Stats:
No. of players: 2-4
Amount of time to play: 60-90 min
Age requirements: 12+
Set-up time: 5-10 minutes

Ultimate Weapons is the third expansion for Warmachine: High Command – Faith & Fortune. It adds colossals and epic warcasters to the Faith & Fortune factions.

Ultimate Weapons Description:

If you have not played High Command before, you can read my overview of the rules and review here. If you are interested in how the factions from the Faith & Fortune core set play, you can read about them here. The rest of this post is going to focus on some of the new cards in the Ultimate Weapons expansion.

The Convergence of Cyriss faction gets the epic warcaster, Directix. He costs 5 War to rush has 5 Power and allows you to return all warjack cards from your discard pile to your hand. This faction’s colossal is Prime Axiom. Available in the yellow, purple and red detachments, it has 4 Power and 8 Health, and is worth 2 VPs. Its special ability lets you deploy or rush a Servitor to its location for free. The Optifex Directive is a warrior that will help you get the colossal out. It has Mechanical Mastery that lets you use War, Command or a combination of them when paying for a colossal.

Rahn, Paragon of House Shyeel is the new warcaster for Retribution of Scyrah. He has 4 Power and when rushed you can move any cards from their current locations to another one. Their colossal, Hyperion, has 3 Power and 8 Health and is worth 1 VP. When present with a warcaster, the Hyperion adds that warcaster’s base Power to its Power. Arcanist Savant Emyliss Shyeel is a warrior that possesses Mechanical Mastery. It works the same as the Convergence’s Optifex Directive’s ability.

The Four Star Syndicate has a new warcaster, Shae, Rouge of the Western Seas. He has 4 Power and can destroy one enemy at his location for each location card you have in your hand. The Galleon is a colossal warjack with 4 Power and 7 Health. He grants you +2 Power when you attack at another location and is worth 2 VPs. Like the previous two factions the Four Star Syndicate has a warrior with the same Mechanical Mastery ability.

With just 3 Power you might think Gorten, Hammer of Rhul is kind of weak for an epic war caster. But then you read his ability Legacy of the Clan. When you rush Gorten you can go through deck to find up to two cards with Grundback in their name and place them at his location. In addition to gaining a lot of Power quickly, having two units to help you capture a location is nice. The Ghordson Earthbreaker is a colossal with 2 Power and 9 Health and is worth 1 VP. Its Driller ability gives enemies at its location a max of 5 Health. Thor Steinhammer fills the role of the Mechanical Master on this faction.

Quick Review of the Ultimate Weapons Expansion:

Ultimate Weapons adds a lot of power to the Faith and Fortune factions. This helps them compete with decks from the original Core Set and the Hordes factions too. Now all the factions have access to colossal and battle engines.

The components for this expansion are in line with the rest in the series. The art is good and the cards are durable. There are no new rules introduced in this expansion.

The new cards continue the themes of the Faith & Fortune factions. And they finally feel robust enough to take on factions from the first two core sets. There is a big difference in the way newer factions pay for colossals. The colossals in the other sets have resource cards that are worth more when used to deploy or rush a colossal. This expansion uses unit cards and the Mechanical Mastery special ability to help get the big guys out. The added flexibility is nice but the new units only help with colossal. The old resource cards helped with battle engines too. It is not a big change but is worth noting.

If you have the Faith & Fortune Core Set and really enjoy the factions in it, pick this up. If you play Faith & Fortune against a player with colossal in their deck this is almost a must buy. If you are just starting to enjoy the Faith & Fortune factions, you should have this on your radar. You’ll want it soon enough.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 4 out of 6
Luck 4 out of 6
Player Interaction 4 out of 6
Replay Value 5 out of 6
Complexity 4 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6