Hot off the presses: Warcrow!

I don’t normally do this sort of thing (hot off the press scoop) as you all know, but I was on my way to my FLGS anyway when the owner called and said he’d just opened his copy of the Warcrow starter and would I like to try? 

Is the Pope Catholic?!

My FLGS brought in one of the first batches of the Warcrow 2-player starter sets (skirmish game, not board game dungeon crawl which is Warcrow Adventures).

I had a very short test game.

The starter is pretty complete:

- 2 factions (human dominant Hegemony) And Northern Tribes (orcs).

- cardboard terrain

- tokens 

- paper mat a la GW

- measurement sticks (more on those in a moment)

- tons of lovely pretty coloured dice. If you've played Aristeia, you'll know what you're in for.

- massive hardcover rule book

- starter rules and scenarios 

There are other videos that do a better job of unboxing. All I'll say is the components are good quality ... Except for that paper mat. Minis are good and detailed and 35mm in scale. NOT your traditional 28/32mm more like Star Wars Legion scale. 

Again: 2 factions only what you see in the photo is what you get because this is a totally NEW game so CB are slowly ramping up the releases for the factions. This is all that's currently available. Although that will change in a few short months. They promise new releases every month (?) once the first starter boxes are fully delivered worldwide. NOTE: There's a booster pack included here as well, "Beyond Winds from the North" with 6 more minis, the same way they make booster packs for the Infinity 2-player starter sets. And on their web store they already have more unit packs: Tundra Marauders and Bulwarks. 

I like the cardboard the terrain is made from. Thicker than Battle Systems, not as thick as Infinity N4 terrain (which was just a tad TOO think for my tastes although they make for impressively sturdy terrain). Mind you I didn’t have to assemble them (unlike the N4 Infinity terrain) so I can’t say if they weer easy to assemble or not.

GAMEPLAY

There are lots of ‘how to play’ videos online so I’ll just give my impressions of the game. With the caveat that we got some rules wrong and we played using the starter booklet and not the full rules… here’s how the game went. 

Victory condition was: 3 objectives. Whoever controls most for longest wins. 

We also didn't use all the units. Just a bog standard orc fighter unit and a few solos Vs similar human units.

I took the brave Northern orcs…

… vs the decadent Hegemony. 

We both had a unit each of basic troopers plus a couple of champions/named characters. The game is a skirmish game, but it's a squad level skirmish game so expect to see about 15-20 minis a side in larger games (according to Corvus Belli).

We each took the objectives nearest our respective deployment zones easily. The tussle was for the third objective in the centre of the map. (Token near the farmhouse. The small red token on top indicated it was under my control at the end of round 2.

At the end, my orcs were supposed to be the aggressive faction (naturally) versus the more defensive minded Hegemony unit, so of course I played aggressively and just charged in. I managed to push back the Hegemony unit and held out long enough that the Hegemony couldn’t move up to contest the center objective and the end of the Round, giving me the win on points. 

IMPRESSIONS AND THOUGHTS

Objectively, my orc unit (not Champions or named characters) felt under powered. Damage output was totally dependent on die rolls. Very unthematic because the dice had 3 symbols:

Solid star (success!) and hollow star (potential success).

Solid shield (success) and hollow shield (potential success).

Exclamation marks!

The point of Warcrow (much like Aristeia!) is to find as many ways as possible to manipulate those potential successes and exclamation marks into actual successes. You need to build your warband to maximise these ‘tricksies’ (as Gollum would say). These would be what are called “switches” in the game’s parlance: you switch one result for another.

The Hegemony had lots of tricksies to turn hits into shields and vice versa and even exclamation marks into something useful. My orc unit just had 2 exclamation marks remove one defence die on the affected unit’s next defence roll. So wimpy… especially as the condition (Vulnerable) doesn’t stack.

The way to obtain these tricksies is to attach champions/named characters to units, giving you all kinds to ways to manipulate those dice symbols. 

That’s why I felt orcs can be glass cannons (only want to deal damage, not so focused in defence) as long as they can output the damage. This basic orc Hunter (?) unit couldn’t do it. Not without attachments.

Movement values are expressed like Infinity’s, with a stat like 3-2. Seems you are more flexible in how you can use movement, including move up using on of the movement stats, shoot, then fall back behind cover. Apparently. We had no ranged units to speak of, so couldn’t test out that feature. 

Distances are quite short… which brings me to the measurement sticks. Corvus Belli, in their wisdom (and apparent imitation of a GW cash grab) decided to give measurements in units that are NOT inches or centimetres but some arbitrary measurement of their own: a ‘stride’… which happens to be exactly 1.25cm long. Those measurement sticks are thick cardboard. What if they get soaked in an accident or you accidentally left them at home???

Facepalm. (OK, your tolerance for this kind of nonsense might differ from mine, but it is something to be aware of.)

Anyways, to recap.

What I liked :

• Excellent components bar that pathetic paper map. That thermoplastic formulation that CB now uses seems to be sturdier than the more brittle first generation thermoplastic used in Warlord Game's Judge Dredd miniatures game.
• Interesting gameplay focused on dice symbol manipulation, if that's your thing.
• Narrative intro campaign to learn to play and ease your learning of the game. That's always a plus in my book.

What felt meh :

• maybe limited number of minis for the price. The starter gives you about 14 minis. For around the same-ish price Necromunda Hive Secundus gives you 28 excellent hard plastic minis, same cheapo paper mats (just larger) and a pathetic amount of plastic scenery/terrain. GW is rightly criticised for its prices, but I feel CB’s Warcrow should be included in this company as well.
• So. Many. Dice!!! 3 dice in 6 different colours! Weak, Normal, Strong. Both for attack and Defence. Again, those who’ve played Aristeia! Or Corvus Belli’s dungeon crawl board game (Defiance) set in their Infinity milieu will know what I’m talking about. At least here the symbols have been streamlined and there are no more attack successes on defence dice and vice versa.
• It’s a narrative campaign. The objectives didn’t fit the narrative enough. Just holding spots on the map for VPs is so meh nowadays. Make it something like the objectives are resonant crystals and you harvest one crystal shard per turn you control it. At the end of the game, convert those crystal shards to pay for advanced tactics cards you can use in upcoming games. Something like that, rather than hold 3 random spots  on the map to gain VPs. To be fair, that blue objective token I featured was an arcane one, giving you arcane/magic points to use in future scenarios of the campaign. But the other 2 were just point salad spots on the map. Now, I did see in an interview that CB did say that they will come out with more campaign books and the method of designing your own bespoke scenarios seems to be pretty easy so it’s probably do-able to insert more thematic mission objectives into future gameplay. The way CB plans to handle future Warcrow expansions smacks a lot like how GW is handling the Necromunda releases, though. So watch this space for future news.

What I didn’t like:

• the bespoke, non-standard measurements. There is NOTHING to be gained from it!
• Orc Hunter unit didn’t feel thematic enough although I’m sure upcoming releases might remedy that. But this is your intro starter set for a new game system and you need to put your best foot forward.
• 35mm scale minis. Gorgeous as the minis are, especially the faction contained in the upcoming Warcrow Adventures board game dungeon crawler, they can’t be repurposed for anything else to fit with your standard 28/32mm minis. The monsters maybe. Should’ve taken that photo of a standard SIF mini to show the difference. 
• Exclusive pre-order mini. Corvus Belli being Corvus Belli, they always do this. So the werewolf is exclusive and will never be available again. CB might make another version of this available for general sale (or they might not), but this particular sculpt will never be available again. Completists take note.

TL; DR: if you like games with tricksies to manipulate results of dice rolls combined with tactical movement and positioning, you can give it a try. If you’re not keen on the randomness of dice AND you might not have enough ways to mitigate the dice rolls… you’re going to feel frustrated. Even though I won, I wasn’t taken with the game. My conclusion was "unnecessarily complicated". But that's just me. YMMV.

However, the rules are a free download from Corvus Belli so you can go and check it out for yourself.

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NEXT UP: my initial impressions and gameplay of Necromunda Hive Secundus.