Warlord 4th Edition CCG - the epic fantasy card game

I love team sports. I love Warlord. Sometimes (well, quite often), I have ideas. Many ideas stay just that. Some come to fruition.

Some ideas come under the shower, some while almost asleep. Some are just there when I wake up in the (thanks to my daughter quite frequently very early) morning.

Like this one: Pending successfully integrating Warlord 4E into David Millis’ Arcanist CCG program I would like the teams and stores that register until a certain point to make their bid to apply for a team at the WICA. That’s the Warlord International Cardplayer Association. The teams will need to consist of at least 4 recognized players (i.e. have participated in at least seven OP ranked tournaments). The teams would be organized in something like Conferences and Divisions and each two-week-period they’d play a match vs. another team.

Basically three players set at A, B, and C would be pitched against the others A, B, or C, much like we did it in the World Conquest. The fourth player is a substitute. The three matches would take place simultaneously, with the team winning the match-up that wins 2 out of 3 single matches (each being best of 3 as well).

Each player would need to log his or her deck with a judge and each player on a team would need to play a different Warlord.

Much like in Pro Sports, the best teams would qualify for playoffs, pitching the very best against each other.

So, what do you think of this crazy idea? Discuss it here.

That’s the maximum of magic missiles I threw with the Queen of Syneri. Pure fun. For me at least. It’s become one of my signature cards in challenge decks, yielding a way above average result with them.

They became feared.

Therefore it will surprise only few that it is going to be included in 4th Edition.

In Münster we have two seasons: Summer and Rain Season (i.e. Autumn, Winter, and Spring). Some years summer consists of two weeks of sunshine in May or June.

This past, long week-end was summer: Perfect weather of 26°C, light wind, ideal for barbeques. So I met with a few friends, we had a open end rpg session (we played a Spycraft 2.0 mission in Moscow if anybody likes to know) including some barbeque and of course, being in Germany, some beer. It was great. The rest of the week-end belonged to family - we really had some good quality playground time!

Now it’s time to take up my blogging again.

More and more art is coming in, so today we’ll have a new Nothrog showing us his power (well, the effect is off screen, but still…).

… is in this case more likely to burn others. A lot of them!

Is what our genre is called. Some dig the power of sorcery, some are into the swords.

I love swords. In D&D I always look into having acrobatic sword fighters, often wielding multiple weapons. Somehow I never end up playing them, for some reason. Duh.

Noting that we have a full page of text and no graphics, I believe it’s time to spoil a new pic. This one is done by Storn Cook, who in my opinion excels in action scenes. This one is no different.

The sketch already was so good, there was no comment needed. And this is the final that came out of it:

… at least not the ones I want to talk about.

If you have a Warlord-selling brick & mortar store in your town that offers space for tournaments, that’s where you want to do it. It offers the best chance for you to expand your playgroup and find new friends.

But what if you don’t have one, it doesn’t carry Warlord, or simply doesn’t have space? Easy: You found a gaming club.

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If you read yesterday’s blog post (and chances are that you did, since it appears right under this one) and you are an accomplished (or aspiring) tournament organizer (”TO”), then right now you are probably quite anxious to know what will be expected of you.

At the lowest rung we will have tournament kits for local level tournaments. All tournaments will be organized by a TO (surprise!), who must be tied in with either a brick & mortar store or a gaming club. Tournament dates are submitted four weeks before the start of a quarter - for the entire quarter. These TOs will then be sent the tournament kits for the whole period.

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Who remembers Ryan Dancey’s OP system? And the AEG Event Manager? Who cares? Well, I do.

In the past AEG had been plagued by not really having a successful Organized Play system. Magic has the DCI reporter that not only is a great stand-alone program, but also allows tournament organizers to upload their results for any Wizards of the Coast game on a mouse click. With the new version of Mantis Upper Deck Entertainment has a similar program.

Both these ventures needed their time and a lot of resources until they were as usable as they are. AEG never had those resources, and neither do we.

But I like statistics. I am one of those people who look at the box score of NBA games first thing in the morning. And I really cherished being the number one Lord Winter player in the world (when not really many people played him) in the old OP system. Things like that motivate me.

The trick is finding a way of doing a good OP system that fits our needs, actually handles well and that doesn’t drain resources we need elsewhere. That’s a tough chore.

If you remember the old days of OP (and the current poll seems to indicate that surprisingly many of you do), you will remember a time of frustration, supposedly bad service, and overall strife. At the same time the system was already quite good - if you neglect that bad choice setting it up on the ‘wrong’ technological basis.

We’ll be using a technology that is Open Source and fast. The forum already runs on PHP and MySQL, so the choice is really easy. Add AJAX and my background in creating high usability web applications into the mix and you have a project.

What do I want?

• I want a system that allows a TO to enter results in a relatively simple and painless way.
• I want a system that puts out ELO rankings sorted by world, national, faction, or Warlord.
• I want a system that is integrated into my forum, so you don’t have to login into yet another system.
• And lastly I want the system to reflect accomplishments in the forum (like these), so people can show the reasons for their bragging without appearing immodest (”hey, it’s the system that displays all those shinies, it’s not me”).

Despite the Open Source software used, this is custom programming and will need time for outlining the project, finding programmers (no, I won’t do it myself), programming and testing, testing, testing.

So it’s not going to happen until well after GenCon.

What do you expect out of a new and definite tournament tracking system? Discuss here, if you are so inclined.

Already it’s been three months since we started the process of getting Warlord 4E off the ground. Starting pretty much from scratch we didn’t have much time to get our systems installed. The first and most important was the Design Team. Luckily I had a good list of people that were experienced with the old system, but still I wanted to start small.

Now everybody has settled in enough so that we are comfortable with each other. At the same time, with designing the first expansion, promo cards and challenges the work load rises. It’s time to draw a joker.

Welcome Chris Dyer to the Design Team. Chris is an accomplished tournament player - even at KoHIT level, and was the European member of recent Epic Edition Player Design Team with AEG. For anybody wondering: He lives in Devon - that beautiful area to the (almost) very south-west of the UK.

I really look forward to his contributions and I am glad to be able to expand the team this early in the process.

“Yes, I am Sorscha, last of the true Medusans. It was I that arranged your first death, and so too shall I orchestrate your second and final one. This time, face to face.”

She tipped the hood back, revealing the visage beneath, source of the glow. Tentacles writhed about her scalp in place of hair or ears, a disturbing counterpoint to the beautiful face that matched her perfect body. (more…)