This is the 1st post in a series of 3.
Part 2
Play Cards? Enjoy Games? Let's Look At Warsaken®, a brand new trading card game(TGC) blazing a trail on the digital NFT scene. Warsaken claims to be "Not your father's war game." Played with trading cards much like Pokemon or Magic, but digitally like Splinterlands. There are currently 2 forms of game play active, Warsaken Blitz, and Warsaken Standard. Warsaken Standard is the full fledged battle game, where as Blitz is a much easier, shorter time consumption version.
Today I will be explaining how to setup Warsaken Standard.
Warsaken® Standard Game Setup Guide
First and foremost I must express, in no way is this manual/guide associated with Warsaken® the company/brand. I wrote this on my own accounts of the Warsaken game with help from the Warsaken community. All the Artwork is respective property of Warsaken and Electic Nerds. I merely assembled this guide.
I will attempt to explain the game in the terms of Setup, Play Structure, and Play Completion with a bit of Strategy and rule clarification along the way.
To get a better feel for this guide I suggest you view the video released by Warsaken for Standard gameplay and be sure to check out Warsaken at https://warsaken.cards 
Official Warsaken Gameplay Rules: https://www.warsaken.com/rules/standard/
Strategy Guide By StolenGoods: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1juIbu8bGcLx_kI8gyGimEW0Vbp0X7F_qXXNass3ynJc/edit
Game Objective: Eliminate All Opponent Leaders
Victory Pre-Requisites: Opponent Leaders Must Be Compromised In Order To Be Attacked.
Conditions that compromise an enemy leader. (ANY 1):
Opponent’s Leader Morale = 0
Opponent’s Arsenal Card Count = 0
All Opponent’s Territories Eliminated
In Set 1, a Leader that is compromised cannot be uncompromised, with the exception of Queen Awati and her Ultimate Ability.
Card Definitions
Card Types
There are 7 different arsenal card Types:
FORCE , GFORCE, WMD, WEATHER, INTEL, BUILDING and MORALE.
To the left is an Intel card type. To the right is a Weather card type.
Each type is broken down into Sub-Type, such as Force-Soldier, or Force-Air for example.
Some Force cards also come in the Type GFORCE.
Each arsenal is allowed 1 GForce variation card. You can see the power of the GForce lies in its cost, the resource costs are completely Generic. All other aspects of the card are identical when it comes to gameplay.
SETUP
To setup Warsaken you will need a deck of 65 Warsaken cards (1 Leader, 4 Unique Territories, 60 Arsenal Cards), 10-15 six sided die, 10-15 counter tiles, 20 each of Warsaken resource cards, and a flat table to play. All of this is available with pre-made decks for the users to try out digitally, on the Tabletopia platform free of charge. https://tabletopia.com/games/warsaken
This is the Standard board setup per player. To the left you have the Morale and Intel counters. To the right of those counters are the Leader’s ability tracking dice. To the right of the Ability dice is the Leader card. To the right of the Leader card are the 4 unique Territories.
Each player starts with 1 Leader and 4 unique Territories. Depending on the make-up of a players Arsenal, players may choose any 4 territories that complement their needed resource production.
In the case of the Lockwood deck shown, Lockwood relies heavily on Fuel and Equipment, so you can see the territories selected for the Lockwood deck compliment Fuel and Equipment production.
Territory cards come in various types. Power, Equipment, Fuel, Food, Generic, or a combination of multiple resource production. See the cards below for a look at some of the territories available.
Let’s take a closer look at the initial game setup:
You can see the initial value of the starting Morale counter is the same as the starting Morale of the Leader card. Lockwood has a starting Morale of 19. Different Leaders have various Start Morale values, in Warsaken, even card variation can play an effect on Start Morale. For example, all Set 1 Leaders have an Infinite variation, the Infinite variation has a higher Start Morale than the regular Leader variation. Regular Volkov starts at 17, Infinite Volkov starts at 18.
The starting Morale can also sometimes be higher than the Morale stated on the Leader card. For instance, some territories actually boost a Leader’s starting Morale. In the case of Zoff, Lockwood’s opponent for the pre-made setup, he has a territory called Wolf Power District. Wolf Power District has a mechanic that boosts the starting Morale by +2. Zoff only has a Start Morale of 18, however because of the Wolf Power District territory, Zoff’s Morale counter has a starting value of 20. Unlike Warsaken Blitz, Warsaken Standard can have any Starting Morale value. There is no cap.
Each card in Warsaken, with the exception of Morale/Intel/Weather, has a HP value. This is the Health Points/Hit Points the particular card has. Leaders, Territories, Forces and Buildings all have HP. Initially for Leader and Territory cards, a counter is placed under the card with the value of the HP. As the game is played, any damage delt to a Leader, Territory, or Building is maintained throughout the game. These counters allow the players to keep track of the ongoing damage to the particular card. If at any time a card’s HP reaches 0, that card is eliminated and moved to the players discard pile after all costs have been paid. (ie. Morale Loss, excess splash damage)
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It is also good to note that the Health Points will vary depending on the Variation of the card. Normally Admiral Bancroft has 120 HP as seen to the left. However, see the cards above are at 130 HP. These are upgraded cards. Some upgraded cards will receive +10 HP buff when they are minted. All Infinite Leaders also have a health buff. Fire Forged, Fire Forged First Wave, Camo Edge First Wave, Black Camo First Wave, Foil Fire First Wave, and Infinite Leaders all have health buff. This goes for all cards that have HP. |
The Ability dice to the left of the Leader card are initially set by the Leader’s repeated Ability turn cost timer values. Not all Leaders have multiple abilities. You will only have a die for each stated Ability timer. When a leader Ability timer die reduces to 0, the respective Ability activates on that turns Play Phase. Although the Ability activates with the expiration of the timer, a player may choose to hold the ability to be used at any time during that Play Phase. In this case, the respective ability die is left at 0 until the Ability is acted out. Once the Ability is acted out, the timer die is once again reset to the initial Ability Cost Timer value.
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Some Territories allow you to start the game with Resources already in play. When this occurs, the respective resources are placed by the Territory during the players first Production phase. Lockwood has the Territory, Vernance Supply Factory. Vernance has the SUPPLY ability. This allows the player to produce 2 extra resources on their first turn, thus the player would place 2 Equipment Resources by Vernance at the start of the Production phase, and then also produce 2 more Equipment. |
To the right of the Territories is where you place your Arsenal.
A players Arsenal consists of the 60 other Warsaken cards which are chosen to make up the play deck. An Arsenal will consist of Force, WMD, Intel, Morale, Building and Weather cards.
In Warsaken Standard, there is no minimum card quantity count. An Arsenal can be made up of all 1 of a kind cards. However, there is a maximum card quantity count. A player may only have up to 4 copies of any 1 card of the same name. Variation of card has no effect on card quantity count. A 24K Gold Gemini is the same as a Base Gemini. Although you can have any variations of the card, there may only be 4 cards of the same name in any deck.
Each Arsenal may also have 1 G-Force card. A G-Force card will also contribute toward the quantity count for that particular card name. For example, A G-Force Goliath 65 must be included in the quantity count of all other Goliath 65 cards in the Arsenal. In this logic, a player may only have 3 other Goliath 65 cards beside the G-Force Goliath 65 within their Arsenal.
Arsenal construction can be very complex to very easy. Construction warrants its own tutorial to follow at a later date.
A useful resource for selecting your Arsenal is a guide created for Warsaken Set 1 by @stolengoods.
It can be found online:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1juIbu8bGcLx_kI8gyGimEW0Vbp0X7F_qXXNass3ynJc/edit
Resource cards are available to all players and are used to keep track of the produced/spent resources. All cards played in Warsaken except Weather cards, have a resource cost to play. A player must have the produced resources necessary to pay the resource costs of a card in order to play the card on the War Zone. Resources are not the only costs associated to playing a card, but if you play the wrong amount of resources, the card is automatically eliminated upon being Ready. It is very important to ensure your resource counts.
There are 4 specific resource types and 1 generic resource type. Any 1 specific resource type can be exchanged for a generic resource 1 to 1. However, a specific resource requires 2 of any other resources to exchange for 1 specific resource. There is no rule that the 2 resources must be the same for exchange, so 1 Fuel and 1 Energy can exchange into 1 Equipment as well as 2 Generic will result in the same exchange.
Specific resources:
Fuel, Power, Food, Equipment
Resource Exchange
Convert to Specific: 2 resources gets 1 specific
Convert Generic: 1 resource gets 1 generic
Game Play:
Each turn in the game of Warsaken can be broken up into phases. Return, Draw, Reduction, Production, Play, and Battle. Note: The very first player to take a turn at the beginning of the game starts their turn at the Production phase, No Return, No Draw, No Reduction.
Return: At the Return Phase of each turn, any Forces which attacked last turn can return to home. This is accomplished by rotating the card upright in relation to your Legion. When cards are RETURNING home, they should be upside down to the opponent from across you. (First Player First Turn Skip This Phase)
This is also the time to discard any Weather you may have played the turn before.
Draw: At the Draw phase of your turn, you draw 1 card from your Arsenal. (First Player First Turn Skip This Phase)
Reduction: During the Reduction Phase you reduce all of your timer dice by 1.
Any Ability timer dice (Yellow Timers) that reduce to 0 are activated, and that ability is available on that turns Play Phase. An Ability may be delayed once active. Multiple card Abilities are negotiated from top down.
Any Required timer dice (Red Timers) that reduce to 0 activate, fire immediately and must be negotiated at the time of the timer expiration.
If it is a card Turn Cost timer dice that reduces to 0, the card it is on becomes Ready.
It is important to know, all dice are reduced simultaneously. Although most players start at the territory dice and work their way through all the turn cost/ability dice they have in play. If a card would be ready on that reduction phase, it must be considered “in-play” for all mechanics that happen, even if you have yet to flip over the ready card. All card mechanics must be negotiated completely upon the card becoming Ready. (First Player First Turn Skip This Phase)
Production: The Production Phase is the time your Territories, Aids, and other Production Buildings produce their respective resources. You attach resources taken from Resource bank to the respective card that produces the resource. It is important to maintain the resource attachment, because if the producing card is eliminated, any resources still attached to the card are eliminated as well. Eliminated resources can be returned to the resource card piles in the Resource Bank.
It is also to be noted, resource producing cards want to produce, so if at any time the production is halted by a mechanic of the game, once the mechanic is removed the producing cards immediately produce. An example of this is, if an opponent plays Freezing Rain Storm no Power Territories can produce. If you were to acquire a weather card in your play phase and bump the Freezing Rain Storm out of the War Zone, your Power territories would immediately produce even though you are past the production phase.
Play: The Play Phase is when you will play your cards. This is the time to pay resources and play cards from your hand. You may play as many cards as you wish, as long as you have the resources produced to do so. Any cards which require a turn cost timer will have the resources laid down with the played card flipped and unseen to the opponent on top of the resources paid. Then a Turn Cost timer die is placed on top the card with the die set to the value of the Turn Cost. To play a card with a turn cost of 0, place the resources to pay for the card in the center of the War Zone, then play the card face up. If it is a Force or Building card, place it with your Legion. If it is an Intel or Morale card place it in the center of the War Zone. When a card initially becomes Ready on the War Zone, the card mechanics must be negotiated completely. Once the mechanics of an Intel or Morale card are completed, the card can be moved to the discard pile unless otherwise specified.
Battle: Battle can be broken into 2 stages. The Attack Stage, The Blocking Stage.
The Attack Stage: During the Attack Stage, you specify which forces are going to attack, and what they are going to attack. Only Leaders, Buildings, and Territories can be specified for attack unless otherwise specified. If a Leader is uncompromised, only Buildings and Territories can be attacked. Force cards cannot be attacked unless specifically stated on the card. To Specify an attack, rotate the attacking card to face your opponent so it is facing away from you, then state what card it will attack. Specify all attacking cards in this way prior to the Blocking Stage.
The Blocking Stage: The opponent can assign blocking cards at this stage. It is important to know Air can block Air, Ground can block Ground, Navy can block Navy. The only way a Force of one type can block a Force of another type is if the card’s mechanic specifically states the ability. All card mechanics overrule normal game play mechanics. Unspecifiable cards can also be blocked, as long as the card doesn’t have the CLOAK ability.
The Damage: Any attack damage that is not blocked is automatically delt to the target. The damage is subtracted from the HP counter of the targeted card. If an attacker is blocked, no matter what the HP of the blocker is, all damage is blocked unless the attacker has BLITZ. If the attacker has BLITZ, subtract the HP of the blocker from the Attack Value of the attacker, that is the amount of damage that is delt to the target. If a blocking card has a HP equal to or less than the Attack Value of the attacker, the blocking card is eliminated and is put into the discard pile, the same is true of the attacking card, if the blocking card has an attack value equal to or greater than the HP of the attacker, the attacker is eliminated. If the blocking card is not eliminated, the HP of the blocking card is restored to 100%. Note: BLITZ can be countered by DETECTED MOTION.
That wraps up the how-to play section. On the next post I will walk through a game from start to finish. Demonstrating with pictures how a Warsaken game operates. You will get to see all of these play phases in real time. I will be providing discussion about each move.
Warsaken is hands down a great game to play, Blitz or Standard. Come join us in the community War Zone, we would love to help you complete your decks, and train for battle.
Warsaken Discord: https://discord.gg/warsaken
Until next time...
