Warhammer 40,000 Warpforge - Faction Guides

Space Marines in the universe of Warhammer 40,000 are genetically modified super-soldiers clad in enormous suits of powered armour that are humanity's - or rather the Imperium of Man’s - greatest champions. They’re divided into large groups called “Chapters”. Of these chapters, the Ultramarines are probably the most prominent and often come as the “default” starter army in the various model sets that have been made available over the years.

In Warpforge, the Ultramarines’ main strategy is the use of overwhelming firepower to pin down and destroy their enemies. This means that you’ll mainly be focusing on deploying cards with higher ranged attack values, wearing down more hand-to-hand focused enemies with cards and units that support this.

Fittingly for the Ultramarines, this means your main focus will be on cards called Stratagems. Although available to all factions, the Ultramarines have a strong focus on them, and with a wide variety of effects, from direct damage against enemy cards to healing your Warlord - the leader of your deck.

The Orks are bizarre, pseudo-fungal mushroom people who just so happen to resemble Tolkien’s creations if they were on five protein milkshakes a day and discovered the existence of firearms. Their main role in the universe of 40k is a mix of comic relief, unrivalled brutality, overwhelming numbers and proving to be a surprisingly effective army to boot.

Fittingly for their great green tide characterisation, the Orks focus on deploying as many cards as possible. This means you’ll get a huge variety of weak but numerous cards with the Tide mechanic, which grants you copies of that card in your hand to deploy - remember that these new cards still use energy, however.

When you have enough of these cards on the field, you can then play certain other cards, such as Unbridled Carnage, which deals two damage to a random enemy and repeats for every troop on the field. Naturally, when you have a lot of troops, this effect becomes deadly in wiping out low-health cards and even warlords.

An ancient race of beings that transferred their souls into metallic, immortal bodies. The Necrons are a bit like the Borg, sans the lack of emotion and have an active dislike for virtually anything living. Their pseudo-Egyptian influence - with a system of dynasties and titles like “Phaeron” - has begun to be diluted somewhat, but that aspect is still clearly visible in Warpforge.

The primary mechanic of the Necrons is Remnant: this is a system whereby certain Necron cards that are destroyed can be resurrected by other cards as long as they have the Remnant attribute. Some cards actively benefit from this and resurrect with further stat boosts to their ranged and hand-to-hand attacks.

Remnants, however, are also cards themselves and can be attacked to destroy them permanently, and will disappear at the end of your turn. They can also be resurrected either by certain characters or certain stratagems but will not regenerate naturally.

An ancient race that is best described as “Space Elves”. The Eldar (or Aeldari as they're currently referred to) used to be the biggest kids on the block, but after a disastrous psychic apocalypse, they’re now a fading race. But that doesn’t stop them from working enigmatic and complicated plans to preserve their species, even at the expense of others.

When it comes to the Eldar, speed and urgency are everything. Many of the Eldar’s cards benefit from the Flanking trait, which means that they can attack on the turn they are played. They also benefit from the Shuriken trait - where if a card destroys another card in their attack, they do not take retaliatory damage.

Finally, there’s the Spirit Stone Mechanic. When certain Eldar cards are destroyed, they drop Spirit Stones. Unlike Remnant, these are a currency akin to energy, and can be collected. Certain cards, when played, will gather this energy to receive benefits such as stat boosts.

However, you should be aware that certain cards also receive effects when Spirit Stones are collected. So it’s always worth checking what effect they have, and whether they are active on gathering a Stone, or take from a certain number when played.

Often seen as the inspiration behind the Zerg of Starcraft fame, the Tyranids were originally conceived as an ersatz race of Xenomorphs for Games Workshop’s old board game Space Hulk. They’ve since ballooned into an almost unstoppable eating machine that evolves new and gruesome forms to deal with virtually any other faction.

The two primary mechanics of the Tyranids are Synapse and Swarm. The Swarm mechanic means that any card played with this attribute on the left of a card of the same type will merge with them, adding their attack and health to that card.

Synapse, meanwhile, allows cards to spread stratagems to adjacent cards. This basically means that if a card is played, which boosts a card’s attack by two, it will then spread that effect to the two cards next to it. Adding onto that, some other cards have effects which only activate when affected by Synapse.

Chaos is an all-encompassing malicious force comprising every desperate, depraved or downright bad dude in the galaxy. In Waprforge, they’re primarily represented by the Chaos Space Marines, who are traitors to the Imperium of Mankind. The four Chaos Gods they worship are: Nurgle the god of death, disease and all things virulent, Khorne the god of anger, bloodshed and skulls, Slaanesh the god of excess, indulgence and cruelty, and finally, Tzeentch, the god of scheming, planning and general monkey’s paw shenanigans.

Chaos’ main mechanic is the Dark Pact system, where dark deals with the four chaos gods are applied to cards. For example, the Dark Pact of Resilience with Nurgle grants a card +1 health and regenerates 1 health per turn.

The focus of Chaos’ game plan is to build up Dark Pacts until their cards possess overwhelming power. But that means you need to play carefully, as some pacts activate only when attacking - and since cards take retaliatory damage from other cards, that means they can very easily be bumped off in the process, putting all those pacts to waste.

Some cards will also have Dark Pacts to begin with, granting them extra abilities including their shooting and melee damage. Keep a careful eye on these cards as their existing Dark Pact can be stacked over time to further enhance these abilities.