Hail Commanders!
Realms of Ruin’s Conquest Mode challenges you to dominate the savage lands of Ghur in a campaign where the very rules of war change from battle to battle. It tests your abilities as a commander, demanding you develop new strategies to fit the needs of the battle. Behind every decision is the risk that too many defeats will see you lose everything you’ve earned in your campaign.
Each successful battle in Conquest Mode earns you points towards your high score, but your mission is only complete once you’ve vanquished the overlord’s army. If you suffer too many defeats, your campaign ends, and all your amassed score is lost.
The battles in Conquest Mode feature rules that twist the familiar. In one battle, you and your enemy may be able to summon new units in an instant; in another, you may both have no limits on how many heroes you can field. You must adapt your strategies and develop new tactics to find victory in an ever-changing war.
Conquest Mode is a challenging marathon of war, and if you hope to succeed in your campaign, there are some key lessons you will need to learn.
A Gamble in Ghur
Losing a battle in Conquest Mode also means losing one of your precious lives. When that pool empties, your campaign comes to an end. However, there is a means to replenish the pool.
Conquest Mode has three kinds of battles: regular battles, overlord battles, and bonus battles. Success in a standard battle adds to your overall high score, and victory in the duel with the overlord’s forces ends your Conquest Mode campaign. However, success in bonus battles gives you a choice of a score buff or an additional life.
For the highest score, you need those buffs; each one significantly increases your points. However, if you run out of lives, your campaign will end, and your score won’t be registered at all. It’s your choice to risk everything for a high score or make your success more likely by choosing a life.
Exploit Each Battle’s Twists
The Realm of Ghur is aggressive and predatory, its lands ever-shifting and praying on one another. In your conquest across its lands, the rules of battle change from conflict to conflict. The speed at which you capture territory, recruit units, and research upgrades can significantly increase or decrease. The distance your units can see into the fog of war may shrink or grow. You may have three Victory Points to capture or just one. Each battle will be different, and you should adapt your tactics to suit.
On the conquest map, when you select which battle to engage in next, you can see a summary of the land you’re contesting. It shows the map's name and the identity of the faction you’ll face and lists the modifiers impacting the region. Any one of these modifiers can radically change the battle.
In battles where you and your foe can recruit new units instantly, for instance, you should drive your assaults forward because your foe will quickly recover their losses and return to fight at full strength if you don’t press your advantage. In battles with a single Victory Point, it’s more important to maintain control and establish a solid defensive force at the location. If you lose the Victory Point, you will lose score quickly until you can regain the ground.
Before entering the battle, consider how the modifiers will impact your chosen faction and form a strategy that exploits those changes.
Don’t Forget Victory Points
Victory Points are the key to success in Conquest Mode battles. Whoever holds the majority of these locations will see their enemy’s score begin to drain, and the first side to lose all of their score loses the battle. While it’s vital to establish your economy by taking Arcane Conduits, building Bastions, and growing your territory, you will hand your opponent victory if you neglect the map’s Victory Points.
It is much faster to capture a Victory Point than an Arcane Conduit. If you leave one of these vital locations undefended, the enemy will swiftly seize it. You should exploit the same mistake if your enemy makes it.
If your enemy ever holds all of a map’s Victory Points, you must act quickly to take them back, as the speed at which your score drains will significantly increase.
Maximising your score
The ultimate aim of each conquest is not just to defeat the overlord’s force but to attain the highest score possible. There are a number of ways you can increase your score, but each of them involves increasing the risk of failure.
The simplest way to get more points is to take part in more battles, as you don’t need to take the most direct route to the overlord’s army. If you have lives in reserve, consider taking on additional battles to accrue more points in your conquest of Ghur. For the very highest score, you will need to take part in every battle on the map.
The number of points you are awarded after a successful battle is determined by how quickly you achieve your objective and how much of your health remains at the end of the battle. Cautious players, who allow their enemy to whittle away their score while they build up their army, will not see the success of more aggressive players – though they may not leave themselves open to the same risks on the battlefield.
If you have a number of lives left, then strongly consider the points boost reward when completing any bonus battles. It will boost your points significantly higher than what you can achieve without it.
The most impactful way to raise your score is also the most challenging: increase the difficulty.
At the start of a Conquest Mode campaign, when you’re selecting your faction, you can also choose from four difficulty levels. The lower the difficulty, the more lives you have and the easier your enemy is to defeat. However, the reward for playing on higher difficulty settings is a bonus to your score. On the easiest setting, Lorekeeper, you start with four lives and get no bonus; whereas on Champion, you have only one life, but you get a 150% bonus to your score.
As you can see, every way you can increase your score carries a greater risk of defeat, but if you can overcome the challenge, you will amass an enviably high score.
For success in Conquest Mode, you must remember that no two campaigns will be the same and face each battle as new ground.
Pay attention to a battle’s modifiers and consider how they will enhance your faction’s strengths and weaknesses and how they will impact your enemy. Don’t forget that each battle lives in a broader campaign and that a loss can have devastating effects on your conquest. Never lose sight of the objective of each battle: seize Victory Points, hold them, and drain your enemy to nothing before they can do it to you.
If you take your campaign one battle at a time and take full advantage of available bonuses, you will amass a high score worthy of pride.
Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin is available to play NOW on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S|X.