WarCry

The Warhammer Fantasy CCG

Overall score:

Warcry is the CCG version of Warhammer Fantasy wargaming, and as an adaptation of battlefield tactics it works surprisingly well. It is produced by Sabertooth, the same company that makes the Horus Heresy CCG for Warhammer 40k, and some of the same principles are present—the game follows a similar pattern of deployment and battle, and requires you to win two out of three battles to win the game. Beyond these superficial differences, however, Warcry is completely new and original, and perfectly suited to the regimental style of fantastic medieval warfare.

Whereas in Horus Heresy you deploy all units equally, in Warcry you must “buy” them by paying their gold cost. In the first battle you have 20 gold, in the second you have 25, and in the third you have 30; during the deployment phase you take turns laying down cards until each player has used up all their gold. This system, while slightly more complex than just playing any old card, opens up a lot of new territory for design and gameplay, because it allows for a wider variety of cards—you can have a horde of cheap little units, a handful of expensive super units, a balanced force of average units, or a mix of all three. Appropriate to the source material, the game includes some truly legendary characters who can make a huge impact on the battlefield; they are balanced, however, by a very high cost, and the decisions of what to play can become quite deep.

As opposed to a standard CCG where you simply play your cards to “the table,” Warcry simulates an actual battlefield (and it is a single battlefield, as opposed to the triple arena system used in Horus Heresy and Star Wars). Each player has two rows of troops, a Battle Line and a Reserve, resulting in a battlefield with four total lines, and each unit type has certain ranges of movement and attack. Short range archery can only attack up to one line away—from your Battle Line to your opponent’s—while normal archery can travel two lines—from your Reserve to your opponent’s Battle Line, or from your Battle Line to your opponent’s Reserve. Long Range Infantry can shoot all the way from your Reserve to your opponent’s Reserve. Similarly, the three types of units (infantry, cavalry, and flyers) can attack at certain ranges: infantry can only attack one line away, making them primarily Battle Line units, while cavalry can attack from your Reserve. Only flyers are able to attack the opposing Reserve line directly (unless you can destroy the intervening Battle Line, of course). This four-line system may sound confusing when I describe it, but once you get a few rounds of combat under your belt it is surprisingly simple and makes a lot of sense; it’s also a very flavorful representation of a battlefield, and adds a lot of cool strategic elements to combat.

The Reserve line is a wonderful strategic option in a lot of ways. Since units in the Reserve are often protected from enemy attack, it’s a nice place to hide your support—fragile units that can’t do much damage, but have valuable abilities that help the rest of your army. It’s also the ideal place for your leaders and generals, because of a unit attribute called Tactics—the player with the higher total Tactics in their reserve gets to go first, which can be incredibly powerful. Leaders on mounts or chariots are among the most powerful units in the game, because they can sit back and direct their army from the Reserve, and then rush into the fray when they are most needed. Tactics are also key at the end of the battle, when the player with the most total Tactics left on the board is declared the winner.

A unit’s Tactics also comes into play in battle, since each combat card requires a certain amount of Tactics in order to play it—a unit with 5 Tactics, for example, could play a 3-point strength boost and a 2-point defensive boost, or any other combination that adds up to 5. Grunt infantry tend to have little or no Tactics, but fights between experienced generals can become quite layered as each player piles on the combat cards. It’s another example of the flavorful, well-implemented gameplay mechanics that Warcry is brimming with.

Combat itself, outside of card-based boosts and bonuses, is a simple matter of comparing strength, modified by a “roll” much like the Destiny draws in games such as WARS and .hack—each card in your deck has a die number printed in the corner, and to roll you simply discard a card and note the number. Actual combat damage is done the old-fashioned way, in hand-to-hand; archery can only lock down an enemy unit, not kill it. I didn’t like this rule at first, though it has grown on me quite a bit the more I’ve played the game—archery is very powerful already, and taking away its potential for damage helps keep armies balanced between ranged and melee combat. Melee combat gets its own little bonus in the form of morale checks and follow-up attacks: if you defeat a unit so severely that it routs, you get the opportunity to overrun them and immediately attack another unit, which can be devastating to the enemy. The use of routs and morale is a little counter-intuitive, however, because you only make a morale check for a unit when it is destroyed—at which point, one would assume, it doesn’t really matter anymore. I think what they’re going for is the concept of how hard or easy it is to completely destroy an enemy: if they hold their ground you have to spend the rest of your turn mopping them up, but if they rout and run you can cut them down easily and move on to a new target. Whatever their explanation for it, it’s a nice mechanic that adds depth to combat without adding too much complexity.

I have some complaints about the game, but none of them are particularly atrocious. It is designed solely for two-player duels, which is a limitation I’m continually surprised to see in CCGs—enough people enjoy multiplayer that you’d think they’d just build it into the game at a basic level. Warcry is more adaptable with house rules than, say, WARS, but would probably lose a lot of its careful balance; either way, it’s annoying to have to “force” multiplayer onto a CCG when other games like Lord of the Rings have shown how successful it can be when you build it in from the ground up.

As a tangent to that complaint, I’m not terribly pleased by the homogenization of “good guys” and “bad guys,” which reduces the rich tapestry of the Warhammer world into a simple two-sided conflict—the game cards are split into two factions, plus non-aligned cards, just like Star Wars and Horus Heresy. This makes the scale seem bigger, because the Empire gets to share the battlefield with Elves and Dwarves, facing off against a super-alliance of Chaos, Dark Elves, and Orcs; to more accurately reflect the tabletop game, each of these should be its own faction. When you ask a Warhammer player “what they play,” they will never say “bad guys,” they will name a specific race—skaven, undead, dark elves, orcs, chaos, etc. The CCG should, ideally, be the same. Once you look into the system deeper, however, you can see where the designers coming from. A card game with too many factions would quickly become almost impossible to collect—you could open a booster and find only one or two cards for your faction, with no guarantee that any of them are good enough to use (or even, after you’ve bought several packs, that they are more than just common repeats). By grouping the cards into two major factions they have assured that any player will be able to use at least half of the cards they open in a booster. Once you’ve collected enough, you will be able to take advantage of certain cards that encourage the use of single-faction decks, and this is something I heartily endorse. The expansion set coming out this fall will add Skaven and Wood Elves to the mix, so the world and our options are continuing to expand.

Perhaps the most annoying aspect of the game is that it requires each player to build two decks: a unit deck for the deployment phase, and a combat deck for the battle phase. I have never liked this when it has been used in other games, such as Star Trek, and I don’t particularly like it here—I much prefer the route taken by Horus Heresy, which has each card double as both a unit and a combat trick. That system is admittedly limited, however, and giving each combat trick its own card allows for some much larger, flashier effects that wouldn’t fit on the tiny command line of a Horus Heresy card. In the end, the two-deck issue is more of a pet peeve than anything else, and Warcry’s use of it does not cause any significant problems of play or deck design. Given that the game studiously avoids my other pet peeve—putting cards into play (such as a Fellowhip or a series of locations) before the game even starts—I can forgive Warcry this minor infraction. It is true “shuffle and go” gameplay at its best.

(I should also note that this game is not for kids—the art in certain sets, in keeping with the visual motif of the miniatures game, involves a small number of bare-breasted demons and harpies. It’s one thing to see a tiny figurine with barely discernible features, but quite another to see topless women in full-color art.They are not terriblt common or obtrusive, so it's easy to avoid them if that sort of thing bothers you.)

Overall, Warcry is a great game that easily rises above its few minor glitches. Play is smooth and innovative, and the mechanics of battle are perfectly blended with the atmosphere and flavor of fantasy warfare. If you like wargames, fantasy, battlefield tactics, or even just the Warhammer world itself, this is the CCG for you.

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Written by Fellfrosch on June 09th, 2005