FFG Star Wars living card game impressions

Thomas introduced me to the recent Fantasy Flight Games "Living card game", Star Wars.
Unfortunately my brain was pretty much fried after I returned home after a full day of gaming so I forgot many of names of the game mechanics. But from what I remember I can say that I liked it.

It's a 2-player game (featured in the universe of episode IV-VI) and it included a couple of familiar "card game" elements that you will recognize quickly, such as having 3 objectives to fight over (though each player has 3 instead of sharing them).

The goal of the game is for the rebel alliance to disrupt Imperial operations while the Imperial player is mainly trying to defend while the death star is being built. Once the death star is finished the game ends an imperial victory, if it's stopped, the rebels win.

The game resource handling, buying and deploying units, it also includes an interesting combat mechanic where you first declare which units will be attacking what target - and commit these cards. Then the enemy has to decide whether or not to defend, but if they defend - both players now place cards from their hand facedown to see who gets the "edge" in the battle and starts dealing damage first. The interesting aspect of this is that the edge points are printed on unit cards, the better the unit the more edge points. This means that you will need to burn good unit cards in the edge battles, units which you maybe you would want to save for the next turn and buy as a proper combat unit instead of using them as a bidding resource.

So the dual purpose of cards I think was nice. The way the objectives worked also seemed to allow for more balanced and less "out of nowhere victories". The way units deal damage to enemy objectives and how each objective has its own special rules etc, I really liked it.

If I get to play this again soon I will write a proper review and make sure to take notes to give a more detailed description of everything. I always write this, I'm not a card game guy. I don't know why but I just have a hard time with card games, however every now and again something good comes along, like the Game of Thrones cardgame or this Star Wars game.

Game of Thrones CCG overview

David in our group owns the Game of Thrones Collectable Card Game by Fantasy Flight Games and have been bringing it along down to the club over the last couple of weeks - so I finally got the time to try it out myself. As I have mentioned in a few review posts in the past I'm really not "card game" fan, it stems from several problems I have with cardgames.

First of allI like to have a clear overview of what's going on, this is often helped by having a board and markers of some sort. Cardgames usually have a bunch of cards facing all direction making it nearly impossible to keep track of what is what and who's got what.

On top of that there is often an overwhelming amount of information in cardgames that you can't grasp as a newcomer as opposed to a boardgame. With a boardgame you can read the rules and understand 85% right off the bat. With a cardgame you can learn the mechanics, but then every player have a couple of dozen cards each with additional skills, traits, events, actions and whatnot - making it impossible for you as a newcomer to be able to foresee and plan or be able to in any way anticipate what the opponent can do. This certainly goes away after repeated games, but it is always the owner of the cardgame that has the edge over everyone else.


Beside that I often feel that cardgames are badly put together. Games like Call of Cthulhu by FFG is a gorgeous game that I think really sucks ass. Nothing happens and then suddenly one player wins. Warhammer Invasion is quite OK, but of the cardgames that I have played I think I like Game of Thrones the most. Game of Thrones related games are really a hit and miss kinda deal, you can't really tell if they are good purely based upon the license. This game did seem to simulate the various characters and houses of the Game of Thrones universe quite good. David had a suitcase full of decks for each of the houses of Westeros - i randomly picked house Baratheon and David picked Lannister.

Baratheon had quite good army capabilities and included Stannis Baratheon as their faction leader, Lannister on the other hand were just showering in gold and were able to pull off a lot of scheming. They also had Jaime Lannister who was wicked in duels with other characters.

The game can be played (and the impression I got it is recommended) with more than 2 players as there s a board with titles such as Master of Coin, Hand of the King and so on each granting a special bonus for the turn in which you possess this title. Each player has his own deck with the house he's playing and you slowly start to build up your home region and armies that you then send to fight other players. You win by accumulating 15 power tokens, which are won either by glorious victories on the battlefield or by scheming in the shadows with plotting characters and spies. Much like in Game of Thrones the boardgame you don't have to annihilate an opponent to win the game.

The game mechanics were quite good, even though I had to keep up with David as this was my first game. There certainly were more reasonable attributes to the skills and the way the battles played out compared to the GoT Boardgame (I hated 1st edition but have not played 2nd which is supposed to have been greatly improved). The theme is quite strong and makes sense, it's not just a tacked GoT on gimmick, the characters and events actually feel like something from the Game of Thrones universe.

In our game I was able to muster armies and powerful characters while David was mainly defending against the wave attacks I was sending against him, he still managed to hold up quite well and eventually won because of his spies and scheming characters. He also managed to kill Stannis in a duel with Jaime Lannister by isolating my commander from the rest of my army with an event card.

It's certainly worth checking out if you get the chance, and especially if you are a fan of both cardgames and Game of Thrones. And while this game is a collectable card game, and the amount of cards is ridiculous (thus including one of the problems listed earlier) I still think the game balance and the use of theme outweighed the stuff usually putting me off games like these.

Warhammer Invasion [Card game review]

Thought I would kick off the 2011 review section with a review of a card game called Warhammer Invasion.

I rarely play card games except Poker, I usually find them either overly complex or just lacking everything I like in a good boardgame. Warhammer Invasion is a surprisingly fun and easy to grasp game that offers a good balance of tactics, resource management and a little luck. It is set in the Warhammer world created by Games Workshop – many Warhammer players will also recognize a lot of the artwork which has been borrowed from various box covers and white dwarf magazines.
Component breakdown. This is fairly simple, there are only 4 components in this game. Resource tokens (barrels with loot), “Burn tokens” marking the destruction of a region in your home realm, casualty tokens marking wounds and damage and of course the cards.

Me and my buddy managed to get 4 games done withing 3 hours with lots of talking in between, this is a very fast paced game, which isn’t a problem and actually an advantage. Each game takes about 30-45 minutes to play. You will have grasped the rules during your 2nd game, after that you will start to refine your playing style and tactics.

How the game works:

There are 4 races in this starter set, Empire, Chaos, Dwarfs and Orcs. Each has a deck of cards, each has a home realm/kingdom board. There is also a deck of “Neutral” cards that lean towards defensive/tactical benefits and which can be used without penalty by all races. You can choose to play a pure Order or Destruction realm, meaning you will only use 1 deck of cards – say the Dwarfs. Or you can mix races of the same alignment, like mixing Empire and Dwarf cards into one deck. You still only have one home realm but more about that later. You can also choose to throw in some neutral cards into the mix. There is a limit on how many cards your deck can contain though so you won’t be able to include all cards from both races + the neutral cards, you will have to choose which to include trying to find a balance between cards that can harm the enemy and cards that will defend your kingdom.

Your Kingdom is a board divided into 3 sections. Kingdom, this area will generate resources, Battlefield, this is where you will assemble your army and send it out to attack the opponents Kingdom and you Quest zone which generates new cards for your hand. Now the board has small symbols of a hammer inside a red circle, this shows how much stuff  you get from each part of your realm. You always start out with 3 resources and 1 card. You then boost the amount of resources you get from your Kingdom or how many cards you get from your Quest area by buying units and placing them in whatever area you want to boost.

Placing a unit with 2 hammer symbols on the card in your Kingdom will boost the amount of resources you get next turn from the initial 3 to 5 (3+2). It works the same for the Quest area, 1 card to start and a card showing 2 additional hammer symbols you get 3 cards next turn (1+2). A fairly simple system which is easy to grasp but gives you several things to decide upon especially during early game when you are low on both cards and resources.  Do you start out boosting your kingdom to get more money while your card hand keeps shrinking limiting the variation of cards at hand ? Or do you try to boost the quest area to get more cards on your hand? At the same time you have to assign troops to each of the 3 areas in your realm to protect them from enemy raids.

The goal of the game is to destroy 2 out of 3 enemy areas, each area kingdom/quest/battlefield can take 8 points of damage before it gets destroyed.  You can boost each area with spare cards by placing them face down next to the area you wish to “develop”, this adds one additional “wound” to that particular area AND at the same time conveying bonus properties from several cards that can be played. For instance, the unit Dwarf Troll Slayers only inflict 1 damage when attacking /defending from the Battlefield area – but if you have 2 or more developments in the Battlefield their attacks are increased to 3! Which is a considerable boost in this game.

A regular turn sequence of Warhammer Invasion looks like this,

Player 1, draws resources matching his resource pool, draws cards matching his card pool.
He may opt to buy one unit/support card  from his hand and place it at any of the 3 areas in his realm. He may buy as many cards as he can afford.
He might then send off a unit on a Quest, send off units from his Battlefield area to attack the realm and/or place 1 development in any of the 3 areas in his realm.
Each unit card comes with an attack and defense value. If a unit has 1 hammer and 4 shield value it inflicts 1 damage / attack and has a total of 4 wounds. Attacking an enemy area which is undefended immediately add damage tokens to that area matching the attack value of the units inflicting damage. However, if there are any enemy units in the target area the opponent may opt to defend with his troops. All damage applied during an attack has to be divided between enemy units, and they all need to be killed before any damage is inflicted on the area itself.

When all of this is done the turn goes to Player 2, which does the exact same thing, draw resources, cards, buying and assigning units, attacking etc.

The tricky part is to boost and protect your areas while battling the enemy in a way so that you don’t waste troops, know when to defend with your own troops and when to let the enemy freely inflict damage to your areas as you sometimes might want to save your troops as their presence is boosting the area itself. If your Quest region is attacked and you have 2 units which both add 1 hammer each to the region – allowing you to draw 3 cards each turn, it might be a better idea to let the enemy inflict a few points of damage and focus on reinforcing the region in your following turn than let your units be killed and cripple the amount of cards you can draw the next turn.
You can always use a region even if it has been destroyed, that is they will always generate resources and you can always send out armies from the Battlefield. However you can lose particular traits from no longer having a functional region. And once 2 regions have been destroyed the opponent wins.
Now with the basic game described I can explain some further details, Loyalty. Each unit has a number of loyalty symbols on their card, these are faction symbols. Each unit has a fixed cost and a loyalty cost. The fixed cost may be 2 and the loyalty cost may be 3. You start out with 1 loyalty on your home realm board, if you want to buy a unit that exceeds your current total loyalty (all loyalty symbols on cards bought and in play in your realm totaled together) you will have to pay extra for that unit. So for instance, let’s assume you have 1 loyalty to begin within your realm, and you have already bought a unit which has 2 loyalty symbols on them – then you total loyalty is 3. If you then want to buy a unit that is marked with a basic cost of 3 and loyalty cost of 3 you ONLY have to pay the basic cost in resources. However if you want to buy a unit with a loyalty cost 5 and only have loyalty 3 you have to add the difference when paying for the unit in resources.

This is often not a problem when you play a pure empire/chaos/orc/dwarf army. But when you start mixing races your deck you will soon run into limitations. You will have to place units of both races in play to get as much dwarf and empire loyalty on the table as possible to keep down the cost of cards you want to put into play.  Mixing races adds another layer of tactical decisions, and you can boost one race with support cards of the other, like adding a Dwarf cannon to boost Empire infantry.
The game is easy to learn, and plays fast. It is surprisingly fun for a card game, especially considering I don’t generally like card games. There are a few things worth mentioning though, there is for instance one Orc card that seems to be fairly unbalanced as it is cheap to deploy and gives a crazy attack bonus which can win the game for the Order of Destruction player fast (Altar of Gork if I recall correctly), me and my friend were a little confused by this card as it is the only one in the game that is so powerful. You can simply opt to play without it though.  Each race also plays differently, my friend said that the Empire (humans) were too defensive in their cards which I could agree with to some extent. I don’t think you will experience that as a bad thing mixing Empire and Dwarf cards however. There is at least one expansion released already (what would you expect from Fantasy Flight Games), which adds additional races and some rules I think.

Overall I would say this is a good game with high replay value, easy to learn rules, good amount and variation in decisions. What you get in the core box should be enough to keep you occupied for a while.

 Get this game at GameManiacs: