vermillian said:

Well, the WoW loot cards were largely cosmetic, but the cosmetic factors were significant. When someone had a spectral tiger, you took notice -- and that's exactly what they wanted when they got the mount. Same goes for that fishing chair/umbrella, turtle mount, non-combat pets, etc. The WAR promotional items are *typically* much less obvious, with a couple of exceptions. That reduces the craze-factor, so I'm thankful for that.

Honestly though, this is just going to be a "fun" item. +5 to a stat, especially at higher levels, won't provide a noticeable boost. The chances of you getting an undesirable stat +/- are probably close to 50%, depending on your archetype/class and your own personal goals. But, since it's a buff, you can click it off if you don't like the stat combo. The real problem, though, is that the item has a 60 minute cooldown and the buff only has a 5 minute duration (and by definition, disappears on death). So, if you remember you have it at all, I'd save it for situations where death is more infrequent, like an RvE public quest. RvR is naturally unpredictable and increases your chances of wasting that hour cooldown.

Just as a random aside, I'd have to disagree on one person not making a huge difference... several times a day, I see RvR situations made or broken by the actions of one player. :) Granted, that's exclusive to RvR.

In the end, my best recommendation would be to buy Invasion because it's probably going to be an amazing game, not because of the WAR promo items. They're just a fun little bonus.

FangsFirst said:

I noticed this too -- even some of the art appears to be WAR concept art, particularly the capital cities. I'm sure the intention is to build a game that the MMO players will want to pick up, in addition to the requisite fans of the IP itself. And I'm not ashamed to admit that in my case, it's already working. :)

Darthvegeta800 said:

sure. they only thing you can't do with the factions is put order and destruction together in the same deck. You cna have chaos on choas [hot :P] action. chaos verse orcs and once they are more then a support race chaos verse dark elder.

Don't worry you can absolutely play an all Dwarf (of any single faction) if you want to, Order and destruction are there for people who want allies.

See you on the battle field,

Steve 

Mazinkaiser said:

And Steve... why didn't you tell me about this sooner? :P

Oh and the WAR promotional items are only a +5 -5 stat boost... yeah 5 isn't that much at all... heh. (quite a bit in tier 1 however).

I'm thinking the rules appear to support having Order vs. Order or Destro vs. Destro... not that I've played it mind you... or even read the rules.

lastly, no you cannot have Chaos vs. Dark Eldar in this game BECAUSE THERE IS NO ELDAR in warhammer fantasy... dark ELVES perhaps.

So...is this why all those Warhammer UFS cards were never becoming tourney legal?

If we wanted to complete a playset of every card in the game, how many boxes would we need?  So far it looks nice, but I really would like to see the mechanics.  Always did like playing Empire gunbunnies.

As with other LCGs, one complete playset would probably require one to three boxes (or, one per lowest number of unique cards included times the maximum number of copies allowed...which with CoC means three, but until we see the card break-down and the rules we won't know).

Yeah, I'm willing to bet it will follow the rest of their LCG models with a limit of 3 per card per deck. Call of Cthulhu used to be 4 copies per card until the change to LCG, and the packaging model -- 10 cards @ 1 copy each, 10 cards @ 3 copies each -- is most likely what we can expect here. I haven't looked at the pricing yet either, but I'm willing to bet $40 for the core set and $10 per pack. So $120 for a playset of the core, $30 a month for the new cards.

nullstate said:

Yeah, I had the same reaction with the WoW minis, and before that the City of Heroes CCG. Tying in to an IP is great, but when you can shadow the actual feel of the game, bring in what's familiar even if you have to change it, it really helps to bring home the experience. FFG did the same thing with both the WoW board games too.

Lars:

But that's exactly my point, I agree that technically you could start anywhere, but where do you start? My own unfamiliarity with it combined with the fact that I usually trailblaze new games so my friends know what to buy means that it makes me hesitant to buy, as much as I love Cthulhu and Game of Thrones. Now say I've never really done a CCG or LCG and my playgroup is also all new; Other than just all deciding on a story to pick on, where do we start for chapter packs? I think one of the strong points to CCG's is when they do have a current play environment and that environment is easy to explain.

For example, though there is no symbol, it's fairly easy with just a bit of knowledge to know what is Magic Type 2 legal (well along with the gigantic list of errata, restrictions, and bannings usually). For L5R, it's extremely easy: if it's bugged, it's legal for that environment. The only tricky part is if you have old cards, knowing which have been reprinted and what the most recent printing (MRP) is.

I would love to see something similar in an LCG. Say the last 3 "story lines" or whatever you want to call them are legal. That means that the furthest you have to go back is a year (going along with monthly release x4 = story line x3 = 12 months = 1 year). While I imagine it would be easier for FFG to go back to press on Chapter packs, it's still hard to tell exactly when something's going to sell like hot cakes and be hard to find. Along those same lines, I imagine it's hard to know when going back to press will be profitable. Going back more than a year is usually the painful point in most CCG's, both price-wise and even just trying to find the stuff.

Obviously the big sets like the base set stay until the new one comes out. This may seem like superfluous, but what I'm looking at is not the price of maintaining, which is very modest even if you want a playset of everything. I'm looking at buying into the game 6 months to 2 to 3 years later.

Say you introduce a friend to the game 2 years down the line, he loves it and wants all possible build options. Just for one year, a complete playset of everything would cost you $360 (assuming the current 3x per card in a deck, allowing multiple unique cards, and current chapter pack setup). Now I've dropped more than that on base sets of some CCG's, so it's definitely more economical.

Let's go with a more realistic 1 per chapter pack and only needing half of them. For two years, you're still looking at $120, but for one year you either get one of each or 2 of half of the chapter packs for the same amount. Adding in the base set (assuming once again that the price point is the same), you're looking at $160 to buy in potentially at a tourney level a year in the game. You have to drop $160 for most ccg expansions if you want to make sure you're going to have the playset of what you need.

My own impressions from playing CCG's are that it's also best if you have a regular cycling out of cards. It's nice to have a familiar game that has an entirely new environment to it, and I imagine this would be much easier to keep up with in an LCG for players. And of course you can always have legacy formats.

Wow this kind of went off the rails, but I still feel that it stays on topic enough. I wish everything would go to an LCG format, it would let me buy more FFG boardgames! ^^  Seriously though, I think if they just added some kind of stated cycle and/or bug for legality this would be my favorite style of game: regular infusions of new option, both more frequently and non-randomly. It also definitely helps to at least build interest in those turned off by collectibles (read: just about everyone). I think the only thing that keeps the current collectible games alive is just brand recognition, longevity, and/or strength of the game itself.

The only other thing I might suggest is making uniques actually one per deck. For those casually playing it means there is a flat $10/month to keep up to date, and for people like me who make multiple decks it still ranges from $10-$30. Just guessing, but I'd honestly be surprised if this changed how the chapter packs are currently purchased. I could be wrong though...

As far as the chaos vs. chaos, I think they'd have to allow it unless they make it like the old Star Wars CCG, where you actually HAD to have 2 different decks, which seems to go against everything we've seen.

*Edit: cut out a lot of the quote

Definitely looking forward to this game big time.  

However, is it just me or does the packaging seem a little odd?  You are going to end up with 9 of some cards to get three of others, why not just make it 3 of each card for $15.  (Yes its the same price per card, and it puts you at the same monthly price as an MMO)

The starter set seems ok, but I wish it was packaged in a friendlier manner towards getting copies 2 and 3 of cards.  I'd rather not have 3 huge boardgame boxes and 2 extra sets of tokens lying around, let alone be paying for them.  Perhaps 2 player starter sets without all the extra stuff and 2 copies each of half the cards?  (Maybe packaged in some cool deck carrier type box if we are luck?)

I never mind the extra cards in chaptyer packs, especially when they are things like events in AGoT that i want to use in more then one deck or a nuetral character that can go into different factions decks so i like getting 9 of those types of cards.

 I think the multiples of some and single of others works for me.  I don't buy multiple Asylum Packs for CoC because I might not play the same factions as everyone else.  If I have three of a card someone else plays, I'll trade it for his single that I do.  Turn around and do it again with someone else.  Now they have gotten three cards each without buying pack #2 and I have gotten three copies of a card I want from pack #1.  Or just everyone buys a copy of the chapter/asylum pack and pass the cards you don't play to the guys that do.  I might get fewer cards this month, but I'll get more next month.  And in the end we all get what we play and remove the collectible aspect (which is THE reason I don't play CCGs).

Ok, this is just some uncontained rambling at this point, especially because the info so far provided has been very scarce, but anyway ... What I really hope for this game is to really feel like an epic, strategic empire building game. Those of you who know about the Mighty Empires (or even Warmaster) will probably understand what I'm talking about. The box illustration shows this epic clash of a hero and a monster about to unveil in the centre, but in the background there are untold masses of soldiery sweeping down the hillsides to meet in rows upon rows of iron, about to establish the supremacy of a single one empire. The cards seen so far, though beautiful, seem to have a somewhat different art directive, showing just a number of warriors at best, not ranks of pikemen or hordes of orcs. I understand that designers are probably coming from a more "boardgamey" background as opposed to a miniature wargaming one and it brings it's own influences in good and bad, I suppose. I understand that what I'm talking about is just a minor point of the overall game design and what's more, it might be my personal issue. I'm also aware that we've seen so far maybe 10, 15 cards at best, half of them unreadable beyond pretty colours. So all is still open, I'm not saying I don't like what I see at the moment. I just hope the overall feeling will be that of some epic-scaled conflict between massive empires, concerning groups of people of nationwide proportions (as opposed to a group of heroes/monsters dabling around the board with everything from combat to resources). Your thoughts?

Well I doubt it'll be much of an empire building thing... given that the game is supposed to be fast paced... Age of Empires TCG was NEVER fast paced...

I think (hope) its pacing is similar to that of the late end RvR aspects of warhammer online, which it seems closely tied to. consider http://www.warhammeronline.com/trial/ , go straight to the PvP area (the culmination of all of the Destro vs. Order aspects in WAR is called RvR or Realm versus Realm), and just do a ton of that (to simulate end game RvR in WAR). Its viscious, and does require some patience, and also some building of resources (like getting your people (other players) together and in the same place at the right time)...

Though I'm sure it'll have a few other concepts other than an MMO duplication as well (like a bit of building... building and such).

Yeah, RvR was my first thought as I checked the WH online ...

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't wish for some 6 hour micromanagement simmulation either, I'm a big fan of fast gameplay. It's just, I don't know, kind of silly to be sending individual fighters to wage war for an Empire. Makes sense in MMO where players control individual heroes. Even in WH universe heroes always played an important part. But when it comes simply down to weather you'll have a picture of two dwarfs or a whole unit of them on a card ... again, I might be nitpicking. I'll have to see when they show us more.

well lets just say they do a good job with your concerns