Warlock: Master of the Arcane Review

If there's one thing that strategy games can generally be counted on for it's ingenuity. There's just something about the genre, be it turn based or real time, that lends itself well to new ideas and concepts. For gamers it means that the big budget games can take more risks without threatening their bottom line, while smaller companies can push more revolutionary concepts in hopes of carving out their own niche. Warlock - Master of the Arcane is no exception to the rule. It's a turn based strategy game that mixes the familiar hex system of the recent Civilization series alongside their Ardanian fantasy elements. It strives to make an impression where other games may have failed by virtue of its creativity. The result is something that's halfway between an absolute mess, and a hilarious amount of fun.

Players start off Warlock with absolutely no tutorial, and though the very core basics of the game are explained at the beginning, this is most definitely a game not meant to be played by anyone brand new to the genre.

While normally guessing your way through the first stages of a game isn't the worst thing, there are a few aspects of the game that would do for an explanation. First, players get to choose a Warlock whom acts as their general/commander figure. The Warlock does not bestow any overall bonuses to their team, and their name is purely ornamental unlike other games where named generals are more significant. What matters when selecting a general are abilities, which can be purchased using ability points.

Players can choose to, for example, allow their Warlock to start with more gold or mana (two major resources in game) and can alternatively select spells they would want to have access too from the very start of the game.

Spells range from low level damage, to midrange buffs and even summon spells that create additional units. What spells players decide to start with heavily influence early game, as well as pave the way for what abilities players will get in later turns.

Mana and gold couple with food to create the three major competing resources, all of which share importance. Every unit (and some buildings) will need one or two of these resources to make, and as long as they're active will consume said resource each turn. This means that players are not necessarily limited by any kind of discernible unit cap, but are instead limited by the growth of their cities. Which by the way, may be extremely different depending on what starting army you decide to play as. So different in fact, you would think there should be a sort of in-depth guide on how to play them.

Welcome to the second most confusing aspect of Warlock: Selecting an army. There are three major teams in the game that players can choose from, each guided primarily by their units as building orders happen to be largely the same.

The humans gain a fair balance of defence and offence, goblins/orcs gain a strange mess of units that are mostly beastmen in nature including some fairly awesome warewolf units, and the undead units are immune to general healing but are a bit more resilient than their fleshy counterparts. All three teams have access to the same general use troop types, and it's not until more advanced units appear that players will see a real difference. What makes Warlock so interesting is that although basic unit types may seem a little restrictive on a 'per team' basis, there's actually quite a bit of variety in the long haul.