Hola all. Massawyrm here.
Occasionally, someone will pop into my AICN TABLETOP column and ask why I don’t like videogames – as if liking board games and RPGs is mutually exclusive from enjoying a video game. On the contrary, I LOVE a good video game. And so when I was approached last week to check out and possibly introduce you folks to a little thing called BATTLEFORGE, I jumped at it. Especially once I heard the pitch.
Combining the best of both worlds, BATTLEFORGE is an RTS (Real Time Strategy game like Starcraft, the first 3 Warcrafts and Dawn of War) combined with the concept of a collectible card game. Rather than having a few armies with a specific units, you instead have access to whatever units you choose to slot into your 20 card “deck”. There are four elements – Fire, Frost, Shadow and Nature – each with their own unique playstyle, powers and feel. Normally I’m an undead and necromancy kind of guy, so I started with shadow, but soon found that Frost was my preferred element. But much like card games (as opposed to RTSs) you can mix and match, creating the army of your choice. You can play a one element army and have access to that element’s most powerful units (eventually) or you can play 2 or three elements and get solid core units and abilities from across the board.
As you would expect Nature has a lot of regenerative powers while fire can throw out a lot of hate. Frost takes a lot of punishment and shadow can feed upon itself and summon all sorts of frightening, hard to kill creatures. Normally RTSs aren’t my thing, but the concept of this game removes what I dislike about most RTSs – the slow power ramp up. Normally you have to run a series of missions that give you only access to certain units, and therein lies the challenge: solve this puzzle with these tools. BATTLEFORGE confronts you with a tough tactical situation and challenges you to find your own solution with the cards you have. The other advantage to this system is that it doesn’t take a full on expansion to expand the game – just new card sets every few months (confirmed as the plan) to add new options to each army, or perhaps add new armies entirely (wild speculation on my part.)
As you’d expect, the cards have a rarity and there’s a trading/auction system built into the game to help you collect. But you’ll find that the Rare and Ultra Rare cards, while powerful, are also late game cards. That’s not to say they aren’t fun and useful, but someone pouring money into the game won’t be armed with a fistful of cards that you can’t beat. They’re still going to be pulling out the same power level of shock troops in a round as you are. I have gotten my hands on a few Ultra Rares myself, and have definitely had a good time messing around with them. But they’ve in no way defined the deck. My choices of my core units have.
But while you collect “cards” you’re not playing a card game. You have access to your deck right away. What determines what level of spells you can cast and how frequently all depends on how much of the board/map you control. There’s no base or factory building per se, but you do take control of energy stones that you can quickly build into energy stations that fuel your spells. If you can keep them, you can cast tons of spells in a short amount of time.
BattleForge has campaign play modes that range from You vs The Computer to 12 player co-op throwdowns. It’s pretty insane. If there’s any problem with the game at all it is that the NORMAL difficulty setting is challenging as all hell. I can’t even imagine trying these battles on a higher setting. But the constant challenge has proven to be a lot of fun. But if you breeze through this, I respectfully bow to you and ask you NOT to challenge me to a duel. You’ll wipe my sorry ass.
I found BattleForge to be pretty addictive. One of my favorite aspect of any collectible game (or miniature wargame) is the strategy of army building, which is definitely present here. With the starting amount of game cash, you’ll have more than enough booster packs to ensure more than 20 cards in each army, so you have to make some difficult cuts sometimes. I assume that over time the amount of cards will grow to the point that multiple decks of the same element won’t look at all similar, save a few standard, optimized choices. I need some more time with it to see if I’ll be playing it in the long run – and I’ll have a full review of the final game closer to release - but I’m sure enjoying the hell out of it now.
So now you’ve heard my thoughts – why don’t you give it a shot? How do you do that? Well, first you’ll want to go to http:// www.battleforgecardhunt.com
and sign up for the beta. Once you do that, you’ll be given the option to “Add a card to your deck” and be prompted with a request for a key. That would be this little piece of awesomeness here:
FRA-JPV-8S9-AZE
WHILE CODES LAST, that will get you your first card and entry into the Beta. You’ll get an e-mail explaining the rest. It’s that simple. You can be playing within the hour (download speeds and patching permitting.)
So the contest? Well, the cards will have their own histories or “legends” and Electronic Arts would like the dreamers and brainiacs here at AICN to dream up a legend for this card: the Parasite Swarm. Prizes range from high end AMD graphics cards to T-shirts. They want no more than 150 words detailing the history/background/story of this card – I’ll bring the best of them to you to vote on next week and the top three will be selected and brought to the BattleForge story writer for final selection. Send your submissions to battleforgecontestentriesaicn@hotmail.com. Have them in by 11:59 CST Thursday, March 4th.
Alright gang. Enjoy, and feel free to share your experiences and usernames here in this talkback. Maybe some of you regulars can actually throw down with and against one another. The final game ships March 24th, 2009 – just after I wake up from a SXSW induced coma. That suits me just fine.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.
Massawyrm
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