The LCG

Promises of Power

Welcome to our final preview article for Team Apoka’s next deluxe expansion for Wahammer 40,000: Conquest, Chronicles of Heroes. If you have not been following us here, our last few articles covered a few of the new keywords and a new warlord from this set but today we are going to talk about something completely different. Today’s article will cover a brand new kind of card being introduced into the game with this deluxe expansion, Pledges!

A pledge is a new type of card called a preparation card. Preparation cards will have the small gear symbol you see in the above image on the right hand side of the card. They are placed face down aside from your deck. When you draw your opening hand you draw one less card for each preparation card you have and then reveal and add the preparation cards to your hand. Preparation cards do count against your deck size so keep that in mind when you are deck building. Since pledges are preparation cards they are added to you hand at the beginning of the game as well! A pledge is special though as you can only play it as your first action in the game during the first deploy phase and cannot be played at any other time. They also cannot be targeted by any other cards in the game because they are special! Lets take a look at a few pledges!

Our first pledge is a pretty straight forward. For your first action on your first deploy phase you can infest a planet! The ability to have an infested planet on turn one of the game is an unprecedented advantage for Tyranids. Lots of their most powerful cards want this and you can get the ball rolling on infesting other planets as well. I can only imagine this card will being a new found power to this faction. The cards at the top of my mind are Subject: Omega, Digestion Pool, Predation, Spore Blast, and a whole slew of other good units. Let’s move on to something a little more complex in terms of pledge cards.

Dark Allegiance is a card a lot of Chaos fan have been waiting for because it benefits faction-based chaos play, and we all know Chaos never wants to work undivided. When you deploy this support you can choose one trait representing one of the four chaos gods. Then after the deploy phase begins you get to search the to 6 cards of your deck for a unit or attachment card with that trait and deploy it at target planet reducing its cost by one! Finally, I can make my Death Guard army deck and it will be functional! But it is also awesome because we get to search for the card we want to deploy for cheaper. Draw a card and played it for one less, I dig it! I am also a sucker for tribal so this card is a huge win for me. But alas, even though trait based pledges are great there is a little more Team Apoka has given in terms of flavor and theme.

Some factions are so special they are allowed their own unit of differentiation. For some pledges, a very specific counter/token is used to track the ability to utilize a that pledges effects. Not all things in war are free and unlike the two previous pledges, sometimes the best ones need to be bought in blood. This is the case with Gladius Strike Force. Once your warlord has attacked the opposing warlord enough you will get a pretty strong benefit. Being able to search/rally two addition cards is nothing to scoff at, but like victory you have to earn it. You can also noticed this card is very specifically themed for the Ultramarines faction and pretty well themed too might I add. There are a slew of pledge that are like this in Chronicles of Heroes so expect to see alto of theme bleeding through these cards.But earning their benefit could be game changing if you know how to use it! Let us now take a look at our pledge. Save the best for last they say…

As a former fan of Netrunner (rest in peace) and a current fan of Liatha, hidden information and bluffing are great mechanics. We have even seen hidden information used in some of the best MTG formats (Commander/EDH and Conspiracy Draft), so I love when I get to see this in other card games. The Flayed Mask is a booby trap for your opponent. When it is deployed on the first action on turn one you get to secretly choose a planet. When your opponent goes to capture that planet the trap is sprung! They must either deal 5 indirect damage to units at the planet, sacrifice a unit or forgo the capture. After a hard fought battle this little surprise may just end up costing someone their best units or maybe even their warlord if they wanna keep the planet.

I hope you enjoyed our coverage of Chronicles of Heroes as much as I enjoyed writing these articles.  What do you think of Pledges as a new card type? How do you feel about Preparation cards as for that matter? Let us know in the comments. Also get ready for the release next Tuesday (December 4th 2018). Living Card Guy out…

-Kyle