Warlord: Saga of the Storm Review: These Warlords are Showing Their Age
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Transcript
Hey everybody, I'm Tom Vassel.
I'm Z Garcia.
Today we're taking a look at Warlord Saga of the Storm. Warlord was originally published by AEG and now Kingswood Games has it. Warlord is one of the OG games of uh I guess I said the word games twice there, but of the CCGs. I want to say it came out just a year or two after Magic, maybe a few years after that, but it was one of the more successful ones.
Yeah. And it was also one of the ones that deviated from the Magic the Gathering formula the most in those early years of trading card games in the '90s. And it did that by saying, "Hey, this is very similar to Dn D, right?
It used a D20 and you were attacking by using the straight up out of the Dungeons and Dragons where I roll a D20, add my attack, see if it beats your armor class AC, and I mean that's straight out of Dungeons and Dragons. So,
it was a game I got into years after it came out because they sold it for cheap at the Dead Ccg stands."
Yep. Same. Same. And it was a game that had a lot of starter decks.
Every Yeah. Every wave, every, you know, release had
boosters you could get. But yeah, there was a lot of buying just a box and you could just play out of that. Though they were not the best constructed things in the world. But that's
No, but I bought
that's the way that worked out in the 90s, you know.
I bought a lot of them. I played it. It was an easier decks to build.
Yeah.
Um to play and it was kind of an easy game to play. But it has been years since I've looked at it. I actually kept my old Warlord stuff. I It's one of the few collectible card games I've kept. So, they redid it and he told me, the guy was in charge of it, that it' be backwards compatible. Boy, is it ever. Um, so if you've never heard of it before, that's fine. I'm going to give you a very brief overview of how it works and we'll be back. The first thing I want to do is we want to talk about characters in this game. So, these are warlords. Each player will start with one, but there's also just normal characters that will be in a game. Now, when a character attacks another character, you use this attack at the top. You'll be rolling a 20sided die, adding that number to it, and then comparing that to their armor. So, if the graveyard librarian just swung at her, he's completely missing. Well, she if she swings back, we'll get plus six.
6 plus 3 is nine. She still didn't miss, but hey, she has two attacks. Her second attack is plus three. 20, which is always a hit by the way, and a one is always a miss. 23, she'll do a damage. This how many hit points people have. If you kill your opponent's warlord, you will win the game. So, you'll see this guy here has three attacks. The first at plus eight, six, and six. They also have down here in the bottom is your skill. Sometimes, rarely actually, the game will have you make a skill check. And then they have other special abilities. These orders on them. Think of that as an action. Now, when you play the game, you are going to be setting up a warlord to level two. That's what this number here. This number shows you what level they are and what type of character they are. So, you can see this character is going to be different than the one with a hand. And that's going to matter because there are different actions and cards that can only be used by people who have those levels. Um, but you're gonna set you're gonna have one, two, and three to start with, and your opponent will have the same thing. And you're going to be fighting each other.
Now, I want to talk about ranks. This is rank one, rank two, and rank three. And this matters because the game is going to be allowing you, you're going to be going back and forth, taking actions. And so, if I want to play, for example, this person into my army, they're level two. They start in rank two, which is fine, but you can never have more characters in a rank behind the one that's in front of it, which means this person would be forced to move up to the front rank, which means they can be attacked by the person in their side. And they'll also, you know, get tapped when they are forced to move up there. Sometimes you get stunned, which means it will take you two turns basically to unexhaust them. So, if you're going to want to get to the person in the back row, you're going to have to kill the people in the front row, which will mean someone here would be forced to move up and you keep doing that and eventually you can get to the person in the back row, especially since you're going to run out of characters on a deck. So, you're going to be taking turns when you attack with someone, you will exhaust them to usually. And sometimes they have different orders like this person has a range strike which means it's plus zero but they'll be able to go one row back and attack in that way. So there's a lot of different actions that players can take. They can move people forward or back a rank although that will spend them. Uh and no matter that ranking is there because there's lots of cards that you can play in this game. You can play other characters and put them out in the rank that it shows but only if that rank exists. So, if I have a level two, but I have nowhere to put them, level two is
not usually a problem because I can usually put them behind. But, for example, if I have three people in rank two and three people in rank one, I can't play this person. Well, I could, but then someone's forced to run up to rank one and be exhausted. And playing someone a bigger character, let's show some characters here that are in rank three or maybe even rank four will be trickier to do. But if you can get these people out, look at this guy, a plus eight attack that they have. or this one's a plus 13 and they can pick another character and basically throw them. You also have different item. You have actions that can be played depending on the different type of character that can play it. You have items that you can play on a character, which is their level plus their ranking. So, the farther back they are, the better item you can put on them. And then these items can do cool things.
Now, the the symbol the item has to match. There are some symbols that can go on anybody and that's just like a round circle, but these have to go on warriors, but this one gives an extra hit point and an extra defense. There's a war horse that you can spend a horse to move someone up, which doesn't spend the person that's on them, or you can even spend them to get just plus two attack or this. It gives you plus five to your attack and plus two to your defense. So, there's all sorts of different items that you can play. The items and different things that you play. You'll notice that there are some there's different cards. The red ones can go in pretty much any army. These are tied to a warlord. And so if you have a warlord that does not match these, you can still play people from out of from their class, but they're going to come into play stunned, which means it's going to be a couple rounds before they come back into play. So, you're going to go back and forth taking actions, playing cards, uh, moving cards, attacking with cards until both players pass, and then you start another round. and your whole goal is to take out your opponent's warlord. If you're wondering about the original game, here's a real quick comparison between two cards. This is the old card, and this is the new card. So, you can see they're pretty much identical, the same art. The new card has the faction symbol, much more clear and easy to see.
The stats here are mostly the same. I would not know, you know, I have not compared every single card, but I'm just showing you kind of the fact that it is a very, very minor change. So, when you buy a deck, you will get all the things you need for a starter deck. You can also, it's 50 cards, plus it gives you a D20, which is something that you need. Plus, you can buy booster packs and get more. And it's completely compatible with the old stuff.
So, a couple things here um about what's production and all that jazz. Yeah.
First of all, I want to talk about a very big problem I have with this to the point where I'm deducting a whole point from it.
Oh, interesting. Okay.
And that is that the rules aren't in these decks.
I know. Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. No,
but not only are the rules not in these decks,
there's not even a thing that says go here for the rules. Now, they do say check out our website, but good grief. I'm sorry. A little rules book would not kill them, especially with how fat these boxes are.
And that's the very first indication there that this is if you're not into Warlord Saga of the Storm already, this isn't for you.
Yeah,
that's indication number one out of like 15 indicators that if you're not into this already, this isn't for you. That's wild to me. The rulebook needs to be in there. this slavish uh devotion to it being backwards compatible with everything else to the point that it looks exactly like everything else that came out in the '9s. This if you just got into Lorana and Star Wars Unlimited, this isn't for you. And that's so weird because we're in we're in a new era. This is the second wave
of
collectible card games coming out right now. And here we got one where they're saying only if you played it before. And you could say otherwise, but that's straight up the case.
Sure.
There's
I would like to meet someone who just got into it now, right?
Who isn't in their 40s or 50s and played it back in the day.
Yeah.
I mean, for us, it was easy to get into because we were a, you know, we remembered, oh yeah, that's how this plays and it's really it's not a hard game to play.
It's not too bad. I mean, yes, it has all the CCG minutia that you're going to be dealing with with any game of this ilk, but no, it's not too bad. And there are very clever things here that were that were especially clever in the 90s certainly. Um, but they're still interesting. You know, some of the rules in this game are still interesting. It has a dollop of luck. It is very random, but there's some cleverness here that is not, you know, untap, upkeep, draw, first main phase, attack second. It's not Magic the Gathering. I love that.
Yeah. But man, this game would have killed and been way more interesting with an actual 2.0 of Warlord and and that even reflects in a lot of the things they have limited order and something order and this order and those all mean actions or what have you and they could have just a lot of this stuff would have been clarified using symbols for classes and then items. There's there's a lot of text and a lot of terms and again a lack of a rule book. I don't know what all this stuff means. Yeah,
I found that to be a a problem. And also the art just looks dated. It really does.
I do wonder if anybody who said, "I want to meet somebody who's gotten into this game now." Um, I can't imagine anybody who's getting into this game now after again maybe being now suddenly interested because of One Piece and Lorana or whatever and being interested in collectible card games who does not look at this game and and treat it like it's a little sarcastically they're into it. You know what I mean? Like
yeah,
it's it's retro. So I'm like into it because it's funny. who's really into it bec and looks through the cards and goes, "Yeah, look at this artwork. It looks like artwork from the 90s because it is artwork from the 90s. They're reusing a lot of the same pieces of art." We know this because you have the original cards still. I got rid of my Warlord stuff, but you add some and when we saw them side by side, they're pretty much identical. There's some slight framing differences. Very, very slight. Um, I think it could have been refreshed quite a bit more and still serve to that idea of, yeah, this is compatible with the old stuff. They don't look alike anymore, but you could mix and match, you know, um, and then you appease both camps in my opinion. And those people who do want to mix it with the old cards have to put up with some slight visual differences, but then everybody who is just playing out of this has a game that looks newer, that looks fresh, that looks like this new wave of trading card games. So, how does the game stand up?
You know, this this game is now 25 plus years old. Um, and again, it's a game that I've enjoyed in the past and I brought it out and and it's weird because there's a lot of things I really like about the game.
The rolling the dice just doesn't bother me. You go in knowing that that your guy with plus 18 or whatever nonsense
could roll one and miss. Or
the fact that
it's not always best to move your big guy to the front, but the game really tempts you to do. So, they're like, "Move that guy to the front. He can do three attacks." and just whale on people.
For me, as much as I like this game back in the day, it's hard to not look at other games, specifically games like Summoner Wars
that do the exact same thing. Kill your opponent's summoner in that game.
And yet, that game feels like strategy and tactics. And this one is
run your guy to the front and roll dice. And the majority of tactics in this are going to be the same as many collectible card games, which is build the deck, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I don't mind that necessarily, but it does feel a little bit dated. I'm like, "Oh, I lost that game cuz I rolled badly five times in a row."
Sure. Or you had better cards than I did or what have you. Um, yeah, it had been such a long time since I'd played that I had forgotten those finer points of the game. And I found it replaying um to feel quite slow paced. Actually, that's the main thing that kind of stood out to me going back to it now. I'm like, wow, this is very plotting. Um, has that feeling of, all right, I'm going to exhaust this guy and he steps up one. He's got he's coming for you. Just give me a couple rounds cuz he needs to like ready next time and then step forward or I give him a horse and speed that up. But it's still kind of plotting. It felt slow paced. Not only does it feel a little slow paced, I also feel like the theming, which was generic in the '9s, is even more generic now.
Sure. I have a guy with a sword. And this one is an orc.
And the
Well, the names even, right? I mean,
you mean it's kind of ridiculous. If I'm a slinger, guess what? My name might be might be Slinger.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like Pokey, you know, cuz he has a sharp spear. It's like Yeah. the names are really on the nose in in a not charming anymore kind of way.
But because of that, it also takes away from the excitement.
There's a few big massive heroes and they're kind of fun to bring out
but they're hard to get out and you meanwhile you have a guy on a boring horse with a boring sword and I need to maneuver him to the front and we roll some dice at each other and it just
and he'll be the one doing most of the work. That's the thing, right? the big cool guy is just yeah they're there but most of what you're doing is fighting with Slinger and and Pokey. I mean doing that a lot.
Now that being said, I do I give a lot of um props to the rank system. Great
where you there's rank one, rank two, rank three moving back and forth.
I like that a lot.
It's very good.
I like the maneuvering. A board wouldn't hurt at this point in time just to help you play a playmat a board, but it's like it takes the mana system and just I mean it's so different. It's so clever.
Yeah. And it's freeto play stuff sort of like I have I still have some cards I was showing Ze some old cards from the old game that are ranked six or seven. I'm like how do these even get on the board? You'd have to work really hard to pull that off.
But it's the fact that it's there and I like that. I like moving someone to the back row just so I can equip them with a good piece of equipment. Now they're coming back to the front
and things having to like when something dies and things have to fall forward to fill in the ranks, but they become exhausted from doing that. The movement system, the mana system is great. It holds up.
But do I recommend this? I mean, if you're a fan of Warlord, you've already bought this. I mean, really,
it does feel that way.
Yeah. What's different? Like why why is it so slavishly devoted to those people that already have it, but it feels like the same stuff? Again, we saw a lot of the cards that are the same.
That blows my mind. Why is this not a completely new set? Why are so many cards? Don't get me wrong, I don't know. I just know that when I was going through the old ones, I was like, "Oh, this matches. This matches. This matches. Maybe maybe the new warlords are different. I'm assuming." But why is not everything different?
Right. using the same artwork. It just feels it feels like this was put out as a hey guys who love Warlord, we still got you.
Yeah.
But I I cannot in good conscience recommend this to people who are new to gaming. There's many trading card games out there. They're hard to get into because if it's something like Alter that you might love, but then they stop making. Yep.
You have to keep that in mind. Every every trading card game has a shelf life with possibly the exception of Magic and Pokemon. Those go on forever, right? But they usually have some sort of shelf life. And will there be enough? You can go back and buy cheap warlord stuff. So that's that.
Yeah.
And there's very few games that let you roll dice as part of them a trading card game.
So I like it, but I cannot cross that line of recommending it. Even though it was once one of my favorite games, it's fallen for me a bit. It feels dated and I do not like the business model. So it's a six where I'll play it. Yeah, it was an interesting time and if you come across it, it might be worth this is definitely a try try before you buy. For me anyway,
right? Yeah. For me, I think uh trading card game players fall into two camps. The people that buy the thing, care that it's alive or dead, go to a tournament, play the thing. If you into that category, good gracious, no. Do not get this. Then there's the other category. The category I fall into. You like the weird ones. You own some random cards still from Shadow Fist somewhere in a drawer. You just enjoy buying them after they die and you play kitchen table trading card games. If so, yeah, as a curio, get a cheap as a curio maybe, but I'm coming in lower than you out of five. It is. It's an average game at this point that was pretty good 25 plus years ago and they did very little to bring it back. It would be like NedRunner having come back from FFG a few years ago and them putting out NedRunner from 1996 or whatever,
right?
No, they took that game and revitalized the entire thing. It looked new, had a new everything. No, come on. This is this There's not enough here.
Well, there you go, folks. That's Warlord Saga of the Storm. I guess these are This set is specifically is called Into the Accord Lands.
It'd be interesting if it was Into the Accordion Lands.
Oh, that'd be fantastic. M music set. Oh,
there needs to be more. I need an LCG based on music.
Yes. some sort of the Sonata fights.
Bard vbard. Anyway, I'm Tom Vasel.
I'm Z Garcia.
See y'all next time.
Hey everybody, thanks for watching this video. If you like this review or whatever you just watched, wasn't it amazing? Uh, check out our channel, Dice Tower. We have all kinds of things. We review games, we do top 10s, we play games live. It's all about board games, but especially the people who play them. Check out Dice Hour YouTube channel.