The next 40K videogame is a free-to-play card game

Not content with the Warhammer x Magic: The Gathering crossover due in August, the grim far future setting of Warhammer 40,000 is coming to a new collectible card game of its own called Warpforge. Just announced as part of the annual Warhammer event Skulls for the Skull Throne, Warpforge will be a free-to-play card game based on "brutal and fast-paced skirmishes."

According to the press release, it'll have singleplayer campaigns for each of its factions, as well as multiplayer with "draft and constructed competitive modes, in both regular play and time-limited competitions with unique rules of engagement." Events called alliance wars will apparently "test the mettle of even the most seasoned veterans."

Warpforge is being made by Everguild, who were previously responsible for Horus Heresy: Legions, a card game set during a civil war 10,000 years in the 40K universe's past (a slice of backstory that's been the subject of like 60+ novels and counting). Legions was a thoroughly decent budget CCG where your cards slammed down onto the battlefield via drop pods fired from orbit, which was a nice touch. The card art was a bit uneven, but based on what's been shown Warpforge seems a lot more slick and unified in that respect.

While it'll launch with cards based on some of the more popular Warhammer 40,000 factions, with necrons, orks, eldar, space marines, Chaos space marines, and tyranids shown in the promotional material, other armies will follow in regular expansions. Expect the likes of the t'au, sisters of battle, dark eldar, and probably imperial guard to follow, but maybe don't hold your breath for more obscure picks like the squats—space dwarf bikers with badass battle trains who deserve a game of their own some day (#justice4squats).

Warpforge is scheduled to release in 2023 on Steam, with a mobile version to follow and cross-platform support promised. It's already got the obligatory Discord channel.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.