Hey guys,

I'm a big Warhammer buff and TCG fan so I thought this game would be perfect to pick up. However, I'm a bit hesitant about one crucial factor and maybe you guys can alleviate some of my worries. My biggest pet peeve is that the LCG mechanic is designed to be fair and I don't need to buy extra stuff to obtain all the cards right? Wrong. After doing some research online, it seems that cards are spread out everywhere in the expansions and there's not the same amount of cards in each expansion!

For example, I play High Elves in the WHFB TT and I'm looking to make a High Elf deck. But then I look on deckbox and find that the cards I need are spread out through every expansion, some have 3 copies of a card, some have 2 and some only have 1. So when making a deck that I need 3 of, I need to buy 3 of the same expansion pack so I'll have 9 Empire cards I don't need just so I can get 3 of a High Elf card. Isn't that worse than buying singles of a mythic rare card for MTG (which I also play)? At least with the singles I'm getting what I need!

I'll expand just a little more: To make the deck I want, I need to actually buy every, single expansion that contains High Elves, and multiples of those expansions. So that pretty much means the entry fee to the game is gigantic.. costing almost the same cost as me buying 2-3x Battalion boxes from Games Workshop.

Are you guys seeing something I'm not? Please help..

You're not the only who wants to focus on a limited number of factions in Invasion, but that's not how the game is meant to be approached. Every expansion does contain cards for every faction, and yes, if you limit yourself, you'll have to buy a lot of cards that are useless to you. Either you find others who want to approach the game your way and you share the expansions between you (easier if you split among Order/Destruction instead of single factions, but which would still mean you won't be able to split the neutral cards evenly), or you get beyond the "I'm a High Elves player" way of thinking and just play with all the factions yourself. Which makes for a much richer game experience in my view.

As for the card numbers, the Core Set, Assault on Ulthuan and the first battlepack cycle did not contain three copies of every card. The other two deluxe expansions and all battlepacks since then do. So if you want three of every card, you would have to buy multiples of the early sets, but unless you feel a collector's need to possess every card, you really do not need to buy every single battlepack to build strong decks. And as more new battlepacks are published, the need to have old cards actually decreases, since there are more and often better alternatives.

The LCG mechanic is fair in the sense that you know exactly what you get when you buy an expansion. This is in contrast to CCGs like Magic where there are different card rarities and you never know what you get. It costs much, much less to acquire the cards you want in Invasion. It is still a game that continually gets expanded, so in the long run, it will be rather expensive, yes. It'll be worth it though, considering the enjoyment you can get out of it. Still, don't worry about buying every expansion yet. Get the Core Set and Ulthuan and see how you like the game mechanics. You can get plenty of playing time out of these two, and if it's your thing, pick up more cards.

You are 90% correct in your assessment of the game, because you indeed need to buy all packs and expansions if you are going for competitive and/or balanced play (which implies having all cards available for deck building and testing). The total fee for that is about 400-500 dollars (based on cost of my cards collection=).

The 10% mistake comes from the fact that if you stick to playing game with your friends for fun and/or with house rules (e.g., some people make restrictions on certain cards even though they are not on banned/restricted list officially), you can buy Core Set, 1-2 Expansions and enjoy the game for total of 100 or less dollars. But in this case I guarantee your almost probable fail in any serious WHI tournament.