We’ve had the new Magic: The Gathering Warhammer 40K sets in our hands for a few days now and it’s been a blast! Do check out our unboxing video below for a quick look at each set and how the new surge foil treatment looks like –
For Warhammer 40K players who are giving Magic: The Gathering a shot for the first time, be prepared for a steep learning curve. A key component that is missing in these sets would be a primer or guide to give new players an idea of their deck’s playstyle.
Otherwise, the entire set is a blast to play! All the individual sets have a strong flavour and have awesome mechanics that represent each Warhammer 40K race but not all of them are made equal.
Necrons
The tomb lords and cybernetic skeletons are the dominant set among the four races. Theming-wise, the Necrons rely heavily on graveyard reanimation and are able to continually resurrect the troops continually. The balance here for the Necrons is their lack of speed – most of their card actions are returned back to the player’s hand instead of directly onto the battlefield. This requires a vast pool of mana to pilot the deck effectively.
Thankfully, being only a mono-color deck, the Necrons are easy to learn and play plus they have quite a good number of flying creatures that bring them to victory.
Tyranids
If you like big and massive monsters, the Tyranids are the race for you. Everything about the deck is about making creatures insanely big to roll over the opponent with the use of +1 / +1 counters.
With plenty of mana-generating cards, getting to the table a massive creature in the early game is a common sight. However, their ultimate weakness here is board wipes and creature removals which the Tyranids have little defense against.
Chaos
The Chaos Warhammer 40K commander deck is a bit of a mixed bag mechanics-wise. While it does bring about quite a bit of chaos (pun-intended) to the table, it really comes down to the luck of the draw a fair bit.
With pretty expensive cards in the deck that have limited utility, the Chaos deck is certainly fun to play but doesn’t have a clear winning strategy that is apparent immediately. In most game sessions, the Chaos player tends to have a lack of plays to execute. But, once the big cards hit the table, this deck can go from humdrum to a massive threat in a matter of seconds.
This deck is recommended for experienced players as it can be pretty challenging to understand but the fun factor can be really high.
Imperium
Compared to the rest of the decks, the humans in the Imperium are by far the weakest of the lot. When you’re facing a giant 38/38 Swarmlord, it does put into perspective how these folks stand their ground in the big mean universe.
Thankfully, most of the cards in the Warhammer 40K deck are made for players to swarm plenty of creatures onto the battlefield. Plus, each of them has strong synergies with each other to make full use of their massive numbers to give one another passive abilities and triggers.
Sadly, they are only human overall and this means that in terms of strength there’s only so much guile that can win them over.
In the games played, the Imperium doesn’t have much impact on the battlefield and does struggle against the other Warhammer 40K decks.
Depending on your play group, the new Magic: The Gathering Warhammer 40K commander sets can be a solid hit. Each of these decks is well-balanced and self-contained and have done the Warhammer IP justice in terms of capturing the flavour of each race
Gerald currently straddles between his love of video games and board gaming. There’s nothing that interests him more than trying out the newest and fanciest gadget in town as well. He dreams of publishing a board game sometime in the future!