endtransmission wrote:
Weird that their official press release misspells sigmar as sigma a few times, even though the logo images clearly show what it should be.

Had a demo of this game at Warhammer Fest today and thought it was worth giving a quick rundown for people that didn't have the opportunity as it's a great little game and doesn't seem to be much info out there as yet.
I didn't have much interest in this game initially, I think because I was expecting a hearthstone clone and when I looked at the cards it looked a bit convulted and confusing on that basis.
Well, it seems I was wrong! The game quickly becomes pretty intuitive as it revolves around a few key mechanics that, once you've grasped them, mean it all goes very smoothly. Apparently a game should take about 15 minutes, although mine probably was closer to half an hour, but sped up as we got the hang of it and I reckon after one game I could quite comfortably show someone else.
You select four Champion cards, which all have a points value, and can have a total points value of up to 20. Each champion also has a positive or negative impact on your starting health. Two of mine gave +1 and two gave -1 meaning I started with the standard 30 health. It's worth noting you have a collective health pool, none of your cards have health as far as I could see and you don't specifically damage your opponents units or champions, the damage is done direct to the collective pool. You win by reducing the pool to 0.
You also have four Blessings and a deck comprising Unit and Spell cards (not sure how many I'm afraid!)
You have a play mat that has a health counter, little summary of some of the icons, and four lanes. Each lane has a space for a Champion, a Blessing and a Unit or Spell. These lanes come into play in the game as certain cards will effect units, spells or champions in other lanes relative to the champion playing the card. To start you shuffle your blessings and place them on the Champion spots face down so you don't know which is which, and the players then deploy the champions on top of them in turn.

One of the key mechanics is that most cards have icons in each corner, and either rotate each turn, or under certain conditions , causing certain effects.
Each turn you get two actions, which can be to play a Unit or Spell, Use an ability or draw a card. If you choose to draw a card you can't then make a different action after, so you either take the other action and then draw, or draw twice.
Each lane only has one spot for a unit or spell and most champions can only either cast spells or summon units, not both, so you have to think about which lane you deploy your champions in and what units or spells you use with which champions. Once in play the units or spells usually rotate every turn, and will usually have a number or an X in each corner that has a different effect depending on the spell or unit that comes into play when it rotates on to it. For example some units will say' do X damage' (where X is a little rotate symbol I can't do on my phone) meaning the unit does an amount of damage equal to the number in the top left corner whenever it rotates. For an example arcane bolt does nothing for two turns and then does 7 damage on turn three. If the card has a symbol on every corner then it is discarded once it has fully rotated, if it has corners without symbols it will be discarded earlier.
The symbols in the champions card corners relate to missions that they need to complete to rotate, for example deal damage, summon a unit, heal etc. Once they have fully rotated the blessing card underneath them is revealed and becomes active giving a powerful buff.
That's the long and short of it but you have other text and abilities on the cards that allow certain synergies and other abilities, for example the orruks can stack on top of each other to allow support, as if in a waaaggh, meaning they can do more damage than unsupported in some cases. I played death and my opponent played and orruks destruction deck and they both felt like they played very thematically.
I think it's probably not the easiest game to explain so I might have made a hash of it, and like I said it looks confusing at first glance, but honestly plays so smoothly once youce had a couple of turns.
I did ask about the AR and digital angles but that all seemed a bit confused, I think it will be a while behind the physical release. I think the digital version is completely stand alone, but using the AR you can see your units by scanning the codes around each card and apparently you can level up the AR characters , both in the physical and digital versions.
Was almost tempted by the founders pack but decided to play it safe as I'm on a budget and wait for release as I'm not sure I'll need all four campaign decks. It's a proper tcg which I can imagine might put some people off but I'll definitely try it out on release

 MIKEtheMERCILESS wrote:
Can confirm - game is fething awesome.

They could have gone the safe and boring route to release yet another MTG/Hearthstone clone with AoS IP, but they took a chance and came up with something really unique and special.

cromagz wrote:
https://www.warhammerchampions.com/ website has launched, with some more info about the game, founders packs up for pre-order (albeit much more expensive than at whf)