Warlord 4th Edition CCG - the epic fantasy card game

Last week I finally got around to see the new episode of my favourite trilogy (well, now it’s not a trilogy anymore). I guess you have heard about it, the main character is a history professor who is always searching old and famous artefacts. The one with the whip. Yeah, right! The movie was OK, the performance of the actors was above average, but you know, when a sequel is published, your expectations are raised.

But last week happened a lot more than me watching a movie, the 4E Warlord Rules were finished! (And yes, you will be able to read them)

At the beginning of the design process, every design team member got a task (such as Playtest Coordinator) and I gladly took the job as the new Rules Team Coordinator.

Yes, you heard right, the junior on the team (“Don’t call me junior!”) got the Rules part.

No need for panic, the Rules team itself consists of way more experienced and qualified guys.

4E is a sequel, too. Thus your expectations are raised as well, and the rules were always highly discussed and criticized, so our main goal was to streamline the status quo. We did that. But I guess these changes are not as interesting to you as actual game play changes.

So, what changes you’ll be able to find?

Planar

There were always problems with Astral and Ethereal. These two traits have a very similar meaning, and one of them (Astral) caused a very serious problem. The basic Warlord rule “A 20 always hits!” doesn’t apply on astral characters.

So, from now on, all Astral/Ethereal characters lose these traits and gain Planar: Odd die rolls against them miss. For Open play, all Astral/Ethereal characters are considered to be Planar. Uriel finally can equip Winter’s Ring without vanishing from the Accord once and for all. Apart from the angel’s delight for jewelry, this makes the game a little bit easier to understand. A 20 always hits!

Charisma

“You hit me with your axe! I’m such a charismatic person, see again whether you really hit me!” While characters like Kerebrus certainly are quite scary to oppose, the logic behind rerolling opposing die rolls with Charisma eludes me. From now on, Charisma will be

Charisma — React: Once per turn, after another character you control within one rank makes a die roll: Succeed with a Charisma check (DC 20) to force the character to re-roll the die roll.

To maintain a certain amount of logic in a game is nice, though this change was made merely to balance and avoid negative play experiences. Some players just don’t like to reroll a good die roll. I certainly don’t.

Searching for treasure

At the end of my very first Designer’s Diary I want you to become Indiana Jones. Read the rules and search for more new features. If you’re persistent as Mr. Jones, you might be able to find an alien skull as well.

www.warlordccg.de/blog/rules/

Tags: Ghed Lionel, Indiana Jones, Rules

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 9:32 am and is filed under Designer Diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.