Warp’s Edge – a solo review

You are rookie pilot Taylor Minde, stranded in the far and neigh-forgotten outer reaches of space. You seem stuck, but you have a trick up your sleeve – your trusty spaceship has a limited number of warps in it, allowing you to go back through time to face your enemies – only you’re stronger now. Can you escape back to chartered space and not get lost in time and space?

Name: Warp’s Edge
Designer: Scott Almes
Publisher: Renegade Game Studios
Play type: bag building, threat management, variable player powers

What the game is about

In Warp’s Edge, you are a young and aspiring astronaut who is stuck in a remote corner of the galaxy. You are facing a whole horde of enemy ships lead by a fearsome mothership. Luckily you have one trump at your disposal – time. Your space ship is capable of warping, which means you can go back in time with all your upgrades in tact while enemies just ‘reset’. Can you defeat the Mothership before you run out of warps? Those alien invaders’ll never know what hit ’em!

Warp’s Edge was kickstarted last year as the second game in Renegade’s Solo Hero Series. It did not do particularly well, in part thanks to very steep shipping costs. I did not back it but decided to make a late pledge because the game looked very promising.

How the game works

Warp’s Edge is a bag-building game, which not only sounds similar to deckbuilding, it also feels similar. Except it feels better, because you get to stir your hand around in a bag full of tokens every turn.

You are an aspirant pilot who finds himself trapped in a time loop, in which they have a finite number of ‘warps’ to defeat the alien Mothership. As you fight your way through waves of other alien ships, you acquire upgrades to your bag (as well as being able to remove weaker tokens) – which means you start every warp stronger. Defeat the Mothership before the final warp ends, and you’ll be able to survive and tell your heroic tale!

The game comes with a number of different enemies and Motherships, but also different player boards that represent your ‘starfighter’. Each starfighter offers a vastly different play experience because you have a unique ability, a unique token in your bag (and other unique tokens you can acquire), and different starting values for your shields and hull. Furthermore, you get a random starting item card that has a special ability

Each turn you usually face four enemies plus the mothership, which is (again, usually) divided in a few parts. Enemy ships (or mothership parts) can either be destroyed (using Damage tokens) or evaded (using Manoeuvre tokens). If, during a single warp, any ship reaches their maximum value of either damage or evade, you defeat the enemy and gain the reward (usually a token added to your bag). Otherwise, they are stunned and won’t damage you that turn. Defeated enemies are replaced until the deck runs out; at the end of the warp, all undefeated enemies reset their damage forcing you to start over again.

A warp ends when you can’t draw the required five tokens for your turn. Sometimes you will need to be a bit more aggressive in trying not to stun all enemies, but instead to destroy or evade one or two in order to gain enough rewards so you get just another turn.

Besides damage and evade tokens, there are also energy tokens which you can use to buy other tokens or to repair your shields (and defeat certain enemies if you play with the expansion). Rewards you can get are Damage tokens (in denominations of 1, 2 and 3), Evade tokens, more Energy tokens, and POWER tokens. The latter are five different tokens that spell P-O-W-E-R – there are a few of each letter, but each ship has access to a different set of five. These tokens vary wildly in effect. Luckily, the back of the rulebook has a handy reference sheet. Some enemies allow you to gain tokens with a certain letter upon defeat.

One of the things that players (myself included) despise in bag builders and deckbuilders is a distinct lack of agency over how you can remove things from your deck or bag. The way Warp’s Edge does this is by forcing you to remove a token from your discard every time you take shield damage. You can burn away weak tokens quickly, although it might cost you a turn if you do it to recklessly.

Theme, art & flavor

Playing Warp’s Edge almost kinda feels like starring in a YA sci-fi novel. You’re this young kid – rookie pilot Taylor Minde – who has to prove himself, yet finds himself alone and with a terrible task at hand, surrounded by emotional trinkets from his past. The artwork plays into this style; while young and flashy, there are also some cool pop culture references that nerd kids from the 80’s like myself can pick up on.

The pressure you’re under does come through beautifully. You’re not gonna ease into your mission; you’re right in the thick of it. The time travel of warping back in time also comes through reasonably well (though admittedly for me it took a Rahdo podcast before I figured it out, but now I know what to look for).

The game comes with a story booklet that allows you to use minor story choices to pick a starting setup. This was of little added value to me, although I can believe it can increase engagement and give the game a prologue of sorts.

How does it play?

Right from the get-go you might be facing dilemma’s. Should I just suck up some damage to thin out my bag and get the cool new tokens? Should I defeat this enemy using Damage or Evade? Warp’s Edge has you hitting the ground running. There’s no respite. The downside is that this game could feel hard and punishing, even random at times.

The learning curve isn’t steep; the difficulty is. You really need to do a few trial runs before you get your grip on this game. You are figuring out three things: how the game works, how to best use your starfighter, and how you need to play in order to beat the Mothership. This means that no two games are the same (since besides those factors, you also need to take into account the different enemy ships that can come out), and there is (as far as I can tell) no default strategy you can follow disregarding both your starfighter and the Mothership.

The game invites you to dive in and develop strategies which will need a constant tactical rebalancing based on factors like items, available tokens, drawn tokens, and enemies. I really felt intrigued to keep pushing in order to finally defeat that one Mothership. Just one more try! Especially if you retain your starfighter (and thus your P-O-W-E-R tokens), you’re good to go for another try in no-time. I have picked up some general tactical notions while playing, but I’m still far from the point of being comfortable to play against any enemy. Right now they all seem anywhere from challenging to downright unbeatable! Which means Warp’s Edge has me coming back for more for some time to come.

What I like

• Both strategic and highly tactical
• Lots of interesting decisions in a relatively short timeframe
• High replay value and ‘one more game’ attraction

What I didn’t like

• It’s not like the rulebook is great, it’s just that I found myself looking this up a lot because I kept missing small rules (or had questions)
• The game has a steep learning curve (especially in conjunction with the rules issue mentioned above) that could turn you off

Expansion

The Viren Invasion expansion came as part of my (late) Kickstarter pledge. To be honest I have a tough time calling this an expansion, since it’s just the stretch goals boxed in a separate packaging. I do like what they add – more stuff, including enemy ships that need Energy to be defeated – but I dislike the title it was given.

Other than that I’m happy with my all-in bundle. It also came with a compact playmat – sturdy and highly functional. The main reason for me to up my pledge, though, where the plastic tokens that came with it to replace the standard cardboard ones. Too bad some of those are starting to show wear or came damaged out of the box, but Renegade Game Studios has promised to replace all of those for free. That’s a class act, Renegade.

Conclusion

While I do still like Coffee Roaster, Warp’s Edge has definitely taken the top slot in the bag builder genre for me. While Coffee Roaster is a game of relaxation and minor decisions, Warp’s Edge puts you in a tight spot right away, making it clear this is not going to be a routine space flight. And that is a good thing – Warp’s Edge is a fantastic bag builder game that I am not nearly done with.

Worth noting: after having played and reviewed this game, I decided to go ahead and bump Coffee Roaster down by one star. Check out my adjusted review here.

Rating: ★★★★☆

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