New Armies for Invasion

[fatolaf]

As predicted, here come the Vamps and the Lizzies...

Savage warriors, the Lizardmen of the jungles of Lustria are vigilant in their fight to restore order to the world, but their enigmatic motivations make them uncertain and often dangerous allies. Meanwhile, the Vampire Counts, from their gods-forsaken castles and fortresses, lust after the power of the mortal races. It is this willful ambition that gives them their power over the dead, and those armies of Order that refuse to surrender to the Vampire Counts in life may come to serve them as mindless slaves in death.

March of the Damned is the next deluxe expansion for Warhammer: Invasion The Card Game, and it will bring new strategic depth to your deck-building experience when it hits store shelves this fall.

With 165 cards (3 copies each of 55 cards) consisting of new deck-building options for players of all factions, March of the Damned brings, as neutral forces, the mysterious danger of the jungle-dwelling Lizardmen and the foul dark arts of the Vampire Counts to Warhammer: Invasion. March of the Damned also introduces two new keywords, "Savage" and "Necromancy," bringing a new level of strategy to your game.

James Hata sat down to share his insights into the development process for this exciting new expansion:

I'd like to take some time to talk with you today about two new keywords that I am excited to announce will be introduced into Warhammer: Invasion with the March of the Damned expansion – Necromancy and Savage. Today, I want to pull back the curtain a bit on the development process and show you a glimpse of the thought process behind each of these keywords.

Necromancy



When I first started working on this expansion, I knew I wanted the Undead units of the Vampire Counts to have some form of distinct, discard pile based ability that hadn't really existed in Warhammer: Invasion. At the time, I thought it was a cool idea to have the undead be this persistent threat that players had to worry about coming back throughout the game. Of course, in order to regulate it, this recursion would need to be limited in some way.

The original (and ultimately flawed) design for Necromancy did this in an unusual way. It was worded as follows: (You may play any action on this card as though it were in play, substituting any cost for the ability with 'put this card on the bottom of your deck.'). By putting the card on the bottom of the deck, the card wasn't able to be reused over and over again, and also it allowed for abilities that draw from the bottom of the deck to be associated as natural combo pieces for Necromancy.

Unfortunately, this iteration of the keyword didn't work. While the freedom of being able to place Necromancy on tactics as well as units with cool abilities was nice, this keyword ability was ultimately deemed to be too complicated and too powerful by playtesting (because you were essentially playing card abilities out of the discard pile for free) and was shot down.

Afterwards, I decided that it would be easier if the necromancy temporarily returned a unit to play. This way Necromancy would be very simple, effective, and could work in tandem with abilities that triggered off of the unit entering or leaving play. And so, the final iteration of Necromancy was born.

Savage



Savage is a keyword that was born out of many attempts to figure out a good way to capture the flavor of the Lizardmen, while also having it be a game mechanic that was relatively open ended and distinct in Warhammer: Invasion.

The first idea I came up with was a keyword called Ambush.

Ambush would allow the unit, if it was played as a development, to be turned faceup during the battlefield phase by paying resources. The ambush units would usually have a "When this unit ambushes" ability on the card as well. This would kind of represent the Lizardmen just coming out of nowhere in the jungles and preying on an unsuspecting opponent. Unfortunately, this ability didn't playtest well. There were several timing issues and space issues in the text box of the cards. The keyword ability usually required a whole other ability (the "when this unit ambushes" ability) to be paired up with it which took up the entire text box and made the unit useless outside of its ambush ability.

I went through several other iterations of this keyword, talked with a lot of people, and read through the background canon again before I came up with the current keyword called Savage.

The finalized Savage mechanic was largely inspired from a story in the latest Warhammer Fantasy Lizardmen book where a Dark Elf stabs a Lizardman through the chest with a lance. The Lizardman, refusing to die, draws the lance further into his own body in order to rip open his opponent's throat with his jaws. This idea of being willing to take damage in order to deal the opponent a mortal blow was appealing to me. I based my design of the keyword on this basic idea, and through some development it ended up as you see it today.

[Garzini]

yay, skellies!

[fatolaf]

The Wight King joins the fray with a lovely possible combo...

The March of the Damned rules state that Necromancy  "allows a unit to be played from the discard pile as though the unit was in its owner's hand. The unit enters play from the discard pile, and if it is still in play at the end of the turn, it is put on the bottom of its owner's deck."

This begs the question, what if the card isn't still in play at the end of the turn? What if you could ensure that a card with Necromancy will make its way back into your discard pile, from which it can be played all over again? You can, of course, by sacrificing it.

Wight Lords, one of the cards in March of the Damned, would make a great candidate for this "sacrifice and repeat" combo. Every time this formidable unit enters play, you can choose and destroy one of your opponent's units! As part of a Chaos deck, for example, you could play the Wight Lord (destroying a target unit), use him to attack, then play a card like Offering of Blood to sacrifice him. This would send him back to the discard pile, avoiding the usual necromancy penalty of burying him at the bottom of your deck.

[Steve H]

Ooooo... new armies might be the ideal time for me to get involved!

[fatolaf]

Ooooo... new armies might be the ideal time for me to get involved!

Something for us to do on our many tournie train journeys......That and drinking Gin whilst sat on the floor next to the stinky toilet! 

[Steve H]

Something for us to do on our many tournie train journeys......That and drinking Gin whilst sat on the floor next to the stinky toilet! 

Ahhhh... good times!

[Dave]

You forgot slamming your head off solid furniture too, seem to remember that also went down well!

[maelzch]

couple more lizardmen card previews, they look a bit good!

[fatolaf]

Nice even though they are both the same buddy...

[maelzch]

I meant to put this one as the second pic


gnarly!