Hmm, there's something not quite right about that subject line. Anyway, moving right along...

Warhammer: Invasion couples, I need your help!

I want to introduce my wife to W:I in the hopes that we can enjoy playing it together as the rainy winter months descend upon the Pacific Northwest. My dilemma? First impressions are everything and I probably have only one shot at selling this game. What are your recommendations for making a first play-through quick, exciting, and with as few rules complications as possible?

Here's some background info:

I haven't played W:I yet. I received the Core set and Assault on Ulthuan expansion for my birthday. I've read the rules, skimmed the forums (both here and at BGG), and sleeved my Dark Elf and High Elf cards into decks (taking the 5 DE and HE cards from the Core set and adding them to the 40-card AoU decks, respecitvely). I now have a pair of 45-card decks ready to play. Note, they don't contain any neutral cards as I'm unsure which ones I should use and I'm leery of just randomly adding them.

My wife isn't a "geek", and while she likes to play certain euro boardgames and is tolerant of my nerdier hobbies, I wouldn't exactly call her an enthusiastic gamer. She was big into Magic: The Gathering back when it first came out, and also played a lot of V:tES many years ago. She's an excellent deck builder, and a competitive player. That's not to say she doesn't mind losing, but she plays to win and likes games where there's a lot of action (i.e. she gets to smash, burn and generally annihiliate things). Having played Warhammer: Age of Reckoning for a few months, she has some knowledge of the Warhammer world. If forced to pick, her favorite race would be the Dark Elves.

So there it is. Are there any husband-wife W:I teams out there on this forum? Do you have any advice for me so I can knock this one out of the park? Let me know!

Sincerely,

Yipe

P.S. If I wanted to expand on the Dark and High Elves, which battle packs should I purchase?

I love the title of this thread ^^...

...then I saw it was about WH:I...

Well, can't help you about that^^.

LOL...really like the title too XD

Anyway, I haven't tried the game myself either BUT if I'm ever going to sell this game (or any other game for the matter) there's something I found out works great. A picture says more than a 1000 words, and a movie more than...how many pictures? Anyway, point being, how about prepare the game, line it up and then BEFORE you start explaining and playing, sit down and show her the toturial video made by FFG? It's on youtube at this link:

Oh, it's in parts I just found out. If you have iTunes you can make a search on "warhammer invasion" OR "fantasy flight studios" in order to get the one-full-length movie via potcast.

I found this to be really helpful in selling Lord of the Rings LCG to my wife

Hope you succeed.

LOL...really like the title too XD

Anyway, I haven't tried the game myself either BUT if I'm ever going to sell this game (or any other game for the matter) there's something I found out works great. A picture says more than a 1000 words, and a movie more than...how many pictures? Anyway, point being, how about prepare the game, line it up and then BEFORE you start explaining and playing, sit down and show her the toturial video made by FFG? It's on youtube at this link:

Oh, it's in parts I just found out. If you have iTunes you can make a search on "warhammer invasion" OR "fantasy flight studios" in order to get the one-full-length movie via potcast.

I found this to be really helpful in selling Lord of the Rings LCG to my wife

Hope you succeed.

Well, maybe surprise her with a candlelight dinner.....................oh wait, that's not what you were talking about. Sad to say, I could not get mine interested in the game at all. Card games are simply not her thing. I don't have much hope for Blood Bowl either, so there isn't much advice I can offer you.

@mr.thomasschmidt:

Thanks for the youtube link, that was extremely helpful. I watched the tutorials and they appear to be an excellent way to learn the game (at least they helped me understand the rules better). I may have my wife sit down and watch those before we play.

@Titan:

You may be onto something here. Perhaps I just need to establish the proper ambiance? Chocolates, candlelight, a glass of semi-decent Pinot Noir and... WARHAMMER! Now, to really capture the mood, I wonder what Dark Elf candles would look like?

My advice, give her the Dwarves or Orcs to play. Everyone enjoys a game more when they are winning and those 2 are the easiest/strongest in the base sets. The Dark Elf deck in the core set + Ulthuan is really weak, only the High Elves are (debatably) worse. Making a good DE deck is pretty hard until you have access to a ton of cards.

If you are generally a better player than her, another handicap I created was to just force myself to always develop the most expensive card in my hand every turn. With many decks, this makes it pretty **** hard.

Best of luck to you, I failed to frame W:I properly the first few times I played with my wife and she now completely refuses to play. In our case, it doesn't help that she is new to CCG-type games and I've played for 15 years.

Yipe said:

Dark Elf candles ? Just use a burning slave...

Also, I agree with Entropy42 : Dwarves and orcs are the strongest and the easiest to play with, having only a Core Set and Assault on Ulthuan. Empire and Chaos are not that simple at first.

When I play with new players, I try not to play decks like orc-rush or full-Verena, because I may crush him, and he might lose interest in this game.

Excellent suggestions. Based on what everyone wrote, I sleeved all of my decks in corresponding colors (to make them pretty) and will recommend having her start out as either the Orcs or Dwarves, while I take the High Elves. I picked up 2 battle packs from the Enemy series (The Silent Forge and the Fourth Waystone) so I can now make 50 card decks without using any neutrals. Are there any neutral cards that are considered vital, or can I safely ignore them for now? I've also set aside the Quest cards. Is that okay or should they be included?

Fortunately I kept all of my receipts for the whips, spikes and blow-up slave doll, so based on collective advice I'll be returning them, which is probably for the best - that stuff is expensive! However, I'm keeping the latex bikini and thigh-high stilletos just in case she wants to channel her inner Dark Elf somewhere down the line. I realize the Druchii are into some rough stuff, but there are worse ways to go down, right? Perhaps a few free development cards will entice her to wear them while we play? A man can hope.

If she opts for the Orcs I've got green body paint and, well, nothing else is needed. I'm hoping she doesn't choose the Dwarves...

I'll let you guys know how it works out.

P.S. I ordered the Legends expansion and should receive it by late next week.

Sounds like you have a plan. One thught though about sleeving in different colours. If you a sharing sets and do a random deal for the neutral support cards, you might want to rethink that. If you sleeve according to race, what sleeves to the neutrals get? If different, you would be able to tell from the sleeve if your opponent gets a neutral or a race card next.

u could always sleave the neutrals in the proper color b4 the game

loken14 said:

This is what I plan on doing should the need arise. I have extra sleeves of the various colors so we can add in other cards (neutrals or a perhaps a multi-faction deck after I'm comfortable with the rules). I wonder why FFG doesn't make Warhammer: Invasion art sleeves like they do for their aGoT and CoC LCGs? I would buy those in a heartbeat.

If you do a random deal for the neutral cards each game you will be doing a lot of re-sleeving. A W:I is quick and won't take much longer than 30-60 min. I am using Ultra Pro Matte sleeves and agree that colored backs would be nice, but the re-sleeving would be taking away too much of my playtime.

I'm not sure how i got my partner to play this game as she has no interest in Warhammer at all! But i guess i just asked her if she fancied it and she did (there's a joke in there somewhere). The trouble is she always plays dwarfs and i very rarely beat her lol.