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We have released our upcoming digital and physical card game as a PnP for a final round of feedback, as well as a sort of reward for the people who have been following the project for a while. We're going to be taking it onto Kickstarter in May and would love to get opinions, especially on the instructions booklet which is still pretty WIP.



War Haven is a strategic card game with a focus on battlefield maneuvering and calculated risk. The game tells a story of intergalactic cataclysm and strife. A wave of radiation threatens to wipe out all life in the known universe, and drives all the sentient races who can to migrate to the single planet they can reach that the oncoming disaster will not. Crippled by the expense of the migration effort and cut off on the surface of a strange new world, societies collapse and new allegiances are built around enigmatic and powerful individuals.

Each player controls one such individual, their commander, who along with their other five character cards comprises their army. The game is played by moving and attacking on a board with your character cards while playing support cards from your hand to aid them in destroying the enemy commander. The cards in a deck can be assembled freely from the game's three races, but support cards are limited in who they play with based on character race and class.


The game starts with a blinder placed in the middle of the board as each player arranges their six character cards in a battle formation on their side. The blinder is then removed, players draw 5 cards from their support decks and the battle begins.

Each turn, players have three actions to spread across their characters. When they've taken three actions, they draw a card from their support deck and end their turn. These actions can be used to move a character, attack with a character, or play a spell or upgrade card. The fact that your options far outnumber your available actions creates an inescapable economy of action in the game, and removes the need for resources or a fixed action order.

Combat is handled by each player rolling a D6 and adding it to their attack or defense stat, respectively, and subtracting the difference (if there is one) from the defender's health. However, the combatants can be reinforced with permanent upgrades or one-shot attack or defense support cards, and the characters of War Haven have been carefully balanced in their access to these cards. Generally the lower the stats a character starts with, the nastier the tricks it may have up its sleeve..

The combined effect of the game's features is somewhere between a battle card game, a tactical board game and a simplified tabletop RPG. An average game plays out in 30-45 minutes but there are outliers on both sides of those numbers.


We feel that War Haven is essentially gameplay complete, but we'd love to hear any ideas you have. We do have some minor design tweaks planned for the card frames, bringing out the text more and enlarging character icons, etc. and the instruction booklet is still a bit of a WIP.

If you have any questions you can shoot an email to [email protected] or [email protected] or just ask right here :)

You can download the PnP @ http://www.fringegames.net/print-play.html (http://www.fringegames.net/print-play.html)
download includes the full set of cards, board and divider image, and a WIP instruction manual.