  Tree-level $b$ decays play a critical role in characterising the quark
flavour sector, and exposing possible effects of physics beyond the Standard
Model. These proceedings cover recent results from the LHCb experiment on
semileptonic $b$ baryon decays, $\mathcal{R}(D^{\ast-})$ using three-prong
hadronic $\tau$ decays, $CP$ observables in $B^- \to D^{(\ast)}h^-$ decays, and
an updated combination on the CKM angle $\gamma$.
