an ask if you can’t easily play with the value during a round.
• A relatively low glory ceiling if you omit or can’t score Complete Harmony – a 5 glory end phase for holding every objective or precisely 15 value. Potentially you could delve a few and hold a few others, but it’s a big ask and very easily counterplayed. Without that card you’ll want some big scores in your faction deck to give you the ceiling HO needs (seeing as you won’t get much from bounty without bounty from aggro, and PoP offers little assistance).

An ideal warband will:

• Bring its own End Phase Objective package that is nearly complete without significant needs from the PoP Deck
• Have a decent Upgrade package that doesn’t require too much from PoP either
• Have some interest in holding objective tokens themselves
• Have abilities or cards that place fighters on guard/prevent pushes/driveback
• Be capable of or at least interested in getting 1-3 kills per game
• Be capable of holding three objectives simultaneously
• Might consider holding ‘every objective’ either through full-board occupancy or token flipping/removal

The Candidates:

Warband Pairings I Have Tested Personally

Sepulchral Guard

The Guard are the game’s current king of Hold Objective play. With a few strong HO objectives in their faction deck, great movement economy with the Warden’s action, and ability to resurrect fighters, you’ll get on token and stand on token all game long. Added benefits are that one of their objectives cares about numbers so you can feel more confident slotting in number manipulation if that’s your thing. I have quite enjoyed playing with this pairing (and it was actually my first win with PoP), but I want to share the deck designed by AoS Pete of the Agents of Sigmar Youtube channel who has substantially more experience with it and has probably a smoother deck.

Starblood Stalkers

The Starblood Stalkers have a few great tools to help score PoP cards, and PoP has a few cards to help them score theirs. The biggest benefit is that the deck is slammed full of Hybrid and Dual objectives to help the lizards nab The Great Plan, and that those cards revolve around holding objectives which will help the skinks inspire. With the Skittish reaction helping get on tokens, some great faction cards (including a can’t be pushed ‘asterism’ which is similar to Domains, but less cancelable by your oppponent), and Kixi-Taka’s ability to flip tokens with an action, you’ll get on tokens and stay on them. Plus, Klaq-Trok can really make people think twice about getting into your territory. I’ve won a few times with The Great Path and with some more experience and refinement think that there’s something here you can really succeed with. There exist several other versions of this deck online as it’s probably the most-explored and most-played PoP pairing to date, so don’t take mine as the prophet’s gospel.

Gorechosen of Dromm

A pairing that may appear surprising to some, the Gorechosen are actually a tremendous match for Paths of Prophecy. In addition to having the best claim for Chief Prophet of the Underworlds, Dromm and the boys have a lot of overlapping synergy. Dromm’s deck has multiple ‘hold an objective’ cards, though they want to do so in the middle of the board. Their resilience and wound pool makes them better able to risk the enemy territory ones as well. Their low fighter count means All Part of the Plan is an easy option. They have a handful of ‘can’t be driven back’ tools as well, so once you get on the token, you’ll be staying there for a minute. The real money for this pairing comes in the fact that Gorechosen has a beautiful set of End Phase objectives that allow you to skip most or all of the ones in PoP, which are definitively the weakest part of the deck. When you look at the ‘ideal warband’ section above, you’ll notice Gorcehosen tick every box except the Perfect Harmony one, making them almost the optimal fit. Bonus points for the Enrage ability being able to force an opponent to charge, and if you pick one that’s on that key token you need, they are forced to step off of it (and just might hand you a blood tithe counter to boot). Check out my deck Held in A Blood-Tithed Fist – it has more potential than you’d think at first brush, and I bet people with more Gorechosen experience can fine tune it even further.

The Sons of Velmorn

These skellibros are a warband I personally love, and you certainly can fit them with Paths of Prophecy. Their faction deck has 2 solid 2-glory End Phases related to Holding, but suffers from a surge package that requires plenty of kills – the less-interactive ones in PoP are something they like to see. You’ll need to play the PoP in a more flex flavor rather than a pure hold as you won’t able to avoid all the violent interaction Objective cards, but the bones are there. Added bonus of having relatively resilient fighters who can survive the first attack and actually benefit from the ‘get back on those tokens’ cards as well as a resurrection in their faction deck (and the option for the cursed crown if you want more). Check out “Path of the King”, with which I have scored 16 glory with while only holding 2 objectives – still a little refinement to do but structurally this has a good start.

Ephilim’s Pandaemonium

This deck, which I have called Closing the Ninth Circle, leans into the hold plan that is in Ephilim’s own deck rather than the spellcasting angle, and honestly might be a pretty nice approach to take right now after some of their better cards got nerfed. You also have synergy in the fact that Portents of Doom and Nine Fates are effectively the same card, so hold 9 with 2 or 3 people and let the glory pour into your pocket. What do you have to lose? I played it twice and won both games, once against Parasite Grashrak and once against Cyreni’s Rimewyrm. With two ways to move tokens and a few ways to move fighters, resurrect, and stay alive, holding 3 is easy enough and if you have to hold 2 while precisely 9, this deck can still do it. I didn’t even take Fires of Change! You don’t need it! A gentlemanly hold objective deck that with a few more tweaks could add even more mobility/durability, but it’s in a pretty nice spot as is.

Brethren of the Bolt

I have given this one a few tries, and I promise you, it SHOULD work. My dice haven’t cooperated, and the bolt bros do unfortunately tend to melt in the face of potent aggro, but the concept is sound. Plenty of flex hold tech in their own deck that has significant overlap with the goals in PoP’s own scoring package mean that when it works, it really works. Kill a few guys, let a few of yours die, and try to stand on three for as long as you can. I’d share my deck, but this one put together by George/Kyros of the Path to Glory Podcast has had more testing and tinkering and is probably a better starting point for your own Brethren path. George tells me he pretty consistently scores 16-17 glory every game against a variety of matchups (the hardest of which is the control/hold mirror) as you’ll be playing reasonably passive/cagey and hoping the enemy comes to you and allows you to make your accurate 2 damage attacks. Give Pater Filius Guided by Fate and start riding the lightning.

Warband Pairings Reported by Others

Lady Harrow’s Mournflight

Queens of the passive game who already want to be on tokens, PoP will force them to come to you. You don’t even have to attack if you don’t want to, or maybe just take out one fighter and spend the rest of the time making move actions. Here’s a deck titled Prophetic Scream put together by the Jon Grant Miniatures blog, which looks to be incredibly chill and noninteractive. Sit back, relax, and count your 18 glory on the longboard.

Thorns of the Briar Queen

Thorns are a great pairing for PoP, and while I haven’t played it myself it has huge potential. Their faction deck has several ‘teleport’ effects, several objective cards that want you to Hold, several pushes, and Varclav’s action to allow you to occupy tokens very quickly. They are fine with flex play and can work with the aggro components of the deck, and have some overlapping goals with the enemy territory parts. A few Upgrades in the thorns deck allow for extra pushes of minions as well, so you’ll be everywhere your opponents don’t want you to be and should score like butter. Complete Harmony is within reach for this warband. Skyler of the What the Hex Podcast has made a deckbuild for this on What the Decks, his Youtube live deckbuild series which you can view here, and you can find the deck “Prophecy of Thorns” here.

Storm of Celestus

Leathanam, a NorthBeast mastermind, sent a summary for the Storm of Celestus PoP to me that reads: “Hold objectives is not just for skeletons! Celestus and crew can do it, too. Lots of pushes, heals, wounds, and guard tokens from their best boy Sleek, keeps them holding all the things. Besides, they have in faction surges to play number games that Path of Prophecy encourages”. Here’s their deck if you want to play the numbers game like Drakan Celestus, certified Mathematics PhD.

Myari’s Purifiers

This is a pairing that has been discussed extensively at this Love Letter to Myari’s Purifiers by Leathanam – The warband likes the added passivity and holding synergies as well as the card draw. Planning to hold 3 anyway, with some overlapping plans in Objectives, you could certainly do worse. It has the benefit of increasing your control play options since it doesn’t require you to move forward the way the Rimelocked Relics build does. See the deck here.

Da Kunnin Krew

A player who goes by the name Bubbasushi submitted this deck to the Battle Mallet Nemesis Library, and while I haven’t tried it myself, I am intrigued. Mannok’s Kunnin Command reaction allows for great action economy and therefore token occupancy, and everybody knows it’s dangerous to tread in DKK’s territory. Interestingly the deck includes 11 gambits and 11 upgrades, offset by the added card draw in PoP. I’d imagine I would have taken this one a different way (at least paring down to 10/10 instead of taking 22 power cards), but this is a deckbuild starting point if you want to explore the space for yourself.

Gnarlspirit Pack

Andy/Hammersauce of Vancouver BC has shared a GSP PoP deck with me that looks pretty fun, titled “It Takes a Pillage”. It was sort of a ‘gotcha’ deck with no plot cards, based in part on removing feature tokens from the board. GSP’s Return to Ruin was a fun one for Andy to work around. It is heavily dependent on matchup, and once the opponent knows what you’re doing it is easily counter-able. But, it is very jarring for the opponent to have to worry about both the heavy hitting fighters and caring about objectives at the same time. Andy reports it ‘doesn’t quite have enough steam for a Grand Clash’, but he was really planning to take it for a week or so. The biggest problem he noted was that in testing it worked in a best of 1, but not a best of 3 once they’re onto your game. I might find a way to swap in The Helping Hand for yet another chance to ‘remove’ feature tokens by flipping two and boost your chances of scoring Return to Ruin.

Grinkrak’s Looncourt

I know firsthand how devastating this deck can be, after I was eliminated from the Las Vegas Open by it. You get on tokens pretty easily, are very difficult to displace, and even have an honest chance at Complete Harmony. He even scored it twice during the Grand Clash, which supposedly is ‘impossible against an opponent who knows what they’re doing’ per the wider community’s wisdom. Not so impossible after all, it would seem! Click here to view the deck Goblin Mode by Cabanas, an authentic Top 8 Grand Clash deck that eliminated my Breakneck Arenai in the top cut, so you know it can take a punch.

Cyreni’s Razors are excellent passive players on the longboard, You can simply occupy tokens and/or Hammertide until they stagger into range and get cut to ribbons. You may be forced to lean into the numbers game a little bit, but will be able to remove many of the ‘kill stuff in enemy territory and put your leader in danger’ parts of the Razors faction deck, and the squid teleport can give you a few options other PoP builds won’t have. You’re fast when inspired and can reach the tokens you need and don’t have the same pressure to interact as your opponent probably will, so you could do worse than to trod the Razored Path. Here’s one put together by Zack Newcome, who notes that the stagger and defensive benefits feel quite nice.

Warband Pairings that Theoretically Have Play

The following haven’t been played with rigor by myself or anybody else I have heard of on online chatter, but I can prophesize some reasonable paths to success. I’ll share some possible deck thoughts and I’d love to hear if you have any decks built up to share with the class!

Zarbag’s Gitz should have good ability to score well with the PoP package – they have many Hold Objective cards in their own deck, multi-move ability, and 9 fighters so you’re ok with losing a few. I did play this pairing once as a joke for my 420th game of WHU (get it? shroom goblins seeing visions? 420?! ain’t that a knee-slapper) but it was my first game with both the new Gitz and PoP. I misread several cards, deployed a squig on an objective (didn’t even bring Nothing Special), and got Headsman’d. If I had any idea what I was doing it probably would work just fine, but I can say from experience you have to play with a little finesse. Definitely something there though, and if anybody was going to score Complete Harmony it would be these lil’ guys. Leverage the scurry reaction and mulligan for Squinty Glarin’ early and you can make things happen – loads of Hold Objective cards in their faction deck to support the plan without having to rely on their lackluster attacks, and with nine bodies (7 of which can hold) you’ll have a few rounds to score lots of holding before you get too thinned down.

The Grymwatch are a very interesting option I would love to play myself sometime down the line. As I discussed in the Maskwatch article, they have a good ability to play pure hold objective but don’t mind flexing if the deck calls for it. Their faction deck includes a “Hold an objective with the number equal to the round” as well as a surge 2 for holding 3, other good hold cards, good pushes, and a resurrection ability. Want to be annoying and run away all day? This might be just the pairing for you. I built one as pure hold and it has such a scarily low glory cap (without Perfect Harmony) that I decided not to play it yet, but haven’t figured out the right flex-aggro additions and changes I’d need to feel comfortable. Might just have to run Perfect Harmony and get reliant on delving/The Helping Hand switcheroo-double-cover trick. More to come, as I probably won’t be able to avoid this temptation for long…

Hrothgorn’s Mantrappers are one that vague evidence suggests could work. I can’t say for sure how exactly this mystery person did it, but there is somebody who has submitted Nemesis results to the R77 project showing Hrothgorn PoP with a 44% win rate across 16 games!? I don’t know who it is or have their deck and on short experimentation couldn’t see anything that would flow how I’d like. I can see that the pull from Hrothgorn’s trap launcher and the push from Luggit and Thwack mean you can clear people off the tokens you need, and maybe just holding three in your territory and cannibalizing anybody who walks over the line is enough. It’s also possible that it took only a smattering of cards from PoP and is mostly Hrothgorn’s straight Rivals deck, which is pretty potent in its own right. The concept definitely has ‘come at me, bro’ energy but I haven’t found a good-looking build for it yet.

The Dread Pageant could certainly do a few things with this deck – their faction cards have support for a Hold 2/Hold More strategy with two of their end phase cards. With the built-in ability to heal/self-damage on their two big guys they can manipulate some things for Held in a Bloody Fist, A Pact Sealed in Blood, and Succor in Certainty. Glysette is always on guard and so can’t be pushed, and the warband has two range 2 fighters and a range 3 fighter. Multiple good pushes in the deck as well (including a distraction), so you’ve definitely got something you could work with here. The problem is the scoring in their deck is somewhat positional in a way that doesn’t work super well with what PoP asks of you, so you’ll either have to be playing the numbers game extra hard, or work well on denial and passivity to win a low-scoring affair.

Skabbik’s Plaguepack is intriguing as a Prochecy candidate. They already want to occupy tokens and have a phenomenal Objective package so they really can just dip their toes into the pieces they like best. Several of those objective cards ask you to Hold 2, Hold while killing, and hold while dying, or corrupting which is another flavor of hold for this warband. The problem is that they really need End Phases from their Nemesis pairing the most, but PoP has more strength in its surges. Range 2 on multiple fighters will help with Guided by Fate and continuing to attack while holding, and Nothing Special will make Skritter even more frustrating for opponents to think about. I don’t know that it’s the perfect pairing for Skabbik, but there is enough overlap and the Plaguepack has a strong enough faction deck that you can probably just season to taste. I’ve run Masks with a similar gameplan and done quite well for myself, so you definitely have a shot at winning with Paths of Plagueseeking.

Wrap

I hope I have given you a few ideas to play with and a bit of inspiration to give Paths of Prophecy a second look, or at least to look at the killer art done by Pedro Sena for the deck. As I mentioned before, it probably could use a healthy lift in an Errata down the line if it is to be ‘truly competitive’, but it also is not the disaster of a write-off deck that people have treated it as in the year and change since its release. And if anybody’s listening, maybe just swap out the ‘precisely’ for ‘or more’ on a few cards…

What PoP pairing is your favorite? Have you given any a try? What other warbands have you made work? Let me on Facebook, Reddit, or Discord, or by emailing SpentGlory@gmail.com. Peering at the positive foreboding in my crystal ball, I see a whole lot of glory being spent in your future.