The latest Warhammer CCG recently came out and it’s GW’s way of competing in the collectible card game scene via a licensee.
Warhammer Age of Sigmar Champions was created by Playfusion. It combines a physical card game version with the one you can find online where any physical cards you own can be used online as well.
I’ve been playing it for the past week and here are my thoughts on whether I think it’s going to make it or not.
Pass or Fail on Warhammer’s New Collectible Card Game
Gameplay (In a Nutshell)
It is a lane control game where you have four blessings that are hidden and randomly assigned to one of your 4 lanes. Then you choose a champion that adds a certain effect to that lane as well as the kinds of cards that can be played there. (spells or units, sometimes both) Each champion has four icons on the corners of the cards that represent them doing something.
It can be as simple as doing damage, or as hard as removing a card from play. Once you cycle through all four you reveal the blessing and immediately can use its effects. Beyond that, the champions can have special abilities called heroic feats that you can spend an action to do once a turn.
Talking actions, you get two actions per turn that can be used to play a card in front of a champion and you then immediately resolve any effects from said card. Now spell and unit cards are more interesting because they have an icon in every corner as well that rotates at the start of your turn.
They also do different effects based on the corner that is showing, so on the first turn, they may heal you, while on the third turn they do damage. Once they are completely rotated through their icons they are removed from play. You can also play Ability cards for an action unless that champion currently has control of a spell card. If you have any actions remaining at the end of your turn you immediately draw a single card for every action you have remaining.
Obviously, it is a bit more complicated with various card effects going off, and abilities that give you more actions etc. but in a nutshell that is how the game works. Complete rules can be found here.
Five Likes:
- The rotating card is a very novel approach and is not something I have seen before, which forces you to play for what a card is going to do 2-3 turns down the road.
- Having the blessings gives you something to work towards beyond killing your opponent, as they are very powerful and can easily break a stalemate between you and your opponent.
- Not having a mana resource is great in that you never can be “mana screwed” which causes you to basically lose a game before it even starts.
- Champions add a nice mechanic to the game as they help dictate what kind of deck you are building. For example, one of the Order champions directly helps Aelf units so you are going to want to build more of an Aelf deck then a Stormcast one.
- Adding an online portion to this is amazing for people who might want to get in a couple games at night or over lunch.
Five Dislikes:
- The only way to deal with units is to remove them or wait for them to finish up their rotation, personally, I don’t like not being able to directly attack units.
- No hand size limit is annoying in that some people will just keep drawing cards until they have a response to anything you can play. There are some discard abilities, but they can be countered and are few and far between.
- There are a lot of moving parts that you need to remember and keep track of and if your playing in person you can easily lose track of them.
- Without mana, there are definitely more “powerful” cards that happen to be rarer that can be played on turn one and swing the game in one person’s favor.
- Not many neutral cards that can be used by all factions, these almost seem like they were added as an afterthought.
Trav’s Impressions:
This game was hard to wrap my head around at first, in that I kept thinking about Magic the Gathering or Hearthstone the two other collectible card games that I have the most experience with. But when I got around the fact that units don’t do damage to other units, it started to click a bit. Then when you figure out the highlighted units mechanic at the bottom of the card everything fell into place. It is fun at first with the rotating cards, but that wears off and I kept wishing I could just play a card and have its effect happen immediately.
Also, you have these great units and monsters (with awesome artwork), but they can’t fight each other and only do damage to the opponents face which was kind of a killjoy. I have to say the online version is a lot easier to manage your cards and turn order then in person and would recommend playing it that way at first until you get a better grasp of the way the game works. Also using that card which removes a unit from play and nets your final requirement to trigger a blessing is a great feeling.
The thing I really enjoyed though was placing the champions in lanes across from each other, it feels like two heroes squaring each other up before the battle starts. The only problem being is that then the champions just stand there and tell the other people what to do.
Final Thoughts:
If you like card games that make you plan 3-4 turns down the road and do not mind games that can be strung out then this game is for you. Personally, I found the online version much more enjoyable then the in-person game in that it helps you along throughout the entire battle by auto turning the cards for you.
There is some confusion though in that the online version you can “win” or buy “online only card packs which to be kind of defeats the purpose of the physical version. It is almost like this game was made for mobile devices and then they were like hey let’s make physical versions as well that would be neat. I can see this game surviving only because of the online version, as I doubt you will see many FLGS running tournaments and things with it against Magic the Gathering.
If I had to guess eventually they might phase out the physical aspect of the game and just keep a free version on the app store that is based around in-app purchases.
There you have it, if you are at all interested in the game I highly recommend trying out the free app version and if you like it find a Facebook group and scan booster cards.
Every 50-100 you get a free warchest and booster pack, and once you do that a few times you will have enough cards to at least have some variety in your decks. Personally, the game is not for me. I played a lot for a couple of days but haven’t touched it since.
It’s not that it’s a bad game, it’s just the mechanics are not my cup of tea.
About the Author: Travis Perkins
