Competitive viability and longevity of Warhammer Underworlds

[CodFather]

I posted this on reddit, but didn't get to much discussion, although the 2 main response I received were very informative.

I've played miniature games for quite some time and the real driving factor for me is tournaments and competitive play. For the last 5 years I've played a lot of competitive warmachine and more recently, Guildball. Both these games have a very tight ruleset and are well supported but their designers in terms tournament support, as well as regular errata's to ensure balance in the game at higher levels of competition.

I've long since avoided GW games due to their reputation of a 'models first, game second' mentality, in that although they make beautiful models, a balanced (non-casual) game has never been their fortay. Now I know that for 40k the ITC has supposedly created pretty good organized play, however this is still no ideal for me personally since as I understand it, the ITC is a seperate entity from GW, and therefore what they do will always be in reaction to GW releases, not working in cooperation to build a tight balanced game.

Enter Shadespire. For me this has a few things potentially going for it. One is that its billed as a competetive game, and one that is built from the ground up. Although I am a bit skeptical since this is still a GW product and they are not known for their balance.

Another big benefit is actually being a GW product, This means that due to the innate popularity and proliferation of the GW IP, the number of players will potentially be much more than other games and it should be easy to find opponents. This is a slight worry of mine about Guild Ball. Guild Ball is an amazing game, tight and balanced ruleset, low model count, deep and varied game play and very well built and supported competitive-wise. However, it's not popular enough locally. Even "strong" guildball metas in North America don't tend to have more than a dozen regular and dependable players, and locally to me (Victoria, BC, Canada), we're lucky to have 6 dependable players. Shadespire shouldn't have this problem, it's only been out for a month, and there are tons of local players (hopefully this remains the case, I do understand the "new shiny" might wear off). As well, it seems GW has been pushing to make sure this game is at a bunch of Cons this year, which is awesome, since my favorite thing to do is travel and compete at conventions.

Another advantage is the small model count. I've learned that I am terrible with sticking with a single faction, and I really like to hop around and Shadespire is great for that, with the whole game costing under $200, and cheap expansions to come, its easy to hop from one faction to another. This I wasn't able to do easily in Warmachine.

So it seems like Shadespire has a lot going for it. My questions are as follows:

1. Do you think the game has the depth and variability to be a lasting tournament game? How much of the game is due to player skill (both in game and deck construction) compared to just dumb luck (the dice do seem quite swingy in this game due to only have 12 activations in a turn and limiting mitigating factors).

2. Whats the life span of this game? There's supposed to be like 6 warbands out by the end of the year, can GW continue to release expansions for it, and still keep a handle on balance between warbands? Or will it quickly become to bloated?

3. Will GW continue to support the game? Not being to familiar with GW, is it likely they continue to release errata's, FAQ's and re-balances to ensure this game remains tight and balanced? Do you think this has the potential and likelihood to be a game that lasts 5+ in the competitive con scene that continues to get support from GW?

Anyways, that's my ramblings. I'm just looking for a competitive game that scratches my miniature itch that is worth investing my time into and that wont fizzle out in a year.

[Killax]

1. Yes I do think so, but only if Games Workshop sets up good and clear ideas for their organized play intentions. The reason why MtG became so big has a lot to do with the FNM support, judges support and the whole community input. The first TO rulesset that was leaked looks good but isn't extremely clear on all fronts and intentions yet. In regards to skill/luck I put it on 70/30. Dice rolls are important but there are so many ways to affect pieces that tactics play the larger part. You currently do not have auto-one hit kills too much yet.
2. I think it will be one to two years for each setting. Like MtG's standard I think this is in the best interest of GW too. I don't think bloat will ever be an issue. Being innovative is the only requirement. Due to boards, dice, tokens, cards and miniatures there are tons of medium to tinker with for a game. 
3. I do believe so, but I also believe it will not be as much supported as AoS or 40K but it also doesn't have to be. Shadespire is different in that it actually is a board and cardgame as opposed to a miniatures wargame. It will stick around as long as they have the sales and ideas. It has drastical advantages over Warhammer Quest, Blood Bowl or even the recently released Necromunda. It's fantastic for players who want an arena combat skirmish game. 

What's much more important as worrying about what happens to the game in comming years I can confirm to you that regardless of the organized play outcome it's a fantastic boardgame that all strokes of players will like because:
A. It doesn't thake long.
B. Painting models isn't strictly required.
C. The game is designed with balance and deck customisation as it's selling point, not the newest armies.
D. It's designed in a way where 3 vs 3 or 4 vs 4 games flawlessly integrate into this game. It's by far a much better multiplayer experience as AoS, 40K etc.

Test and try it mate, if you like it, what's holding you back? Here's the cost picture for me in what you need/want:
- Core set €50
- Expansion 1 and 2 €45
- Expansion 3 and 4 €45
- Expansion 5 and 6 €45
- Sleeves €15-ish
The total cost of the game would eventually boil down to €200, for that you have 8 playable Warbands, 470+ cards, all dice you need and considering that every Warband has it's unique ways in playing likely over a hunderd options to play this game.

For me it's low cost enough and is just very easy to get but very hard to master. While it might sound silly the game itself is just briliant. It's fast paced, easy to learn, cheap and low hobby time intensive. 

[CodFather]

Before I start, are you the same Killax that used to be around the Privateer press boards?

 

Thanks for the quick reply.   I agree there is lots to love about this game.  I'm aware of its low cost and thats certainly a selling factor.  I know that its good for multiple people and its just a solid board game. But honestly for me, thats not what I'm looking for in a game.  There are tons of great board games to play casually with friends.  I want a tournament minatures game. Something with a tight ruleset, balance between factions and a lot of company support.   I really dislike games that come down to Rules as written vs rules as intended.   It doesn't matter if the company intended it a different way, a tournament rule set needs to be tight, and taken literally as written.  If the company made a mistake, and didn't mean for it to work that way, they need to errata it, but until then, it works as written.  (sorry for the rant, personal pet peeve)

 

 Personally the biggest factor for me is its popularity.  It should be far easier to find a game  locally than it is with Guildball.  Although I've only played ~10 shadespire games, for me Guildball is a superior game for what I'm looking for, and that is a tight and balanced tournament game, something I don't believe gamesworkshop has every been able to pull off.  It has a tight ruleset, relative internal and external guild balance, and extremely good support through Steamforged, with regular errata's, rule clarifications and community involvement.   And that's all great, particularly when I go to a con, because then there's tons of like minded opponents who love the game and who love tournament play.  But thats not the case locally.  Locally theres 4-6 of us who play Guildball semi regularly and even then its sometimes hard to get a solid game night without having to play the same few people over and over again.

So in short, the biggest factor thats causing me to think about leaving a game I really enjoy, is the popularity of shadespire.  With GW being probably the biggest and most popular miniature company out there, its sometimes hard to get GW fans to try other companys game systems, but with this game being a GW product, there are way more people playing it currently, despite it being so new.  MtG has the same appeal, being so popular, but I really just don't enjoy the game. 

So that outta the way, I own the core product and have borrowed cards from other expansions to make better decks.  What is keeping me on the fence is trying to decide if I want to invest my gaming time into it seriously.  It's what I do for fun, I find a competitive game to focus on, and I invest almost all my gaming time into it, i'm not good at maintaining a split focus.  If I'm going to do that however, I want the game im investing time into to be a lasting one.  My biggest worries revolve around GW as a company.  They have in the past released sub games (not 40k or fantasy) that after their initial hype/marketing have lost any sustained company support.  The other concern is that GW generally is a great model company, but not a great game company.  The rules they've written in the past have been good for a beer and preztls game, but not for a tight competitive game.  Their rules tend to be imbalanced, and sloppy enough that they can be ambiguous.

I want this game to do well, but I don't know if I have faith that GW will take the steps it should.  Even now some of the cards are ambiguous in how they work, or enough so that they are a bit confusing.  And its a new game, of course its going to have oversights the makers missed, thats fine, thats par for the course.  But GW needs to errata these cares, fix the ambiguities and they best way to do that is probably either to re-release the cards as they make errata's, or put the changed cards online for free printing.  Thats probably the easiest and most effective method.   And as the game progresses, some cards or even model rules might need to be re-vamped if they are over/under performing. But I'm confident GW will do something like that.  GW has never liked the idea of releases rules/content free online, nor do I believe they have a good track record of errataing under/over performing models, or ambiguous rules.  This is the type of support I believe a competitive and lasting tournament game needs to thrive, and I'm not sure if GW's business practises will allow that (although I have been told and have observed that GW has been getting better in the last 6 months).

 

Anyways, more of my incoherent ramblings

[CanHammer-darren]

To be honest. You got time to just add this game. 

 

I work 60+ hours a week. I have a family with young children.  And I run a YouTube channel.  I plan and host events and tournaments. Yet I still find plenty of time for multiple games of shadespire since release.  It literally is a game you can add on to your pile of hobbies

[CodFather]

I realize I could, yes.  But I have somewhat of an obsessive personality, I spend a lot of my time thinking about the game (which ever it may be) even while not playing, listening to podcasts, watching match reports etc... I have have trouble split focusing, as in I don't enjoy playing a game if it doesn't have my full attention, this last week I haven't been able to enjoy guildball because shadespires been on my mind too much.  That is a personal flaw of mine, but true none the less.
 

Also, a more practical reason, is that the 2 days of week shadespire is played at my LGS, is also the 2 days a week that we do guildball, so its hard to do both.

[someone2040]

Here's my thoughts.

Shadespire kinda has to be competitively viable, that's basically it's selling point. Unlike all other Games Workshop products, perhaps apart from the board games, Shadespire has no force customization. You don't get to choose the models you place into your warband at this time, you are stuck with Severin Steelheart and his 2 followers, or Garrek and his 4 other Reavers. This means there is a lot less creatively you can do from that perspective (Can't choose your own leaders, can't choose what other types of models to include, can't choose equipment).

The Customization you get from Shadespire is through the decks, and this in general is more for tweaking your decks to serve a certain purpose which is usually to be more competitive. 

So... if it's not competitively viable, it's kinda gonna fall flat on it's face. Because if it's not balanced to a decent extent, then unless you're taking one of those 'power races', there's just not much reason otherwise to play. I mean, let's say all the doom mongering about Garrek's Reavers is true, and it turns out that at a warband level (i.e the stats they have on their cards), they're just rubbish. Well, if you only want to play Garrek's Reavers, you're basically out of luck because you can't tune your warband further as that level of customization isn't available.

 

As for the longevity. I think that as long as it turns out to be successful, Shadespire will have a pretty long lifespan. I think it's pretty obvious that they at least have the first 8 warbands ready to go and slotted into their release cycle. They probably even have a decent idea of what season 2 will look like, although it may be in development. That being said, I don't know how large of a market it'll really hit. In my area, it seems to be only GW that stocks it and pushes it.

I walked into a LGS to pick up some card sleeves and they basically had heard of Shadespire, and said they'd had a few people mention it, and might look into running local events if it picks up. This store is primarily a board and card games shop, but has a GW stand and has a Hordes/Warmachine stand (Although that's currently all on a 40% discount, so unsure if it's something they're continuing to stock). Overall I was a little surprised that they didn't have any of the Shadespire stuff on the stands, I would've thought that GW would be pretty heavily trying to push Shadespire in these Card Game shops as well.

 

Overall, I think as long as Shadespire is successful, it'll get ongoing support from GW. 

[Killax]

@CodFather yep, but basically left the whole PP forums for a couple of years now. Really can't get into the community that was thriving it at that moment. Hope things are different now. With this I mean that I'm still suprised how much WarmaHordes focusses on a few individuals who are champions of a game with a relatively small fanbase.
Back to Shadespire, it's not out a month yet so I completely agree with you that Guildball currently has a larger following. However I also will say that I feel the games are very different and the precision game found in Guildball isn't even designed into Shadespire. I think there are some more arena combat skirmish games and those are likely easier to compair with Shadespire altogether. I havn't played any of those so can't comment on other games in that aspect.

I think your sceptism isn't an unwise thought at the moment. The prime reason for it is that frankly none of it's current fans knows what Games Workshop has planned for it and because it's also the first time ever that Games Workshop attempts something like it I would just say have the patientence to see it grow.
Shadespire, like any new Games Workshop product, will be judged on it's sales. While I think there are some briliant minds behind this game, selling a game is not only dependant on how good or competitive it is. What needs to happen simply is that Shadespire is picked up enough and reconized as balanced.
Because we only have 3 sets to work with now I can't really say if it's balanced well, fantastic or not at all. In order to judge that we really need to have all sets. It's very likely that Warband X will counter Y in combat and Z in objectives but we have 8 Warbands and we don't know what half of them do at this moment. 

@someone2040 yeah the doommongering from Bloodreavers most certainly also comes from me. However I still continue to play and comment on them  aswell. As above, it's quite possible that Stormcast are generally a bad match up for them and because they come with them in the Core Set it's quite possible that the current view on them is based on that. -   - With the pre-made deck the balance beteen Bloodreavers and Stormcast seem okay, both have several cards that don't specifically counter each other.
- Without the pre-made decks the Stormcast in my eyes are too difficult to kill for Bloodreavers and when 3 are dead (more likely all Bloodreavers) it's not uncommon to see all Stormcast inspired aswell, at that point Garrek and either Karsus or Saek can't deal with the Warband anymore.

Time will see how it all unfolds, having fun now is the most important thing.
 

[CanHammer-darren]

I think Shadespire is a safe bet.  Unlike a lot of their other boardgames they have released (most of which were just model-selling vehicles), this game has its own website!  Now that's not firm indication that they are invested in it, but more so than their other non-40k and non-AOS releases.    Bloodbowl is the other game that comes to mind with its own website, and that's doing pretty well. I think Shadespire in a way has already outstripped bloodbowl.  They have already had GW sponsored tournaments for Shadespire so that bodes well. Also, they are releasing their competitive tournament guide/ruleset whatever in January, so that's definitely a good indication.

And if 40k is any indication, this is a new GW that listens to its players, they for the most part have been extremely responsive to the competitive 40k meta in making tweaks and changes and FAQs, so that only bodes well for Shadespire if they are as invested in it as it seems they are.  I think actually that Shadespire will end up being bigger than Necromunda, but time will tell.

[Sleboda]

15 hours ago, CodFather said:

It doesn't matter if the company intended it a different way, a tournament rule set needs to be tight, and taken literally as written.  If the company made a mistake, and didn't mean for it to work that way, they need to errata it, but until then, it works as written. 

Preach!

[mjkotovsky]

I think Shadespire is competitively viable but needs several things to really explode onto the scene. First we need an easy way to find players/events. Right now in Austin TX there are roughly 5 stores that support Shadespire, two of which are GW stores but you wouldn't know that unless you show up at the store to ask around. The stores themselves aren't advertising nights to come out and play/events online making is difficult to co-ordinate a player base and create an active community. So if a central repository of information existed it would make that more feasible. It would move the onus of promoting events to local community members,  allowing people unfamiliar with the store/area to easily find a night to find an opponent or travel to a nearby tournament.

Additionally information regarding the game is spread across several website forums, if you create a consolidated place for people to produce content promoting the game it creates an environment that's conducive to pushing the game forward and maintaining a balanced competitive environment. Shout out to all the Warmachine/Hordes players I used to go by mattieK and ran website endgamegaming.net to support the hobby.

[stato]

1 hour ago, mjkotovsky said:

I think Shadespire is competitively viable but needs several things to really explode onto the scene. First we need an easy way to find players/events. Right now in Austin TX there are roughly 5 stores that support Shadespire, two of which are GW stores but you wouldn't know that unless you show up at the store to ask around. The stores themselves aren't advertising nights to come out and play/events online making is difficult to co-ordinate a player base and create an active community. So if a central repository of information existed it would make that more feasible. It would move the onus of promoting events to local community members,  allowing people unfamiliar with the store/area to easily find a night to find an opponent or travel to a nearby tournament.

Additionally information regarding the game is spread across several website forums, if you create a consolidated place for people to produce content promoting the game it creates an environment that's conducive to pushing the game forward and maintaining a balanced competitive environment. Shout out to all the Warmachine/Hordes players I used to go by mattieK and ran website endgamegaming.net to support the hobby.

The central community forum / hub idea was mentioned to the GW guys in a recent seminar.

I would suggest if you have strong feelings that it would be helpful to your area (it sounds like in the US GW stores alone are not enough to make a community with the distance/spread of players) then please email the community team or post on FB as they do hear it and the more people that ask the more they will likely help.

[Goblin-King]

I have a good gut feeling about the future of Shadespire. It feels like GW is really betting on this horse.

* Strong launch. Base game, promos, two expansions within 14 days.
* The branding of the game as a competetive board game.
* They seem pretty long term with this, with releases planned out well in advance.
* It's an easy game to add new content to.  They are not running out of stuff to do. Lots of races haven't even been touched yet.
* It's vastly easier to get into for normies than the rest of GW's games.

Of course for the competitive part, as in any game that fields options of characters and equipment, there's bound to be certain elements that are just plain better than others. Some cards are just straight out worse than others and in time as everything gets tried and tested, certain warbands will emerge to have an edge (or NO edge!).

[someone2040]

12 hours ago, Killax said:

@someone2040 yeah the doommongering from Bloodreavers most certainly also comes from me. 

The point wasn't to say whether the doommongering was right or wrong. Just to illustrate that within the scope of Shadespire, if one race turns out to be a complete level below the rest or on the flipside, one race turns out to be a lot better than the rest, it may prove Shadespires undoing for certain people.

Shadespire has none of the narrative stuff that drive people to collect a Games Workshop game. There's no choice in what models you can include, nor is there levelling up and experience you see in some of the smaller games. So it's harder to make a connection with your warband. All you can do is tweak how your warband plays on the board.

So the point was, if someone loves a warband, and it ends up being dirt, well... that's not going to be great for that player, and they may choose not to play or move onto another game (Games Workshop hoping AoS). Similarly, if say, Steelhearts Champions are just a clear level above the rest, people are also not going to enjoy the game as much because the competition is unbalanced.

[Killax]

1 hour ago, someone2040 said:

The point wasn't to say whether the doommongering was right or wrong. Just to illustrate that within the scope of Shadespire, if one race turns out to be a complete level below the rest or on the flipside, one race turns out to be a lot better than the rest, it may prove Shadespires undoing for certain people.

Shadespire has none of the narrative stuff that drive people to collect a Games Workshop game. There's no choice in what models you can include, nor is there levelling up and experience you see in some of the smaller games. So it's harder to make a connection with your warband. All you can do is tweak how your warband plays on the board.

So the point was, if someone loves a warband, and it ends up being dirt, well... that's not going to be great for that player, and they may choose not to play or move onto another game (Games Workshop hoping AoS). Similarly, if say, Steelhearts Champions are just a clear level above the rest, people are also not going to enjoy the game as much because the competition is unbalanced.

Well Im more convinced Warbands will have great, exciting and hard match ups. E.g. Bloodreavers love playing against Sepulchral Guard, Orruks are allright and Stormcast is straight up hard. The more is added the larger the mix becomes.

As Ive converted my Warband and make decks completely on own insight I believe there is enough connection you can make with your Warband  So far the balance works. I think Shadespire will be great for everybody. It's competitive enough for me. 

[Sleboda]

Matchups will matter. At the moment my only loss with Guard is against Khorne. My other games have been, frankly, pretty easy. 

[Dave Fraser]

2 weeks after launch there was a 90ish player event in the UK, yes it was tacked onto a larger GW convention style event so was always going to be popular but I think the game will be more popular than GB already (I play GB too, and the largest event was a 128 player but that pretty much maxed out the UK competitive community).

The game is designed in a great manner to be a competitive game, but GW don't understand competitive play.  You just need to see their approach to the competitive pack and this is clear.  The size of an event is tied to a traditional swiss chess, they're proposing 24 player event support, which would suggest 5 rounds for a winner but the pack is only 4 rounds and secondary scoring deciders.

I wasn't convinced in the run up to release but now I've played the game I'm wholly on board.  The business model is that of a CCG, so you are going to want to buy every single expansion if you plan on playing competitively but at a buy in of £30 every few months it's not horrendous and you are getting a bunch of cool models with that too.

 

[stato]

28 minutes ago, Dave Fraser said:

2 weeks after launch there was a 90ish player event in the UK, yes it was tacked onto a larger GW convention style event so was always going to be popular but I think the game will be more popular than GB already (I play GB too, and the largest event was a 128 player but that pretty much maxed out the UK competitive community).

The game is designed in a great manner to be a competitive game, but GW don't understand competitive play.  You just need to see their approach to the competitive pack and this is clear.  The size of an event is tied to a traditional swiss chess, they're proposing 24 player event support, which would suggest 5 rounds for a winner but the pack is only 4 rounds and secondary scoring deciders.

I wasn't convinced in the run up to release but now I've played the game I'm wholly on board.  The business model is that of a CCG, so you are going to want to buy every single expansion if you plan on playing competitively but at a buy in of £30 every few months it's not horrendous and you are getting a bunch of cool models with that too.

 

Bare in mind that the Blood and Glory event was quite short notice and ran on a Friday!  A lot of people playing where there already for the weekend but a plenty were not and had traveled there and back for the day, and it ended quite late!

[Killax]

As a sidenote, I also want to say that for AoS and 40K the ultimate goal never was to create competitive only games, which is why this is also not what it is. Just because there is a market for it doesn't mean it's the largest and every AoS or 40K player cares about tournament play to begin with.

Shadespire in that aspect is a different animal and it also only works out well because every card and Warband for this set is allready designed and finished. We're basically just waiting for their releases as we speak. Again with 40K and AoS it isn't the same. Not all Warscrolls/Datasheets for either game are finished as we speak and becasue of that we usually see a difference in balance. The other reason for difference in balance is the different designers that work on different armies.

So what it boils down to for me is that Shadespire itself will be a hit regardless of what GW will do. The real question again for me is what they intend to do with Organized Play. Because unlike 40K and AoS there is no gigantic following. Based on the Facebook numbers I'd say roughly about 5000 players are playing it worldwide now, so all we need to make that count is more of them really. 

I think a lot of the Shadespire Tournament results we have now, basically only Blood and Glory, also should be taken with a grain of salt. We know the winner made a mistake in the finals, knowing how many mistakes I made I think the whole Tournament was riddled with it. The ruleset of Shadespire is great but not predictable and considering how many unawnsered questions are still on the Warhammer Underworld page I eagerly await the newer FAQ. For the most part the intend is clear enough but the wording isn't as strict as some hoped for sure. Because we also don't have a detailed overview of how steps resolve in a phase (yet) we're often making some assumptions. With the 50-ish games Ive played now I still need to check the book for quite some info on situations I didn't expect.

[Mr. White]

My one hope for this game is that it doesn't end up in a 'Pay to Win' situation. I really enjoy my plays of Shadespire and look forward to getting more warbands in the future. That said, I don't want to buy _all_ the warbands and I don't want that to hurt us.

I suppose if it does, this will become a casual game only for us.

[KillagoreFaceslasha]

In my experience I think it's not as much as: you need to buy the warbands as it is: you'd like to buy the warbands to focus on a certain playstyle. Like objective holding/defensive decks require you to get core and skelletons but at the same time this pretty effective deck isn't broken nor unbeatable.

[Goblin-King]

I'd say it's pretty much pay to win at this point. You want all options? You buy all the boxes.
Man, I'd really wish GW would just sell us card packs.

I dislike having to pick my decks apart every time I want to switch warband.
A box with a single copy of all cards would find it's way to my basket several times.

The alternative is to print cards and use non-transparent sleeves.
I don't like that, and official tournaments probably won't either.
But try to get the target-audience (new players / "casuals") to buy everything just for a board game.

[Kugane]

I think the pricing is ok considering you get an extra warband to play with, plus there are no random boosters like in MTG, so 20E per expansion and getting lots of support for your favourite warband is just right for the cards alone IMO. I consider the warbands bonusses to buying the decks. They should improve card quality though! ^^ The game is random enough to make subpar cards work in your favour anyways.

[Sleboda]

Agree with a few of the last posts. 

I don't want pay to win,  and I don't think having cards only in certain boxes equates to that since, I think,  those cards are not "better" than others.  It's about how you want to compete,  not whether you can compete.

I think the second Khorne and Stormcast warbands will be telling.  If they are objectively better than the starters, then we can worry about what GW is trying to do.

My bigger concern is stuff like Skaven.  Will GW be able to maintain a balance while also making them sufficiently underhanded and unstable enough to not only be fun,  but also not have games with them be played by the rules as opposed to the players. 

Akso, timely card and book revisions are important.  Right now there are certain cards and certain rules situations I don't use or get into simply because they can lead to arguments over the meaning of what is written. 

[Goblin-King]

46 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

I don't want pay to win,  and I don't think having cards only in certain boxes equates to that since, I think,  those cards are not "better" than others.  It's about how you want to compete,  not whether you can compete.

It's not so much that each new expansion is better than the previous, but each of them has certain single cards that are just great for any warband.
You either acquire that expansion (just for those few great cards) or you loose an edge. That's my point of view at least

1 hour ago, Kugane said:

I think the pricing is ok considering you get an extra warband to play with, plus there are no random boosters like in MTG, so 20E per expansion and getting lots of support for your favourite warband is just right for the cards alone IMO.

No "booster packs" ransomness is ideed a very good thing. As for the warbands, they are great and everybody should want to own them. Problem being when you want to acquire more copies of just the cards. Personally I just don't have anything to use multiple copies of the same warband for.

Ebay seems to reflect this sentiment as well, as there are lots of models and fighter cards floating around, but not the power and objective cards.

[Kugane]

6 minutes ago, Goblin-King said:

It's not so much that each new expansion is better than the previous, but each of them has certain single cards that are just great for any warband.
You either acquire that expansion (just for those few great cards) or you loose an edge. That's my point of view at least

No "booster packs" ransomness is ideed a very good thing. As for the warbands, they are great and everybody should want to own them. Problem being when you want to acquire more copies of just the cards. Personally I just don't have anything to use multiple copies of the same warband for.

Ebay seems to reflect this sentiment as well, as there are lots of models and fighter cards floating around, but not the power and objective cards.

Yeah, you are right. I personally am using the skeletons as a base for conversions, so I am able to get nearly half of my investment back by selling the deck separately. But it does require some needless time investment to ship things and stuff. But ah well! Its a really fun game at least^^. At glance I feared it would be boring, I am glad it isnt!