Because of 3 year release cycle for Games Workshop games we can expect new edition somewhere in the middle of next year. It means that due to long time of product preparation (that hopefully involves a lot of testing), manufacturing and shipping its probably the last moment we can try to influence our beloved James Workshop with our hopes and wishes for new edition. Below are the 3 things I would love to see in next edition (that start with letter B, for no reason at all).
First B: Blessings
Blessings provides increased granularity across statblocks and one goblin can finally differ from another one without referring to elements outside of core game mechanics. This kind of profile change is the essence of narrative gameplay as rules(profiles) can now change according to story in an organic way (If you don’t know divine blessings – it’s the optional rule implemented in White Dwarf magazine. As with all other rules its available on Warcier HERE). For matched play blessings are even better as they provide additional avenues of skill expression and increase the number of options. Blessings in their current shape are fine, but I would love to see them modified a bit and implemented in both matched play and narrative play core rules. First of all – it would be great to have access for “blessings” that decrease stats, so let’s call the new system “traits” instead. Negative traits could be used as a consequence of being taken down in narrative campaigns, which lead us to another change – Instead of current separation of no blessings in narrative and max 1 blessing per fighter in matched play I would love to see max 1 blessing per fighter in matched play and unlimited number of blessings in narrative play (fighters should start with only single one, but change over time). Outside of using negative traits as consequence of failures positive traits could be used as a reword, for example – permanently sacrifice X renown to gain new positive trait of Y. Other interesting idea would be to also attach some runemarks to traits. This could be a great balancing mechanism, as for example “Minion” runemark (assuming it is the runemark required for resurrection ability) could be assigned to negative trait so a player would have to pick if they want their undead units to be weaker, but resurrectable, more expensive with positive traits or use normal profiles without traits. Other strong ability (like Shambling Horde) could be attached to different runemark that is also granted through trait which would open the possibility of 2 warbands made of the same models to play very differently due to different trait choices. Signature and powerful abilities like nets or “Engulfing flames” for obvious reasons should not be available simply through trait choice, so some runemarks must stay on fighters. One last suggestion for traits would be to change the cost scaling from the current system where we have 2 costs per blessing to have additional step, like for example different costs for fighters that cost 0-80 points, 85-160 points and 165+ points (and maybe remove certain traits from certain pools, like for example: no access to +1A in highest tier and no +4 Wounds in lowest one). If blessings/traits would join the core rules I would expect some tokens representing them to be added to Core Book and starter boxes.
Second B: Battleplans
I mentioned many times that I think that Core Book battleplans are awful (they are so bad it’s hard to find the worst one as both Cursed Relic and Reaper are often mentioned as the worst missions of their type with Hidden Vault not that far from that in my opinion). Over time Games Workshop produced more interesting missions (with few great ones, like beloved Loot and Pillage), but struggled to balance the battlepack from skewing heavily towards single archetype. Hopefully if James Workshop is browsing any bigger online Warcry community he should be able to come up with decent set of missions, as event organisers went away from GW missions towards community ones and there are a lot of great ideas to be stolen from community packs (last GW packs suggests that it has already started). There is also another idea I hope to see implemented within battleplans – better formatting. I would love the game setup, mission special rules and scoring separated somehow so if a player wants a quick refresher about certain aspect of the battleplan reading the whole mission isn’t necessary. One last thing I hope won’t make it to next edition are twists with catch-up mechanics.
Third B: Better implementation of minor/major victory
With current implementation games that are not close(as far as VP are concerned) provide both players with very bad decisions. Winning players must make sure they have enough points to win and then switch to defense or risk their major victory. On the other hand losing player has to decide whether they want to fight for victory and focus on mission objectives or skip the mission completely and go berserk to get minor victory. In my book 20-3 victory should never be a minor victory just as 12-11 victory is not a major one. I’m glad the community adapted the minor/major victory system based on victory margin introduced in mark of chaos battlepack and I would expect Games Workshop to follow, or at least to move away from the current system as “running away after doing just enough” shouldn’t be a winning strategy.
As always thanks for sticking to the end. In 2 weeks you can expect next article as we get closer to the biggest annual Polish tournament – Warkraj2024 and it’s a perfect opportunity for extending “how to overprepare to a tournament” series, especially because it features 6 missions from next iteration of yet unpublished battlepack from popular youtuber 😉
Overthinking Warcry 