Ever since the first time Warhammer 40,000: Warpforge was showcased, one of the most recurring questions about the game has been about its economy. How hard will it be to collect your favourite factions? How long will it take to build your desired deck? How much agency will players have when collecting cards? With this post, we aim to display how players will progress in the game, explain the game’s economy and answer these questions. Read on to find out!
Starting your collection
Whether your connection to the Warhammer 40,000 universe comes from playing the tabletop game, painting its evocative, epic miniatures or reading its decades-worth of novels and stories, you most likely have your favourite armies and characters. You might be a fan of the Ultramarines and wish to build a codex-compliant deck, or maybe your loyalties lie with the Necron’s Sautekh Dynasty and you aspire to reclaim what is yours by right. Perhaps your aim is to command the biggest Waaagh! in the galaxy, or maybe even all of the above.
Whoever you are, when you first enter the battlefields of Warhammer 40,000: Warpforge, you will be able to claim a full starter deck for your favourite army to start playing immediately. This starter deck will be but the beginning of your legacy, for soon you will be able to customise your deck to your liking and progress toward your favoured strategy.
Progress through your army’s campaign to collect cards
In Warpforge, we’re introducing an innovative system designed to give players maximum choice and a rewarding experience for playing the game: Campaigns. Progressing through an army’s campaign will be the main method to acquire new cards in Warpforge, together with booster packs. When a player completes missions and objectives, they will earn points that will help progress their selected Preferred Army campaign.
Campaigns are organised as a series of nodes, each granting different rewards. When a player earns enough points to progress to a new node, they will be able to choose which one to unlock, so they can prioritise rushing through one path to unlock a specific card or progress many paths simultaneously to gather resources. The selected Preferred Army can be changed at any time, without any loss of progress, so you will be able to progress through multiple at your own leisure.
We want every game session of Warhammer 40,000: Warpforge to be fulfilling, and a step towards completing your favourite army’s collection. For this, you will also be able to play one full Draft Mode run for free every day. This mode is perfect for trying out new cards in a varied and surprising environment while earning some great rewards. The further you make it into your run, the better the rewards, so start honing your deck drafting skills!
Use duplicates to upgrade cards
As you progress through the campaign and fill your collection, there may be times when opening a reward yields a card of which you already have the maximum number of copies you can use in a deck. Whenever this happens, you will store that duplicate card in your account, and will be able to use it to upgrade the card in your collection, improving its visual look and generating Forge points for its army. The visual upgrade will not have an effect on the card’s power at the hour of battle, but it will make it pop up and stand out among its peers on the battlefield. Forge points, on the other hand, will allow you to progress through that army’s Forge level and get you amazing rewards!
Earn wildcards and more in the Forge
Each army’s Forge level goes up when you upgrade cards from that army. Every time you reach the next Forge level, you will get amazing rewards including army-specific boosters, high rarity cards, in-game currency and Wildcards.
Wildcards follow a rarity system just like regular cards, but instead of being added to a deck, these are consumables that allow you to add to your collection a specific card of your choosing from the Wildcard’s army and rarity. These are very powerful consumables that facilitate completing your collection and allow you to get your desired deck battle-ready quicker than a bolter shoots a round.
Perhaps the most important content unlocked in the Forge would be the army’s Offence and Defence cards, which we introduced in the previous article. As you study and further your knowledge of a specific army you don’t only learn how to command it more effectively, but also discover their weaknesses and how to exploit them when you find yourself fighting on their home turf.
Booster packs, premium campaigns and more
But there are still more ways to speed up your in-game progress. You will receive Booster Packs among the rewards for progressing through your Campaign and Forge, or you can buy them with gold. Booster packs contain 5 cards, with at least 1 of them being Rare or higher. Getting army-specific boosters will let you give a big push to that one army, but you can also progress many armies simultaneously with Base Set boosters, which contain cards from all of them.
If you want to get the most out of your campaigns, you might want to consider upgrading them to Premium Campaigns via an optional purchase. A Premium Campaign adds an additional layer of rewards that you will unlock as you progress through the army’s campaign nodes. These rewards are tailored to accelerate completing your deck with additional in-game currency and wildcards – including a Legendary one in the very first node!
Moreover, Premium Campaigns will provide free campaign points for that army as part of your login bonus every day. That means you will be reaping the rewards forever, regardless of which army you have currently chosen as your preferred one, without having to play or meet any criteria other than logging in and collecting them!
A whole Galaxy to conquer awaits you in Warhammer 40,000: Warpforge. Make sure to stay up to date on the new features that will make their way into the closed alpha very soon by checking out the previous article, talking about the Offence and Defence cards. Have you chosen which armies you will command into battle? If you haven’t been able to try them out yet, sign up for the closed alpha by filling out this form and begin the fight before the game’s released.