Pixels and Grids

Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games
Designer: Eric M. Lang
Players: 2-4
Ages: 13+
Play Time: 1-2 hours
MSRP: $39.95

Grade: A-

Consider this a companion piece for an article about my hands on experience with Warhammer: Invasion at Gencon ‘09.  I recommend you read it for the gameplay break down.  However, I wil say that after a bunch of games with Logan and Dave, this game is every bit as good as I hoped it would be when walking away from Fantasy Flights booth.

As the finished product was what was being demoed at Gencon ‘09, none of the rules, cards, and settings have changed since my last article.  It’s still part of Fantasy Flights line of Living Card Games.  This means that the core game can be played by itself and then expanded with booster packs released monthly.  They will typically come with about 40 new cards per pack to add some variety to the core set and cost roughly $9.95.  The core set comes with 220 cards, 4 capital boards, and various tokens to represent damage, resources, and burning areas of your capital.

There are four preconstructed 40 card race decks.  The races are Chaos, Orks, Dwarves, and Empire.  Each deck has a different feel to them such as Orks overpowering with numbers and self sacrifice and Empire being extremely mobile with the ability to move units to different zones.  After playing and playing against each of the decks, I found that each of the decks were fairly balanced. 

The rulebook contained instructions for standard play, hints for deck building, and a draft variant.  For the review, we only played the standard version.  Warhammer: Invasion does a good job of keeping each game fresh by providing 24 neutral cards that can be placed in any deck.  Standard play recommends that you shuffle the neutral cards and deal out 10 randomly to each player.  It adds a little bit of depth and is a great way to ease into deck building. 

The draft variant, however, enhances your understanding of deckbuilding by making you combine the Order cards (Empire, Dwarf, and 5 High Elf cards) and Destruction cards (Orks, Chaos, and 5 Dark Elf cards) then put 10 random neutral cards in each.  There are also three Loyalty Banner cards for each deck along with special Draft Format cards that will alter the draft as it progresses.  Each player would then pull 15 cards (a draft pack) from their respective decks, look through them, pick two cards to put in their deck, and then pass their packs to their opponent.  You then counterdraft one card out of your opponent’s deck, thereby denying them use of that card for the game.  You do this with 5 draft packs and then play as normal.

I can’t recommend this game enough if you’re looking to get into a TCG that won’t break the bank and is fairly simple to learn.  The fact that it’s a living card game only adds to it’s value as you will always have the option to expand the game with the monthly boosters.  If you’re just looking for a card game and don’t want to spend the money to expand it however, I’m not sure this will be your bag as I can see the core set getting stale after a little while.  It’s that combined with the fact that the rulebook is a little unclear and vague at times that is keeping this game from being absolutely perfect.