• May 24th, 2009
  • The Generals

Hello all, and welcome to the first in our series of preview articles for Forged Unity.  Over the next few weeks, the staff here at Chaotic will be bringing you a sneak peek of the cool new cards in the next set coming out June 17th.  I am fortunate enough to have the honor of introducing what I believe to be the most exciting set in Chaotic history.

Forged Unity tells the story of the final stand of the dryland tribes of Perim against the M’arrillian Invasion.  As more and more fall under the brainwashing power of the M’arrillian Chieftains, the will of the tribes to fight back the invaders on their own begins to fail.  Lord Van Bloot, under the control of Aa’une, wrests control of Underworld City from Chaor and drives him out entirely.  Perim looks to be all but lost.

It was in this chaos that Tangath Toborn brought the tribes together.  In his training under Vidav, he realized the strength that came from unity, and he sent word to the leaders of all of the tribes that they must stand and fight together.  Vidav had tried to preach this message of collaboration before, but the other tribes would hear nothing of it then.  Now, however, with Perim on its knees, the leaders of the four tribes listened to Tangath’s words.  Each sent representatives to lead the united armies of Perim into battle against the M’arrillians.  Enter the Generals.

     

As Forged Unity tells the story of the tribes coming together to fight as one, many of the cards in the set encourage multi-tribe armies.  The Generals are the most prominent of these.  Each tribe has one general – Tangath for the Overworld, Barath Beyond for the Underworld, Gorram for the Danians, and Grantkae for the Mipedians – who is representative of the way that tribe works with the others in the battle against the M’arrillians.

Tangath Toborn, the Overworld general, learns from the strengths of those he leads in battle.  From the Underworld, he learns to better wield Fire attacks.  From the Danians, he learns to adapt to his enemies.  And from the Mipedians, he learns the subtle art of disarming battlegear.  But he puts these to use to protect his allies, as he only has these abilities on your opponent’s turn, when he can step into harm’s way as a Defender.  Tangath is a general who leads from the front lines and who fights to keep his troops alive, making him a perfect representative of the Overworld approach. 

Gorram, the Danian general, takes a very different perspective on the role.  Unlike Tangath, Gorram doesn’t fight to protect his allies.  In fact, he doesn’t do much fighting himself at all.  What Gorram does is bring the Danian hive mentality to the allied tribes, in which the sacrifice of one is made for the good of the collective.  In Gorram, we tied the new “compost” mechanic into the multi-tribe theme of the set, giving bonuses to all of your creatures based on the tribes of the creatures in your discard pile.  While Tangath throws himself in front of his allies to defend them, Gorram empowers your army for each creature who has been defeated!

Our goal with the general design was to make them all care about the different tribes you play with, but in different ways.  Two of them – Tangath and Barath – are fighters themselves, who are more powerful based on the other tribes in your army, while the others – Gorram and Grantkae – empower the rest of your creatures.  Each of them have different effects based on what tribes are in your army.  You’ve already seen Tangath and Gorram now, but you’ll have to wait for the others! 

One concern we had during design was that a deck with nothing but generals would be a natural fit if the generals each empowered and were powered up by the presence of the other tribes.  From a story line perspective that just didn’t make much sense – the generals worked together against the M’arrillians, but they each led their own armies, and we didn’t want them all showing up together regularly.  Our solution was to make them Legendary, which also made a great deal of sense for the story, since they are all powerful heroes who step up to save Perim in a time of great strife.  That gave them a much more epic feel, as well as avoiding the possibility for the all general deck that broke with the story.  Double victory!

It was important to our design that the generals were powerful and exciting.  Before Forged Unity, most competitive decks tended to be of a single tribe.  There are a lot of reasons for this, including powerful Loyal creatures like Maxxor and Chaor, as well as being able to consistently use counters from any of your creatures to play your Mugic.  In order to make up for the costs that come along with playing multi-tribe, we had to create sufficient incentives to play with two, three, four, or even five tribes.  I can assure you that both Tangath and Gorram have seen a lot of action in our decks, and you’re likely to see them across from you if you battle a Codemaster any time soon!

The Generals are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the multi-tribe theme of Forged Unity.  The Generals look at each other tribe and have effects based on whether your army has that tribe.   Others you’ll see in future previews, look at tribes in different ways, and some cards even let you give creatures additional tribes.  Keep coming back here for articles as we reveal new cards up until the pre-release events on June 13th – 14th!

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