Game Review - WARHAMMER 40,000 CONQUEST

GAME REVIEW: WARHAMMER 40,000 CONQUEST

We all have our different watermarks for “making it”. For some it might be that first paying gig in the profession of your choice. For others it could be home ownership, getting married or making their first million.

I summited the peak of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs when Geek Girl Authority wanted to review products from Fantasy Flight Games (FFG). Then General Aud (our esteemed editor) asked me in turn to do some of the reviewing. This is like In N’ Out asking me to come over for a free Animal-Style Double Double with fries and a shake and then please tell them what I think of it.

From a business standpoint, FFG is in an impressive place. They’ve licensed some of the biggest properties in Sci-Fi and Fantasy and have been allowed to run with them, developing a mind-boggling array of card, tabletop miniature and straight up board games. What big names, you ask? How about Star Wars. Or Game of Thrones. That do anything for you? Oh, and of course, Warhammer Forty F*cking Thousand.

And you guys.

Seriously.

I get to keep the games after I provide my opinion on them. How did my life turn into a 90’s hip-hop video?!?

On to today’s game: Warhammer 40,ooo Conquest.

Conquest is a card game for two players. The box says the game time is around 30-60 minutes, and I think that’s accurate once you have a handle on the rules. It’s for players 14 years and older.

The setting of the game is the Warhammer 40,000 (40k) Universe. A setting best described as “SPACE WAR!”. And the flames of war burn bright in the Traxis sector. (C’mon, how can you not love this backstory?) Players choose which faction they’re going to play, then face off over different planets. The first one to win three worlds with matching attributes win. (There’s a few other ways to win, but we’ll keep it simple here).

When it comes to which faction (in regular 40k we’d call it an “army”) to play, we’re spoiled for choice. Options include Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines – these are Space Marines that betrayed humanity, made pacts with Warp Demons and mutated into demon monsters in powered armor. Metal. As. F*ck. Other races include The Eldar (Elves), Dark Eldar (Evil Goth Elves), Space Orks, The Tau (essentially a Gundam suit/Robotech style alien race) and many others. There’s even more factions on the way like the Necrons (Terminator Exoskeletons crossed with Evil Mummies) and the Tyrannids (the Alien from Alien, only an entire army of them, with disgusting variations).

Fellow GGA contributor and game connoisseur Matt Young arrived at my house to play around 8:30pm. Beers were cracked and the bag of caramel corn was opened. Matt abstained from the caramel corn, leaving me to feast alone in shame.

It took us about an hour or so to get the hang of the game and play our first match. Matt played the Space Marines, I played the Orks. iTunes was on shuffle, which provided a sometimes apropos soundtrack. I also realized what a show of intimacy it is to bring someone into your iTunes shuffle confidence.

The horizontal cards are planets about to suffer the fury of the Ruinous Powers. And arm hair.

For our second match, Matt chose to play the Eldar, and I played the Chaos Space Marines. This was a big step for me, as I’ve always kind of favored the Imperium of Man over the Ruinous Powers of the Warp. But, as we know from Jung, it is folly to deny the shadow self. I took up the banner of Khorne, the Blood God of Chaos, put on Ghost’s album Meliora, and set forth to let the Galaxy Burn.

The second match was quite fun. By now we had a slightly better handle on the rules, and game play ran much smoother.

Matt’s valiant Eldar forces spared the peace-loving citizens of Elouith the excruciating yoke of my demonic rule. That planet swings red in every election anyway, so not a tremendous loss for the gibbering legions of the Warp.

After shuffling our decks of cards, we laid out between us on the table the cards for the seven worlds we’d be battling over. (As the game progresses, each world can give you different boosts in different rounds of the game)

The decks themselves are similar to other combat card games like Magic or Pokemon. (Matt noted that Conquest’s gameplay was nearly identical to FFG’s Cthulhu card game). There’s Army cards that denote specific types of units you can deploy to each planet, a Warlord card for your heroic (or in the case of my Chaos Marines, Demonic) leader, plus all types of equipment bonuses, special power ups unique to your faction and so on.

This device is used for making secret commitments. To Heavy Metal.

Without going too deep into the rules, I can say that the game moves in rounds of deployment, combat, and then a regrouping stage where you can expend resources to build your forces back up.

It really is fascinating that what began in the 80’s as the Sci-Fi spin off of Games Workshop’s Fantasy Tabletop system, Warhammer has matured into a Universe so rich with backstory that combat card games like this can provide an independent, alternate avenue for players to experience it.

At first I thought this card summoned obsolete PC’s in cow-print boxes to the battlefield to confound my enemy with Netscape as their primary browser.

To me, this is what makes Conquest so cool. While nothing can replace a well-constructed miniature battlefield, peopled by tiny warriors with kick-ass paint jobs, Conquest does provide the elements of strategy, narrative, aesthetics, tone and the depth-of-world realness that make 40k so captivating. Conquest achieves this both through lavish artwork and fluff copy that evokes the fabled grim darkness of 40k, and also the functionality of the game itself. Example: While playing the Chaos Marines, I deployed the Virulent Plague Squad, devotees of the foul god Nurgle, Lord of Disease and Decay.

Show of hands, who vaccinated their kids?

What was cool about the Plague Squad was that they caused any of Matt’s discarded army cards to cause more damage to his troops in play: The putrescence of his own war dead visited doom on his still-living troops. Well, they would have if Matt’s Iyanden Wraithguard hadn’t immediately annihilated them under the fiery skies of Osus IV. See? You can really get into this shit if you want to, which is an especially attractive quality for those already familiar with 40k, but who may not have the time or resources to commit to the miniature wargaming hobby.

I would recommend Conquest for fans of this type of card combat game, and especially for 40k ex-pats like myself who want to return to the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium, but also have to get to Trader Joe’s before closing because goddammit we’re almost out of organic 1% milk again and that sh*t’s like three dollars more at Vons.

I’m still not sure what this card does, outside of handling all my murder cogitation needs.

Click here to go directly to the Warhammer 40,000: Conquest page on Fantasy Flight Games website and check out the game!

Click here to read my essay series: Warhammer: A Saga in Miniatures.

Click here to watch FFG’s Warhammer 40,000: Conquest’s tutorial.

Go to FFG’s website here to check out all their wares for yourself. Their miniatures are absolutely gorgeous, and a good deal of them come painted already. (Look at those Star Wars ships! You will totally make TIE fighter sounds and strafe your desk with those when nobody’s looking).