Background

Warsaken is an upcoming digital and physical trading card game from Eclectic Nerds, LLC. The $500 limited edition box set, of which 1000 were made, is the first physical Warsaken product to be made available for purchase to the general public, and contains one foil copy of each card from the Genesis of War set, plus four foil copies of each resource. 

While as of writing I have not been sponsored/hired/endorsed by Eclectic Nerds, because I was among the first to purchase this box set and have been pretty engaged with the game on the Warsaken Discord server (and with its co-creator Brandon), I have received a box from the first printing (the last of twelve boxes available, I'm told) with four misprinted cards corrected in later printings, as well as a test booster pack from Legion of War (the former title of Warsaken during development, and I'm told there are about ten of these left floating around Brandon's office).

The Meat and Potatoes

Here's a summary of everything I got in my package (Mangara for scale):

• The box, containing the following:
  • One numbered and embossed foil certificate of authenticity card - #2 of 1000 (Brandon personally owns #1 and says he isn't selling it, so this is actually the lowest numbered box in consumer hands!). Note that the box itself does not have any such numbering on it.
  • Four foil copies of each resource card (20 total), numbered 700-704 (Generic, Food, Power, Fuel, and Equipment).
  • One foil copy of each card numbered 000-243, 300-313 (Infinite Leaders), 400-413 (Loot Leaders), and 500-509 (G-Force cards) (282 total).
  • All of the above should total 303 cards.

• One Legion of War booster pack. You should not order the limited set with the expectation that you'll get one of these - Brandon was feeling nice when I ordered mine and I'm among the first to buy this set. I'm told there were about 16 of these test packs made (some given to board game YouTubers for the Legion of War Kickstarter preview). I have no plans to open this anytime soon.

According to Brandon, the following cards are misprinted only in the first twelve limited edition sets (should be boxes with certificate numbers 1-12) and were fixed for subsequent printings:

• Card 107 - Overtime Production (Grammar in text: "produces")

• Card 108 - Non-Aggression Treaty (Grammar in card name: "Agression")

• Card 138 - Advanced Weather Station (Missing "001 -" before card number, and missing "Shuffle your arsenal" at the end of the Weather line)

• Card 241 - Burn Notice (Grammar in art: "do disregarding")

Additionally, all three copies of Will (regular, infinite, and loot) are missing a period after "Draw a card" across all printings of the limited set, which will be corrected for future printings.

Print quality and card stock are good - 800 DPI source artwork (text is higher of course), offset printed on smooth 310 GSM German black core paper. No cards came damaged as far as I can tell. Foiling is basic but still looks alright (as far as I can tell, there's no underprinting layer). What exactly the identifiable differences will be between this printing and the Kickstarter/retail printing(s) is unclear for now, but I'm told that the foiling will likely change, the print quality will improve, and the manufacturer/print company will likely change (possibly moving from China to the US).

My only real gripe is that the box does not hold all the cards sleeved. Granted, you do not have to unseal the cards from their plastic prisons (and many collectors/speculators will not), but because I was planning on writing this article and also needed to check the misprints, it wasn't really an option for me. With that said, I'm told that storage solutions that accommodate sleeved cards are something the team wants to keep in mind for Kickstarter/retail.

Is this for you, and is it worth it?

Brandon, co-creator of Warsaken, has said himself that the upcoming 2022 Kickstarter and retail product line will offer significantly more value to the average tabletop player, and I'm inclined to agree. Because it contains all single copies of non-Resource cards (when a playset of a specific card is usually four copies), this box set is not for those looking to actually play Warsaken right now - the target audience for this product being the cross-section of early adopter collectors, investors, and weird board game/TCG nerds, like myself. Even then, $500 is probably going to be a difficult ask at the time of writing, as Warsaken is barely released and there are few who grasp the project enough to know what they'd be getting themselves into. For the 99% of people reading this, it's both my advice and the Warsaken team's advice that you should wait for the Kickstarter or the digital game to launch if you actually want to play the game, and even if you're looking at this from a TCG finance standpoint I can see plenty of other opportunities coming. For the 0.9% that really want to playtest it, a Tabletopia version of the game exists and you should be able to get your hands on it soon.

I now address the 0.1% of madmen like me. Personally, from what I have researched so far about the game and have discussed with Brandon regarding the roadmap and the team's plans for potential challenges down the line, I have confidence that the game will see success and I will be following the project closely. However, although I have strong first impressions, I simply have not playtested the game yet, so you should take that for what it's worth and Do Your Own Research. It's hard to call this anything but an Alpha printing of a TCG, and that one word alone is probably setting off FOMO alarms in your head like crazy, but you should know more about the game beyond this article before dropping $500 on it - TCGs are terrifyingly complex beasts. I, personally, was financially able to reinvest $500 in the market of brand-spanking-new card games, and was able to talk with the creator of the game to get a better grasp on the project, and I'm pretty satisfied with what I got here. However, you're also looking at an outlier who got the lowest publicly available certificate possible, plus four one-of-twelve misprints, plus a unique item from Warsaken's development. I think it's good, but your experience will be different, so DYOR and be an informed consumer.

This is a niche product through and through, decidedly not for everybody - at the moment, appealing only to the most diehard collectors and card game nerds, and a handful of speculators. For the others, you should likely wait for the Kickstarter or the digital version. But for those people like me, it's a solid early offering that I believe has the potential to pay dividends, and I think it looks pretty cool in general.