Warhammer: Invasion The Card Game

Warhammer Invasion is a thematic card game for 2 players. It is set in the Warhammer Fantasy universe and includes some of the most classic factions and cards! The goal is to set your opponents capitol on fire until two sections have caught ablaze.

To start each player selects a ‘faction’, takes their deck and capitol card. Shuffle your deck and draw 7 cards.

Lets take a look at the different types of cards that you will find in your deck.

Units: Units are the core of your army, depending on where they are placed in your ‘capitol’ they will either let you attack your opponent, produce additional resources and defending any zone they are in. The red hammers represent a unit’s power.

Support: These are weapons, armour, buildings, locations and more. Some are placed right into a area of your capitol and others are played as attachments to cards already in play.

Tactic: Cards that can be played to alter the outcome of an event. They are played directly from your hand after paying the appropriate cost, then you carry out the text on them and discard them after they have taken effect.

Quest: These are long term goals players can pursue to gain additional benefits. Quest cards are played into a player’s quest zone and after he can place a character directly onto the quest to complete it.
Lets take a look at how it plays.

Turn Breakdown:

Kingdom Phase: The active player returns all his unspent resources from his/her previous turn, then collects 1 resource for each power in his the ‘kingdom’ and gains 3 resources for the capitol.

Quest Phase: The active player gets to draw one card for each ‘power’ he/she has in their quest zone, quests have a power of 1 even without any units attached.

Capitol Phase: The active player is allowed to play quest, support and unit cards into one of his / her capitol zones.Cards costs are paid by cashing in the number of resources equal to the cost on the card. Each matching ‘race’ symbol on the card being played and your cards already in play will reduce its cost by 1. (cost can never be 0). The active player may also play a card face down as a development in any zone. Developments add 1 hitpoint to that ‘zone’ of the capitol in addition many cards increase in power as the zone they are in gains developments.

Questing: Once a quest card is played its owner may send a unit on the quest, to do so simply attach the unit to the quest like you would a support card to a unit. While on the quest that unit is considered to be ‘questing’ it may still defend the zone if attacked and contributes power to the zone it is in but by ‘questing’ the unit allows resources to build on the quest. Once the quest has reached its desired number of resources it is completed and its owner may execute the quest’s effects. Note: The resources added to a quest do not come from the player’s pool gained during the kingdom phase but come from the ‘center of the table’ the neutral pool that both players grab from.

Battlefield Phase: This phase is broken down into 5 steps. In between each step both players have the opportunity to ‘take action’ this allows them to play tactic cards from their hand or use abilities on cards already in play.
1. The active player declares which capitol zone he/she is going to attack.
2. The active player declares who will be attacking that zone. Note: Only units in the ‘battlefield’ zone may attack an opponent.
3. The defender declares which of his/her units IN THE ATTACKED ZONE are going to defend.
4. Damage is assigned, both players total their ‘power icons’. The attacker must do enough damage to destroy ALL ‘defending units’ before he/she can damage the zone they attacked. Both player’s place damage tokens near the cards they wish to place them on but do not put them on the cards yet. After the attacker has assigned damage the defender gets to do the same. Note: Sometimes it is smart to assign more damage than needed to kill a unit in anticipation that its controller will play a card or use an effect.
5. Both players assign damage, any units with wounds equal or greater to their hit points are discarded. If the capitol now has wounds equal or greater than its hit points place a burning token on it. When 2 sections of an opponent’s capitol are burning you win the game. Note: A burning zone functions the exact same as it did before it was set on fire the only difference is you are half way to winning/losing the game.

After damage has been applied play passes to the next player and he/she becomes the ‘active player’. Players alternate who is the ‘active player’ until someone has set two capitol zones on fire.
Components: Although there are no cool Cthulhu statues the art work is simply unreal. The ‘strongholds’ are pretty neat they are a perfect size for the game and have good artwork aswell. The tokens in the game are good too except I feel the blaze tokens should have been a rectangle piece instead of a slightly larger but still small fire token, either that or make them the same size as the wound tokens and use multiple tokens to track each section’s damage.

Warhammer Invasion brings back many fond memories of playing the tabletop Warhammer Fantasy, the fact that Dwarfs are included as a faction in the base game is only a added bonus for me. All that aside I still feel that Warhammer Invasion is a fantastic game that not only captures its theme in a awesome way, but mechanically works and flows very smoothly. Lets talk about who’s going to like this one.

Family Gamers: Although combat and violence are not the most family oriented theme, Warhammer is enjoyed by kids as well as adults. I would recommend this to ‘family gamers’ with some experience under their belt, having played other card games is definitely a plus and will make it easier. I think where this game fits fantastically is if you have a family member who is really into Warhammer, if they take to the game you are going to save a lot of money and hopefully its a good bridge to get someone that enjoys tabletop gaming to expand and try more boardgames.

Casual Gamers: Warhammer Invasion is a two player game, because of this it generally isn’t a great casual game however they do such a great job at capturing the fantasy theme that this game can be appealing to lots of people. Even if a casual gamer isn’t into the Warhammer world as long as they appreciate a good fantasy theme this game is great, orcs, dwarfs, humans and mutated humans and the last one standing is the winner? I think so.

Gamer Gamers: More serious gamers might first overlook Warhammer Invasion because its a card game and even the word “Warhammer” might be a turnoff. I’m telling you there is so much strategy to this game, sure there is the luck of drawing your ‘good’ cards, but you also need to know when to play ‘development cards’ combine that with having to burn down different sections of your opponents capitol and having to place units into different zones of your own capitol leaves you to make some heavy strategic decisions.