For me, one of the great product successes Games Workshop have had over the past 12 months has been the release of the "Battle Magic Cards" and the subsequent updates for race-specific spells each time a new Army Book is released. These must be very cheap to produce but I expect they sell well and certainly enhance the playability of the game.
I would love to see GW do the same for Psychic Powers in 40k. They could either do this as a generic set for current codex releases or as a race by race release. Again they would be very cheap to produce but would greatly enhance playability.
Where I find they work is that through access they enhance knowledge of your opponent's options and that they can act as a tabletop record of when a particular effect is in play. This reduces the potential for confusion/disagreements among players - which has to be a good thing.
For me they would be a cheap addition to the 40k players arsenal and another moneyspinner for GW.
What would that do to the focus in the game towards psychic powers? There is after all, no "psychic phase" to the game.
ReplyDeleteThat said, cards of that sort are mighty handy. I would love to have some "unit" cards that contain information like what I get from an Army Builder print out.
It's something I could see happening with 6th (as that would be an easy thing to focus marketing/planing for) but not really something I can see happening with the current rules set. At the moment there isn't really enough variety between powers, enough people who use units which take powers or indeed that many powers in general (plenty of duplicates) to justify something like this. The Magic cards work because they are a core mechanic of the WFFB game which every single race makes use of and will encounter in 99% of games (except Dwarf vs Dwarf games really). They are also generated randomly, so you always need to buy the entire pack. Psychic powers on the other hand are non existent in a decent chunk of (admittedly mostly older) codices, and even among armies which do have them not everyone uses them. An expansion of the rules for psychic powers is something I could see happening for 6th though (a psychic/start of turn phase, standardised psychic defence for any army and maybe even generic powers), in which case cards would definitely be a good idea.
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