Warcraft Rumble: Blizzard’s New Strategy Game
Warcraft Rumble recently released onto Android and IOS, bringing the world of Azeroth to small screens. It is a mini based champion collection strategy game. The stages each have a MOBA-like feel where each side has a tower that must be defended. Minis are placed on the field and instantly start marching forward, but each placement starts a cooldown for every slot. Placing forces without some thought will make it difficult to get through later stages.
There will be some well known enemies, like Hogger, that make an appearance. There are five modes to challenge players. Level up champions to take on the campaign, daily challenge quests, Arclight Surge, dungeons and, eventually, PVP. Players will face off head to head to gain seasonal rewards. There will also be new challenges every two weeks when maps rotate. The first season introduces Slyvannas Windrunner as a commander, a mini with unique abilities.
The minis available to players aren’t limited to heroes. There are AOE (area of effect) spells that will allow players to take out that horde of angry chickens, and other enemies. This variety does help each fight feel different, even if a stage needs to be repeated. It can also lead to the game feeling unbalanced when one attempt leads to a flood of commanders obliterating the player’s tower almost instantly. Yet, the next attempt feels so easy that it seems like a completely different stage.
Warcraft Rumble has the expected Alliance and Horde factions. It also includes the Beast, Black Rock, and Undead factions. The Alliance has a focus on healing and magic heavy champions. The Horde allows players to build up gold faster, have faster attacking troops, and can stun enemies. Beast leaders can disable enemy defenses while Black Rock leaders reward using air and elemental magic users. The Undead faction gives you both a never ending army of skeletons and Bloodmage Thalnos who grows stronger with every cast. Finding a good synergy between these factions is key.
The game gets started pretty quickly. Tutorials are given in a brief dialogue at the beginning of a match. Warcraft Rumble starts off in Westfall and even here the training wheels come off after the first few matches. This can be good if you’re familiar with the game type. If the cool mechanic is difficult to get a grasp on, it may be harder to move onto the next area. Even then players shouldn’t be stuck indefinitely. Warcraft Rumble is a casual game in that sense. Players who are new to strategy games shouldn’t be put off.
Warcraft Rumble is off to a promising start. It will be interesting to see what changes are to come. Will we get new modes? Which iconic characters will make an appearance in later seasons? Fans of strategy games and World of Warcraft are in for a fun time.
