Back in 2016 I wrote an in-depth article about getting into miniature paint/assemble war games. This article even after nearly 10 years continues to get regular hits and comments from my readers I think in big part because when it comes to miniature war gaming, very little has changed since the 80’s, to be honest. Sure the quality of the game designs and the miniature games themselves have improved one hundredfold, but so far as advice about getting into the hobby goes, everything in this article still holds up. I wouldn’t change a word of it.
In fact that article is my mantra when it comes to miniature-war gaming and every time I get excited about a new miniature-war game, I re-read it to remind myself of all the pitfalls of the hobby. In recent years my interest in painting and assembling miniature games was revitalized thanks in part to games like X-Wing being refreshed, the fantastic Songs of Ice and Fire miniature game which I maintain is one of the best miniature games out there today and most recently I have re-connected with Warhammer 40k and the Middle Earth Battle Strategy Game thanks in large part to the new updated rules and modernization of Games Workshop.
In today’s article, I’m going to talk a little bit about Warhammer 40k 10th edition specifically and why I think Games Workshop and in particular the Warhammer line is really going through a renaissance of sorts and how and why I actually gave up on the game about 10 years ago, but now find myself coming back to it.
Warhammer 40k In The Past
I played Warhammer 40k starting with 2nd and 3rd editions and then again between the start of 5th edition through to the end of 6th edition.
I really enjoyed the game and actually, I look back on these gaming experiences with great fondness but I also recall a lot of frustration.
This is the first miniature game box I ever purchased, it was colorful, it was exciting and at the time, my friends and I had no clue what we were buying into.
The great part about the game was that the creative process of getting your army ready was invigorating and inspiring. Painting miniatures is a lot of fun and the entire hobby-craft part of the game was awesome then and it’s even more so today thanks to both the quality of miniatures and supplies, in particular, the quality of paints massively improving over time.
Once your army was painted and ready for the table however is where a lot of the problems started with Warhammer 40k and ultimately where a lot of my frustration led me to abandon the game entirely.
For one, Games Workshop was terrible at maintaining the game back in the early editions. They were very anti-online updates, in particular releasing information about the armies so printed books would be left unchanged even if they had glaring mechanical and balance issues for years at a time. I recall some codexes would go half a decade between updates. This meant that if you painted an army, that army would, depending on how long it’s been since the codex was updated, be borderline useless in actual play at the table.
All that work preparing your army, lovingly painting it only to discover that every unit you have chosen is completely useless and out of date at the table is a disheartening experience, and having to wait sometimes through entire editions of the game to get an update took a lot of energy out of the experience. Often when a new codex would come out for your army, it would be designed to sell those miniatures so then you would end up with an army that is so powerful and unbalanced in the other direction that players would not want to play against you because you had such an unfair advantage. In a way, you were screwed either way. The periods where the game and your army were in a good place, where games were fun to play were few and far in-between.
After many editions, this problem never really got any better and while I had a couple of fully painted armies, I found myself always playing with an army that was either too weak to be fun, or too powerful to be fun. The balance of the game was just terrible and I eventually gave up on Warhammer 40k altogether for greener pastures. Despite this transition, I always kept up with 40k on some level through other mediums like PC games and I think somewhere in the back of my mind I was always planning to come back eventually.
What has changed in modern Games Workshop
In general, three main events woke the company up and made them realize what was important about miniature war gaming to miniature war gamers.
First was that at the turn of the century, both Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k were no longer the most popular miniature games on the market. Competition had turned out several very popular games and even at Games Workshop, they produced the Lord of the Rings miniature game later renamed The Middle Earth Battle Strategy Game which sold better than their main franchise.
What made The Middle Earth Battle Strategy Game unique was that its central focus was on re-creating the many unique battles and campaigns from the movies. The game fully supported (and still does) this approach and it makes this a far more robust and interesting game to play. It also had an excellent ruleset.
The question was why? The answer was simple. Games like Warmachine and Horde, Star Wars X-Wing and the Lord of the Rings miniature game were all just objectively better games mechanically.
To this day, ask anyone who plays Games Workshop games which is the best game they ever made, both mechanically, strategically, and narratively and you will get the same answer. Middle Earth Battle Strategy game is still considered to be the best ever made by GW.
I think at this point, sometime between 2000-2005 Games Workshop realized that while the hobby-craft part of the game they had down pact, they certainly knew how to make the best mini’s in the business, this was simply not enough to compete anymore. You also needed to have a good game, something that makes that hobby-craft effort worth doing in the first place.
The other thing I think they simultaneously realized is that while competitive play was a big part of the hobby, games like The Middle Earth Battle Strategy Game proved that narrative play, where games are more focused on story’s and events from the franchise played a huge role in what motivated purchases. Essentially, lore mattered a lot more than I think even GW realized even though I think 40k lore was always really great, I don’t think they fully recognized that this was actually a huge driving factor of the games sales and longevity of the fan base.
The second thing was that Warhammer 40k’s scale was all or nothing. This was a problem for entry into the hobby. If you wanted to play Warhammer 40k, you needed at least a 1,000-point army and most agreed that unless you had a 2,000-point army there was almost no point in playing. This meant that the entry point for Warhammer 40k was a 500-600 dollar purchase with a few hundred hours of hobby craft before you could play the game “for real”. Not a great place for the game to be given the immense focus on streamlining entry into the hobby many if not all other games where doing at the time.
This is a Tyrannid combat patrol army represents a little less than 500 points worth of an army. To get a 2,000-point army (a real army) you will need to collect and paint 4x’s this many miniatures. That is a lot to ask of a new player.
Meanwhile, games like The Middle Earth Battle Strategy Game could be played (and played well) on a wide scale from small skirmishes with only a small handful of hero’s to massive battles. This was also true about a lot of competing games like Warmachine for example that was at the time also giving Games Workshop a run for their money on the lore and miniature quality fronts.
Middle-Earth Battle Strategy Game had scenarios that required as few as a dozen models, to scenarios that would require several hundred models like the Battle of Helms Deep. Players could scale their experience and collections and grow with the game.
Finally, I think Games Workshop realized that good support with digital releases and making the core rules of the game free was no longer negotiable. The game needed to be supported with regular updates to fix balance issues, corrections, and clarifications to the rules and most importantly they needed to listen to the community and track how the game was being played. Why players where choosing and not choosing armies or certain units and doing something about it in a timely fashion.
How modern Warhammer 40k works today
Today the world of Warhammer 40k is very different from where I left it about a decade ago. A lot has changed for the better.
Combat Patrol & Entry
The most notable change is the release of “Combat Patrol” a sort of basic version of the game that supports the core concept of purchasing a single box set that is fully supported as a game with free rules.
Each army gets a combat patrol that can be purchased for around 100 dollars and the combat patrols are pre-constructed, balanced armies designed to played against each other using the same 40k rules you will play later in the full game, but with slight alterations to make the game more streamlined and easier for new players to get into.
Combat Patrols encourage players by making their collection feel complete and playable as early as their first purchase and that is important for maintaining the early interest in the game and allowing that interest to blossom over time. As far as I’m concerned, this one decision by GW probably saved the franchise because without it no sane person would ever recommend getting involved with Warhammer 40k today.
This was desperately needed in Warhammer 40k and it has turned out that not only is this format newbie friendly and welcoming for new players but quite welcome by veteran players as well as they allow for much shorter/quicker pick-up games.
Now I will say that most veteran players will still want to play a minimum of 1,000 points and 2,000 points is still the standard game. Still, it’s nice to know that when you’re starting a new army, you can play a few games with your starting forces as you work your way toward your goal of having a full army.
Crusades & Narrative Play
Another big improvement of the game is that Games Workshop has now fully committed Warhammer 40k to narrative play via the Crusade system. The Crusade system is very similar to the Middle Earth Battle Strategy narrative system which allows players to replicate key battles in the Warhammer 40k universe as well as string those famous battles into a series of campaign games as well as rules for creating your own campaigns in which player armies and army leaders can gain experience, effectively improving through experience.
This mode is supported by “story books” like the Warhammer 40k: Crusade – Tyrannic War which walks you through how to setup narrative battles and long-running narrative campaigns. Crusade mode is also supported in each codex, giving each army unique narrative advancements and campaign styles that can be run.
Narrative play is just one of several ways to enjoy the game, but personally, I think this is probably the most fun way to play the game as it offers progression, and story and provides relevance to the battles you have on the tabletop beyond determining a winner.
This is fantastic news for players who are not into the competitive scene and want to explore a less generic style of play with less focus on list building and more focus on creating stories for their games and armies.
Active Online Support & Competitive Game Focus
One massive improvement Games Workshop made was committing themselves to not only track but do something about the state of the game at any given moment, not just at the release of a new edition or the release of codexes. Regular updates to the point values of armies based on competitive results as well as rules changes that they track with a focus on ensuring that all armies meet certain win/loss ratios has resulted in a game that is generally far more balanced than ever before.
This is particularly noticeable if like me you have been away from the game for a few years and are coming back now. In the days when I played, more than half the armies at any given point were objectively and unequivocally broken and unplayable competitively, in fact, many of the armies were so bad that they would be banned from anything but official GW competitions simply because they were too weak or too strong to qualify for fair play.
The community engagement goes far beyond simply posting updates, but as strange as it may sound, this was a huge leap forward for GW who saw concepts like posting rules online or updates to codexes as a roadblock to profits. I’m glad they have woken up as I believe if it were not for their much-improved community engagement, there would be no 40k today. The absence of digital release was one of the main reasons not to play GW games.
Long gone are these days of radio silence, GW is taking a very active role in making sure the balance of the game is well taken care of. That is not to say that they automatically succeed in doing so, some armies fall below the ratios while others are a bit too good, but the ranges of balance are much closer and the time to make corrections is much quicker. Generally speaking, almost all armies at any given moment are worthy of competitive play and those that fall behind don’t have to wait for years to be fixed.
Lore Support and Writing
This is not a category that will be super important to most players, but many of us are readers and we want/need good lore and good writing to support our experience. The story is a big part for me and I have to say, after reading the core rulebook lore, the codex lore and the crusade lore, I can say unequivocally that the writing for Warhammer 40k is exceptional.
The Black Library makes GW games one of the most supported franchises in gaming. Your 40k experience can be so much more than just collecting and playing the game.
Not only that, if you crave more from the Warhammer 40k universe you have the Black Library, a virtual utopia of content that you can endlessly explore. There is so much great work for Warhammer 40k for readers and lovers of lore, that I don’t think it’s overstating it when I say that Warhammer 40k is the single best-supported lore of any miniature war game out today short of perhaps Age of Sigmar which gets similar attention from GW.
They have done an amazing job supporting the game on this front.
The Supplies Have Made It Easy
I’m not sure most people fully realize it but modern hobby-craft supplies that support the miniature game hobby today are overwhelmingly and vastly superior to anything we had 10 years ago. The technology has lowered the difficulty levels of creating beautifully, very professional (looking) armies within the grasp of even the most un-artistic people out there.
Contrast paints in particular have expedited the time it takes to put a fully painted army together by about 90%. Like, I recall just trying to get a marginally looking army of 2,000 points fully painted would take me a at least 2 years or more of daily work to put together. Today, with contrast paints not only can I do it in a quarter of the time, the result will look like I spent hundreds if not thousands of hours meticulously painting my army. Contrast paints are a miracle technology that has completely changed everything, it has made hobby-craft fun even for guys like me who don’t have an artistic bone in their body.
These are Tyranid miniatures I painted with contrast paints. Each one took about 15 minutes to get to this level of quality. I’m not saying it’s anything particularly eye-popping or demon award-worthy, but 10 years ago it would have taken me 8-12 hours per mini to get them looking this good and frankly, I don’t think I could get them looking this good without contrast paint, I simply lack the talent. Contrast paints don’t require talent, simply learning a very basic technique. Its….magic.
Painting miniatures is no longer a roadblock to creating those amazing-looking scenes we see in magazines on your tabletop. I’m here to tell you that quite literally anyone with two functioning hands and eyeballs can create an army that looks like a professional artist put it together for you. I can’t even tell you how many people look at what I paint and question whether I did it myself and when I tell them, hey that took me 15 minutes to do, they assume I’m lying because it seems like it should be impossible. It’s not, contrast paints are basically, magic.
Is it all Perfect?
By no stretch of the imagination, there are still quite a few issues in the world of Games Workshop miniature games but I would say most of the issues can be quantified as common problems with miniature games in general, rather than anything uniquely problematic with Warhammer 40k specifically. More importantly, there is more myth and propaganda than reality about the miniature gaming hobby propagated by jaded players who have been unwilling to accept the realities of the modern gaming markets.
The Cost To Play
Warhammer 40k like all miniature war games and the hobby as a whole is probably the single most expensive gaming thing you can do. I participate in just about everything from CCG’s, board games, PC and Video games, you name something gaming-related and I’m doing it and there is no question in my mind that the miniature war gaming hobby is the single most expensive thing I do and by a considerable margin. Nothing comes even close, a single miniature army typically costs more than my entire board game collection put together. It’s crazy expensive!
Between collecting the miniatures to form armies, the supplies needed to get them to the table looking good and the amount of time spent getting everything ready, it’s a financial undertaking that overshadows anything else I can think of.
I love A Songs of Ice and Fire miniature game, it’s fantastic but to claim it’s cheaper than Warhammer 40k is outlandish. It can be, if you are willing to live with limited list-building options, the equivalent of collecting 500 points of Warhammer 40k and stopping, but realistically most players will collect the shit out of it and the result is the same as any mini-game… a cash drop to make you blush.
Still, GW has always had this reputation of being overly expensive as a company compared to other miniature war games and as a guy that participates in several, I don’t believe this reputation is deserved or even remotely accurate. Yes, it’s expensive, but no, it’s not more expensive than other games.
Take for example getting started in 40k with a combat patrol which clocks in at about 1140 Swedish crowns (110 dollars). Compare that to say a Songs of Ice and Fire Targaryen starter set which comes in at 1299 Swedish Crowns (125 dollars). Both give you a basic army to start with but not enough to play the full game. A typical expansion for Tyranids like something big and awesome like a Hive Tyrant costs 450 Swedish Crowns (43 dollars) compared to say The Targaryen Mother of Dragons which comes in at 499 SEK (48 dollars).
Point is that actually when you get right down to it and you do some price comparisons, GW comes in lower most of the time. A Starter Star Wars Armada core set comes in at 1250 Swedish crowns and a Bolt Action Japanese Banzai Starter Army comes in at 1119 Swedish Crowns.
Considering that GW products are far superior quality in every measurable way and by a pretty big margin, you get a lot more bang for your buck from them. It’s true that ultimately a typical Warhammer 40k army will cost you more than say a full Songs of Ice and Fire army, but that really boils down to what you consider a “full army”. These definitions get pretty tricky when you start looking at army building and competitive meta’s. I promise you that if you want to keep up with Songs of Ice and Fire meta you will not see any savings between 40k and AsoiaF. My Soiaf Targaryan collection is worth roughly 650 dollars and I’m still missing quite a few releases for it. Anyone who claims playing something like Songs of Ice and Fire, Bolt Action or Star Wars Armada is cheaper than 40k is full of shit.
Suffice to say it is expensive either way, miniature war gaming is not for dabblers and while I would argue there are miniature games you can get into that can be cheaper if you can live with certain limitations than others, in the end, you are counting your investment in hundreds if not thousands of dollars to fully participate in this hobby regardless of which game you choose.
You may as well choose the game that produces the highest quality product and there isn’t a miniature gamer on Gods-Green-Earth who could claim that there is a higher quality miniature produced out there than those produced by Games Workshop with a straight face. Miniatures GW produced 10 years ago are of superior quality than anything any company out there is even capable of producing today, let alone the stuff they are making today. No one can compete with GW when it comes to miniatures, no one comes even close.
Edition Changes & Army Degradation
One thing that is unique with Warhammer 40k and most Games Workshop games is that they do pretty regular edition changes, typically we get a new edition every 3rd year. The result is that there is a sort of degradation of your forces and books you have purchased.
What this really means is that some units get replaced, some simply are no longer part of your army codex and over time you will end up with parts of your army you have collected and painted no longer being part of the new edition. The codex itself will also expire as will the core rulebooks and other content purchased that is connected to the current edition. This takes time to happen, usually, something you bought in one edition will still be viable and usable in the next for a while, but throughout several editions, certain parts of your army will simply no longer be part of the modern version of the game and the books will all be essentially made obsolete.
Many find this cycler process frustrating and understandably so. Imagine spending hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hobby-craft hours to put something together, only to have the company that sold you that stuff, tell you “Hey, all that stuff you have, it’s now obsolete, throw it in the garbage!”
Conclusion
I’m a veteran gamer, you would be hard-pressed to name anything tabletop or digital gaming-related that I don’t know about and most of it I will have some level of expertise in. I scuff at complexity, but I’m conscious of it and the reality is that Warhammer 40k, when it’s all said and done while approachable, is a fairly complex game. Not just as a game but as a hobby in general. Its expensive, time-consuming and pretty elaborate on all fronts.
There are much easier, far more approachable and truth be told, far better-designed miniature games than Warhammer 40k out there. In fact, off the top of my head, I could easily name 10 miniature war games I know are objectively better game designs and I doubt you would find people who would disagree with me, even the most adamant 40k fans. Like it’s not some sort of contested idea or controversial statement, most people know and understand this.
That said I think what Warhammer 40k does well and in a sense does right is that they don’t make the game experience about the rules, but rather they make the game about the atmosphere and all of the connected elements to that game which combine to make it THE most popular miniature game on the market today and for the past 50+ years.
It’s a combination of crazy good miniature quality, amazing lore, flexible game modes and epic event-level feel that combine to create a far more robust gaming experience than anything I can think of. Comparing 40k to other miniature games is a bit like comparing car brands. We can argue till the cows come home which car company makes the best cars, but driving a 40k is the equivalent of driving a fuck you looking, Ferrari. Is it a good car? I have no idea, probably not, hell it’s not even practical but you can’t help but smile and imagine what it would be like to have one.
40k is not the best game, but it’s a game that lives in excess, it’s the 1st class of games, it is crystAl on ice, and it is the one everyone hates because it demands way too much. At the end of the day, all miniature gaming fans that feast their eyes on a fully painted 3,000 point army know.. they wish they had one. That is what 40k is… its excess, plain and simple and frankly, if you can afford it, its fun to live in excess when it comes to your hobby. That is effectively what a hobby is, doing something that is clearly a waste of time and money, but its fun.
Some of the long-time readers of this blog may know that I’m a big fan of The Songs of Ice and Fire miniature game and that I play the Targaryan faction. For quite a while this was a high-profile game in my local gaming group to the point that I was writing strategy articles on this site for the game. Unfortunately, the game sort of died a while back for us because frankly most of us felt like that while the core game was great, the balancing of the game in too many areas was atrocious. To such an extreme that it sort of sucked up all our desire and energy to keep playing.
Fast forward to 2024 and at the start of the year Season 4 of SOIAF has started with all new updates to all the factions, with lots of balancing and fine-tuning of the game. A perfect opportunity (hopefully) to get back into the game we know and love.
It’s a pretty big update and I thought it would be fun to revive articles on this blog that focus on strategy, tactics, list building, and the game as a whole.
Now mind you I’m not a competitive player, I play miniature games for fun, but I enjoy theory crafting and writing articles about my hobby so consider these articles to be from a guy who just likes playing games, less so a serious tournament player. I would imagine most competitive players would have a lot more to say, but I think most people who play this game are going to be more like me, excited fans rather than hardcore competitive players.
Today we are going to get very specific and talk about the base Targaryan Tactics Deck. The tactics deck is a key element of every army, a foundational advantage that dictates a lot of the very specialized things you can do and drives the strategy of your army. It’s, in a word, a key element of an army and to understand the strengths and weaknesses of any given unit you need to understand how that interacts with the tactics deck.
If you’re a Targaryen player, this article is for you! Let’s get into it.
Overrun
Overrun is a pretty niche card that plays well into the Targaryan army general strategic core which is driven by highly mobile units, especially calvary that outflank opponents to devastating effect.
In short, as a Targaryan player, you should always be the one doing the charging, not the other way around. In a way you know that you have learned to use the army well when you no longer find your mobile units getting charged in all but the rarest of circumstances.
Overrun plays off the assumption that you will be successful and in the event you wipe a unit off the table (hopefully a frequent occurrence), this card allows you to either make a second charge or perform a big march move to get yourself into position for a future charge.
If you have the horse NCU spot (which you should and will prioritize most of the time), you get the bonus of this card of being able to re-roll your charge dice allowing you to improve your odds of taking a riskier (longer-range) charge.
This card falls into the category of niche, but powerful. It’s niche because it requires a lot of very clever setup and a bit of luck to pull off. You can’t control the dice, so you’re never going to know for sure if your charge is going to yield the condition (wiping a unit) you need to play the card. Not only must you first destroy a unit to play this card, triggering a surge forth, but you have to have the opportunity for another charge or be facing in the direction you would want to march and be in a position where making a charge or marching somewhere is a good idea. All circumstances are difficult to control and very conditional on what is happening on the table.
My experience with this card is that the conditions to pull it off don’t come up that often and unlike many cards in the deck, you have considerably less control over creating the right conditions.
This means that this card is unlikely to be useful early in the game, turn 1 and 2, you will rarely kill any units outright, making this a turn 3+ card. Additionally, this card does not have any alternative effects like some of the cards do which means that after you draw it, to use it you need to create the rare circumstances to be able to play it and while setting that up which may take a couple of rounds, you are occupying that all-important card slot in your hand of cards.
This is a really good card don’t get me wrong but in my experience, the chances of you getting to use it to good effect that will have the strong impact it suggests is very slim. It’s a rarely played card and most of the time you are chucking it hoping to replace it with something more immediately useful. One of the core concepts of the tactics deck is that you should be going through it during the game. Holding on to cards is not a good strategy ever, you want to be smoking your hand and drawing a new one every round.
What is worse is that only one of the two calvary commanders gets this card in their deck (Khal Drago), as it is excluded from Jorah Mormont (Westerosi Tactician Cavalry) and it is for Calvary units that you want to play this card for as they are your best offensive weapons. Add injury to insult, The Mother of Dragons also loses this card, which sucks for those dragon lists.
Verdict: 3 out of 5 stars
While very strong when you get the opportunity to use it, its niche requirements are difficult to set up making this one of the weaker cards in the Targaryan tactics deck overall. The fact that you can’t combo it with key commanders makes it that much less useful.
That said I’m glad it’s in the deck. It’s kind of a strange circumstance because while you rarely get to use it, when you do, it can be a game-changing moment. I wish this had a draw card replacement effect so that you can chuck it when table conditions aren’t ripe for it. Suffice it to say I have won games on a single play of this card, so the impact when executed is very strong.
Good, but hard to use card.
Sudden Retreat
One of the tactical cores of the Targaryen army is that you are really strong on the charge, but not great when it comes to battles of attrition. Targaryans are well-equipped to outflank, so after you flank-charge, a card that lets you escape once you have done your thing is very welcome in the deck and that is exactly what Sudden Retreat lets you do.
With this card you will never need to take more than one attack if you don’t want to once you get into a melee.
It’s a pretty easy card to use which is really great and especially effective thanks to the high mobility of calvary units which are usually who you will save this card for.
Unfortunately this card, like overrun, is the elimination card for one of two of your cavalry commanders. It particularly sucks that Jorah Mormont is the one that keeps it and it’s Khal Drago that loses it. It is in fact Khal Drago that would most benefit from this card as this is the best calvary commander at least currently for the Targaryans.
Fortunately this card combos well with other units in the Targaryen army, it’s fantastic on Pikemen, especially when comboed with Unsullied Officers for example who love to be charged, so you want to get them out of combat.
Verdict: 4 out of 5 stars
It’s a good card, but its purpose is escape, which doesn’t make it a power play thing, more of a utility thing. The fact that one of the two cavalry commanders (your best commander) loses it is a bummer but unlike overrun, it’s easy to use and useful in a lot of situations.
I like to keep this card when drawn in the early rounds and setup a situation to use it as post retreat you are often in a position an opponent did not expect you to be and most armies are not as mobile as yours.
Swift Reposition
This card can be extremely useful in a lot of circumstances, but in a Targaryen army very often it’s redundant thanks to your already amazing mobility. Frankly getting an extra 2-3 inches of movement is pretty amazing in a game where inches matter as much as they do in ASIOAF, I would imagine almost game-breaking in a lot of armies, but in a Targaryen army it’s handy, but not quite as impactful.
It can come in handy for getting that extra range for when you want to get archers into a better position or make a charge somewhere your opponent thinks you’re out of range to attempt or sliding onto an objective, or slipping out of the way of the line of sight. Lots of fun utilities that can create very nasty surprises. The problem is that you usually don’t have issues pulling things like that off with the Targaryen units anyway. You are already crazy mobile.
I find I use this card more often on infantry units, it’s particularly nasty on Unsullied Swordsmen. Most of the time I wind up using this card to slip into objectives
Verdict: 4 out of 5 stars
Even though Targaryans don’t need even more mobility options most of the time, this is an exceedingly useful card that your opponents are going to hate because it makes pre-measuring carefully and trying to avoid Targaryan charges and being outflanked that much more difficult.
It’s quite devastating against slow-moving armies and especially effective in lists where you out-activate your opponent.
Fire and Blood
I love cards with options, the flexibility to adapt a card to a situation rather than trying to create a situation for a card is so much more useful.
Fire and Blood is a straight-up “I get some extra shit” card that is focused on letting you do more damage, so it’s great. The fact that you get a bonus for horses plays into what you are going to be doing anyway, so most of the time getting the double benefit is pretty easy to setup.
Sundering and Vicious I think are the two best benefits you can have on a charge, especially when you are usually already outflanking opponents.
This card when used on a flank charge of a calvary unit with the horses is devastating, it all but guarantees the destruction of multiple ranks.
Verdict: 5 out of 5 stars
Versatile, easy to use and powerful with literally no drawbacks. All the good commanders get to keep it. It’s without question a top-tier card for the Targaryans, you will use it in every game. If it has any drawbacks it’s the fact that some of your units already get Sundering or Vicious anyway, but in a way that is also a plus as it means you don’t have to rely in those cases on the horse to get both benefits.
Field Control
This is a multi-use card with a lot of utility and it has a very sneaky bonus effect that isn’t written on the card.
The first part, using the horse NCU yourself effectively makes this an improved version of the horses, both when maneuvering and retreating, with a bonus effect on the retreat. Very useful.
The alternative effect; when an enemy grabs the horse NCU from you, it lets you perform a 3′ shift. The key here is the timing, as this shift takes place after the enemy resolution, so you effectively get to do an extra 3-inch move with a unit prior to taking your turn. This can be used to absolutely devastating effect when timed right.
The sneaky effect of this card is that your opponent is going to want to steal that horse NCU spot from you since you gain so much benefit from it in your tactics deck, it’s a common action taken at the start of a round when your opponent goes first. I find that players often don’t think about the existence of this card, make a very calculated move to position themselves for some future move, and then boom out of nowhere you have a calvary able to do a 3-inch move, then on your turn, that same calvary makes a 6-inch free maneuver and then they can move or march or charge another 6 to 12 inches. You can potentially charge a unit with relative ease up to 15 inches away and march as far as 21 inches!
It’s bonkers and you will find that when an opponent see’s such a move one time they will never feel safe again.
Verdict: 5 out of 5 stars
This card is a combination of an improvement of an NCU spot and a swift reposition built into one card and can even be combined with a swift reposition to get a unit a free 6-inch move before your opponent can do anything thanks to the timing of the card.
When people say the Targaryans are a mobile force, this is what they are talking about!
Unstoppable Advance
This two-part card is sort of the Targaryan middle-of-the-road card.
For the first part of the the card, re-rolling charge distance dice, while nice in niche situations, the truth of the Targaryen armies is that as a general rule, charge distance is not normally a problem. Most of the time you are just trying not to roll a 1 so you don’t lose your bonus and I suppose it helps in that situation. There is some use occasionally for it, especially when using infantry units or neutrals. It’s a luxury item and not really what makes this card pop.
The real juice of the card is the surge forth ability. A +3 to maneuvering is huge but the secondary part, weakening everything in the short range is golden. Not only can you get the unit into the action but you are going to be facing an enemy force full of weakened conditions.
Surge Forth requires you to make a kill, which means it has the same problem as Overrun so not a great card to draw early.
Verdict: 3 out of 5 stars
Decent card, I docked it because the first ability is only marginally useful to Targaryans and the second ability has a pretty specific trigger that you don’t have full control of and doesn’t come up that often. Most of the time when you draw this card you are probably going to toss it unless the table situation has circumstances that might allow you to leverage it.
When executed, it’s devastating much like overrun.
Blood of the Dragon
I love “start of any turn” triggers as they are extremely easy to use and easy to plan your actions around.
This card is great to draw early in the round but tends to be considerably less useful in later rounds, but it comes with two effects and you are almost certain to lose units in every match to collect the bonuses.
An additional attack die is always welcome as is the -1 wound from failing panic tests. It’s a straightforward card, not powerful but not weak, kind of a middle-of-the-road bonus. The only trick to it is to simply get it into play as soon as possible.
It is a shittier version of a tactic card other factions have like Starks which has a kind of “feel bad” to it.
Verdict: 3 out of 5 stars
Decent card that gives you a couple of basic bonuses, a consolation prize for losing a unit. If the bonus is stacked with additional tokens this card would be a lot better, but as is, it’s best described as easy to use with a decent effect. Nothing too extraordinary.
Conclusion
The Targaryen tactics deck has always been universally considered to be one of the weaker, if not THE weakest deck in Songs of Ice and Fire in the past and looking at the updates they have made since launch, I’m fairly sure that is still true in such a comparison.
Looking at the tactics deck cards in isolation, the effects are great and they work well with the general core concepts of the Targaryen army, creating strong synergies and sticking to the theme.
It’s only when you start comparing the Targaryan deck to other factions is when you realize just how weak the effects are comparatively and I think it’s here that the Targ deck’s reputation comes from.
When speaking to the balance of the game as a whole, I’m not sure a comparison of tactics decks is particularly useful however and I have always felt like this reputation, while technically probably true, didn’t really say much about the game.
The Targaryen army is very strong in my opinion and very competitive, but it’s filled with subtle complexity which can be difficult to get your head around. As such I find it performs generally far below its strength when looking at stats as it is a lot less forgiving of mistakes and it’s unique in a lot of ways, meaning usual tactics associated with other armies don’t perform well when applied to Targaryans. They have a very different and very specific way they must be played and the tactics deck is built around that specific playstyle.
The point here is that the Targaryan tactics deck is very strong, in the Targaryen army and while it doesn’t appear as strong when tactic decks are compared, within the Targaryan strategy, these effects are very potent.
I think if you asked any player of any faction what they think about their tactics deck they would all come up with a list of winners and losers in their deck. I think the Targ deck is unique in that there are no outright bad cards. There are cards that are niche and very situational, some cards that can feel redundant some of the time, but generally good all around.
I have my beef with some of the commander tactics cards, but that is for a future article. As far as the Targaryen season 4 tactic deck goes, it gets a nod of approval from me. Well done!
A song of Ice and Fire the miniature game is back in my gaming group with a vengeance and while I had planned a What Makes It Tick series on the game for quite a while, I have not pulled the trigger until now. Today we start the series that will take a deep dive into the Targaryen faction (my faction) in hopes of expanding the series to eventually go through the entire army. Enjoy!
We begin the series with Jorah Mormont a Commander, An Attachment and a Solo Unit in the Targaryen army. Now before I begin, let me just say that sometimes in miniature games there is a phenomenon known as “One Good Wayism”, which is similar to the concept of “competitive meta”, except unlike in the competitive meta which is what players do more based on tested reality, “One Good Wayism” is when players do something on pure perception.
In ASOIAF the miniature game, while there definitely is a competitive meta and this drives how people play the game, how they build list and pick factions, the truth about the ASOIAF community is that a lot of how the community operates is simply based on perceptions rather than the meta realities. I bring this up because Jorah Mormont is definitely a really strong case for how true this really is.
Jorah Mormont is a cavalry commander that fits neatly into the Targaryen theme as a fast-moving, hard-hitting, flanking army. With the 2021 update, Jorah Mormont however has not fared particularly well in competitive play sitting in the 34th spot out 88 commanders overall on ASOIAF stats but in second to last place in the Targaryen faction.
Certainly, the competitive meta is not something to be ignored entirely, there is usually a good reason for a commander’s position in the rankings, but it’s my opinion that Jorah is actually one of the most underrated commanders in the Targaryen faction, perhaps even the game. I think his position among Targaryen commanders is directly linked to the fact that Jorah Mormont – The Wandering Knight (solo) is perceived as so good, that most players favor using Jorah as a solo rather than a commander or anything else for that matter. In fact, this would probably be how I personally favor using Jorah best as well, so I think the stats reflect this, but I think this definitely falls into the category of “One True Wayism”.
This perception of how to use Jorah (as a solo) is so strong that this commander unit is practically ignored entirely and it’s a real shame.
As a commander, Jorah is actually pretty fantastic, without question one of the strongest commanders in the faction. His Ambush ability is pretty amazing as weakened protects the unit during counter-attack and panic helps to increase the chances your opponent will fail their panic test, a great combo. Given your already charging from the flank or rear as a strategy in general, you are also likely making a pretty strong attack with any one of the Targaryen Cavalry units.
This ability is made ridiculously lethal and potentially game-changing thanks to the potential of combining it with one of Jorah’s fantastic tactic cards, Feinting Maneuver. This is arguably one of Jorah’s best tactic cards, perhaps even one of the best Targaryen tactic cards as a whole.
It cannot be understated what a massive difference there is between charging someone from the rear instead of a flank or a flank instead of the front and the fact that you can do this with a card is just absolutely devastating. One well-timed play of this card can and often will be a total game-changer.
Stubborn Tenacity is just a sort of sugar on top kind of ability for Jorah, great to have but nothing to get too excited. Most important thing is to remember to use it.
Marshal to me however is one of the most universally useful cards in Jorah’s tactic deck because while Feinting Maneuver is amazing on the offensive, one thing about running Cavalry as the Targaryens is that you really need them to be attacking at full ranks, this is so key to the game and to the Targaryen Cavalry strategy. One of the simplest way to declaw the Targaryen Cavalry lists is to simply take the money bags away from a Targ opponent to prevent the 3 wounds heal. This secret in the sauce is often ignored by less experienced players who are eager to steal the horse NCU spot, but the truth is if you really want to hurt the Targ. Cavalry, prevent them from healing 3 wounds.
This is why Mopatis is an auto-add for any Cavalry list, but Marshal not only doubles down on this by giving you a second out it does so as part of the activation. You have to remember that Targaryen Cavalry loses a lot of steam when they lose a rank and Marshal allows you to heal and still act. With cards like Swift Reposition and Sudden Retreat, you have alternative options for additional movement to your free maneuver anyway, so losing it is not the end of the world and these cards can combine to create some real surprises for your opponent.
Betrayal is also a truly amazing late-game card that can turn a game your opponent thinks is going to end the next round into something you win this round. Those end game situations which come up often where the score is tight and you are sitting on 7-9 points and you’re just trying to squeeze out those end game points to end things early, this card is perfect for. Don’t ever discard this one, once you draw it you want to keep it! This, just like the first two cards we talked about is a game-winning card.
You don’t want to pull the trigger on this one too early however, there is no way out of the Betrayal card once it’s on you.
Opportunist is one of the weaker cards in Jorah’s deck, though notably still among the strong general commander cards in the game. This is the chink in the armor, yet is still pretty strong. Certainly gaining Precision or Vicious on any attack is always a bonus but truth is that with a typical Calvary list you are trying to stall quite a bit, its always best to attack later in the round rather than early in the round to avoid potential counter-charges and extra retaliatory strikes against your units. Hence this card kind of works opposite to your standard strategy.
I find in general, just like the Cutthroat’s ability Ruthless Aggression ability, attacking someone before they have activated is never ideal and I just don’t think precision carries that much weight statistically so you are likely going to choose vicious for most occasions. It’s a very useful card, but I personally use it the round I draw it or toss it if I don’t, just about any other card draw in your deck will get you more mileage.
Jorah as a commander is clearly tailor-made for a Cavalry list, remember that Marshel only works with Cavalry units and if you are going to eat a Betrayal card you will want it on something that can get the hell out of dodge (aka a fast-moving cavalry).
Arguably both Opportunist and Feinting Maneuver are useful on infantry units, in particular, something like Unsullied Swordmasters combined with a Feinting Maneuver are absolutely devastating. Generally, though I think Jorah and a heavy-handed cavalry force is the most bang for your buck.
As a commander, I would personally rank him much higher than where he sits in ASOIAF stats, especially in the Targaryen faction, but I’m not at all surprised to see him as low as he is and the reason for that as mentioned is Jorah’s solo variant and this perception that the solo is so good, that you favor it over taking Jorah as a commander.
Jorah Mormont – The Wandering Knight (solo)
There is no doubt in my mind that Jorah Mormont (solo) is one of the most versatile and useful units in the Targaryen faction. The 3-point cost alone is worth the extra activation for a Calvary unit with a move of 6 that can control objectives. The fact that Jorah has a great moral score means simply Crowning him to death is unlikely so as long as you keep him out of harm’s way even without Scout Openings he is a worthwhile investment.
Scout Openings however takes this unit over the top in particular in a calvary heavy force that is reliant on charging but can and often does get stuck in unwanted melee brawls. Precision is a nice bonus but it’s the re-rolls you want and that ability means Jorah far exceeds his cost in value. The potential of a well-timed attack with Scout Openings leading the way can be devastating.
Use him to hold objectives, use him for Scout Openings, and use him as a blocker during those final end game moments.
It’s true he might die unexpectedly and this will happen. Your opponents are going to be highly motivated to kill him, it’s a pretty easy victory point and activation reduction for them if they can trap him, but if you use Jorah well and extra cautiously, he is amazing and is worth keeping alive just for the activation and objective control.
One of my favorite things to do with Jorah in the early or late game is to use him as bait. It never ceases to amaze me what risks and foolish plays players will make to try to kill Jorah and at 3 points he is worth trading up for just about any unit in the game.
Jorah Mormont – The Exiled Knight (Attachment)
At 2 points I find the Jorah Mormont – The Exiled Knight attachment to be extremely circumstantial and a bit difficult to use. The keyword for this unit is “Start of an enemy turn“. If it was any turn, then this would be a force to be reckoned with but doing it on an enemy turn makes this a defensive play typically or potentially a setup for a charge on your turn. Personally, I have found this one to be quite awkward to set up and use, in particular with attentive opponents.
I also find it’s a kinda dirty attachment with its timing, one of those things your opponents might forget and you try to surprise them with it “aha, I shift 3 inches”, but the timing is important here. You have to do it before they choose a unit to activate, so what is more likely to happen is that you forget to use this one rather than the other way around and your opponent forgets you have it.
I think there is potential for this attachment but I think it falls into that expert player area where you really need to know what you are doing to leverage it. I have never had much luck with it, but don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s bad, It’s just tricky to use I think.
Jorah Mormont – The Andal (Attachement)
The other 2 point attachment (infantry) of Jorah is a bit more straightforward. Both abilities are extremely useful and pretty easy to use.
Martial Training is just straight up awesome on, well pretty much anything that doesn’t already have re-rolls as a unit. The combination of re-rolling and Vulnerable is just straight-up beast mode. Typically I think this attachment is best on scrappy units that want to stay and fight like Unsullied Pikemen, but strictly speaking, all infantry units become considerably more dangerous when they can re-roll dice and hand out vulnerable when they are engaged in a fight.
Stand Your Ground! on the other hand, while really good on paper gets less use than you might think. It’s great when it goes off, but infantry units rarely just stand around and fight without being attacked by something else, there is always a catalyst of charges and counter-charges in fights. It’s a great ability, but this card is worth 2 points just for Martial Training to be frank, Stand your Ground is just extra value and it’s very welcome.
Jorah Mormont – Penitent Betrayer
What I like to call “The Forgotten Attachment”, Penitent Betrayer can only be used when it’s added to a unit with Daenerys Targaryen. This is a one-shot, one-point attachment that I can only describe as circumstantial at best. Under the right conditions, it can be extraordinarily useful, other times it’s just kind of meh.
It’s nothing you can plan around, favorable conditions to use him will either come up or they won’t, but given that typically using Daenery’s means dragons, odds are that whatever list you are building is going to be tight on points anyway so even for 1 point it can be a tough sell.
Conclusion
Personally, I think Jorah Mormont is a highly underrated commander and very underutilized outside of his Solo variant for one very, hard to argue reason. That solo is amazing and it’s really hard to pass on a 3 point activation that can do so much for so little. We have currently no cheap alternatives for activation outside of the very peculiar Freed Men which I don’t think can hold even a dim candle to our mounted friend.
The fact that we have a really great alternative cavalry commander in Khal Drogo, makes this decision point that much easier. In a sense with Khal Drogo and Jorah Mormont (Solo) you can have your cake and eat it too and I think that is both the best way to utilize Jorah and simultaneously why his popularity as a commander is so low in the ASOIAF stats.
I don’t see that changing anytime in the near future, the entire Jorah package’s fate was sealed by the Jorah solo unit, it’s just too damn good!
Let’s be honest here, Game of Thrones as a setting, as a franchise as, a design space for games is just an awesome place. The books and show have made so many fans world wide that there are plenty of people looking for more, but for those in the table top community you know that this franchise has also produced some of the best table top games in the market today.
You have the Game of Thrones board game which is just amazing, recently getting its own digital version. You have the Game of Thrones living card game, another smash hit in my book and now we have Song of Ice and Fire the miniature game, a new rank and file mini game adaptation. While I reserve judgement to an extent with this first impressions article as my experience with the game is limited to a few games, as my first impressions will indicate, I’m very excited about this game. There are some very good reasons for miniature gamers to take notice and today we are going to talk about this lovely game a bit from the perspective of a newbie.
Evolving Modern Miniature Games
There are many notable features in Song of Ice and Fire the miniature game that modern miniature gamers will appreciate and find familiar, in fact the game improves on many modern staples of the genre.
These improvements where born out of what I believe to be something of a golden age in the world of miniature games. There have been a metric ton of amazing mini games in the last few years and the hits just keep on coming. It all kind of started with Fantasy Flight Games who took the approach that miniature games don’t have to be complicated, that they don’t need a 400 page rulebooks and special army books and through that approach FFG produced hits like Star Wars X-Wing, Armada and Legion. This has triggered miniature game makers to re-asses the classic exception based designs and really changed the face of how miniature games are made and released. An evolution to design was started and games have been benefiting from and evolving ever since, after decades of stagnation.
Song of Ice and Fire the miniature game is among the latest of games to take advantage of this evolution and what can be said about this game is that like many modern mini games, its VERY easy to get into.
For starters the rulebook is more of a pamphlet and the rules are crystal clear with a dependable, structured core rule system that you can rely on. This has become the norm in good miniature game designs. This makes the game very approachable, very easy to teach and it really clears out that elitism that has for so long been associate with miniature gaming. SoIF didn’t invent this concept but it takes full advantage of it. It evolves it further by providing living documentation and an officially supported app to ensure players always have the latest rules and unit errata. This allows them to make changes to the game as they see fit without the frustration of our books and game material going “out of date” which is still a problem even in many modern mini games.
The next thing to note is that SoIF miniatures come pre-assembled and I can’t say enough about how that opens the world of miniature gaming up. The game assumes that its meant to be played, that it’s not a hobby that occasionally masquerades as a game, but that its an awesome game first, which you may or may not care to also make a hobby.
I know that this is controversial to say but for me personally if your game comes on a sprue, its an automatic no from me, nothing else about the game matters to me. I want to play these games, if I have to spend 20 hours gluing shit together you already lost me and I believe a lot of that elitism persona of the genre comes from this assumed hobby expectation. SoIF takes this a step further by not requiring any assembly of any kind, compared to many games like Star Wars Legion for example where while you don’t have to deal with sprues, you will still need to super glue stuff to play. Making each army a specific color so they are easy to tell apart on the board further illustrates the fact that SoIF is a game first and a hobby second, as it should be in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy painting mini’s to some degree, but I don’t want to be forced to if I’m busy and have assembly block my playing the game. I have plenty of miniature games on my shelf I have never played because they are still in sprues.
Another modernization I think is worth noting is that starter boxes come with ready to play and moderately competitive armies. I can’t express enough the disappointment of getting a new miniature game with a starter box only to find out that my game is still technically incomplete and what I have is not an army, but a demo of the game or worse, the game comes with the built in assumption that you will buy two starter/core sets. I hated this with X-Wing, I hated it with Armada, its literarily the reason I don’t play Legion (after buying two core sets I STILL don’t have a complete army).
Finally and I think this is fairly significant albeit minor thing, but even in the starter set you have quite a few list building options, in particular considering it is in fact a starter set. Typically starter sets are not only very limited, but there is a pre-built army in it and there is no customization or flexibility in list building. With SoIF there are choices to be made, variations to be had and I think this is a great thing. It gives you a taste of what is to come and that helps to encourage you to expand your army.
At The Table
I think that SoIF is one of those games where you can easily comprehend the rules, but there is tremendous depth in how those rules are applied to the strategic and tactical component of the game. The game is a bit deceptive in this regard, it seems like a simple game, but is almost overwhelmingly deep to the point that it can very quickly become a little intimidating.
This is a game that is extremely sensitive to tactical and strategic mistakes at the same time. Where you position your units during deployment is critical, where you position them at the end of the first round can be game changing. Make one mistake and it can cost you the match. This is a game where you can be wiped off the board in a single round and it does happen and its not because of the dice.
As such I think this game despite having a very minimal learning curve for the rules has an extremely steep learning curve for becoming even marginally competitive. There is just so much subtle things in this game that you have to remember and their are so many ways units, actions and effects can have on the game that it can feel almost impossible to keep it all in your head. Things can swing on a dime because you forgot that your opponent has some commander who has an order that lets him make an extra attack or that archer units when they shoot can shift 2 inches, or that your player has a hand of cards that can let him break various rules in the game, or that the NCU (more on that later) has some special ability that stops you from doing something you had been planning for with one of your units.
It actually reminds me a bit of games like Magic: The Gathering where if you have a high level of expertise, knowledge about the game, about the cards, about the effects, you become almost super humanly good against people who don’t have that knowledge, because you can anticipate and plan around the activities of your opponent. This isn’t a game where you can look at the board, create a strategy and execute it. You need to know in great detail every inch of what your opponents units can do, all the possibilities of his hidden hand of tactic cards, the many ways effects can combine and the subtle timing of effects that can trigger unique and devastating combinations.
These things take time and practice to learn well and I would argue that this is a game that you not only must learn how to play, but you must study if you have any hope of ever winning a match.
What this does for the game is two fold. On the one hand it can be frustrating because part of the learning process is losing, badly and often. It takes time to really pick up many of the subtle elements of the game and that can feel like a bit of a turn off as you learn the game through failure. You come to realize the rules are simple and fun, but that the strategy of the game has so many layers that this ups the stakes on the learning curve front a great deal.
On the bright side of things however, a game that challenges players, takes time to learn to play well, ultimately gives you a reason to keep playing. A game that has a basic strategy that all players work out ends up being a game about list building and who rolls dice the best, where there is no expertise beyond the basics of the game and it all boils down to list vs. list and dice vs. dice. I see a lot of games like this and they tend to lose their energy in our groups as the conversations shift from “how can I improve my strategy” to “My army sucks because my units aren’t as good/cost effective as my opponents”. The conversation essentially shifts to discussions about what is and isn’t balanced, because there are no more avenues from the perspective of strategic play. SoIF does not have that problem, which is not to say that there aren’t some balance issues here and there, but “how you use units” matters a lot more than “how good the units are” and its very easy to prematurely judge a unit in the hands of inexperienced players.
That is not to disregard a conversation about balance, but often a unit may feel unbalanced because your not using it right and that is a very different conversation.
The result of all this is a game that is deeply tactical and strategic, a game you can study, really sink your teeth into. You will drive yourself crazy thinking about the different effective ways to use your units and your cards, but beyond that because the game comes with a lot of different “game modes”, aka scenarios, each more unique then the next, there isn’t this “one list to rule them all” kind of thing in the game. You build your list, but no matter what you build, every scenario is going to create unique challenges for that list and your always going to have advantages and disadvantages going into every match as a result. The same list that gets completely crushed in one scenario may totally dominate in another.
My impression so far about the game play is that, I’m largely confused. I’m in that newbie zone still and I feel like I lose matches, not because I roll dice badly (though I often do) or because my army is shit but because very clearly and very obviously I make a lot of tactical and strategic mistakes. I can see that with every match I improve dramatically and really the conditions haven’t changed, but how I see the game has. This to me is as a whole, purely positive. I see a lot of potential in the game and as I play more matches, I’m eager to learn and play even more. This is a good place to be in a miniature game.
The Details of The Targaryen Army
The army I chose is the Targaryen army, it was a rather unplanned choice, I largely made it based on theme and maybe a bit because I knew at some point I would be getting some dragons which I thought was cool. I did not investigate the army nor chose it as a result of anything specific about how it would play.
The Targaryen army, at least as its represented in the starter set is a very fast moving, hard hitting cavalry army, a sort of glass cannon driven by hit and run tactics. My experience with them so far has been that it seems to lean a lot more on positioning and use of cards to be successful, though an argument could be made that all armies and really the game as a whole is about position and timing of card play.
There are some really interesting units, some I would argue are just amazing while others, even with my minimal knowledge of the game I recognize as absolute shit. So its a bit of a mixed bag, but there is plenty of room for adaptation and some really great army lists can be formed even with just the starter set.
I will talk a bit about the different units in the starter set here just to give you a feel for the army, but it suffices to say some of this conversation might not make sense unless you know the game rules and I will make that assumption here (that you know the rules of the game).
Jorah Mormon The Wandering Knight
Cost of 3 points, you have to wonder if this was a misprint or something.
First up is Jorah Mormont, The Wandering Knight which I start with only because there should be so little to say about this unit, yet I will say a lot anyway because he was one of my favorite Song of Ice and Fire characters. Jorah is, by no stretch of the imagination the worst unit in the Targaryen army and arguably in the whole game. It almost feels like a misprint its so bad.
The main problem is the cost of this unit, not visible in the picture here, but at 3 points, this unit simply doesn’t earn its point value, not even close. Scout Openings is a strangely tone def ability in a game that is so well designed, a short range ability you are not likely to get more than 1 use of if you’re lucky. Jorah is very vulnerable because of having only 2 health in particular to the many instant wound abilities of NCU’s and card effects. An argument could be made to use him for the extra activation, but you may very well never see an activation with Jorah thanks to this unique vulnerability. You essentially are adding a unit to your army list that almost assures your opponent will get a free victory point, it just doesn’t make sense to pay 3 army points for that privilege.
You can get a lot of mileage out of the Targaryen army for 3 points, investing it in Jorah is a terrible use of such a limited resource.
The frustrating part for me is that his ability and setup just does not fit within the game, within the setting or within the Targaryen army. Jorah from a story perspective was a volunteer serving Daenerys, while also being one of the tougher characters in the story surviving all sorts of crazy stuff. For him to be weak and expensive is a tragic misreading of the character.
Ok I have said my peace, moving on.
I would argue one of the best NCU’s in the game, a far better use of 3 points then Jorah.
Dothraki Screamers
At 6 points its a arguably bit pricey in the Targaryen army, but its a cavalry unit and that is a big advantage on the battlefield.
These guys are the staple of the Targaryen starter set, you get two of them and while I would argue that at 6 points they are just 1 point too much for a cavalry unit with no abilities, however, cavalry units in their own right offer exceptional flexibility on the battlefield so I can understand the 6 point cost here.
My argument for reducing its cost by 1 has more to do with the fact that activation advantage is a major concept of the game. The impact of activation advantage is massive in SOIF and the Targaryen army does not have that all important “low cost unit” required to put them in a place where they can compete in a game where 8-9 activations is the norm. Typically a Targaryen army will have 6 to 7 activations at best which means every match you enter you will be out activated, typically by at least 1-2 activations. It might not sound like much, but this really knocks Targaryen’s out of competitive play entirely, its very difficult to overcome an activation disadvantage. This being the Targaryen’s staple unit seems like the most appropriate place where an argument for reduced cost could be made.
At a 5+ defense you want these guys doing hit and runs on people’s flanks, which can be devastating with a 3+ attack and though they can hold their own in a fight with a 6+ morale save, they aren’t likely to be able to remain in a sustained fight for very long with a +5 armor save. Their leverage is their 6+ speed which can be increased in various ways in a Targaryen army with NCU’s like Daenery’s Targaryen, Khaleesi and Targaryen cards like Unstoppable Advance.
I would argue however that this is really a 7 point unit because fielding it without one of the two commanders for an extra point (Either an Outrider KO or a Screamer KO) is really not getting your points worth, they transform this unit from a threat to a major threat with one of the two KO’s. You will feel like you need to have them I think to get the value out of this unit and strictly speaking if you add 2 Screamers and 1 Outrider, each with its own commander you are spending those 3 points you just saved by not adding Jorah into the list, a vastly better investment in army points in my opinion.
Screamers are a great unit, though I can understand some arguments for using Bloody Mummer Zorse Riders for example as a potential alternative. While slightly more expensive at 7 points, Zorse Riders offer some built in abilities.
A 7 point unit that is in competition with the screamers.A staple NCU in the Targaryen heavy cavalry army that doubles down on the factions main advantage.Yet another way to get more speed and with the added surprise of ignoring terrain and ensuring your charge re-rolls.Good on either the screamer or the outrider cavalry unit.The only place to put them in your starter army is on a screamer.
The Dothraki Outriders
At 6 points the Outriders can have a high impact on matches, but don’t forget the Outrider KO, its arguably the best 1 point you can spend in the Targaryen army.
I think the best unit in the starter set by a fair margin, the Dothraki Outriders at 6 points while tricky to use largely do to an absence of a melee attack and short range of their bow, have incredible mobility thanks to a 6+ move combined with their Nimble ability. In fact, I’m fairly certain this is the most mobile unit in the entire game.
When fitted with their attachment (Outrider KO), they are shooting 7 dice at 3+ into units that can be assumed to be vulnerable (thanks to their Outrider KO) which when combined with shooting into a flank can be absolutely devastating even to the toughest of units. Their nimble ability also keeps them out of range of other short range units and makes it much easier for them to get into peoples flanks. All around its a pretty amazing combo and deadly combination.
This is a unit that when timed and used well will always earn its 7 point cost (never leave home without a outrider KO however). I think its well priced within the scope of the Targaryen faction and though I think I could file a complaint when comparing this unit to the Nights Watch Ranger Trackers who are effectively better and cheaper in every way as they get the Outrider KO ability built in, have better defense and a reasonably decent melee attack. I do believe that Nimble is so significant that it makes up for it.
Its unfortunate that you only get one of these guys in the starter box, I think I would rather have another unit of these guys as an option then the poorly thought out Jorah.
Dothraki Veterans
This very pricey (10 points) yet very dangerous unit requires a lot more plays to make a determination, but you cannot deny its ferocity, people will come to fear the veterans.
Finally we have the Dothraki Veterans which is our high priced, high value unit. It seems every faction gets one, but at 10 army points it is one of the most expensive units in the game, currently one among only 3 units that come in this pricey. It is more expensive then a bloody dragon for crying out loud!
The question is, is it worth it and the answer is, that I just don’t know. There is no denying its ferocity, it is absolutely devastating to get shot at with 7 dice at 3+, then get charged with 8 dice at +3 before any other effects are even applied in a single activation. With an Outrider KO or a Screamer KO you could potentially wipe entire fresh units off the board with a single attack and when you consider some of the Targaryen cards like Overrun or Khal Drogo’s cards (The Commander) like Devastating Impact, the potential for a single game winning move is very high. Your opponents are going to fear this unit and rightfully so, its a game changer.
The problem is however that as it stands, to invest 10 points into a single unit is a hard pill to swallow for any faction but in particular the Targaryen faction where if you really consider the makeup of the army we already have major activation disadvantage problems.
The cheapest unit we have is 6 points (screamer and outrider), which arguably need their KO’s to be effective making them 7 point units realistically speaking. Adding this 10 point unit into any army list means you are going to be limited to 4 units on the board at most, meaning 6 activations at best (with 2 NCU’s). That is too big of a disadvantage in a game where you will be facing 8-9 activations as a standard. In my experience having an activation disadvantage and having a unit disadvantage on the board at the same time is pretty difficult to overcome and this may very well explain why Targaryen’s are at the bottom of tournament play results, yet to win any recorded tournaments in which they were played.
I don’t think the issue with Veterans are the Veterans themselves, in fact, like the screamer I think the unit is appropriately priced in general, yet I would argue because of the composition of options for the Targaryen’s, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense to add them. We don’t have cheap options to offset high cost units and running any army but with only 6 activations is a losing proposition, it’s just too big of a disadvantage.
Devastating but situational, it can turn a loss of a unit in to a loss of multiple units.All around great and easy to use card.
The Commanders
In the Targaryen starter set you get two commanders, Khal Drogo and the commander version of Jorah Mormont. In my humble opinion these are both excellent commanders that work extremely well within the Targaryen faction and they are both a joy to use. They come with strong abilities in their own right that punish opponents and offer some amazing surprises for your enemy and frankly both of their tactic card sets are filled with some amazing cards.
Jorah Mormont tends to be a lot more flexible than Khal Drogo and I would argue that cards like Bravery in the Face of Death and Superior Flanking are two cards you can count on using in every game. Martial Superiority is also a great defensive card that punishes opponents for attacking you. Really they are all great.
Charging and Morale checks is something you are going to be doing, so this card will always get played.One might say situational but your a cavalry army so if your not charging into flanks and rears your doing it wrong.Great defensive card that punishes opponents for attacking you.
Khal Drogo’s tactic cards are a bit trickier to use. The already mentioned Overrun can have insane impact on games in combination with successfully timed charges.
Addrivat! is extremely circumstantial, I find its the card I discard the most often. It requires you to activate the combat action on the NCU board to use, which means you must already be engaged with the opponent and have the initiative. In addition screamers already have sundering so they don’t leverage as much of the card as other units might, its useless to outriders because it’s melee only and you don’t want to use it with veterans because you won’t get your ranged shot – charge combination, arguably the main reason to use veterans.
To be honest I don’t recall ever actually playing this card, the circumstances when you could use the card combined with actually having it in your hand at the same time are extremely rare. Its clearly designed to combo with Khal Drogo’s ability but even there its not great since usually you will have Drogo in your Veterans unit and you don’t want to skip over your ranged shot before charging. I actually think its a terrible card in general.
The trickiest of the cards is Ride-By-Attack, it allows you to make a march through an enemy, performing a charge as you do it. Again its a very situational card because you need to be able to move far enough through a unit to get on the other side of them to do it. Additionally it doesn’t combo well with your most expensive unit as it does not allow you to use that ranged attack before the charge as the card must be used on activation. It requires considerable coordination and positioning to pull off, but can push one of your cavalry into your opponents back line so in addition to the charge you have good positioning for the next series of action. It has a lot of potential and I think becomes more relevant and significant in expert hands.
Clearly a card tailor made for whatever unit Drogo is in, but overall its just a terrible card.Can be tricky to use, but your opponents will never expect it, it breaks the rules of the game.This is one of the easier cards to use from the Khal Drogo set.
Conclusion
There is certainly a lot more that can be said about the Targaryen army, there are other components and cards not mentioned here that could be discussed but I think I have shown enough here to come to this conclusion.
The Targaryen army is a very mobile force that can make high impact moves that can completely decimate opponents but in the same token, it has a lot of vulnerabilities and is susceptible to terrible collapse if not positioned well and its core effects timed poorly. I think it should probably come with a warning label that says “For Advanced Players of Song of Ice and Fire” because it really does assume a lot of knowledge to use well.
As an army its biggest drawback which I think is the biggest contributing factor to its poor competitive play results is the fact that it lacks the ability to overcome the activation advantage almost all factions will have over it. The standard amount of activations for a list is 8-9, for the Targaryen’s its 6-7. This is a major problem for the Targaryen’s that keeps them from being truly competitive and there is currently no way to overcome it.
I do believe however with a bit of practice and a few expansion units, in particular the Heroes box to get some variety in the NCU’s can result in this army being at the very least fun to play. With some good player skill developments I certainly think you can get some wins on your record with the Targaryen’s, as they tend to really punish opponent mistakes.
I suspect in time their will be changes made to this army, its clear to me that units like Jorah Mormont The Wandering Knight are just too awful to be ignored and the cost of units like Screamers and Veterans are probably going to be adjusted (or their abilities adjusted) to bring them in line with the rest of the game or at least the army will get some methods to help them overcome their awful activation disadvantage.
The Targaryen Faction represent the newest addition to the Song of Ice and Fire miniature game and as such I think inevitably, as was the case with the rest of the games many factions, there will be some adjustments needed and made. CMON however seems to be very cautious about just sporadically making changes which I think is a good thing.
So far I’m enjoying my experience with SoIF, there is a lot of love put into this game, some really great design work and a really great design space to expand the game. Even as I write this article I as well as many of my gaming friends are waiting for new units to arrive to join the ranks of our armies so that is a good sign that we will continue with this great in my local gaming group.
Ok here goes nothing. Without question among the list of biggest things to happen this last year in board gaming was the breakup of Fantasy Flight Games and Gamesworkshop, the merger of Asmodee and Fantasy Flight Games and their prompt announcement that they are getting into the Assemble and Paint miniature games market. At least for me personally as I’m a huge fan of FFG, this was a big deal. From these events FFG has spawned their latest collectible love child which they called simply Runewars The Miniature Game, an announcement that might answer the question of why these events took place in the first place, but I digress.
We can only speculate about why GW and FFG broke up their relationship, but with FFG creating a game that clearly competes with GW’s core business, you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure it out.
These events are big no doubt, even worthy of their own article perhaps but in my experience, gamers don’t really care so much about the business end of things when you get right down to it, so really the most interesting event was the announcing and now release of FFG’s new miniatures game, our topic of the day.
Creating this review has been a long and arduous process, one that I don’t believe is even in the ball park of complete and might never truly be. It suffices to say reviewing collectible games in general is tough since your review is frozen in time, not accounting for anything that is released afterwards that could improve or make worse a game. Collectible miniature games are even tougher as there is so much more to the hobby than just the game, in its own right it almost feels like the game and the miniatures should be entirely separate reviews. We won’t do that however, instead this review will focus on the Core Set for Runewars, as some call it, the Wave 0 release.
With mechanics like this, expansion potential is endless and as such doing a review having only seen the core set both feels and probably is premature. None the less reviewers must review!
I consider this a premature review and I will admit that right up front here and now, however, I felt it prudent to do the review earlier then later because I believe there are a lot of people out there, in particular Gamesworkshop fans who might have a hole in their dark hearts after the death of Warhammer Fantasy Battles but also fans of FFG’s other miniatures lines that want to know if the juice is as good as the hype in FFG’s latest creation.
Let’s be honest here, if there is one thing that is taking place right now is fanboy insanity, the hype machine is thick. Objectively is thoroughly out the fucking window, hell I even feel the sting of it and its likely to make its way to this review is some fashion, but being the always vigilant internet Evangelist and giving a grand total of zero fucks about anyone’s feelings, I’m going to give you the Gamersdunegon.net take on FFG’s latest creation.
FFG made a big show out of Runewars and the community has gone insane. Having an objective conversation has become nay impossible among the rabid fans who gave it a 10 out of 10 before they read the rulebook!
This review will be extensive and far more detailed then normal, so put on your reading glasses, sit back and enjoy. Oh, and If this review upsets or offends your miniature gaming sensibilities, and you would like to complain, please feel free to dial my comments hotline at 1-800-ZeroFucksGiven. <– just kidding, this is not a real number, please don’t call it!
Overview
Final Score: (3.9 out of 5 Stars)
Runewars the miniature game falls into the rank and file fantasy battles lines of games, though right off the bat I can tell you that it has far more in common with Star Wars: X-Wing and Armada than it does with Gamesworkshops now defunct Warhammer Fantasy Battles which for the most part defined the genre. Everything before Warhammer Fantasy is ancient history. This fact in its own right makes Runewars a very unique entry into the market. Suffice to say, while the game is rank & file and may even appear to be of the same stock as Warhammer Fantasy, Fantasy Flight Games has borrowed far more from their own miniature game lines, then they have from Gamesworkshop, not to mention broken more sacred cows then 4th edition D&D.
Breaking sacred cows is not always a good thing, it certainly didn’t work out well for 4th edition D&D.
Runewars features FFG creations like movement/action dials that use a pre-programming (hidden movement) systems as we have in X-Wing. It uses a more fixed unit based system where you pay for entire squads in certain formation as opposed to GW’s Warhammer style per model purchases. It also makes use of tokens and effects for easier book-keeping as we see in most of their games, miniature or otherwise. There is also cards for upgrades with fixed slots for each unit and of course in classic rebellious fashion once again FFG brings us specialty dice with symbols rather then numbers because, fuck you that’s why!
Suffice to say, when it comes to classic war miniature design, Runewars is a rebel in the genre for better or for worse. The breaking from tradition goes much deeper, though perhaps only those of you that have spent a thousand hours in front of Warhammer miniatures might notice. For one the miniatures don’t come on sprus and are designed with easy assembly (largely without glue) via a basic hole and peg system. Poses are also in fixed positions, another words you are not going to be messing around with picking a position for your hands, body, heads etc. The level of model detail and general layout of the models is designed very specifically for easier painting to cater to the novice resulting in a lower level of detail. All of these things certainly break from tradition and might even piss off traditionalist (go figure).
To a novice like me this is intimidating, enough to turn me off the game, but fans would rightfully argue that customization is what this hobby is all about.
Runewars is a very different than your daddy’s miniature game, that much is clear, but in its heart and soul its very much chasing the same classic premise. Players build their armies making a wide range of choices (getting wider with each expansion) and construct a fundamental strategy that they bring to a 6×3 battlefield. Then the battle is on as units march in formation at each other, collide and the dice extravaganza begins. Stuff dies, someone kills more stuff then the other guy and wins the game. In terms of concept, this is a very traditional miniatures game, but much of the design and what leads you to the field of battles is quite un-traditional.
Runewars is also based on its own fantasy world, the same as several of their fantasy based games like Runewars the boardgame, Runebound and Descent. With its own lore, covered in a pamphlet that comes with your core set, you have the basic platform for a fantasy world that defines where stuff comes from. This too breaks from the traditional mega volume rulebooks and army books that are released for your old school miniatures game like pretty much everything from GamesWorkshop.
Components
Score:
Tilt:
Pros: Components built to last, core set jam packed with goodies with an amazingly low cost of entry as well as a designed to be approachable by the novice hobbyist.
Cons: Miniatures are not as detailed as the high standards created by companies like GamesWorkshop and Privateer Press.
Of all the things that are tough to talk about and judge in this review, components definitely ranked quite high on the difficulty scale. In particular because components are arguably one of the most important elements of a miniature game as its a defining element of the hobby to assemble and paint with tender love and care your precious miniatures.
The first step to making a judgement is that you have to decide the standard on which it should be based and perhaps more importantly how do you determine whether a shift from established traditions is good or bad?
I think its only fair to explain how I came to my determination. Simply put, I have taken what is the best in the business component wise and measured it against Runewars. Yes that means arguably Gamesworkshop miniatures, which are among the best in the business. GW are masters of their craft honed over the course of 30+ years and while I would personally argue that there are other candidates, I think as a measure of quality this is one of the most well known sources to be judged against and this is exactly what I have done. I think its fair, I think its just. If you are going to enter the miniature market place and tango with the big boys, you will have to fight on their terms.
You can say what you will about GW’s ability to produce quality game mechanics, but their miniatures are works of art with amazing detail even 10 years ago.
Let’s first talk about the other components of Runewars. The tokens, the cards, the rules & lore books, dials and everything else in the core set box.
Simply put, everything is of fantastic quality. These are components built to last and last they will. I really only had one major beef with component quality and that was the dials themselves. Its a minor quibble but the plastic stand piece that stands the dial up, rubs against the edges of the dial and after only a couple of games it has already damaged the bottom of the dial base. When you get a new game and after two plays there is already something damaged, its annoying. I suggest gluing the plastic stand to the dial to avoid this the first time you put them on. Minor I know, but with FFG, component quality is almost always amazing so its rare I get the opportunity to bitch about something.
While the terrain tiles included in the core set are a nice way to get you started quickly, it didn’t take long for the community to step it up a notch and make proper terrain.
As for the Lore and Rules book, well they are both good and bad. The traditional standard here is a big fat rules book that is not only extremely detailed and explicit but at least more than 2/3rds of it is “traditionally” dedicated to the hobby of paint and assembly and most importantly, the lore. Now Runewars did come with a Lore book, but by comparison to what we get with most miniatures games, this can be described as a very light pamphlet that gives you a very high level birds eye-view of the lore. To me the the size of this book was disappointing, but worse yet was the content.
Well written and detailed lore is absolutely vital to a miniatures game and I’m sorry to say as much as I tried to get into it and like it, the world of Terrinoth is a very boring and generic place. This tiny pamphlet did little to inspire creativity in a game, that is as much a game as a creative hobby as a game, which is terrible news for miniature fans. Miniature games are after all cousins of role-playing games and lore is paramount. We need more, much, much more. Now what was there wasn’t poorly written or anything, it was certainly enough to give you a taste with a bit of pizzazz, but in general the world of Terrinoth is just not very interesting at all at the moment. Its a walking, talking cliche and at best can be described as incomplete. We don’t even get a proper world map to look at.
Sorry to say but this weak ass pamphlet that FG passed as “lore” for Runewars is simply not good enough.
To be fair however, the cliche was born somewhere and certainly while the world of Warhammer Fantasy is filled with its own mind numbing cliches from the age of D&D and Lord of the Rings, they get a pass because well, they also created a lot of them with Warhammer. There was a lot of very original and very cool concepts in Warhammer Fantasy that jazzed up the cliches and that just doesn’t exist in Terrinoth. Where we had Vampire Counts and Egyptian themed Tomb Kings in the Old World, by comparison the Waiqar are “standard skeleton/undead people”. There really is no culture or uniqueness to them, they are at best, generic. The human army doesn’t do a whole lot better, they are just your standard run of the mill “Knights in shining armor” from a fairly uniform medieval fantasy world with little to get excited about.
Now while the Lore book and Lore in general was disappointing, the rules books, one for learning to play and one reference was a breath of fresh air and this is one change to tradition I appreciated. Gamesworkshop like many miniatures game publishers have this uncanny ability to write a 600 page book and still leave an endless amount of unanswered questions, as well as confuse the living fuck out of you not to mention that they create crappy indexes as a cherry on top. Gamesworkshop was notorious for doing this and despite 30+ years of writing rules-books they absolutely suck monkey balls at it. You could argue that this was all the justification FFG needed not to do it.
Along with the massive source book and army books, GW has always had a magazine dedicated to their game. FFG has a lot to live up to if they want to compete with GW.
Runewars on the other hand gives you a 20 page booklet and after reading through it once and playing two games, I’m quite certain it will remain in the box 90% of all games going forward. It’s clear, it’s easy to understand, it leaves very few unanswered questions and its super easy to reference. I Ioved it, it really just made the game easy to get into and most importantly made the rules easy to remember. A++ for the rulebook.
Ok now its time to get into the real stuff here, the miniatures. I know this is going to be controversial but unless we are going to play favorites here and hold FFG to a different standard then everyone else we have to be honest and objective.
I will say this upfront, despite everything I’m going to say right now, I actually love the Runewars miniatures. For me, every objective issue I list here, is not one I personally share, but the goal here is to make an objective review, not be a fanboy.
The first thing you will notice about Runewars miniatures is that they are not on sprus, they come in baggies in ready to assemble, fixed poses which you will not have the option to change unless you bust out the razor and green stuff to start making conversions. I personally loved this, as I hate dicking around with cutting miniatures off sprus and spending hours just putting them together, but I can understand that in a creative hobby like miniatures gaming, making customization more difficult is a big no no.
Sprus or no sprus, in my mind, its always been about the painting and the community has already shown off some amazing work.
The decision here is likely one of catering to a less experienced or perhaps better to say, not experienced consumer. Its clear that this decision makes Runewars more approachable, more likely for a gamer to take his first steps into the world of paint & assemble miniatures which I think is the right move for FFG. That said, its a kick in the ass of a sacred cow that is going to turn off a lot of miniature hobbyist and rightfully so. Tradition is tradition, this market needs an infusion of players, but not at the price of leaving its core audience in the cold. If your a veteran miniature gamer, you might find some of this pretty disappointing.
Miniature gaming is a hobby first, a game second. The creative element where players create their own unique version of an army is of utmost importance to hobbyists. I would argue this is done through painting, but I understand that assembly, posing your mini’s and making custom choices is part of this creativity. It’s simply not to be fucked with as far as veterans are concerned (I get it) and FFG’s decision to not cater to this audience of 30+ years of fandom I think is going to put more than a few frowns on people’s faces.
Now talking about the quality of the molds, I personally believe them to be extremely well done, but I must point out that they are not really comparable to the level of detail we see from Gamesworkshop and other miniature game makers. If you take a Runewars miniature and line it up with a Warhammer miniature, there is no contest, the Runewars miniature looks more like a boardgame piece then the piece of 3d art that GW produces. I don’t think most people getting into the hobby today would find themselves anything but impressed by Runewars mini’s but to the experienced eye and hobbyist who has spent time painting GW mini’s in particular in the last couple years knows how far the art form of miniature sculpting has come. Runewars really just does not stack up.
Your going to have to get up pretty close to a miniature to notice the reduction in detail compared to other miniature lines and even still they look amazing when a nice paint job is applied.
With that said, the mini’s are definitely above grade for FFG, these are without question the nicest mini’s they have ever produced and for the purposes of gaming, personally I think they are perfect. Painting these mini’s is going to be a much simpler fair and one advantage of this simplification is that the time from opening the box to having an army of painted mini’s on the battlefield has been cut by 1000%. I mean properly constructed and painted miniature army for GW took me the better part of a year and half to paint (yes I’m slow) and I’m quite certain I’m going to have Runewars rocking it color style inside a few weeks.
Its also worth pointing out that the level of detail really only matters upon extremely close inspection, a simple fact of the mini hobby and this is true for all mini games. When your looking at a Warhammer army on the table from a players perspective you are not going to notice the 85 layers of detail on the face of a mini and so really if you want to be practical about it, why bother making them so detailed? Its the old adage, if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to see it.. but I digress.
This is a more realistic way you will see your miniatures 98% of the time. No one is going to inspect them and from this range, you aren’t going to notice the reduced detail level.
The point and the answer to this question is again, because that is what the hobby is, detailed. Very very detailed. Miniature gamers are a meticulous bunch that push the art form forward and to them, this is a very important sacred cow and FFG’s move to scale it back might be seen a step backwards. I think people will adapt and adjust, but the grumbling from the GW community about the quality of the sculpts is almost certain to be debated.
There is also some logic to this hobby first, gaming second approach most miniature gamers have. In the end you are spending far more time preparing for battle then you are having one. A game takes a couple of hours, painting an army takes.. well, it takes a lot longer. So its understandable that this side of the hobby is so important to them. That said, I think its very much FFG’s intention to flip that upside and make Runewars more about the game then the hobby. A controversial move, but one I personally support. I just don’t know that my opinion is representative of the community at large, I have my doubts about that.
Despite it all, its clear that many hobbyists are looking to perfect their miniatures with intense detail spending hundreds of hours per model. Runewars will deny you some of that creativity.
For me personally there is a level of detail that miniatures reach, for which, going beyond makes little difference. FFG has made high level of detail miniatures, going beyond this, really does nothing for me but to be fair, I fall into the category of people who see this as a game first and a hobby second (if a hobby at all) as I believe FFG intends it to be. What doing the opposite it does for Gamesworkshop is make their game way more expensive and that is a far bigger negative to me then a lower level of detail.
To be fair and objective however we have to say it so its clear. Runeware miniatures are not as detailed as Gamesworkshop miniatures. Period.
Ok I think that about covers components. I think my conclusion is that after all considerations and comparisons, what FFG has created here is a very low cost miniature game that is easy to get into, has great quality and is more about the game, then the quality of the sculpts. No it doesn’t exceed and perhaps even reach industry standards as they are today, but I don’t believe they where aiming for that, so how can you blame them for not achieving a goal, they never set in the first place. They want people to buy, assemble and paint miniatures quickly so they can enjoy the game, its a perfectly reasonable goal. Their target aren’t artistic hobbyist, their target is gamer’s and I think they have chosen wisely.
Gameplay
Score:
Tilt:
Pros: An amazing and diverse set of mechanics that creates fun, easy to get into strategies. Despite the dice, battles are won largely by your wits.
Cons: A few asymmetrical balance issues you might find reason to gripe about.
When it comes to gameplay I think its only fair that if we compared the miniatures to Gamesworkshop mini’s, we should do the same when it comes to gameplay. Unfortunately this will be a wildly unfair contest. If there was one thing Gamesworkshop truly sucks at its creating engaging gameplay. The yahtzee fest that passed as a game that was Warhammer Fantasy was an embarrassment to game design, and Runewars blows the fucking doors off by comparison. So , instead of this comparison, lets just judge it on other miniature games from FFG lines like X-Wing and Armada as much of the player base will come from here anyway and of course Runewars is based mechanically on these games as well.
The progression from X-Wing, to Armada and now to Runewars is quite clear, each new game an improvement on the previous one.
Runewars is effectively played on three levels mechanically, much in the way X-Wing and Armada is. There is list building, which is of course the construction of your force where you build into it various strategies and synergies. Then there is the actual combat system, with hidden action/movement via dials, template based movement, special unit powers, upgrade cards etc.. all that combine to make of the bulk of the gameplay. Finally there is the mind game element, the sort of deduction and anticipation mechanics which deal with the fact that decisions are not made in the course of the round, but rather prior to the round starting in the planning/pre-programming phase, at this point an FFG tradition when it comes to mini games.
Nothing to my knowledge exists like this in any other miniature game except in those found in FFG lines and game systems based on their signature mechanic (I could be wrong). Runewars however has the luxury of not only using this fantastic core mechanism, but doing so after the experiences gathered by FFG designers from the previous two versions of these systems. In Runewars, it really shows as it is the most advanced and dynamic version of the mechanic to date. Dare I even say an improvement over the amazing Star Wars Armada.
I think I could make this article quite short, aside from a few quirks and arguably questionable balancing, Runewars is the best version of FFG’s signature miniature game mechanics, referred to as the flight system, to date and without question. They have really nailed it home here and while in my first impressions article I got hung up on a few things like Runes for example, after follow up plays of the game I have discovered that their are layers upon layers, upon layers of logic, mechanics, strategies and tactics in the core gameplay of Runewars. Runes are still my least favorite mechanic, but its not nearly as bad as I made it out to be in my first impressions article.
Of all the mechanics to love in Runewars, Runes remains one of the few I don’t care for.
There is a ton to discovery to be made in Runewars mechanics and strategies, its very clear that for every move there seems to be a clear counter move. So much thought has gone into each unit, each dial, each ability and there is an awesome merging of it all into what amounts to a deeply rich gaming experience. I started off quite apprehensive about this game, but several plays later I’m delighted and amazed by how much fun and how much depth there is and this is just inside the core set which by all definitions is mostly a demo game.
Now grant it I cheated a bit, as a blogger, I have the luxury of a little bit of a bigger budget then most gamers to ensure I always have something to write about so I went straight for 3 Core sets. Which I imagine is a much different experience than having 1 core set. None the less, I’m absolutely enamored with this game and while not all the hype about this game is deserved, when it comes to the gameplay, I whole heartedly agree with the consensus, this game is amazing.
The value of getting 3 core sets is questionable, but you really can’t get a true 200 point match experience without it at the moment of this writing.
I could already write a book about some of the ways this game suprised me and the little secrets I have discovered along the way, but It almost feels like it would be a spoiler to reveal it all. This is a game you really need to experiment with and in a way its almost kind of a built in right of passage, a part of the game to discover it on your own, its a bit rude to spoil it for people.
Still I have to mention a few of my favorite gameplay elements here, this is a review after all.
First without question separating the dials into two sections where you have a main action and a supporting bonus modifier or action is, while simple, genius. This just makes the choices that much tougher and creates a way for each action to carry risk vs. reward, with built in timing, making even simple decisions delightfully albeit painfully tough. Not only are you choosing your action which may involve movement, an attack, a shift, reformation, special action (on and on) but you are also picking your initiative and how that action will be modified. Hence each action has a built in speed variance and while at first it was a bit confusing, there is so much logic to how everything works. It gives each unit a distinct feel as well as purpose, but more than that it gives units variation in terms of how you execute your battle plans. The combos here are so many its hard to imagine that anyone can call this game simple, yet rule wise it certainly is. The reality is that it falls into the category of easy to learn, but impossible to master, as I often say “the design sweet spot”.
Next up is the simplification of the Rank and File system, by creating simple and effective rules for things like lining up, using terrain, movement, charges and re-forms. This system while simple, is something that was never really evolved in Warhammer Fantasy and felt stiff and unrealistic. Its almost embarrassing how much better this system is to anything that GW was able to produce in 30+ years of design. It works so well, I would expect any game designed in the future that doesn’t do it this way is going to have a lot of explaining to do. It puts you in a position of focusing on strategy rather then trying to figure out how the rules actually apply. Its simply put, a beautiful piece of design, simple, to the point leaving few unanswered questions.
Warhammer Fantasy also had trays and it was quite fiddly as well.
Now I will say I wasn’t crazy about the connecting puzzle piece tray and while you might chalk that up to a component flaw, because its such a fundamental element of game play, I put it here. They stick and makes it kind of awkward to remove trays. Its fiddly and it gets in the way, but more importantly its non-nonsensical. There really is not reason to force the connection of the trays. They were going for a system that made the units easier to move, but instead resulted in a system that is annoying to work with. A minor flaw, but a flaw non the less.
Finally, last but not least is my absolute favorite element of the game, the mind game. The pre-programming of actions is among my favorite mechanisms in games and in Runewars this concepts adds so many layers to the game to a point that you often make decisions by looking into your opponents eyes and trying to read him then you do looking at the tactical situation. This is a game about juking, faking and trying to surprise your opponent with your dial. Games are literally won and lost this way and often doing the unexpected is the key to winning. While not exactly a mechanic, this atmosphere is created by the mechanics and I think in many ways its one of the most important elements of Runewars.
Even with a single core set there is a lot going on, on the battlefield. This is a game of wits as much as it is a game of bluffing.
When it comes to miniature war games we can’t skimp on the sure to be eternally debated topic of balance. Is the game balanced, how does it balance, is x or y unit too expensive or too cheap. You know, the usual stuff. If you have spent any time playing miniature games, this is going to all sound very familiar and if you are a Warhammer Fantasy Battles player, then you know just how horribly out of balance miniature games can get because you have played without question the worst of the bunch.
My take on Runewars is that by far and large it is one of the most balanced assemble and paint miniatures I have ever played, but this is a far cry from “balanced” in board game terms. Suffice to say, miniature games suffer from asymmetric mechanic blending that simply can never be perfectly balanced from game to game, at least not to any sort of consensus on the topic. In the case of Runewars its actually even more sensitive as each card upgrade you add can easily throw the entire thing off the rails. The fact that they achieve any semblance of balance at all is nothing short of a bloody miracle.
More to the point though its a game of list building and it can be so that while the game is balanced, you and your opponent may have lists that might very well not be, a part of collectible miniature games that always has impact. I don’t think you can blame the game for that, but strictly put, not every game of Runewars you play will be balanced, list building is going to affect the fairness of a game even if you become proficient at it. There are just going to be those times when despite both players building great lists, one player will have a clear advantage as a result of the blending of the two lists. Its just the way it is in these games, an inherent part of miniature gaming that can heavily burden a gaming experience.
List building seems simple at first, but once it all sinks in you realize that there are endless considerations from Panic, objectives, upgrades, leader and unit abilities. Everything is important and it all plays a role in how you construct your fighting force.
Right now I think the main issue with the game is that its meant to be played at 200 points and while I would argue a miniature game should remain balanced regardless of how many points you play at, this might be asking too much of it. I believe if you play a 3×3 fight using just the core set, you are going to get a fairly tight game, its clear the core set itself was tested heavily. With 2 core sets there is a bit of an offset that favors the humans and I think this is largely because the human army relies less on synergy then the undead army and the higher point count you get to, the more redundancy is necessary for the undead to be successful. Given equal skill I think the game favors the Human armies ability to leverage dice odds over the specialties of using synergized elements like Blight and Panic in that weird 150-180 point range. In a sense, the Skeletons are harder to play because of this aspect, but can potentially be devastating if and when the synergies are pulled of. If you don’t pull them off, you chances of winning are greatly reduced in a straight up dice chucking match.
My personal friends argue with me on this matter and I think I can say that I can’t conclusively say this is true. Its certainly debatable and given that perhaps the definition of balance is that there are good arguments on both sides to claim which is best. As long as their is no consensus, perhaps that means the game is in fact balanced. I have personally played the skeletons 6 times at this point, 5 of which where done only with the core set content and the first match I won was when we introduced proxies and used upgrades from the future releases. I believe the game becomes a lot more stable with the upcoming content which of course is not part of this review. In fact for the purpose of this review, the Waiqar have never won a game in my group to date. Its not until we introduced expansion content that this changed and the Waiqar finally won one.
While it may be easier to balance board games, this isn’t the first game I thought had its issues with balance that carried the title “Runewars”. Balance is always a subjective thing and as long as there is no consensus the game is arguably balanced.
At 200 points with expansion content however, the Undead really come into their own and while I will not say it overthrows balance, I will say that that it allows synergies to be far more reliable and very unlikely to fail outright. It really becomes a game of leveraging your blight correctly rather then hoping you don’t fail to get your synergies going through unlucky dice rolling.
In a 200 point game you have enough on the battlefield that if one of you units get caught in an unplanned position, your ability to synergize isn’t shut down entirely, you will have other units that can continue to work off each other and pick up the slack. More importantly you’ll be able to triple down on things like Archers or Lancers, which are devastating in larger numbers and dirt cheap to field. You really just need the plastic to do it and right now in the core set (wave 0) environment that really means you need to invest in 3 core set to complete a proper 200 point army. I’m not sure I would recommend that, but it does help to even the playing field.
Upcoming upgrades like Combat Ingenuity are certainly major factors in strengthening the Waiqar army as they make mechanics like Blight more reliable.
Still even with that said, at round 170-180 points despite the undead having never won to date in my gaming group, most matches are not complete blow outs. Its not like the humans are tearing it up uncontested. Given that the Undead army is a bit more specialized, perhaps requiring a bit more experience with the game to play well, the balance may very well always be there, you just have to know how to tap into it. At this point we are all a bunch of noobs and with the human army you really can arguably get away with just “charging” your opponent and out rolling him.
I also believe the real strength of the undead army really isn’t blight, its a part of it of course, this mechanic is tailor made for them but really their greatest strength is their ability to both hand out panic and resist it, as well as severely out field their competition. Undead units are much cheaper and they are far more effective in small numbers than the humans in smaller numbers. Panic in particular however more often than not is the way the undead army gains a positional advantage on the field and for them its a pretty reliable mechanic that they can tap into thanks to the reanimates secondary ability on attack to hand out panic and upgrades like Terrifying Herald which while expensive are very good at making things difficult in a fight of attrition. Leveraging Panic in combination with Blight which can be used both offensively and defensively is tricky, but when timed correctly its far more devastating then someone who throws a bunch of dice and lets lady luck do the fighting for him. Panic and Blight are reliable, dice rarely are, unless of course your my friend Ola who seems to have made a pact with the devil.
One major strength of the Waiqar army is that they don’t panic as easy and they hand it out like candy. The morale deck is far more dangerous then the damage coming from dice.
In conclusion in terms of balance, I think the game has some debatable elements but for the most part I think I can safely say the game is balanced enough to keep you coming back. Certainly enough that any argument you make can be countered to give you food for thought. Runewars is a game of skill, tactics and a bit of luck, as all good miniature games should be. In the case of Runewars however lucky gets the short end of the stick here, the dice are stable and results are fairly predictable. You will have the occasional shocker, but you aren’t doing the double or triple rolling thing as we see in a lot of miniature games where lucky gets far more opportunities to rear its ugly head (I’m looking at you X-Wing!)
Theme
Score:
Tilt:
Pros: Strong mechanic connection to the fantasy battle theme. Its easy to get your army painted and on the table to get the full enjoyment from the games visual intentions.
Cons: The Lore is dull and unfinished, its not going to inspire you.
Talking about the theme of Runewars is a double edged sword, after all its a game of fantasy miniature battles and mechanically it performs amazingly. But theme isn’t just about a mechanical connection, its also about the basis of the game, the lore, the story behind the game and how that inspires our imaginations. Runewars to me is split between being a fantastic thematic representation of a fantasy battle while simultaneously being plagued by a relatively generic and uninspiring fantasy world.
In the end, for me, thematic representation through mechanics to bring out the feel of the game is far more important then the backdrop. Sure, the lore of the generic humans and skeleton people is uninspiring and bland, but once you put those miniatures on the table and start pre-programming dials, it creates an amazing illusion of being a commander behind a massive force clashing into their enemy. The tactics and strategies, the out guessing of your opponent’s actions, the formations and special powers of the units all form a fantastic gaming experience true to the sense of epicness that we look for in a game like this.
There is no question in my mind that Runewars has the thematic connection to mechanics needed to give you that general of a fantasy army feel even if the back drop of the lore is a bit dull and unfinished.
It may even be worth pointing out that while I love the lore of Warhammer Fantasy, I rarely played the game, despite having a painted army ready to go. This was mainly because while I loved the backdrop, the game itself was kind of a drag and had a tendency to suck the joy out of the room. So clearly, a wonderfully written piece of lore can’t save a game, but I believe an amazing game experience can do wonders to inspire the imagination and even amidst a boring generic fantasy world get you excited to play.
Of course its a bummer that we can’t get both and its sadder still if you consider that if anyone can create an amazing world full of original and creative lore its Fantasy Flight Games. Just look at the fantastic work they have done with Android, sure future techno hackers isn’t my thing, but you can’t say peep about it not being original and inspiring. Hell I read the lore book even though I don’t play any of the games! Suffice to say I have to give some negative points for Runewars lore as far as theme goes, I think FFG can do better and they should have done better. I think it was a mistake to base this on their Runebound world, even though there is obviously a lot of logic to doing so for them as a business. Its just not a good enough setting for a miniatures game.
The visual spectacle and amazing lore of the Warhammer Tomb Kings is undeniable as was the quality and detail of the miniatures, but a shitty game is a shitty game, and shitty is what Warhammer Fantasy was.
In conclusion I can honestly say that for me, lore is an overlookable matter. It’s not the world I would have chosen, but its not a deal breaker in the light of the quality of the game itself. Certainly their is room for improvement but the juice is in the game and when it comes to Runewars the juice is fantastic. I feel a pressing urge to collect, to paint and to play, this is the feeling you want an assemble and paint miniature game to give you. The battles that Runewars offers are epic and full of life, with endless strategy, tactics and presence.
Replay-ability and Longevity
Score:
Tilt:
Pros: The blending of mechanics and asymmetrical units and components create a vast sea of possibilities.
Cons: You’ll need more than one core set to really find the game, collecting is without a doubt required to get the most out of the game.
Longevity of a miniature game is going to be pretty tough to predict given all we have to work with is a wave 0 core set. Still, its clear to me that the game is set up for it in three very distinct ways.
First and foremost, despite the lore being a let down, it is for the most part wide open. They have not written themselves into any corners which gives FFG the opportunity to be creative, think outside of the box and add into the game anything they want and make it cannon since they control the IP. This is a fantastic opportunity to expand this game into any direction they like and I suspect this is exactly why the lore has been left wide open with a lot of question marks. This world is far from finished and while we know that we are getting 2 more armies in the near future, there is lots of room for plenty more. FFG may yet surprise us with the backdrop to Runewars.
Elves are up next, one of two additional armies already confirmed coming to Runewars, but can you imagine what a 10 or 15 faction Runewars will look like!?
Secondly the mechanic is so diverse, that their is design opportunity up the ass in this game. Its a designers wet dream really, in particular with the way units are broken down by special ability, formations, upgrades and the double sided dial. The amount of combinations that can be created is seemingly infinite and if there is anyone you can count on to expand the shit out of this game its FFG. They have left the door wide open design wise and created a flexible and dynamic mechanic that can be used to represent just about any concept you can think of. There really is no telling what they could create with it.
Finally and perhaps most importantly, this is not a IP that is in danger of ever leaving FFG. This isn’t part of some sort of deal, or negotiated contract. This is their world. They answer to no one but the fans and they can do with it as they please. This is a big deal, in particular for FFG that more typically works with existing IP’s that have years and years of legacy built into them. This is their world and that is an important distinction from other games even in their miniature lines like Star Wars, an IP license they could very well lose one day ending their control over their own games. We have already seen this happen once with Gamesworkshop, an IP they lost, that among its casualties included wonderful games like Forbidden Stars which never even got a much needed expansion.
Fallout from the GW & FFG breakup had its casualties, including any hope of a Forbidden Stars expansion. So much potential lost.
In terms of replayability, Runewars like all of their miniature lines already has a built in foundation that very clearly begs to be explored. I believe Runewars will get the same treatment like Armada and replaybility will grow out of it in the same way. Each time a new unit is introduced with new upgrades and dials, the game changes and needs to be re-explored as old avenues are re-openned. More than that though I believe their is room for elements like Campaign sets, also something we got that truly expanded the gaming experiance for Armada. You have other platforms on which to base some assumptions as well like X-Wings epic play or Mission play. Runewars has built into it objectives and as you can imagine, more will be released at some point growing the gaming experience in new directions.
Simply put, I think the replayability here is endless, Runewars is not a game that will dull and while I expect it will certainly phase in and out of popularity in gaming groups as all games do, like X-Wing and Armada, I believe it will always remain on my shelf waiting for the itch to be scratched. I have no doubt about Runewars dynamic gameplay being endlessly replayable, FFG’s are masters of creating such games and Runewars may be their most imaginative and dynamic game yet.
Conclusion
Runewars is definitely not without its flaws, I have my beef with the lore and there are a few very minor issues I haven’t mentioned because this review is already waaaay to long. Suffice to say however, Runewars overcomes its shortcomings by bringing us the most important element of a miniature game with near perfection. Gameplay. This is where this game shines, leave it to a boardgame company to design one of the most playable assemble and paint miniature games on the market and show everyone else how its done right.
Sure, it’s not quite the hobby game we are accustomed to seeing enter the market. The miniature sculpts are not quite up to standard of the industry and some limitations like static poses are going to annoy a few people. We are missing our usual fat army books and mega volume core book too, but for all that is missing the most important bits are there. That said, these miniatures look great, painting them is a joy and I have absolutely no doubt that FFG will continue to step up their efforts and bring us better and better mini’s as time goes by as they have with X-Wing and Armada. This is FFG’s first entry into the Assemble and Paint mini market and in my eyes, its an amazing achievement not just as a first effort, but in general, it has created a new standard in the hobby. Its not a standard based on the sculpts of their mini’s but one focused on gameplay, a place where most assemble and paint mini efforts fail pretty regularly in my eyes.
Warhammer is not the only competitor out their, games like Warmachines tap into the market in their own way and look just as amazing on the table.
Certainly there is a ton of hype and fanboyism surrounding this game, but I believe its justified. I look at this game and I see a lot of opportunity for some amazing gaming experiences and while I honestly can say I’m really not the best representative from the assemble and paint community, as a general gamer, to me this game has made just the right compromises to get me involved and the truth is that ordinarily I would not be interested in an assemble and paint miniature game at all. Runewars has changed my mind, an achievement in its own right and I suspect fundementally one of the goals of FFG’s effort here. They have created a game that lets you ease into it as a novice and this was exactly what they were going for. I think my faith in FFG has a lot to do with my conclusion about Runewars, but while it’s not yet the game it will one day be, it’s clear that FFG intends to give it all the support and love it deserves to have a bright future.
It remains to be seen if the assemble and paint hobby community embraces Runewars, I’m skeptical, but given its target audience and goals FFG has set for it, I think it has a fighting chance. What we have here is a bonafide smash hit in my novice eyes, but whether that translates to a hit among experienced miniature gamers is hard to predict. Like all assemble & paint miniatures, it’s usually not the release that matters so much as the longevity of the support and dedication of the publisher to push it forward beyond its infancy. Few games in the miniature market make it that far, but FFG has a proven track record of success and they have infused this game with the same endearing qualities of games like X-Wing and Armada that to me are among the best games ever made.
Gamesdungeon.net gives this the seal of approval, if you’re a miniatures game fan, this is one you cannot pass up, it begs to be played. If you’re a casual gamer looking for your first experience, while I would personally still recommend X-Wing over Runewars, if you want to get into painting, this is definitely the way to go.
