From its first moments, Warcraft Rumble is charming and interesting. Positioned as a "game within a game," Warcraft Rumble aims to add more life to the overall Warcraft universe by answering the question: What do the citizens of Azeroth do in their downtime?
Apparently, imbue figurines of themselves and their greatest heroes with life and battle them, that's what.
This isn't the first "game within a game" Blizzard has released, with 2014's TCG Hearthstone also filling that bill. But as Hearthstone approaches its 10th birthday next year, the citizens of Azeroth are apparently getting restless, bringing the Warcraft franchise back to its strategy game roots.
Strategy Session
The premise is simple: some of the most iconic characters from the Warcraft universe, from Jaina Proudmore, Cairne Bloodhoof, Tirion Fordring, and more, as well as the regular troops of Azeroth's armies, are turned crafted into miniatures. Imbued with Arclight magic, these minis come to life and battle it out in a PVP arena, overcoming obstacles such as defensive towers, all to take down the big boss at the end of each match. It has shades of a MOBA and tower defense, with some hero collecting along the way.
While it seems simple on the surface, the actual moment-to-moment gameplay itself has surprisingly some more depth than I initially expected. While Warcraft Rumble features a "rock-paper-scissors" mechanic that helps to dictate which minis are strong and weak against which, it's more nuanced than that. Minis can be upgraded with talents, which makes them stronger overall, allowing a mini to overcome the simple RPS formula if powerful enough.
The minis themselves fall into one of five teams: Alliance, Horde, Beast, Blackrock and Undead. I mean, it is a Warcraft; there was always going to be the traditional factions that have defined its universe since 1994's Warcraft: Orcs and Humans.
The various teams also find five leaders in their ranks, each serving as an archetype to build around. An example Blizzard gave during a press preview of Warcraft Rumble yesterday was the Alliance Leader Tirion Fordring, which heals units on the battlefield.
The first leader I unlocked in my gameplay was the Undead leader Bloodmage Thalnos, which has an ability that sees Thalnos gain one level for every Spell I cast while the Leader unit is alive on the battlefield. This came in handy as I had a low-cost Chain Lightning spell I could cast every few rotations to power up Thalnos until he eventually died. Rinse and repeat.
Mapping It All Out
While the miniatures themselves are the lifeblood of Warcraft Rumble, the maps themselves are the playground they all get to play on. Each map feels distinct. In my playtime no map felt recycled or repeated, though some elements were present across each map, from lane switching toggles, tower capture points, and obstacles that required some solving.
One map, the Dockmaster, sees a curiously named character, Docky Kaang, hurl barrels down the lane, swapping sides periodically during each session. Part of the strategy is ensuring your powerful units are not wiped out by a well-timed barrel from Kaang, so knowing when and where to deploy a mini is key. Another map, an early encounter with Hogger, sees the strategy shift from throwing units at a tower to instead using bombard units to take out enemy archers so that I could move in with my own aerial units.
Another had me capture the high ground and rain spears down on a giant spider who, had I got closer, would spit acid and poison my minis. Toys they may be, but poison still sucks.
It all culminates in maps that are varied and interesting and ones that demand that you think things through before throwing your minis into the fray. This is where Warcraft Rumble comes alive for me - the strategic thinking that ensures victory before a match and during when things might turn against you.
One of the key things I had to learn early on was restraint. Warcraft Rumble has a Gold resource system in game, which is what you spend to pay for your minis. Think Mana in Hearthstone. Knowing to hold my minis back to use them for maximum effect rather than impulsively throw them into the fray was key to winning some of the harder matches.
It's not just about holding back units, but figuring out the optimal order to send them out on the play surface in as well. Warcraft Rumble uses that RPS formula, but it's made easier when you have Tanks leading in front of the more fragile ranged units, all while ensuring Bombards mop up archers before sending in the aerial cavalry. It's a dance of minis that makes each match feel unique as well.
So what's next for Warcraft Rumble?
Warcraft Rumble has already soft-launched in a few territories, such as the Philippines, Canada, and a few others, but it's holding its full global launch for a special occasion: BlizzCon 2023. Warcraft Rumble will launch officially on November 3rd, 2023 across iOS and Android devices during BlizzCon itself, and I'm sure we'll be hearing more about Rumble during the festivities as well.
The standard single-player campaign mode isn't the only way to play when it launches on November 3rd, either. PvP matches pit players against each other for Honor points, and thankfully stats on minis are normalized here, making it more about the skill of the two players rather than who has the more leveled-up army.
Players can also join guilds to play with each other, which will be crucial for the upcoming post-launch raids, the first of which will be the Molten Core. The raids themselves will have to be co-op affairs, with levels to overcome on the way to Ragnaros at the top.
The Heroic game mode, inspired by the Heroic dungeons of World of Warcraft, also brings more challenge to Warcraft Rumble by letting players tackle the same maps they have already completed in the campaign but with harder twists. That same Dockmaster map I mentioned before gets even harder with two Docky Kaangs chucking barrels down the lanes, making timing and the miniature army composition more important than ever.
However, as with all mobile titles, the store is something to watch out for. While the Warcraft Rumble team assured us during a group interview yesterday that the items in the store can all be unlocked through gameplay and that there won't be any "pay to win" concerns, this is really one area that still remains to be seen in the live game itself.
Associate game direct Adam Kugler mentioned in our interview that there is a convenience item you can buy, akin to "buying the box" that provides some benefits such as boosted XP, 50% more coins than normal, and a few other permanent benefits for buying the upgrade. But Kugler mentions that, in the end, the important thing is that the game is designed in a way where the player can't "spend themselves out of a good time."
"We even put experience caps on things so, for example, if you were to spend all the money in the world on the first day, you still can't get to max level of experience. We don't let you do that in the game. We definitely want to make sure that playing the game is the way to progress because that's the most fun. We very much don't want players to be able to spend themselves out of a good time."
The dev team also confirmed in our interview yesterday that there won't be anything like a Battle Pass when Warcraft Rumble launches, eschewing the model seen in games like Overwatch 2 and even Diablo. Purchases instead are meant to make it so you can grow your collection of minis faster, not inject power into a player's arsenal.
At the end of the day, it'll be interesting to see how Warcraft Rumble fairs long-term. But in my short time with Rumble, I'm eager to see more as it continues to develop down the road. Each of the handcrafted missions I played were fun, challenging, but not so difficult that I couldn't just pick up and play for a few minutes and get frustrated. They're short, but fun. Easy to pick up, but offering surprising depth that keeps me coming back at every down moment in my day. Warcraft Rumble reminds me that Blizzard are great at making strategy games, and if anything, it makes me yearn more for a Warcraft 4 than anything else.
For now, I'll just have to grow my mini collection.
