Warcry is.... Enjoyable?

[Malarks]

Whaaaaaat?

Had a chance to try some Warcry today and it was more enjoyable than expected.

No massive piles of dice.
No getting speared by Goblin Stabbas.
No overwhelming rules and abilities and objectives and everything else to keep track of.
A reasonable number of models on the table.

Neat.

[StepwisePilot]

Was this the first or second edition?

I had played the first edition a few times before covid, and really enjoyed it. I'm hoping for the same when I eventually am able to play the second edition.

[StepwisePilot]

Actually, upon looking at the free compendium online, I actually have enough models to make a warband. Only catch is that they aren't all painted yet. Well, I have a few fully painted, a bunch half painted, and some just bare plastic.

Maybe it's time to go over the rules?

[dave]

I have read the rules, but didn't retain much. Should read through those a few more times, ha. I'd be up for some learning games if people are interested. I can make a warband of beastmen.

The near future is a bit busy for me, as I'm working a lot of overtime, but I hope to be able to squeeze in some gaming.

[princerobinp]

I was playing against Malarks, 

We played the second edition. It is indeed pretty fun. The core rules are extremely simple, but not entirely intuitive and I think might be a bit hard to pick up from the rulebook. Once you get going however I think you can have them memorized after one or two games.

What isn't obvious at all is how the abilities and synergies of the units will work out on the field. List building at first seems a bit of a crapshoot, and I think there's a pretty steep learning curve to figuring out how to use your guys well. I don't actually think this is a downside in particular, figuring this stuff out might be part of the fun.

I could see it being frustrating if you were trying to actually buy models to build a warband with, but If you're just using what you have it won't matter much.

I generally don't like games that are dominated by combo's and abilities, but this seems a bit different. They seem pretty much baked into the game from the start.

There is, like all GW products nowadays, a lot of info to keep track of. I think making some sort of play aids would help a lot. Maybe some cut and pasted print outs of just your guys fighter cards and abilities would help. You definitely need to print out your abilities and fighter cards at the least IMO.

Gameplay is pretty fast paced with alternating activations and stuff going on pretty much from the get go.

[Malarks]

Yarp! I had a decent time of playing against yahs! We tied for score, in the end, but the adventure up to that point was where the real enjoyment was derived from (honestly, I don't care for results, so much as playing the game was enjoyable)

Play what's fun! Play what's silly! Play thematic lists! Have FUN! Wheeeeeeeeee! Just build lists with models you enjoy and are fun to push around - stressing out over making "win at all costs lists" ain't worth the energy (I think we've all heard enough of my opinions about meta-chasers who bring tooled lists to casual games) as we all know it is going to come down to a few particular builds that will be unfun to play against without a [fairly] specific counter-build.

I found that, with how triggering abilities works in the game, that I wasn't having to even bother checking what my abilities are all that often (just cos I wasn't rolling doubles or triples, mostly) The abilities are neat and likely are big force-multipliers, but I also found that just brawling wasn't that bad an experience and the base stat cards were quick to refer to for such.

The alternating actions really is a nice step away from GW's usual thing of activating one's whole force in one go , which I find really emphasizes alpha-strike gameplay and boils games down to first-turn rolls - being able to actually do things with my models feels good, man. Beyond that, choosing the order in which to activate models even adds to the strategic value of one's actions.

With regards as to how gameplay unfolds; Warcry feels very familiar to Frostgrave... And I think that the choice between the two will come down to whether one prefers to roll d6 or d20 and if one wants to play a game with 2-4 players (with Frostgrave allowing up to 4 players)


Playing Warcry does make me want to check out Kill Team and see how that compares with Stargrave and Infinity.

[dave]

Sounds like fun to me. And it's probably a fair point that getting some games in will go a long way to getting the hang of how things work. I have all the Beasts I could need for building various lists. Short games are good for trying out new combinations.

The one thing I was unsure of was terrain. Height seems like it plays a significant role, and all of the warcry terrain sets seem to include elevated walkways and such. What sort of a battlefield did you guys set up? I don't really have a terrain collection to speak of, myself. Does the game want a fairly dense board?

[StepwisePilot]

Mar 19, 2023 20:59:01 GMT -5 dave said:

Sounds like fun to me. And it's probably a fair point that getting some games in will go a long way to getting the hang of how things work. I have all the Beasts I could need for building various lists. Short games are good for trying out new combinations.

The one thing I was unsure of was terrain. Height seems like it plays a significant role, and all of the warcry terrain sets seem to include elevated walkways and such. What sort of a battlefield did you guys set up? I don't really have a terrain collection to speak of, myself. Does the game want a fairly dense board?

I can't speak for them, or for second edition, but for first I recall having it fairly dense (Although, for all I know that was just the preference of the folks I played with). Although it does make sense, since individual models can get around much easier than squads of models, so the play area being dense with terrain wasn't a problem. 

[princerobinp]

For terrain I have the original (1st ed) starter set stuff.

Having vertical terrain matters to some of the warbands apparently, but I don't know how much. It does look cool and offer more tactical decisions.

I think having a lot of terrain is a must, though I've noticed the new sets are more sparse. The table is only 22x30 so it doesn't take much to fill the board.

[StepwisePilot]

New sets being sparse is likely not due to needing less terrain, but rather GW figuring they can get away with putting less per box. I could be wrong, but that's my guess.

[dave]

They are also popping out those double warband plus terrain boxes faster than they were. They are probably assuming people are buying a few, and ending up with a lot of terrain as a result. I'd say it would be a method to keep the box prices down a bit, but that is clearly not the path they chose.

[Malarks]

One thing that makes terrain "tricky", for Warcry, is that one *could* (is likely encouraged to) build terrain from card -draw generated map designs, which, I assume, will reference very specific shapes of terrain.

That said, in a friendly game, I see no problems with designing terrain one's self.

So.... Knowing what we know of GW... That is likely why terrain is broken up as it is.... But I am not bitter and jaded - what?

[princerobinp]

It does look like you would want at least 2 of the new boxes to make a full table of terrain, I'm sure you could get by with one though.

The cards included with the starter sets are an easy way to decide terrain placement. I like it, but you can set up the table however and with whatever you have.

One blog I highly recommend is "Warboss Kurgan" he's done a LOT of cool things with warcry and his own campaign setting. It's definitely something that got me more interested in the game.

[StepwisePilot]

So, I put together a list of 8 models that adds up to 960 points. Now I just have to read the rules so I know what these models even do, hahaha.

To my understanding, a standard game is 1000 points, right? 960 is close enough to that. 

[princerobinp]

Nice, 1000 point is the standard game size, 960 is probably close enough to try.

Figuring out what things do is a bit harder- definitely print out your stats and abilities. I found a lot of the abilities didn't make sense till I actually tried playing.

What warband did you put together?