Introduction

Wardens is our upcoming 5v5 tactical minis game that’s focused on team-building and creative real-space play. It, in my opinion, plays nothing like other games in the tactical skirmish genre. In fact, it doesn’t even play like BattleCON or Exceed, two of our previous games that use a similar simultaneous reveal strike system.

This uniqueness makes Wardens a truly engaging game with some of the best depth of play in its class. It is this same uniqueness, however, that makes it difficult to understand and get into. We are aware of this. In fact, it is an active trade-off we decided to make. We made the conscious decision to make Wardens a game that simply gets better the more you learn about it, while also making sure that there’s always something new for you to learn each time you play. 

I’m writing this article as a sort of quick-start guide for Wardens; to help the people that might stumble as they begin their Wardens journey. It will be a difficult road ahead, especially if you expect your knowledge in CCGs, skirmish games, or even our previous games to directly translate to Wardens. Fear not, as I will be your guide into the wonderful world of Wardens!

Wardens Design

Before we get started, you need some insight into the kind of game that Wardens is. And, more importantly, what it is NOT. Wardens uses mechanics and systems that many people will be familiar with: real-space minis placement and CCG-style card management. However, it uses these systems in such a way that the unique experience it creates plays very differently from those kinds of games.

To the minis gamers, pieces in Wardens don’t usually have implicit stats or rules. For the most part, a unit’s capabilities are largely determined by the cards and resources you draw into. This means that you can’t “rely” on any specific piece to do a specific move, tactic, or attack all the time. 

To the card gamers, cards in Wardens don’t dictate all the actions you can take on your turn. You’ll likely be familiar with more traditional card games where you can only take an action by playing a card that says you can. For example, you can’t just decide to draw more cards unless a card says to do so. This is not the case in Wardens. A large majority of the actions you can (and should) take can be done regardless of which cards are in your hand.

These two points seem counterintuitive. On one hand, piece capabilities are entirely dependent on cards. On the other, your action space is largely independent of said cards. What brings these two together is the actual experience and skill that Wardens wants from its players: discovered play.

Wardens is designed in such a way that players don’t have ultimate control over what they can do with any one specific piece, meaning that they cannot use a single powerful tool repeatedly as a crutch. On the other hand, it is also designed in such a way that the player has enough agency to “make things work” if they use all the tools at their disposal. That is to say, regardless of what specific cards are in your hand, there is always a line of play you can take to succeed or gain some sort of advantage, assuming you get your entire team involved.

Wardens is a game about making do with what you have. It is a game where you must puzzle out creative solutions to scenarios and plays that you’ve never seen before; often with tools that seemingly don’t work together. It is NOT a game where you attempt to optimize-out the randomness by drawing your entire deck. It is explicitly designed to NOT let you do that. Instead, you must embrace uncertainty and learn to be resilient to unforeseen circumstances. Truly, the most-winning Wardens players are not those who memorize sequences of plays or combos of cards; they are the ones who have built a creative tactical mind that can easily analyze unfamiliar situations and formulate new plans.

What “Winning” Means

“Winning”, therefore, comes across very differently in Wardens. To win a game of Wardens, you must simply defeat the enemy throne by removing its shields and wounding it. There are many ways to do this, ranging from taking control points to attacking the throne directly. Notice, however, that I did not list “winning strikes”.

I’ve tricked you! By luring you in with the sweet promise of winning more strikes, I’ve hopefully given you your first lesson in Wardens: the player who wins the most strikes isn’t necessarily the player who wins the game. There are plenty of Wardens games that end with the more “dominant” player losing at the end. There are, of course, games where that player wins as well. But what you need to know is that winning more strikes doesn’t win you games. Strikes are a means to some tactical end. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Much like any other game action you can take, striking needs to be viewed as a tool to help you achieve some goal. It is not the end point of your play. I’ve seen way too many people fall for this trap, throwing away advantages just to win a single interaction. The ultimate embodiment of winning a battle but losing the war. Do not be like those people.

Winning Strikes

How to win a strike, therefore, has no defined steps or criteria. There are no “magic numbers” that an attack must have for it to function. There is no magical number value that makes your attack “consistent”. Given the flexibility and inherent capability of most pieces, there is simply no such thing as a guarantee. How, then, do experienced Wardens players consistently get winning results? It’s simple: a winning strike is not about the outcome of the individual interaction, but rather the implication it has on the rest of the game.

When a winning Wardens player initiates (or defends against) a strike, they do so with a clear tactical or strategic purpose in mind. They don’t simply do it to “win the strike”; they define a specific goal for this interaction. Did they want to force the opponent to use a certain resource? Did they want to move their melee Warden closer to a back-line support? Did they want to check on a threat their opponent presented? Regardless of what it is, the important part is that they defined a specific concrete outcome that they’re using the strike to achieve.

Now, here’s the part that will blow your mind: none of the goals I listed in the previous paragraph are contingent on “winning” the strike. They don’t care about which Warden gets wounded in the end. These outcomes can be achieved regardless of who actually “wins” the strike. This is how you achieve true Wardens “consistency”; not by winning every interaction, but by redefining what a “win” is to begin with.

The Heuristic

That being said, I won’t just leave you with some philosophical musings. After all, a guide is only as useful as the clear, concrete, and actionable steps you can take to implement its ideas into your play.

When attempting to strike, be it attacking or defending, it’s important that you first understand your intended goal behind doing so. Once you can identify your goals, this informs how much you should be willing to invest in a strike or whether you should even do it at all! This can be very nuanced and deep, but most goals fall under one of these categories:

Positioning

Positioning is listed first for it is the most important goal. Everything in this game is contingent on which Wardens are in which positions. A Warden with many powerful melee attacks is completely useless if they’ve been displaced to an isolated position with no one nearby to attack.

A positioning-oriented goal aims to develop your Wardens or displace your opponent’s Wardens such that the other goals further down the list are easier to accomplish. For example, you can use this strike to move your Warden closer to the opposing throne, making it easier to attack. Bruisers and Supports have great control over positioning and often gain ground while still threatening to wound opponents.

Throne Pressure

Winning the game is all about wounding the enemy throne, so this goal is pretty high-up on the list if you want to win. Confirming a hit on the enemy’s throne quite literally gets you one-third of the way to a win. Be careful, however, as the throne is the most difficult target to attack, with its powerful Assist ability which lends any nearby Wardens a +4 Power boost.

That being said, certain Wardens excel at attacking the throne, often because of their high power values or their massive ranges that let them sneak in hits even against the most fortified of positions. Tank and Bruiser Wardens are good at doing just that.

Point Pressure

Given that the enemy throne is quite literally on the opposite side of the field, opportunities to attack it directly are very scarce. As such, control points are your next best bet. If you control a majority of the points on the map, you can spend your turn to mortar and deal damage directly to the opposing throne; no strikes required. It is therefore very important for you to control points, or at least prevent your opponent from controlling too many.

Wardens that have powerful striking capabilities are amazing at exerting point pressure by either taking the point or defending it from an onslaught of opponent attacks. Look towards Wardens with huge power or excellent displacement such as Tank or Assassins to put pressure on points and threaten mortars on the opponent.

Warden Wounds

If you can’t exert throne or point pressure it is very likely that an opposing Warden is in the way. Sometimes, movement and positioning tricks won’t be enough to get what you want. In these situations, your best recourse is violence. Lots of it. Taking a Warden off the board by defeating them can be a great way to enable other plays down the line as it lessens your opponent’s options. This can pressure them so much that they’ll eventually be forced to muster, which revives a Warden at the cost of a throne life. That brings you closer to a win.

Some Wardens are just built to kill. High speed and excellent ranges are the name of the game when it comes to picking off specific Wardens. You won’t need a lot of power; the main expectation is that the defending Warden won’t even be able to hit you back! Assassins and Bruisers are some premier anti-personnel Wardens that can take out a key target when you need it.

Option Pressure

Information is powerful in Wardens, so having ways to tease out your opponent’s plans and options is great for knowing what you can or cannot deal with. Now, this doesn’t mean that knowing your opponent’s exact attack is strong (or that it will win you a strike), but knowing whether or not that melee Warden actually has a melee attack available changes the way you decide to deal with them.

Therefore, Wardens who can perform “safe” strikes that gain value or stall offense are great at picking apart the opponent’s options. It will either force them to play their options or reveal that they were simply bluffing. You may want to check out Supports and Specialist as great examples of Wardens that can pressure the opponent’s resources.

Card Management

Last and definitely the least is card management. Wardens has a hand size of 10 with a unique rule that straight-up prevents you from drawing more cards once you are at that hand size. This means that you can’t repeatedly stall and draw more cards to filter options. Instead, you have to make do with the cards currently in your hand if you want to see more. Therefore, finding ways to shed cards is pretty important, but if you ever get to a point where this is your main goal, it is very likely that you've mismanaged your other opportunities to begin with!

Nevertheless, this is a solvable problem. Wardens who have powerful artifacts are great at letting you filter out less useful options. Find a decent attack then put strong artifacts on it to create an acceptable strike that frees your hand up for more cards. Check out Bruisers and Supports for some really useful artifacts.

Conclusion

While I have listed the goals here, they’re not as separated as the categories make them out to be. In fact, the best Wardens players strike with such purpose that it often covers 3 or even 4 of the listed goals, giving them compounding advantages outside the actual result of the strike.

Of course, touching all the goals isn’t the be-all end-all of winning strikes. What you spend to achieve those goals matters a lot too! Who cares if you got your Warden in position to attack my throne if doing so cost you the final attack that Warden had? I’d get more into that but this article is long enough as it is. So let’s save that for another time!

My hope is that you come away from this article not just with a heuristic for “what makes a good strike” but, rather, a deeper understanding of the kind of game that Wardens is.

It is a game that rewards you for finding new and novel ways to use familiar tools. It is a game that relishes in presenting players with unfamiliar situations to deal with. It is a game where the fun is learning more about it each time you play.

It is probably one of my favorite games of all time.