Warcraft - From The Screen To The Board

Thanks to OgreCave for their article discussing the imminent arrival of the Warcraft-licensed board game, adapting Blizzard's classic RTS series for paper-gaming. They point to a new article on maker Fantasy Flight Games' site, where "...designer Kevin Wilson described his desire to have an endless variety of scenarios for the game, and how victory points and interchangable board pieces will make it possible." The game itself, shipping later this month, will have "13 board sections alone, helping bring the game's component count to over 400 pieces", but despite the large amount of units, an earlier article describes the design goal: "...to create a fun, relatively simple game that could be played in under 2 hours while still capturing enough of Warcraft's charm to have players yelling 'Zug zug!' and 'At your command, my Lord!'"

Comments

Diversification

[etherlad]

Wow, an MMORPG coming out, a pen-and-paper RPG from the good people at White Wolf, and now a board game. Blizzard's really putting their brand in as many pots as they can. Wonder if it'll pay off?

Re:Warhammer?

[hibiki_r]

I really don't think so. This game seems to have nothing to do with a standard miniature game like warhammer. In fact, just the price difference makes the games completely different. A $30-$50 game is very different from spending a few hundred dollars per player, + the time investment of painting the miniatures, which appeals to some people, but is a no-no to many others.

Warcraft does take a lot of artwork and race design from Warhammer, but the game mechanics have nothing to do with each other. Thus, a Warcraft boardgame will have very little to do with Warhammer. In fact, it doesn't even have miniatures!

Two things

[misuba]

1) To others in the thread that claim that Warcraft and Starcraft rip off Warhammer Fantasy and 40K, respectively: this rings about as hollow as White Wolf's recent suit against the producers of Underworld. Both are actually ripping off a common source - in this case, Tolkien - and unless you can make a case for more specific infringement, that's the rightful end of it.

2) If a Warcraft board game will make Warcraft fans flock to Warhammer, why didn't Starcraft make Warcraft players pick up, say, Master of Orion? That's an imprecise analogy at best, but the point is that gameplay matters. Fantasy Flight (publishers of the Warcraft boardgame) appear to be focused on making a game that has the same sense of fun and action as the source material (unlike the publishers of the recent Age of Mythology board game, who focused on the resource management aspect to the detriment of everything else). The ponderous, crufty Warhammer rules base can't achieve any kind of a "real time" fell without major hacking. (The fact that such hacking is so common is a credit to Warhammer and its players... but my point stands.)