Fan Made Battle Pack - Gathering Storm Cycle Set One - Marshalling Cry

By LordMalinari, in Warhammer: Invasion The Card Game

Here's a fan-made battle pack I've been putting together, I just wanted to see what everyone thought of the cards, and if I'd missed anything massively broken. It was just an exercise in card design I wanted to try out. The loose focus of this Cycle is on Siege cards, attachments and building up to Storm of Chaos.

Assume this is the first battle pack in a series of products consisting of two cycles and an expansion:

The Gathering Storm Cycle - Siege mechanics, attachments and Storm of Chaos hints. Subtle in first pack, get slowly less subtle.

The Breaking Storm Cycle - Introduces multi-faction cards with loyalty costs different to the faction icons they provide (Cult of Slaanesh cards, Flayerkin, Empire/High Elf Teclic etc.) and a "version" system allowing multiple copies of a Hero to be printed with the same name. Builds on Gathering storm . Contains minor characters from Storm of Chaos.

Storm of Chaos Expansion - The Storm Breaks! A new expansion box containing an all-new Epic Order and Destruction decks, including Valten the Exalted; Karl Franz; Morathi of Slaanesh, Archaon, Lord of the End Times. Decks in the box are designed to make them slower than the normal environment allowing the massive units to hit play, but are still balanced to have an impact on the metagame when added to your own decks.

Forgefather [Dwarf - Unit] 4DD

2 Power // 2 HP

Priest.

- You can play Attachment cards any time you could play an action.

"Who are you to stand before the fury of the forge; anything I can imagine, these fires can craft!"

Flame Cannon [Dwarf - Support] 2DD

Attachment. Weapon.

- Attach to a target [Dwarf] unit.

- Attached unit has +1 power and has "Action: Sacrifice this unit to deal damage to each attacking unit equal to this unit's power."

"Burn!"

Return to the Earth [Dwarf - Tactic] 2DDD

- Action: Turn target unit face-down. That card is now a development. Heal the zone that unit was in by an amount equal to that unit's remaining HP when it was turned face-down.

"From the earth all life came, to the earth shall it return."

Master Engineer [Empire - Unit] 3EEE

1 Power // 4 HP

Engineer.

- Your support cards can use their abilities as though they were in your Battlefield zone regardless of what zone they are actually in.

"Left a bit . . . No you fool, your other left!"

Helblaster Volley Gun [Empire - Support] 2EEE

Attachment. Weapon.

- Attach to a target [Empire] unit.

- Attached unit has counterstrike X, where X is equal to the number of developments in the same zone as that unit.

Soulfire [Empire - Tactic] 0EE

- Action: Target unit can't attack this turn. If that unit is a Daemon attach this card to it. It then counts as an Attachment with the text "Attached unit can't attack."

"Be bound daemon, with this fire I cow thee!"

Lion Chariot of Chrace [High Elf - Unit] 4HH

2 Power // 3 HP

Chariot.

- Whenever a unit in this zone is healed, Lion Chariot of Chrace gains counterstrike 1 this turn.

- Battlefield. Double this unit's counterstrike value.

"Hear the lion's roar! A triumphant war cry proclaiming the glory of Ulthuan!"

Luminescent Waystone [High Elf - Support] 2H

1 Power

Waystone.

- At the start of your turn, heal 1 damage from each unit in this zone and each unit in each opponent’s corresponding zone.

Curse of Arrow Attraction [High Elf - Tactic] 9HHHH

Epic Spell.

- Action: You choose how indirect damage dealt to your opponent is assigned this turn.

"This isn't rain . . ."

Keeper of Secrets [Chaos - Unit] 6CCCC

3 Power // 5 HP

Daemon.

- Whenever a unit defends while Keeper of Secrets is attacking, corrupt that unit.

“Look into its rapturous gaze and elate: the brief remainder of your life will be spent in the throes of unearthly ecstasy.”

Thousand Mouths of Archaon [Chaos - Support] 3CCCC

Siege.

- Battlefield. Whenever a unit becomes corrupted, each player takes indirect damage equal to that unit's remaining HP.

"Hear the Hellcannons speak the fiery proclamation of our champion, the Lord of the End Times!"

Utter Rapture [Chaos - Tactic] 0CCC

Spell.

- Play only during the battlefield phase before damage is assigned.

- Action: Remove target corrupted attacker or defender from this attack,

"I hold no thrall over my subjects; they willingly give their lives to me."

Stone Troll [Orc - Unit] 4OOO

2 Power // 4 HP

Troll.

- Whenever a zone burns while this unit is attacking, destroy target up to two target support cards in that zone.

“We wuz s’posed ta break that, yeah?”

Da Camp [Orc - Support] 2O

1 Power

- Whenever one of your opponents' zones burns, you may put a card named Da Camp from your hand into the same zone as this card.

“Da Camp is where yoo boyz go. Da Boss gets dat buildin’ over dere, no complainin’.” – Urgak Gobsimma, Orcish “Logistiks”

Pump Wagon [Orc - Support] 1OOOO

Siege

- Battlefield. Action: Sacrifice Pump Wagon to deal 2 indirect damage to target opponent. That damage must be assigned to units in that player’s battlefield or to that player’s battlefield zone.

"WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Executioners of Har Ganeth [Dark Elf - Unit] 3DDD

1 Power // 3 HP

Elite. Khainite.

- Action: Pay 2 resources to deal damage to target unit with greater printed HP than cost equal to the difference between its printed HP and cost. Whenever a unit dealt damage this way is put into a discard pile from play this turn, this unit gets +1 Power until the end of the turn.

"You lives are forfeit for the glory of the Witch King."

Pendant of Khaeleth [Dark Elf - Support] 0DDD

Attachment.

- Attach to target [Dark Elf] Hero.

- Whenever attached unit would be destroyed, you may sacrifice this attachment. If you do, remove all damage from that unit and that unit is not destroyed.

Ritual of Blood and Fire [Dark Elf - Tactic] 8DDDD

Epic Spell.

- Action: Defending units get -2 HP this turn.

Packmaster [Neutral – Unit] 3

1 Power 2 HP

Skaven.

- Destruction only.

- Whenever Packmaster attacks you may uncorrupt a corrupted unit you control in any zone. If you do, that unit joins this attack.

“Faster faster weak things, kill kill!”

Misfire! [Neutral - Tactic] 2

- Action: Destroy target Siege support card.

I don't think that was meant to happen . . .

Marvelous work!

I encourage creative expansion such as this.

I have a file of homebrew cards I've been working on myself (including wood elves).

For some specific criticisms:

a) Epic spells: Forget them for now, they seem way way OP. We have not even yet really seen the power level and effect of the epics, so I would not advise designing ahead of the core game.

b) New mechanics: There are quite a few novel mechanics in the set you propose. For now, I feel that fleshing out the edges of the design space and working to create cards which fulfil important roles in the current metagame are more valuable. (ie, anti-skaven and something to slow down the orc rush)

c) Flavor: excellent work here, you really have captured a certain recent era of the warhammer world. I'm still stuck hating on the discontinuity of the WH:I beastman card which has 3 power and 1 wound. I still remember when beastmen were about the only core units with 2 wounds in WHFB, but that's another era.

Keep up the good work!

WarpWeaver said:

For some specific criticisms:

a) Epic spells: Forget them for now, they seem way way OP. We have not even yet really seen the power level and effect of the epics, so I would not advise designing ahead of the core game.

b) New mechanics: There are quite a few novel mechanics in the set you propose. For now, I feel that fleshing out the edges of the design space and working to create cards which fulfil important roles in the current metagame are more valuable. (ie, anti-skaven and something to slow down the orc rush)

Thanks for the feedback, yeah I must've had a brain fart when I designed Ritual of Blood and Fire, if you play it after dropping a Troll Vomit it's basically game against Support-heavy decks (especially vs. Contested Stronghold). I'm also not happy with the Executioners so I might change them yet, and remove Elite from the Packmaster (it used to be a Stormvermin card, but was more evocative of a Packmaster).

My battle pack is assuming we get some form of answer to Orc Blitz etc. in the remainder of corruption cycle / next cycle / expansion, otherwise the metagame will quickly go downhill anyway if Orc Blitz remains a dominant build.

Changed: Ritual of Blood and Fire, Executioners of Har Ganeth, Packmaster, Misfire for flavour reasons: so Swords don't randomly explode.

In terms of new mechanics, I'm just exploring design space within the rules of the game. I made this cycle not include any new keyword/game mechanics on purpose, so I could explore what could be done with what we have at the moment, and I found a lot more design space than I initially thought! It's a surprisingly deep game for one with such a simple ruleset.

misquote

Cool. I was gonna make one of these too lengua.gif (Unfortunately, I know nothing about the universe...)

Curse of Arrow Attraction should be an Action payment triggered support card or cost less.

Thousand Mouths of Archaon is strong..makes skaven ridiculously even more powerful. Corrupt your skaven, deal indirect damage to all players. Wham bam!

I like it though, keep making stuff up!

The thing is, if Curse of Arrow Attraction cost less it would be very easy just to fire off a couple of points of indirect damage from a Repeater Bolt Thrower and assigned them to your opponent's capital in such a way as to burn two damaged zones. The cost is designedto make people who want to use this tactic be forced to generate horrendous amounts of resources / build around the card to make it a fair card.

I'm not happy with Thousand Mouths tbh, I'll have a think about modifications that could be made.

I also need to change Pendant of Khaeleth's wording to make to show what happens to damage on the Hero.