Lords of
War Review
One of
the problems with running the Expo is that very often you don’t get to see the
show, and you only find out who won the awards in the aftermath. Such was the case with Lords of War, which I
only really encountered in December at Dragonmeet.
Lords of
War won the Expo Best Strategic Card Game award in 2013, but I first played it
as a demonstration game at Dragonmeet and I have to say that while I wasn’t a
part of the awards system for that category, if I had been, I’d have voted for
it.
At the
basic level, it’s a simple game, you start with a battleboard (included in each
pack or you can buy the deluxe one), 7 spaces wide, 6 deep, and takes turns to
place a card and then either draw a card from your deck or take one up from the
board that you didn’t place down this turn.
Simple so
far…
All cards have arrows pointing in certain directions or the colouring of dots on a three by three grid to indicate where the cards ranged firing affects (in the case of some cards, both).
The only
constraint on the placement of a card is that it must engage one of the enemy
cards or be placed in a support position to one of your own cards.
When you
manage to line up enough damage against an enemy card, you remove the card as a
casualty and it goes in your victory pile.
Amass twenty of these (or four hero) cards and you win…
As a
concept goes, it’s very simple, it enables even non-gamers to get involved in
the game within minutes, and while the advised playing time on the side of the
decks is thirty to forty minutes, that’s when you’ve got advanced players
taking time to plan out moves and strategies in advance. When you’ve got two newbies having a go, it
takes far less time than that as every card laid presents a new target, and
rather than aiming at the heroes with the high defence rating, it becomes a
race to clean up the rank and file to get the win.
Initially
starting as the Orcs vs Dwarves battle set, it was soon complimented by the
Elves vs Lizardmen battle set, and following a successful kickstarter campaign,
the Templars vs Undead battle set. There
have also been separate decks that have been brought in to allow for the use of
weather and terrain in the game, and the creation of Foil cards with
significantly higher prowess than even the generals of the armies.
Unlike some
companies, who got a single win and then sat back on it, Black Box are
continually coming up with new ideas and ensuring that they keep adding to the
background of the game, adding in new characters and teasers for the new armies
that will be forthcoming. With the
creation of each new army, the range to play has increased and with the
inclusion of points costs each card, it’s possible to field composite armies
with troops chosen from many different sets and to make customised armies that best
suit your own fighting style.
The
production values on the game are excellent, with all the cards printed on good
stock and the boxes neatly designed to hold both decks and the board in an
easily storable package. The artwork is
consistently good, every image clearly conveys the nature and type of card,
there’s no way to mistake an archer for cavalry, and it’s this attention to
detail that make the game particularly fun to play.
If you’re
new to the game, certainly start with the Orcs vs Dwarves, as the newer sets
require significantly more planning to get them to work properly, such as the
Lizardmen, who don’t hit that hard, but hit in far more directions, and the
Templars, who hit hard in very limited arcs but have massive armour values to
back them up (as my undead opponent remarked when the Pavise hit the table
again…). With the inclusion of the
advanced rules, weather, and terrain, this game can be as simple or as involved
as you like, and from a game that can be played start to finish in ten minutes
flat, it’s possible to have games that last for hours without any loss of the
tension that makes the game good.
Looking
forwards to seeing what they’re going to do next…
