ZogBlog

On Saturday night we played Starfarers and Puerto Rico. On Sunday night we played Settlers and Warcraft. Having already played the other three several times, it was Warcraft that was new. I have held off buying the expansion until I had played the original game, but I will most likely pick up the expansion before we play again.

Warcraft is made by Fantasy Flight Games and plays like a somewhat simplified version of the computer game. Each turn consists of 4 phases: Move, Harvest, Deploy, Spend. Each round, everyone moves in turn, than harvests in turn, then deploys in turn, then spends in turn - much like Puerto Rico. When the turn is completed, the round starts anew with the person to the left of the person who started the round last time (aka. the governor changes hands - and we actually used the PR governor to denote this).

You move your armies accross a board that is a collection of tiles placed according to the given scenario. Workers, Melee and ranged units move one, winged units move two (and may move through mountains), unless a Fast card is played which allows you to move no more than THREE regardless of the unit type. You also may not stack more than THREE workers and THREE army units on the same hexagon. Finally, if any unit enters the hexagon containing an enemy unit - battle ensues. Battle occurs in this order: all ranged, all winged, all melee. At the beginning of the battle all combatant players draw an experience card. Battles are resolved by simultaneously rolling the dice for your given units strength in turn. One caveat (without Ensnare or Web - discussed below), Melee units cannot hit winged units (more on this in the summary). For instance a 2nd level ranged Undead unit must get a THREE or less (referring to that races' units' upgrade card on a six-sided day to cause a casualty). At the end of the battle the victor again draws an experience card.

Experience cards can affect the outcome of battles, and each race has specific experience (spell) cards.

• Humans
  1. Call to Arms: worker units count as melee units
  2. Dispel Magic
  3. Invisibility: reduce human casualties by one
  4. Polymorph: one enemy unit can not attack
• Night Elves
  1. Faerie Fire: subtract one from each attack roll in that phase - ranged, winged or melee
  2. Marksmanship: you choose the opponents casualty
  3. Moon Glaive: for each hit the elves inflict they get to roll again at the successful units strength
  4. Renew: remove a partial or complete depletion from a Forest space
• Orcs
  1. Devour: allows the Orc to pick a unit who can't fight during the entire battle
  2. Ensnare: opponents can take winged casualties from Orc melee units
  3. Envenomed Spears: allows an attack re-roll on all attacks that miss during that phase
  4. Pillage: when an enemy unit suffers a casualty, the Human player takes from the enemy player the cost of wood and gold of the enemy unit to suffer a casualty
• Undead
  1. Cripple: target space's units can move one less this round
  2. Curse: allows the Undead to prevent a casualty on a separate roll of THREE or less
  3. Summon Building: allows building construction without a worker
  4. Web: same as Orcs Ensnare

During harvest your workers (that you must train in the town center) may harvest from the TWO resources in the game: Gold or Wood. Harvesting is simulated by rolling a six-sided day that has mostly 1's and 2's and one 3. The number represents the resources you recieve, but a 3 also signals a depletion event. If two depletion events occur the mine or forested is destroyed (unless the elf heals your forest you're SOL, and their is nothing to renew a mine - where are the dwarves?).

Finally, deploy and spend. You deploy any units you may have purchased during the last spend phase to your town center (or any outposts you may have constructed), and complete any buildings you may have had under construction (such as the aforementioned outpost).

Each of the 4 races (Orc, Undead, Human and Night Elf) each has three types of units (Ranged, Winged, Melee). Each unit can be upgraded to that particular races' maximum which your race may have a special power associated with the given unit. The Elves have Slow Poison with a 4th level ranged unit, and Area Attack with a 3rd level winged unit. The Humans have Heal with a 3rd level ranged unit, and Area Attack with the 3rd level winged unit. The Orcs get Area Attack with a 4th Level melee unit, and Blood Lust with a 3rd level ranged unit. The Undead get Raise Dead with a 3rd level ranged unit, and Area Attack with a 4th level winged unit.

The game plays until

• A player is eliminated
• a player receives 15VP (in a 2-3 player game)
• a team reaches 30VP (in a 4 player game)

Victory points only really matter in a 2-3 player game where 15VP's is achievable. You start with 3VP's for your town center, you can upgrade all of your unit types to max for another 3VP, and their are 3VP cards in your experience deck. That totals 9VP, leaving 6VP's that must be achieved by placing your units in strategic VP positions on the board.

In a 4-player game each team must get 30VPs. In order to accomplish this (using the same logic) we start with 6VPs (both town centers), can max out our units, get all our cards... and we will have 18 total. This means that a team must find 12VPs on the board. The entire 4-player board has 14 VPs. So you can either spread yourself to cover the entire board, max out every unit and get all VPs from your experience decks, or head in for a final assault on an enemy town center.

This strategy in fact was used by our Human player. He maxed out his winged units, built TWO and headed to the Orc town center. The Orc maxxed out his Melee units, but had no cards (such as ensnare) to defeat the winged units. Essentially the Human player won the entire game with TWO winged units. Obviously this game is incredibly unbalanced, and VPs are irrelevant in a 4-player game. Now that we know this tactic, we will all ensure that we have ranged units ready to go so as not to be utterly destroyed by TWO units (or one for that matter).

All in all the consensus was that our gaming group would play it again, but all in attendance (except for the Human player that wiped out the incredibly powerful orcs with TWO units) were extremely frustrated with this obvious imbalance. I will be picking up the expansion which supposedly adds Hero's... and hopefully balances the game a little better. Another problem is that the game is limited to 4-players and our gaming group is routinely 5 or 6 players.

According to Fantasy Flight Games, the WarCraft Expansion has

• New rules and components for the sixteen Warcraft heroes
• Random “creep” encounters
• New special race decks
• New specialized board tiles
• New scenarios
• New resource system

Sounds like they did some signficant work to balance the game and make it less of a slaughter fest in the 4-player version. They might even have more than one scenario for the 4-player game. I'm also pretty curious about what they did to the resource system.