W40k Armageddon! Licensing agreement between Games Workshop & Slitherine/Matrix Games

Armageddon invasion starts in 2014

Slitherine and Games Workshop® are pleased to announce Warhammer®40,000®: Armageddon™.

Having announced an exciting partnership with Games Workshop a few weeks ago, Slitherine are delighted to release further details. Slitherine have acquired the exclusive rights to Games Workshop’s “Battle for Armageddon” setting in order to create a series of amazing multiplatform, turn-based, hex-based games. Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon will make full use of Slitherine’s expertise in creating compelling and challenging strategy gaming experiences. The initial game is set…See More™ in great detail, from the initial Ork landings to the final liberation of the planet;
It contains a large branching campaign with 30 major scenarios, plus additional 5 tutorial scenarios that explore the story in detail;
A complex plot, which can develop during a mission, right in the middle of battle, creating an engaging story line with unexpected twists;
Players lead Imperial troops of the Armageddon™ Steel Legion, with supporting assets from a number of Space Marine chapters against the ferocious Orks;
Fight alongside Commissar Yarrik and Commander Dante against the cunning Ork Warboss Ghazghkull Thraka;
Carry over battle-hardened veterans from scenario to scenario, using their experience and upgrading their equipment;
Detailed combat model with terrain, weather and morale effects;
Extensive modding options delivered through a powerful and easy-to-use game editor.
Some numbers:

Over 35 scenarios;
Over 100 unit types, with unique roles, stats and special abilities;
20 different units stats;
A separate set of maps are designed and balanced specifically for multiplayer via Slitherine’s PBEM++ system.

 

Original news:

Slitherine links with Games Workshop® on new licensing agreement

World leader of tabletop wargaming joins forces with strategy video gaming expert

Slitherine (www.slitherine.com) and Games Workshop (www.games-workshop.com), two giants in their respective specialist markets, have signed a deal to produce a strategy video game set in the popular Warhammer® 40,000® universe.

“This deal represents yet another testament to our continuous aim to reach new audiences, without losing sight of who we are and what we do best“, said JD McNeil, Chairman of the Slitherine Group. “It’s all about creating strategy games that are targeted to a particular audience and addressing a very specific need in the market. The Warhammer 40,000 setting is a perfect fit for the style of strategy games that we make and will be very popular with fantasy and science fiction fans alike. Joining forces with Games Workshop will allow us to bring an wonderfully deep and appropriate IP to the Turn Based Strategy genre”.

Details of the deal including the content and features of the game have not yet been announced, but development is already underway on multiple platforms, involving the best talents in design and development available to the Slitherine Group.

Jon Gillard, Head of Licensing at Games Workshop said: “Slitherine are clearly established and successful masters of their genre of games, and there are many fans of their work here at GW. It’s a pleasure to work with such like minded individuals who share our passion for strategy games of all types”.

Warhammer Invasion LCG: Battle Packs

Jump to “List of Battle Packs”

Warhammer Invasion is a “Living Card Game” (LCG) by Fantasy Flight Games. This means, it’s a collectible, customizable dueling card game where players build their individual card decks and battle other opponents’ decks.

The Best of Two Worlds

The only difference to a “Collectible Card Game” (CCG) – for example Magic: The Gathering or Yu-Gi-Oh-, is the distribution model for additional cards. In contrast to the classic Collectible Card Games, you don’t blind-buy randomized booster packs with unknown contents. Instead of that, you buy  monthly expansions called “Battle Packs” with fixed contents which are public knowledge. You don’t have to “hunt” for very rare cards anymore, probably spending hundreds of $ on blind-buying random booster packs.

Each Battle Pack adds some cards to each faction and some neutral cards and most of them deal with a specific aspect of the game (for example new sub-themes like Skaven, combat effects, keywords, locations, spells..). If you want more cards for your deck, you  can check out which Battle Pack offers the best contents for you and your specific playing style and strategy. If you want to counter a specific weakness of your deck, or if you need tools against a certain opponent, or if you want to create a theme deck with a certain focal point or strategy, you can check out which Battle Pack includes cards that will provide the desired effects to optimize your personal deck.

Ultimately, you will buy all expansion packs nevertheless, just to be more flexible and to “own them all” because also in a LCG the collectible aspect is quite addictive, but at least you don’t have to spend $100 in search for one rare card while getting 85 copies of the same cheap card in return. There’s simply more bang for your buck in the LCG format.

In a LCG, you always know what you get for your money, but you can still profit from the basic concept of deck building by choosing “your” favorite cards. The only difference to a CCG is that no cards are “rare” cards anymore, all players have access to the same cards and expansion packs and all cards have fixed prices. So it all comes down to your deckbuilding strategies, your gameplay and your choices of which characters, items, or events you take into the battle.

Core Set and Battle Packs

A Dark Elf from the Assault on Ulthuan de Luxe expansion

In 2009, Fantasy Flight Games released a “Core Set” which contained 4 pre-built decks (220 cards) and all components you need for the game (4 Capitals / strongholds, resource markers, burn tokens, damage tokens, a full-colored rulebook). The Core Pack includes 4 of the 6 factions; the last two factions (High Elves and Dark Elves) can be added to the game with a large De Luxe expansion, containing Capital boards and starter decks for the last two factions.

Players can get a first impression of the game by playing the Core Pack, by choosing one of the 4 balanced pre-built faction decks and by learning about their strengths and weaknesses. If they like the game and decide that they want to delve deeper into the hobby, they decide which factions or strategies they want to utilize in the future and start deck building by supplementing the core game with Battle Packs.

New Battle Packs are released regularly (roughly one per month). They belong to “Story cycles” which add more flavor to the game, add races, creatures, buildings, and weapons from the Warhammer Fantasy universe and allow for deep customization. Since their contents are fixed, players know what they get in advance and can decide whether a specific Battle Pack would be a good addition for their decks.

The first 6 Battle Packs (Corruption Cycle) consist of 20 different cards, 2 copies each (for a total of 40 cards). Since players tend to build decks containing multiple copies of a single card (the game allows for a maximum of three copies per card), they often bought each Battle Pack two times. This is somewhat contra productive to the “lower costs compared to a CCG” concept of a Living Card Game, so with the second story cycle, Fantasy Flight Games changed the contents of Battle Packs to 20 unique cards in triplicate copy (for a total of 60 cards), starting with the Enemy Cycle.

Battle Packs are not too expensive ($6-10 Dollars, depending on the shop) and can be bought in various game shops and from amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, or amazon.de.

List of Battle Packs (BP) and Deluxe Expansions

• Core Set

De Luxe Expansions:

• Assault on Ulthua (Dark Elves & High Elves)
• March of the Damned (neutral forces, Lizardmen, Vampire Counts, new keywords “Savage” and “Necromancy”)
  

The Corruption Cycle:

• BP1: The Skavenblight Thread, introduces the Skaven
• BP2: Path of the Zealot, adds zealots of Order
• BP3: Tooth and Claw, adds Rat Ogres of Moulder clan
• BP4: The Deathmaster’s Dance, adds Deathmaster Sniktch
• BP5: The Warpstone Chronicles, focus on ancient relics of the Old World
• BP6: Arcane Fire, focus on spells and arcane magic
  

The Enemy Cycle:

• BP7: The Burning of Derricksburg, Battle for the town of Derricksburg
• BP8: The Fall of Karak Grimaz, Orcs attacking the Dwarven hold
• BP9: The Silent Forge, High Elves discover the Dark Elves’ secret forge
  
• BP10: Redemption of A Mage, adds powerful Dwarves runes, “Mage” and “Knight” keywords for the Empire
• BP11: The Fourth Waystone
• BP12: Bleeding Sun

The Morrslieb Cycle:

• BP13: Omens of Ruin
• BP14: The Chaos Moon
• BP15: The Twin Tailed Comet
• BP16: Signs in the Stars

Excel Sheets, called “Spoiler Lists” are available for all Battle Packs. Check out the Warhammer Invasion File Section on Boardgamegeek!

Introduction to Warhammer: Invasion (LCG)

Warhammer: Invasion – The Card Game is a Living Card Game (LCG) by Fantasy Flight Games (FFG). In contrast to the other LCGs by FFG (Call of Cthulhu – The Card Game and A Game of Thrones), Warhammer Invasion isn’t the re-launch of a former Collectible Card Game but an entirely new series.

The game is based on the Warhammer Universe by Games Workshop and was designed by Eric M. Lang.

What’s a Living Card Game?

A Living Card Game is a fully customizable dueling card game, where players create their own custom decks which support their favorite tactics, and deck theme. They choose one or more factions and create a deck of a given number of cards. Depending on the game, you have to follow a basic rule set for constructing your deck (a minimum or maximum number of cards, a point or cost system, allowed number of copies of each cord in one deck etc.), but apart from this, you are free to build and explore the “ultimate deck“ which utilizes or exploits the different strengths and weaknesses of game factions. This deck is then pitted in battles against the opponent’s custom deck.

 

Battle Packs add additional cards to the Core game and allow for deck customization

In contrast to a Collectible Card Game (CCG) or Trading Card Game (TCG) (for example Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, Marvel Vs, The Lord of the Rings TCG, Pokemon) where new cards are added by buying so-called randomized “Booster Packs”, Living Card Games start with a fixed set of cards in a Starter Pack and fixed expansions. While you don’t know the contents of a CCG booster pack (thus probably spending hundreds of Dollars in search for a very rare card), you always know the contents of the LCG starter pack and all expansion packs. New booster packs are constantly added to a CCG card system, so you have to spend a huge amount of money if you are a competitive player who wants to be “up-to-date” with all-powerful and rare cards. This “blind buy” model of CCGs is somewhat problematic because it burns a lot of money while you find copies and copies of the same cheap cards over and over again while you are searching for the “one” powerful new rare card. Nevertheless, CCGs are quite popular, mostly because the thrill of “not knowing what’s inside” is somewhat addictive to many players.

The Living Card Game has a different distribution model – the expansions (=new cards) are not sold in booster packs with random contents but in fixed add-ons (called Battle Pack, Asylum Pack, Chapter Pack or Adventure Pack, depending on the game). These are published regularly (usually once a month) and the contents are public knowledge. You don’t buy the pig in the poke, but you know exactly which cards you will get when you buy a certain expansion pack. If you don’t want to buy all packs but are only looking for some specific effects in order to make your deck stronger or to counter an unbeatable opponent, you can do some research of which cards are available for your favorite faction(s) and then buy specific expansions which will support your deck and individual playing style. Since the costs for such an expansion are moderate (about 10 $ for 60 cards), most LCG players will buy all expansions anyway, but it’s still much cheaper than buying tons of booster packs without knowing if you will ever get the card you are looking for.

Besides from the distribution model, there is no difference in gameplay and deck-building and customization between a CCG and a LCG. You still buy more cards, you customize your individual deck and you want to find the “ultimate weapon” against your opponent’s decks. So LCGs give you the best of both worlds.

For more information on the Difference between CCGs and LCGs, you should also have a look at our  introductory article to Call of Cthulhu – The Card Game (LCG) by Fantasy Flight Games.

I own Call of Cthulhu / A Game of Thrones. Do I really need another LCG, aren’t they alike?

If you are afraid that Warhammer: Invasion is just a Call of Cthulhu or A Game of Thrones clone simply in a different setting, you can rest assured that this ain’t the case. All three LCGs are actually very different from each other and they are entirely new games. Of course they share certain similarities (which all CCGs / LCGs / TCGs do), but their game mechanics, factions, objectives, and rules are absolutely different and not interchangeable.

Many players who like dueling card games play two or all three  of the LCGs – because they are all great and very special. All three LCGs are good  representations of their portrayed universe and you won’t ever confuse the games or the rules.

What’s Warhammer: Invasion – The Card Game?