Warlord Ascendant 2e features:

• A Narrative Skirmish Wargame: Designed from the ground up for solo and co-op play, Warlord Ascendant focuses on emergent storytelling and character development over competitive play. Every battle shapes the organic narrative of your warband’s struggle.

• The Momentum Engine: The game is powered by Blackoath Entertainment’s Momentum Engine, a flexible D100, skill-based ruleset. With unique mechanics to enhance the gameplay experience and streamlined combat, Warlord Ascendant feels fresher than ever.

• Create Your Warband: Choose from a wide variety of factions, each with unique units, abilities, and playstyles. Lead the fanatical Inquisitorial Retinue, the savage Akelian Wardancers, a desperate band of Commoners, a disciplined company of Pavarian soldiers, a horrifying Demonic Cohort, or a shambling horde of the Risen, among others.

• Deep Campaign System: Your fight extends beyond the battlefield. Explore and conquer the randomly generated hex-based map of No Man’s Land, capture strategic locations, and manage your resources. Build and upgrade a mighty stronghold or rule over captured settlements to fund your campaign.

• Character Progression: Watch your warriors grow from green recruits into hardened veterans. Characters earn experience from battle, allowing them to level up, improve their skills, and learn dozens of new Combat Maneuvers and passive Feats to customize their role on the battlefield. The extensive gear list allows you to truly narrow down your characters’ builds and create a Warband tailored to your preferences.

• Extensive Toolkit: The book is packed with everything you need to generate rich tales of survival, including rules for a host of monstrous threats, extensive gear and loot tables, unique magical artifacts, and a crafting system for Masterwork equipment that offers unique gear traits.

• Flexible Ways to Play: While designed for solo play, rules are included for co-operative campaigns and head-to-head versus battles. For a different experience, try the Lone Wolf mode and play as a single, exceptionally powerful hero carving their own path through the chaos.
  

What’s new in this Second Edition?

For those of you coming from the first edition of Warlord Ascendant, you will find a familiar game, just expanded and refined:

• New Larger Format: The book is now 6x9 inches, a little bit larger than 1e. A complete new design and layout really makes the game a joy to read and learn, as well as the incredible new illustrations, of which there are dozens this time around. 

• New Ruleset: The second edition uses a D100 system, instead of the D20 system of the first edition. This makes the game faster to understand and much more flexible. Want to attack? Check the character’s combat score, roll a D100 die, and if the result is equal to or lower than their Skill score, it’s a success! This simple core mechanic powers all actions in the game.

• New Gameplay Elements: Magic has been added to the game, allowing you to either hire or train Arcanists, something that will surely change the face of battle. There are new Combat Maneuvers, Feats, and a new Trait system that makes every single piece of gear in the game unique. Managing your stronghold and the towns you conquer adds a deep strategic layer to the game that will keep you coming back.

• New Ways to Play: With the addition of the Lone Wolf mode, which sees you controlling a single character instead of a whole Warband for a more RPG experience, or the Expanding Adversary rules, which offer an active opponent controlled by the rules that expands across No Man’s Land at the same time as you do, Warlord Ascendant feels as fresh and interesting as never before.

• More of Everything: With new Warbands, enemies, events, gear, locations, and more, the game has more to do than ever before.

All in all, the book has doubled in size, offering a more streamlined system but with tons more of content.