Wargoose?

 

This past weekend I have started looking at Warcrow, the fantasy miniatures game by Corvus Belli.

I will preface this by saying that I have not yet even played a game! That will hopefully come soon. Nevertheless I find myself intrigued and I thought it would be worth talking about why I am now looking at my third miniatures game - a thing I definitely have time for.

The first and most important part of a miniatures game for me are the miniatures, and Warcrow excels in that area. Corvus Belli make beautiful minis for Infinity, and the Warcrow miniatures have built on that.

I have some issues with the siocast components; I spent Monday building the Song of the Dormant pack and the siocast was so poor that in many cases I needed to cut down the sockets, sand them, and repose. Not all of the line is siocast though; some is unicool plastic, and that was a joy to work with. My understanding is that all the latest release is unicool, so hopefully we are now witnessing the death of siocast and going forward it will be a far higher quality line.

But, leaving the assembly issues to one side, the actual miniatures themselves are a joy. It is rare I look at a line and don't see a single thing that I dislike, but that has thus far been the case with Warcrow. If you want a fantasy game line that somehow manages to feel both fantastical and grounded, I don't think there's a better one on the market right now in terms of aesthetics.

The second most important part of a miniatures game for me is the system, and whilst I haven't played it yet the Warcrow system looks like it fills a hole in my rotation that I've been looking for.

I love Malifaux but it is extremely high rules complexity, even in the simplified 4th edition, and after 2.5-3 hours of playing (which is the average game length in my experience) I am left exhausted.

I adore Marvel Crisis Protocol but it is a game designed to play fast and reward managing the high variance of the dice system. It is a game of tactics more than it is a game of strategy and whilst it is a ton of fun, I don't spend a ton of time pondering approaches to the missions. Plus, it's getting a huge update in the near future - which always makes it hard for me to get invested in the present.

Warcrow seems like it may sit in a nice middle ground between that, where games aren't quite as quick and prone to high variance as Marvel Crisis Protocol without being as much of a time investment as Malifaux.

Warcrow uses a propriety dice system somewhat like MCP, except that they have many different colours of dice which have different weighted facings. It also uses triggers ('switches') and automatic results for more powerful units, as well as a more moderate reroll and dice fixing system - everyone can reroll all dice on a charge attack, some abilities add the ability to reroll or fix a small number of dice.

The magic system looks extremely fun, with characters able to cast a variety of movement, damage, healing and defensive effects and take on the corruptive force of the world ('tinge') for additional effects at the risk of hampering or even killing themselves if they aren't careful.

What impressed me the most, though, is how these mechanics flow into a strong factional identity - something which, as much as I love it, can feel a little lacking across Malifaux factions. There, most factions have a master to fill most roles with greater or lesser degrees of success. Similarly, in MCP, every leadership can potentially work with every character and 'splash' characters are a big part of the game - so everyone can do everything to a greater or lesser extent.

With Warcrow, the thematic identity of the different factions remains very intact. That's maybe easy right now because they're only just releasing the final faction; the line is relatively small. As Infinity, Corvus Belli's other game, grew, this became a point of difficulty - but for the game as it exists now let me give you a rundown of my initial impressions having read the cards and consumed far too much Warcrow content in the past few days.

The Hegemony of Embersig: The 'generalist' faction, the Hegemony in the lore is defined by its cosmopolitan nature, accepting peoples of all races to come together in the name of expansion, empire, and 'progress'. Mechanically, they are designed to feel like a professional army; most companies (the 'squad name' of the game) can only activate 5 times each round. Embersig brings a variety of ways to cheat that, and good middle of the road statlines which lets them respond flexibly to changing battlefield positions. In the tradition of 'empire' style forces, they also bring guns!

The Northern Tribes: An alliance of orcs and blue-skinned 'varank', the Northern Tribes have a lot of cool lore about their ancestral ties to the land, religious belief, and the reason why they are now having to abandon their home and press south. Mechanically, they excel at aggression. They have a number of ways to hurt opponents when they are being hit, and to gain automatic damage on the attack. They hit extremely hard, but have less battlefield control to mitigate that.

Syennan: The main survivors of an ancient elven empire, the Syennan are about as traditional wood elves as any of the fantasy elements in Warcrow get. They have high access to hit and run tactics, ways to ignore terrain, and great ranged attacks. They are fragile, though, and leveraging their speed needs to be balanced with a relative defensive weakness.

Feudom: Worshippers of the Moon Goddess, Feudom enjoys traditional, uh, feudal, style culture. Their forces are split between Knights, Priestesses and Peasants. Feudom have a defensive playstyle with powerful buffing and debuffing effects which help make middling human stats able to turn the tide. In the future we expect to see cavalry of both the standard and winged variety which you'd hope will help shore up their mobility issues.

Scions of Yaldabaoth: The other side of the fallen elven empire, the Scions use the corrupted magic of the setting without restraint. They have transformed their bodies and those of their followers into all manner of scary monsters, and they get a bunch of unique mechanics to represent this, usually built around powerful but vulnerable spellcasters. Necromancy, cool spells and a whole new way to use the 'tinge' corruption I touched on earlier. They are currently getting a range refresh that brings their models from the various boardgames into the wargame proper.

Mounthaven: The Dwarves of the setting, Mounthaven follow an old plan set in motion generations ago and see everything working towards their Grand Design which seems pretty cool as a unique take on dwarven magic. They also have origami wizards which just rules. Mechanically, Mounthaven set up traps and effects which take place at points in the future to represent their design. They are also slow and sturdy, as you might expect. They are the range currently being released and whilst the range is small for now, future expansions will include a lot of firearms which may make them even more blasty than the Hegemony.

The lore of Warcrow seems like a ton of fun, and I appreciate that every single announcement I've seen from the company comes with a new narrative expansion as well as rebalancing and releases for the competitive side of the game; it feels like they understand that the story of these worlds is an important part of making the property compelling.

This weekend I will be going to Salute, my annual wargaming convention where I usually come back with my new hobby project for the year. I can't guarantee that it's going to be Warcrow - me and my friends have a tendency to get sidetracked by new and shiny things when they are waved in front of us - but right now at least I'm pretty excited at the thought of getting lost in the fog.

 HONK!