Münster, Germany Oct 31st

After the successful rebirth of the Customizable Card Game Warlord 4th Edition, PHOENIX Interactive (PI) is pleased to announce the first expansion Warlord: Shattered Empires is to be released November 30th, 2008.

„Our design team led by Oliver Schaaf succeeded in providing Warlord players with arguably the most balanced tournament environment our game ever had“ says Arne Reuter, president of PI. „Now it’s the time to build on that success and expand the card pool with new cards“, he adds.

The expansion continues where the base set left off: A gargantuan magical explosion has shattered the Accordlands and with them the Deverenian Empires and opened the way to a new land, the remnants of the old empire of Thessyria. With power structures shaken up, there is room for new adventure, and new heroes. Heroes that the players themselves will help to shape.

Warlord: Shattered Empires consists of 168 unique cards, 148 of which are totally new. It is going to be packaged in three Adventure Path Sets, containing two decks of 55 cards each, continuing the format established with the Warlord 4E base edition.

Previews, rules and other news are posted on the 4th Edition weblog, found under www.warlordccg.com.

Warlord: It’s more than just a game.

Münster, Germany Oct 30th

PHOENIX Interactive (PI) is pleased to announce a Call for Proposals for the Warlord CCG’s first interactive tournament events series: Winter Campaign, to be taking place between Nov 15th, 2008 and Feb 28th, 2009 in seven locations around the world.

„While we have gotten rave reviews about our new Warlord 4th Edition play environment, we want to focus on the d20 role-playing aspect of the game.“ says Arne Reuter, president of PI. „Faction loyalty has never been as important as now: The main prize for Winter Campaign Events is gaining a genuine hero for the winning faction, to be printed in Expansion #2 scheduled for April/May 2009.“, he adds. „In essence the player his the hero representing his faction and now we are printing it, too.“

For Winter Campaign a Call for Proposals has been prepared that interested Tournament Organizers can request from PI. The event support includes an event package with exclusive promo cards, product, medals and the right to choose the hero’s class and give a general description of what the winner envisions his or her hero to be. This hero will be printed in the upcoming first Expansion Warlord: Shattered Empires.

Seven tournaments around the world are planned: four in the United States, two in Europe, and one in South America.

Warlord: It’s more than just a game.

For more information, contact

Arne Reuter
reuter at phoenix-interactive dot de

You might have noticed that I have been adding KoHIT stuff all over this website, my signatures in the forums, and so on.

The deal is: Pre-Registration is over, we are now headed directly for the biggest Warlord tournament of the year!

You know the tournaments, you (hopefully) know how to get to Münster, you might even know where to stay (for students I have a 3 EUR / night option now - 13 spaces open).

Andrea will provide the catering as last year, food on Saturday night is included and we’ll have a keg of beer to celebrate, well, lots of things. I am even looking at having the Wii there again (getting something to project it on is my biggest problem right now ).

The big thing for me right now is, though: I don’t know whether YOU are coming. So if you are going to come to KoHIT, drop me a PM or e-mail saying so, so I can include you on the pre-registration list. It makes planning for food, drink, table numbers and all that so much easier! Thank you!

Thessyrian guards have become complacent - their masters deal with powers way beyond their comprehension, so the guards jobs seems to be ceremonial. With the arrival of those strangers, things change. And for the specific guard on this sketch, it might be a terminal change…

There has been a lot of discussion about the packaging Warlord 4E is being presented in. We decided to clarify the “tags” for it, to facilitate understanding what is the idea behind the new “format”.

Warlord is being packaged in Adventure Path Sets, each containing two playable and tournament legal decks.

While boosters are eliminated from distribution, there is still a form of rarity: Each Adventure Path Set contains 20 Rare Cards that only appear in that specific set. Uncommon Cards and Common Cards may appear more often in a set. Distributed over the full set each Rare Card appears once, each Uncommon Card twice and each Common Card three times. Warlords and other Fixed Cards take the slots of Rare Cards.

Now you ask “What the heck? We already knew that.”

The distinction becomes necessary because the old nomenclature led people falsely to compare the new packaging with the kind of starter packs known of Warlord (and other CCGs) in the past. The new Adventure Path Sets are not Starters. Each is a complete game by itself, that is customizable through adding additional cards.

As such an Adventure Path Set is roughly equivalent with an earlier two Starters plus twelve boosters where you were extremely lucky to even draw cards that fit your deck(s). Of course your mileage may vary as you might not be interested in the second deck, which then becomes part of your trade pool.

For any new player interested in playing a well balance, quick, and fun customizable card game, Warlord offers a good way to play an intricate tactical card game and expend considerable less money than you would need for any other currently still produced “collectible” card game.

For the collector (also known a suitcase player), Warlord is an affordable option to get into as a secondary game, for example. In previous editions it was nominally impossible to collect a playset of the base edition at below $600 or for an expansion set at below $300, assuming the format continues in the way it has been presented up to this point.

So the new format elegantly combines all the virtues of Warlord: Swift and fun balanced game play, supported tournaments, and an affordable price tag for “serious” players.

In the past, there has always been an Open format as a “if you got it, smoke it” format. Open will always stay that as well. But over time, unique items and combos from different arcs have produced “NPEs”: Negative Play Experiences.

(more…)

I know everybody is eagerly awaiting the first expansion. I am very busy with the art, but design and playtest tell me the expansion fulfills expectations and appreciate the extra time for making sure it works as intended. Having caught a stomach bug my daughter brought home from Kindergarten doesn’t help either.

Here is a first sketch you will find in Expansion #1:

Each year I keep getting asked about hotel information for KoHIT - which is fine, of course. This year I don’t have a deal with any hotel, because there is no obvious one near the site (that will probably change next year as we might move back to a bigger location again).To help with finding a hotel, I have opened a thread in the forum, so if you are planning to come to KoHIT, go there.

Also: If you are arriving by plane and have questions, don’t hesitate to ask me, especially if you come to KoHIT for the first time.

… is a mystery to me.

As you can imagine, I get quite a few messages and e-mails each day. Right now it’s impossible to answer them all, so please be patient, if I don’t answer immediately. I will eventually (especially PMs).

One thing that escaped me this way is gaming clubs (like New Jersey). With the new requirements we should be able to put a lot of new clubs on the map. If you club is not on the map yet, reply to this post or send me a PM at cardmasters.de !

KoHIT is the very first large tournament (64+ players) for the 4E arc, widely acclaimed as the most balanced environment Warlord: Saga of the Storm ever had. Also it traditionally is the place where the European Warlord community comes together to play and to party. The schedule is very traditional as well:

• Friday:
  16:00 Registration starts
  17:00 Start of the Quest for Heroes side event. This and the one from GenCon will be scored after the event
  18:00 Open Single Constructed “Ancients format rules” starts
  19:00 8-man single elimination Sealed Deck tournaments start. Participants win promo cards, winners qualify for an Iron Golem challenge.
• Saturday:
  09:00 Registration starts
  10:30 4E Single Constructed European Championship starts
  13:15 Lunch Break
  14:00 4E Single Constructed rounds 4-6 (possibly 7)
  18:00 Dinner Break (included in registration fee)
  19:00 Playoffs (top 16), 8-man single elimination Sealed Deck tournaments start. Participants win promo cards, winners qualify for an Iron Golem challenge.
  20:00 4E Booster Draft European Championship, Challenges, including the Harvester of Souls
• Sunday
  09:00 Opens for registration
  10:00 4E Doubles European Championship (4-5 rounds, top 4 or top 8 )

As if all of this wasn’t reason enough, there are prizes. Top among those: Best of Faction players in the Single Constructed each choose a non-Warlord character of their faction to reappear in the 4E environment. The best The Chosen player gets to help design a new The Chosen character instead.

The winner of the Open tournament gets to choose any vintage non-Warlord card (Siege or older) to make a reappearance, the winners of the Doubles tournament get to choose non-Warlord characters of their factions to make it back into the game.

All cards have to be selected by Sunday. The Design Team withholds the right to adjust powers in order to preserve game balance. All cards such selected will be printed with the winner’s name and accolades.

In addition to all this I will try to make my Wii available again on a big screen as well as offering additional side events like Formula Dé races and other board games. Also we’ll have our Tombola with major prizes again. You will also be able to exchange your gold pieces for Taisia and possibly other cards.