Warcrow: The Road To The New World Of Lindwurm

Let’s start at the beginning

Corvus Belli, mostly known for the sci-fi game Infinity and the sports game Aresteia. Since I am more into wargames than sports games, I know the company more for the insane cool miniatures. They are a mix of anime and hard sci-fi style. The Spanish company was founded in 2001 and has been around for more than 20 years. There is more than enough experience to make a fantastic game and Infinity is a solid testament to that statement.

The early days of Corvus Belli (CB), saw a range of fantasy miniatures line called Warcrow. The reception of these miniatures was really good! The community feedback was that the community wanted a ruleset around these miniatures. Since the team wanted to put the focus on that game instead of building a whole new one. It wasn’t time for Warcrow yet…

Although the team started out with fantasy miniatures, they soon saw there was a need for SF models. As a result, the first edition of Infinity came onto the market in 2005. FYI, we are now at 4th edition (N4) and there is no sign of anything slowing down for the game. But it has always been Sci-fi.

Somewhere down the line of a few years, the team decided that it was time to start venturing into a new fantasy setting. 2 years ago, Corvus Belli showed the first signs of life for Lindwurm, the world where the newly built games Warcrow and Warcrow Adventures play in.

Since we love both styles of game, Warcrow Adventures will have its own blogs planned. This series, The Road to Lindwurm focuses on the wargame. I do however, want to say that the miniatures of Adventures, will be usable in the skirmish game.

The Backstory of Warcrow

Lindwurm is a high fantasy setting, where all the familiar races can be found. Of course, we’re talking about the Humans, Elves, Orcs and Dwarves and some other forms of life that are beyond horrific.

The game takes place in a time of great change. The star which grants the users their magic drifts further and closer to the planet and as it gets closer, the magic gets stronger. The star is closing in again and many of the people of Lindwurm are finding magical potential that will surely bring a shift in the power dynamics of the world.

For years, many regions have been enveloped by a thick, red, corrupting fog. All of a sudden, this fog starts spreading throughout the land. Death and Insanity is the only trail that shows where it went, leaving deformed and crazed creatures in it wake, bent only to violence.

This is the world of Lindwurm, where legends are wrought, waiting for heroes to ad their names to these legendary tales. This is the time of Warcrow.

Warcrow, What You Need to Know.

Starting a series of blogs about a single topic, means that you can deep focus on a couple of interesting points that make the game of Warcrow unique. We are going to start with the main points of the system that drives the game.

It’s a lighter, more narrative driven experience. This is shown in both the rules as in the game size. A normal game will consist of about 20 miniatures per side, which falls just between a skirmisher and a mass battle wargame. This is perfect for the ones that crave mass battles, but don’t want the pain of working through the painting of 20+ mini units.

Which means in Warcrow that…

• Miniatures will be put into squads, which will operate as one. This greatly speeds up the game, but also keeps is relatively easy to play and understand.

• The game plays as a story driven game and players will get different ways to “get rid” of the opponent. The narrative will be a feature, not a flavor like in most games, where it’s an option. Stories in your games have an impact, more than just providing more excuses to roll dice. (we don’t need excuses to roll dice, right?)

• Warcrow will use different colors of D8’s, like for offense and defense. Troops will use a certain combination of dice, giving a simple way to define their relative power. This also means that rolling combat is easy, and you don’t have to wade through endless stats to compare what or who wins (yeah, we are talking to you GW).

• Movement will have custom measuring devices and only the movement of the leader of a unit is pivotal in placement. This means you only measure and move the leader. Once moved, the rest of the squad will form the unit around the leader. This speeds up the game drastically.

• Alternating activations make sure every player is constantly involved in what happens on the battlefield. There is no waiting hours till the other player is finished with their something.

• Units you activate will have two actions, two short or one long, but last one is not confirmed yet. When all the actions have been completed, the play is passed on to the opponent. Easy peazy, squeezed lemons!

So, the Warcrow release, what do we get?

There are more than just a couple of things that the releases of Infinity do really well. One of them is the yearly new starter set. These sets contain 2 small forces of minis, dice, terrain, measuring devices, tokens and of course the rulebook. Warcrow as it seems, will take that route too.

The first 2-player starterset, Winds from the North is a battlebox that has the rulebook, a full (!) table of card stock terrain, dice, unit cards and 14 insanely nice miniatures. 7 miniatures on each side and CB have chosen the orcs and humans that have to deal with each other.

As said earlier, narrative is important, so to miss out on the first chance to give narrative to the game would be a big miss. The Starter contains a narrative campaign, right from the start!

You might know CB mostly known for their metal miniatures, but these take the route of high quality thermoplastic.

Warcrow, down the monthly line

CB have confirmed that, as with Infinity, the game will be supported by monthly releases of new miniatures. This means that you have to keep painting the beautiful miniatures and that there is no way they will let you idling your new game. When we look at Infinity again, there are about 8 releases max per month, but not all factions get some each month. Calculating this and knowing there will be more than 4 factions, there will be loads of awesome miniatures coming our way really soon!

All nice, but why would I want to play Warcrow?

There are a couple of things that probably haven’t missed your attention lately. One of them being GW seemingly hating their clientele by deleting whole armies and dropping the ball on the Old World, with 25+ year old models for recent prices and waiting times that are more than 3/4 of a year.

Also, this isn’t a company that just started because someone in the company designed a ruleset. This is Corvus Belli we are talking about, with 23 years of wargames experience! They aren’t diving into the black abyss, hoping this will succeed. CB made a living world, that manages to feel fresh and familiar at the same time.

The Warcrow Hype Train

All aboard! We are heading into the second chapter of this amazing ride towards the initial release of the game. Ahead of the pre-release of the Winds of the North Battlebox, we will tell you everything you need to know about the game, why you need it in your life and why we feel this is an important game in the wargaming meta. Did we mention we might even have fixed an interview with one of the developers?

The hype train rides from two different stations at the same time! One of the ways is here on the Bloggotron. The second is via the YouTube channel Dicegodswargaming. We collaborated with them to bring you the best and newest info on this game! Go take a look and give them a sub while you’re at it! Looking for the timestamps on when the blogs and video’s release? Check out the post here

See you at part 2, same time next week?