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This Warcry Review Is Not for the Squeamish Gamer

By Jack Stover | August 20th, 2019 | Categories: Age of Sigmar, Chaos, jstove, Warcry

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If you’ve been on the fence about whether to try out GW’s new Warcry game, you’re probably won’t be after you read this no holds barred review of the game!

JStove is back to tell us about his personal experience playing Warcry. Take a look at what he has to say about the game and let us know if you agree!

Today I’m going to tell you about my first impressions of WARCRY, GW’s newest skirmish game.

This is going to be an ESSAY, so if you don’t like reading long and serious reviews, you can go back to whatever Koolaid hype GW site you came from. I’m gonna lay it all on the line here and be thorough.

The One Skirmish Game to Rule Them All

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First of all, I was excited for Warcry as soon as it was announced. Ever since the original gangster Realm of Chaos books about gangs of nomad barbarians battling out in the realms of Chaos for the glory of the dark gods, I was all in on Chaos.

The thought of Conan The Barbarian having his own skirmish game was always a great idea to me- The only problem with Realm of Chaos, Path to Glory, and every iteration after it was that they weren’t balanced at all. Since you randomly rolled up your gangs, it was nearly impossible to collect a range of models to play them. And if you actually tried to play any kind of campaign, an obvious winner with a busted Warband full of high rolls would just dump truck on the poor suckers who all had low roll warbands.

There were other great games like Necromunda, Gorkamorka, Mordheim, and other indie publishers that stepped into the breach like Malifaux and Infinity. But as a lifelong worshiper of Chaos, nothing made me happier than finally seeing an all Chaos all the time barbarian bloodbath with the only thing that GW never gave them… Point values. Let’s see if Warcry lives up to the hype.

I Hate These Awful Fighter Cards

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The first thing that really deflated my hype train for Warcry was the fighter cards. I’m not gonna sugar coat this, I hate these awful cards. They’re wretched, they’re awful. As soon as I saw them I thought they were the worst part about the game. I’ll explain why.

The reason I hate the Warcry cards is that they’re covered in meaningless numbers and symbols. If you look at the cards, you see a lot of data, but you don’t know what any of it means. And if you’re not already familiar with GW games and how they format their data, then you can’t really puzzle it out by looking at their other stuff. GW tends to recycle a lot of their formatting, data, and mechanics through all their games.

You’ll Constantly Be Going Back & Forth on Cards

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So if you know how to read their data in one game, you can figure most of it out in another. But, if you’re trying to jump in, new people who don’t have that knowledge, you’re gonna have problems. This is why I wish the Warcry cards had freakin’ WORDS on them. 

The problem with cards that have wacky symbols instead of WORDS is that sometimes people get ahead of themselves when they’re trying to learn something. I’m talking about competitive guys who try to fly before they can walk. Skipping running entirely. I know a lot about this because two of the guys in my playgroup are the worst when it comes to this. They’re always trying to win the game before they even know how to play it. The worst part is that they’re actually really smart. And one of them is even a 177 IQ genius. Guess what happens when we play games though?

The genius gets dunked on by guys who are truck drivers and bartenders because he’s trying to out-think the game before he knows how to play it. What’s my conclusion? Don’t teach anyone with an ego how to play Warcry because the cards are unreadable. Make them read the damn rulebook themselves. Thanks for the crappy cards, GW.

…But I love These Wonderful Deployment Cards

When it comes to GW games, I’m pretty leery of data cards/objective cards, whatever they want to call them. To me, they stink of a cash grab, and what’s even worse is that a lot of times the GW designers just like to dress up random mechanics as content. This is the absolute worst thing ever in 40k because it’s more bookkeeping in a game that already requires two years of community college to play. For anyone reading this who is an aspiring game designer, I just want you to know that if you think randomly pulling cards from a deck is game design, it’s not. It’s just lazy!

HOWEVER, there is one beautiful shining exception to my embargo against GW’s lust for cardboard. And it’s Warcry deployment. I’m a believer. I love these cards. I never thought I would say I love GW cash grab cards, but in Warcry, I do.

Battlefield Layouts are Pre-determined

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Warcry deployment cards are great because they lay the map out for you. What map? The one that comes in the box, with all the terrain. Everything you will ever need is on those cards/in that box and it’s beautiful. The biggest problem in every GW game ever isn’t the rules or the bookkeeping. It’s the battlefield. The battlefield is the one X-Factor that is never the same. And can’t be accounted for in game design and balance.

This was always a huge problem in 40k, and a bigger problem in small engagement skirmish games. Too many clear lines of sight and shooty teams dominate. Too few lines of sight and aggro teams roll over shooty teams. How do you solve the problem? Screw random terrain and letting the players set the table themselves. We’ve figured out that they’re not adults and they can’t handle the privilege. From now on, daddy GW sets the table and it’s no longer an X-Factor.

I’m perfectly fine with Big Brother GW deciding what the table is supposed to look like because, in a skirmish game with campaign systems, I want to curb randomness as much as possible. The only thing that should be random in a campaign game is dice rolls. When you allow too much randomness in a campaign game, it mucks up the long term strategy and allows some players to pull ahead and snowball through dumb luck. The only time a player should snowball in a campaign is by outplaying and outrolling his opponent on the table.

Aside from that, random factors should be curbed as much as possible. So that the strategic decisions of players in the campaign matter. Kudos to GW for Big Brother deployment cards. I’m all-in on this.

The Initiative System is Pretty Novel

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First things first, Warcry uses alternating activations instead of I-go-you-go turns. Which is to say, unlike in games like 40k where you use all your models at once and then your opponent uses all their models at once, you take turns each using one dude at a time until you are both tapped out. This system will never work in a high model count game like 40k, but is a vastly superior system for any game that’s small enough to take advantage of it. Mainly because it prevents snowballing.

Your opponent can always have an immediate reaction to your play, and vice versa. Unlike in 40k, where you can win the game in the first turn if you have a blowout shooting phase. GW has embraced alternating activations, and it seems to be in all their new products from Necromunda and Underworlds all the way down the line to Warcry now. It’s nice to see that someone there is an actual game designer. Not just a hack fantasy author that writes bad Eldar codices.

Going 2nd Gives You A Fighting Chance

The initiative system is also a pretty great idea. Normally in a GW game, the attack is usually the best defense and alpha striking the hell out of your enemy is the best way to win. Essentially killing his toys before he kills yours. In Warcry, you play a weird version of craps to determine the first activation. The player who rolls the most singles will go first, but the booby prize for going second is that doubles, triples, and quads go into a special resource pool that your fighters can activate to do badass stuff. It adds a strategic angle to losing a first turn roll-off. Do you actually want to go first? Or do you want to go second and be able to bust out a sweet secret move? We’ll have to play the game to find out, but for now, it’s just interesting to see the second turn player gets some kind of consolation for losing a turn roll.

The Movement Rules Don’t Suck

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Warcry is the first time GW wrote movement rules that aren’t garbage. In the past, we’ve seen GW write movement rules into their games that were poorly worded, didn’t account for strange situations, or just added to weird conundrums for line of sight or shooting attacks. Warcry doesn’t have that problem. Every facet of movement from terrain to vertical distance is covered. And the center of the model’s base is the heart of the model. Want to know if your model is affected by wobbly model syndrome or if it can stand on some weird object?

The center of the base has to be able to sit on it. Furthermore, since the game uses a static terrain set that is always the same, the distances for things like falling and climbing are always set in stone. Plus, the terrain is actually designed with platforms and flat surfaces on it for models to stand on. No more of that cheapo aquarium store fish tank terrain garbage. This game has movement rules and terrain that works with the movement so that there’s no doubt where a model can or can’t go. This sounds kind of obvious, but anyone who’s played multiple editions of 40k knows that moving models from point A to point B has always been a wildcard in GW rules.

There Are No Weird & Confused Target Priority Rules

Warcry is a first for GW in that there are no weird target priority rules. GW has always had a weird way of trying to protect characters, or making cover or line of sight wonky, (true line of sight is garbage game design, cough cough) or requiring your models to shoot at the closest target unless they pass leadership, etc. Warcry is something new for GW- There’s only one target priority rule and it isn’t garbage. What is it? It’s really simple. A model that is within 1” of an enemy model must swing at that model, even if it has a weapon with longer range.

That means that if you get in the face of an archer or a guy with a chain or a spear or whatever, he can’t get tricky and try to ignore you to swing at a better target. Even dudes with guns or harpoons or whatever still have to fight guys in their face, even if they have some kind of reach advantage. This is pretty important because most attacks in the game are going to be short-range anyway. Only the Daughters of Khaine and the Stormcast have any real shooting to speak of, and everyone else is just dancing around. That means that the difference between a range 1” attack and a range 3” attack is a pretty big deal, and guys that have to get in close to work with their fists still have answers against guys that would rather keep them at arm’s length.

Chaotic Beasts Are Kind of a Joke

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The first thing in Warcry that I read that I thought was weak or useless were the chaotic beasts rules. The chaotic beasts are the random monsters that can find their way into a game and are neither the property of Player 1 or Player 2. Instead of having their own turn, they can be activated by players. A player can use their own activation to control the beast. They roll a die, and on a 3+, they use the beast as if it was their model. On a 1 or 2, the opponent gets to use it. In either case, it still counts as the activation for the guy who decided to trigger the beast.

This is risky, and for a beast to be worth the random chance of just handing it to your opponent, it’d have to be pretty badass. As a general rule, I think most players are risk-averse and would rather play with their own models. And I imagine that in most cases the chaotic beasts are just going to get ignored unless there’s some objective or extenuating circumstances that make them valuable for some reason.

While it’s a little lame, I’m fine with it. Because as I’ve said before, curbing randomness in campaign games is a big deal to me. The dice should stay on the battlefield where they belong, and if everyone decides to ignore the big dumb monster, so much the better.

Campaign Rules are Snowball-Resistant

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I’ve talked about snowballing and how I’m not a fan of randomness in campaign games and how it can contribute to snowballing. Snowballing, for those that don’t know the lingo, is when one player pulls ahead in a campaign so fast that the other players can’t catch up. He just keeps winning and pulling further ahead, like a snowball rolling down the hill.

The campaign rules in Warcry are pretty snowball-resistant and are light on bookkeeping. First of all, there are no permanent injuries. Models either die or they recover. So there’s no need to constantly check who has the brain damage or the broken leg. This doesn’t particularly bother me. Because in most cases in games like Necromunda and Mordheim, players would just use their most wounded model as charge-bait and a sacrificial lamb until that model died or they replaced him with a fresh one. So even though it’s a loss for flavor, it at least puts an end to players sandbagging their own gangs.

Second, leaders can’t die. Any roll of death on the injury table for a leader just gets knocked down to recovery. I actually think this is a great idea. Because in previous GW skirmish games, losing your leader broke the back of your gang, and the leader model was so powerful and so expensive that most players just hung them back to use their support abilities and played super defensive with them. In Warcry, since you know your leader can’t be permanently killed, you can use them to do more risky heroic plays. Personally, I’ll trade cowardly leaders afraid of death for suicidal daredevil invincible leaders any day, it just looks like more fun.

Nobody Can Become OP

 

Third, the ways that models gain power in Warcry is more limited. Instead of logging skills and upgrades, models can gain and lose destiny. Destiny grants re-rolls, which is of course super good, but is not as abusive as a powerful model gaining a nearly unstoppable list of stat block upgrades and skills. Also, a model full of destiny points can lose destiny if he gets taken out in battle, so there’s more ebb and flow with how a Warband performs in a campaign.

There are also artifacts that you can find. But none of them are as abusive and game-changing as the Mordheim artifacts or rare gear in Necromunda. For the most part, getting destiny re-rolls is the biggest game-changer for a model’s power level. You can be pretty sure that models in a campaign don’t get so far out in front of their baseline that they become unstoppable.

Finally, Warcry campaigns have asymmetric win conditions. Each Warband selects their own quest with its own goals, and it’s own loot tables and artifacts for the gang. This at least keeps variety and flavor in the system, so everyone isn’t constantly rushing for the rare item or piece of gear that’s ‘meta’ in other skirmish games.

Overall, the campaign rules of Warcry are light on bookkeeping and largely snowball resistant. This is definitely a plus.

Outlook Looks Mostly Positive, But…

So far, everything looks pretty good. The rules look solid, but I anticipate having a hard time teaching them to newcomers that can’t read the cards. The box actually has a full set of terrain for complete tables, and I mean COMPLETE. This isn’t your daddy’s Necromunda or Mordheim box that came with a handful of cardboard buildings. This game box comes with everything you actually need to put on the table. It’s one-stop shopping, THE END.

However, there are some little snags, there always are. Let’s look at the negatives.

The Starter Box is Basically Mandatory

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In Mordheim, Necromunda, or Kill Team, you could basically get away with just having the rulebook and the gang of your choice, and making up the terrain with your collection. This is not the case in Warcry. At least one person in your crew needs to have the starter box because the terrain set up is basically mandatory to use the deployment cards, which I personally think is one of the stronger points of the game.

The Jury is Still out on Whether or Not the Starter Box Warbands are Good

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GW has a history of hamstringing all-in-one gang boxes. Back in the Mordheim days, the Skaven box only came with 2 sling arms. (You wanted them on every model.) In Necromunda, the Goliath gang was awful, it came with more expensive power weapons than you could ever buy, but only had a handful of cheap weapons you actually needed to outfit the gang. Every GW skirmish game has had this problem, “Incomplete box syndrome.”

It’s when you need to buy a second box to have all the parts you want just to build your Warband correctly. I haven’t done enough research yet on Warcry to see if the Iron Golems and the Untamed Beasts have enough gas in their box to make the grade, but if GW does what GW historically does, I’m not gonna be surprised.

If you use an off-chaos gang, you need to order the cards NOW!

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This is a big deal if you plan on playing Nighthaunts, Orks, Aelves, Gobbos, or any of the other guys that aren’t part of the core game. GW is only making limited runs of the card packs, so if you don’t get them, you’re screwed. More importantly, when your local games store orders the card packs, they come in booster boxes, the same way Magic cards do. Except, rather than having a few of each faction, the box comes with a bunch of Sigmar packs, and one pack for everyone else.

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This means that when your store goes to order them, there’s gonna be one “bad guy” pack of each flavor, and a dozen vanilla Stormcast packs. Why did GW do it like this? Don’t know, but that’s how it’s gonna go down. So unless you’re planning on playing Stormcast, you need to get your baddie gang packs now before they get snatched up.

The Starter Box Rulebook is Kind of a Piece of Crap

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The starter box rulebook is functional. That’s really all it is. It will teach you to play the game, but anything after that is a stretch. It has two major problems.

Problem number 1 is that it’s a pretty cheap softcover binding. After reading mine for one night, just to read the rules, I woke up the next morning and picked it up and the glue was already coming off the cover. I guess it can only sit open and flat long enough for one person to read it once and learn how to play. Hopefully, GW will drop a better version later on.

The second problem is that there is no GLOSSARY OR INDEX. This was an amateur move by GW, but historically, it’s something that they do. They were on a tear for a minute where they actually had an index in all their books, but they backpedaled on this one.

Another Minor Problem With the Book

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The third problem is that the rulebook interior art is low effort. The nicest thing about GW rulebooks has always been that even if they’re expensive or poorly written, the interior artwork is really cool and you can just keep it as a coffee table book to stare at. This isn’t the case with Warcry. There’s barely any interior art. Old 3rd edition softcover black and white codex books have more art in them than Warcry. It’s a tragedy. GW has contacts to some of the best fantasy illustrators in the business, and they didn’t use them for Warcry. This is literally the only thing that Kirby’s GW did better than Rountree’s GW. (I guess there had to be a first, right?)

If I had known they were going to go cheap on the rulebook, I would have preferred they just make a staple-bound throwaway rulebook. Like the little ones that come in 40k boxes or the Shadespire rulebook. The half-measure softcover garbage rulebook they give you is just going to fall apart. It’s like the Mordheim rulebook from 1999, it’s been 20 years and Games Workshop still hasn’t learned that if you want to charge $40-$50 for a book, it better be as nice as a leather-bound bible. At least Forgeworld figured that one out.

Final Thought- What to Buy

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As far as the overall is concerned, I think the answer is to always buy the starter set. It comes with all the things you need to play. You want to have the battleplan cards, the terrain, the rulebook, and the dice and stuff. Even if you don’t want the Untamed Beasts or the Iron Golems, you’re still better off just buying the box.

Rob did a breakdown of what you’re saving when you buy a starter and it’s hands-down the best option for jumping into the game.

Warcry is a little different… The starter box is not only the best value, but it’s actually obligatory. You need the rules, you need the terrain, you need the cards… And they’re all things that I’d never buy separately. The terrain is great, the cards are obligatory, and the rulebook is a piece of trash that I would never fork over forty bucks for by itself. Buying the box as a bundle and then scalping off the gangs to your friends or eBay to recoup the cost is the cheapest way to get in the door.

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About the Author: Jack Stover