Warcry – Skirmish for Age of Sigmar

By Tom Gall

Games Workshop is releasing a new skirmish game called which is set in the Age of Sigmar universe. It is somewhat akin to which is skirmish for the Warhammer 40K universe however the game is vastly different so don’t assume it’s just another Kill Team, it’s not. As demo units are starting to hit your friendly local game store, let’s walk through what the game has to offer.

Game Setup

The first thing you’ll need to do is construct a war band. Your war band is a point costed force that is selected from one of the 15 different forces. Two are in the initial game box, the Iron Golems and Untamed Beasts. An average game is 1000 points and an individual figure ranges from ~200 points to just under a hundred depending on weapons, shields, health. speed and so on.

A stat card is provided for each figure that’s available to you. The stat cards are simple, easy to read and greatly enhance the game. You’ll never look up stats.

After you have your war band, you’ll draw a card from each of four decks.

Three of the decks are part of the battle plans that can be purchased separately. They establish deployment, victory conditions and something called twist which gives a special rule for the game.

The fourth deck is the terrain deck and determines how the terrain is laid out. This deck will vary depending on what set of terrain you’re playing with. The starter set comes with the ruined city. It will be available as a separate purchase at some future point in time. The Corpsewrack Mausoleum and Shattered Stormvault are two terrain expansions that are coming which will each have their own terrain deck. Retail on the expansion terrain is $90 (USD).

The game is played on their supplied mat, it’s a 22″ x 30″ in size, well printed and fairly solid cardboard.

When you put your terrain together, a word to the wise, think about things in terms of modulability. Pieces will be combined and recombined in many different ways due to the terrain deck. Magnets will make your life and future gameplay much happier. The terrain in the core box I found excellent, tho unpainted.

Game Turn

To start a turn, each side rolls 6 dice which will determine what special capabilities you’ll have this turn. There is a card per faction that indicates that faction-specific abilities are available. Additionally, in the core game, there are a set of generic abilities that everyone has access to. Abilities are further limited to certain figures. So your individual figures might have a special ability tuned just for them.

Abilities are unlocked by having dice that match. Some abilities require a combination of double, triple or quad matching dice to be spent. Additionally, each turn you gain magic die that you can set to any face you like and thus decide how you want your abilities to be available. When you activate a figure you decide to spend the double on an ability for that figure or not.

If you play , it’s very akin to the battle board concept except you spend that dice at the time you activate a figure.

Unmatched dice determine who goes first.  If you roll a 1,2,3,4,5 and 6, you’ll get the first activation, but no special abilities to use this turn unless you use a magic die.

It’s a You-go, I-go system, with each side activating one figure, giving it two actions. Move, attack, pass is just what you’d expect.

Combat

The core combat system is D6 based.  You check your strength value versus the toughness of your target. This decides if you need a 3-6, 4-6 or 5-6 to hit. A 6 is always a critical.  In the case of a hit you do base damage and for a critical there is a second value. Most characters have between 10-20 health. No saves. No complications. It’s very straight forward.

Tokens are provided to take damage and mark a figure as activated.

Winning

The open play mode is 3-turns in length. Often with deployment, you’ll have part of your force starting on board in turn one and then two other parts of your force coming on the board during turn two. Since the game board is approx 2′ x 3′, you’re into the thick of things immediately.

The deck that establishes victory conditions reminds me of . Sometimes it’s collect treasure, sometimes it’s take objectives. There is a great deal of variability and thus replay-ability in the game which I was impressed with.

Summary

We played two games with the starter set at my FLGS . It was fun. The core rules are fairly short and straight forward. After a couple of games you’ll find you can get a game on the order of maybe an hour. The pauses in play will be on account of you making tactical decisions, not looking up rules. Your initial investment in time will be assembling terrain and figures.

I think if you’re an Age of Sigmar player, Warcry will be very interesting to you. If you’re not someone in the Games Workshop universe it might be a harder sell.

Overall, I find it a good fantasy setting skirmish game. It reminds me at a design level of Saga, or Star Wars Legion. It’s not steeped in recognizable history so if that’s a core thing you look for, sorry this isn’t the game for you.

You won’t need to buy the starter set if you don’t want, the rulebook and necessary items are available separately. If you’re already an Age of Sigmar player, likely you might have figures that’ll just work so you can pick up what you need and you’ll be ready to go.

All in all, I rate it as a solid buy. For those that don’t know me, I ‘m the kind of guy that goes for deeply historical games. It takes a lot to get me off the fence into something like this. The game mechanics are simple but complex which yields a fun experience. The designers I think learned from the miscues from other skirmish game systems.

I can’t help but think if they’d gone with something other than D6s for combat if they couldn’t have had a bit richer experience as more warbands are developed. On the other hand the system of abilities and keeping the math straight forward  I think yields the right design balance.

This is a game I’ll be playing and hope others do too.