I finally got the opportunity to play Warhammer Invasion from Fantasy Flight Games. The game takes place in a setting that is very near and dear to my heart, so I am always happy to explore the Warhammer Fantasy mythos from new perspectives. I am a big fan of FFG. Their games are very well done, offer the right mix of strategy, complexity, and fun, and have a very high production quality to them. I own several of their board games but Warhammer Invasion is my first Living Card Game (LCG) by FFG that I have owned. So while I may sound biased (and I am!) here are my thoughts on Invasion after playing one game.Once I opened the box and pulled out the contents of the game, I immediately knew I was playing in the Warhammer world. The iconography on the card backs and the art work on the cards really grabs you. Some of the art work I have seen before from Games Workshop, while some I am sure was produced just for this card game. In keeping with FFG simple yet graphic intensive rulebooks, the rulebook was full of art from the game and provided many visual examples of rules or cards. The rules were written well enough to be easily understood from the get go, so after reading them once or twice, we got to playing.
I am no stranger to collectible card games. I was one of those "Mr. Suitcases" back in the day when Magic: the Gathering was in it's infancy. In fact, anyone who has ever played Magic or Legend of the Five Rings CCG, will find some of the rules very familiar. The objective of the game is to attack your opponent's City and reduce two of his three City zones to a burning ruin. You do this by gathering your resources, deploying Units and Support cards to the Battlefield, and sending Units on Quests. And here is where the fun begins! The base game has several factions from which to choose. From the forces of Order you have the Empire and Dwarves, while the forces of Destruction are represented by the Orcs and Chaos.
Randomly, we chose our factions from the premade decks, and I pulled the defensive Dwarves while my friend drew the offensive Greenskins. Game set up revolved around laying out your City card, drawing a starting hand of seven cards, and placing the pile of various markers within easy reach. Each City has three zones (Kingdom, Battlefield, and Quest) and you follow the turn order in sequence before passing the turn to your opponent. The Unit cards all have a base attack and defense value which can (and will) be modified during game play. Generally, the turn consists of generating resources (producing Resource tokens to pay card costs and drawing cards), putting cards into play by paying the card's "casting" cost and placing them in one of the three zones, and attacking the opposing City. You choose which zone(s) you are attacking and which of your Units will be the Attacker(s). You may only attack with Units from your Battlefield. Your opponent assigns any Defenders and then the battle begins. Combat is simultaneous. You each add up how much damage your forces are producing and then assign that damage among the opposing units. Don't worry, there are nifty tokens to help make this process quick and nasty. Once all the Attacker's damage has been assigned to all the Defenders (and Defender's damage to the Attackers) any "extra" damage is carried over to the target City. The damage is assigned to whichever zone was attacked, and once a zone takes eight damage, it is razed and the Fire token is placed on that portion of the City card.
Thrown into this mix of action are opportunities to use Tactic cards or use Actions of cards in play. As you can expect, this is where plans and strategies get derailed. For example, that unit of Squigherders with a Power of 1 is suddenly backed up by a vomit spitting Troll! Anyways, you get the idea. Each faction does have a unique flavor and exploiting this is one of the keys to winning the game. I really had fun playing Invasion and I loved the interaction and combos the game offers. I also loved the resource management aspect. This is where the early and late game strategy decisions become important. Do I need more resource tokens? More cards? Do I need to add some developments to this zone or play this card next turn? It really was fun playing a game with this mix of game elements.
While I obviously need to play several more games to really appreciate the intricacies of the game, I like what I have seen so far. One small criticism is that currently, the game is just for two players. I am sure there are some multi-player rules down the pipe, as some of the card text references multiple players. Finally, the LCG aspect of the game is something that sold me on it. I was loathed to get into yet another card game (I have more card boxes than I care to admit) but Warhammer Invasion is self contained. All of the cards for the starting factions are in the base set. I need not purchase any more cards. However, FFG is in the business of making money, so you can bet there will be expansion decks for different factions. Chaos Cultists and Skaven have already been released upon us. And with the rich background of Warhammer to pull from, you can be certain there will be many more decks yet to come.
I look forward to playing them and I hope you will too.
Wickedstormy
