Basics

Minis are the basic ‘units’ in Warcraft Rumble. Minis have traits which describe their abilities. For example, the Fast trait indicates a certain movement speed, whereas Cycle is for minis that have a base cost of 2g or less.

All minis can be classified as either ranged, flying, melee, or spells. Loosely speaking, ranged counters flying, flying counters melee, and melee counters ranged. Note, flying minis are never considered melee even if they fight in close combat, like Harpies. Spells stand outside of this triad as temporary effects on the battlefield.

The other important trait for each unit is the family it belongs to. For now, this is either Alliance, Horde, Beast, Blackrock, or Undead.

An army is six minis + one leader. Leaders are special, named minis. Each leader has six slots, each associated with a trait. When a mini of a matching trait is placed in the slot you get a level bonus to that mini, starting at +1 (Bronze) and upgraded to +3 (Gold). Three of those slots are fixed, and three can be chosen.

Each army comes with a Kobold who can mine gold for you, making the total size of an army eight. Chests can be opened by ranged or melee minis but not flying.

In a mission, four minis from your army are available to you at all times. The initial four are selected at random, with the remaining three forming the ‘deck’. As you play a mini, it is placed at the bottom of the deck, and replaced in your hand by the top.

The primary currency in the game, used to buy minis, talents and so on is gold. The bulk of your gold will be rewarded by completing campaign missions.

Basic Content Types

There are multiple types of content available to play. The immediately available one is the campaign which takes you on a tour of Kalimdor (to the west) and Eastern Kingdoms. As you unlock each zone, you’ll be presented with five missions to complete, culminating in a ‘boss’ with a larger reward. When you defeat the mission with any army, the mission is marked completed and you are rewarded with typically a small amount of gold.

Next are quests. These are presented as a choice of three minis to grant experience to. Two of those will be taken from your currently equipped army. A quest allows you to replay a randomly-selected mission, awarding experience for the chosen mini upon victory. The mission is typically made slightly easier by disabling some of the mechanics from the campaign, as well as giving them a different army.

Quests come in three varieties - uncommon, rare, and epic, awarding an increasingly large amount of experience.

Third is the daily meter, filled by completing any content, granting up to three rewards a day (typically experience tomes). Rare and epic quests fill up more slots of the daily meter, with overflow being captured.

Other types of content will be covered below.

Mini Progression

A mini can be upgraded in two ways. The first is by gaining XP they can grow in levels. The second is upgrading the rarity of a mini. Each level of rarity adds a bonus level to the mini, as well as unlocking a talent slot. Talents are additional abilities that a mini can acquire, such as an invulnerability shield at low health for Tirion, or summoning Skeletal Mages for Baron Rivendare. You can have as many choices for talents as you have slots, but you can only select and gain the benefit of one talent at a time.

In the ‘GRID’ (shop), purchasing a mini for the first time unlocks that mini for use. That mini can be purchased again, adding a star to it. The number of stars required to upgrade is listed, starting at 3 to upgrade a mini from common to uncommon, 10 for uncommon to rare, and 25 for rare to epic.

Each upgrade also requires Arclight Energy, but this currency is generally abundant enough to not matter until you get to the epic upgrades. Upgrading from uncommon onwards requires cores. A rare core from uncommon to rare and an epic core from rare to epic.

A leader has the same upgrade path as a regular mini, with the additional ability to have their slots upgraded by completing dungeons. Completing a dungeon with a leader allows you to upgrade a slot for that leader, chosen randomly.

Other Progression

As you complete missions, you will be awarded sigils. Sigils are used to unlock zones in the campaign map, content such as dungeons, PvP or surges, as well as granting some small rewards as you collect them like minis or leaders.

The other major form of progression is your collection level. As you unlock, or level up your minis in either quality or level, you will be awarded points towards your collection level. Each time you level up, you get a small amount of gold, as well as increasing the multiplier of any experience you gain. Because unlocking a mini is the cheapest source of collection level points, it is a pretty good strategy to just buy at least 1 of every mini.

Dungeons and Families

The dungeons are unlocked as you progress through the campaign. A single dungeon is available for completion each week, rotating through. Completing a dungeon requires facing a gauntlet of three missions in a row, each victory granting you an additional try on a mission before starting from the beginning again.

Before facing each mission, you will be given a choice out of three relics, which offer powerful bonuses for the rest of the dungeon. These will generally be tailored for the army that you select to take with you into the dungeon.

Completing a dungeon awards you with a leader upgrade and increases the level of the minis in the dungeon by 1. You can then try the dungeon at the higher level for another reward. Failing the dungeon leaves it at the same level.

The choice of leaders available to complete a dungeon changes each week, rotating through the families. The family week also determines which leaders are available to purchase in the GRID.

Surges

Twice a week, two zones (from the campaign) will surge, enabling them for temporary re-completion for gold rewards. The missions will be modified. One zone will have a ‘wacky’ modifier like all minis have bloodlust, and the other will give you a pre-made army from two families. If you have a talent unlocked for a mini, it will be enabled in the pre-made army.

The current and future surges can be found here.

Heroic Campaign

Eventually, you will unlock the heroic campaign. This allows you to complete every zone again, with a few changes. The first is that clearing a mission now requires clearing it on every single family. The second is that the map has a new mechanic for you to solve, and enemy minis now have talents equipped.

Each family clear will reward experience, and clearing with all 5 families grants 300g. For this reason, it is useful to have a army and leader ready for each family. If you don’t like or care about a particular family, here is an easy option for each:

PvP

Players can face each other in combat, earning rating and rewards. You have player rating and leader rating. Your top three leader ratings combine to form your player PvP ranking. The map, modifier, and tower type available for pvp combat are rotated periodically.

Mini levels are capped up until 3k rating, at which point they become your level in PvE, cut by a third, rounded up. So a level 12 mini will become level 4, but a level 13 mini will become level 5. There is an attempted matchmaking of army levels, but it is admittedly imperfect, trading between queue times and match fairness.

PvP grants rewards for rating. Rewards before 9k rating are earned once, and rewards after 9k can be earned again each season. Each season rotation has a rating decay.

Raids

As of pre-release, Raids are not available. It is suggested (but not confirmed), that they will be completed cooperatively with other players.

Guilds

Players can join guilds. By the time you read this, perhaps raids will be out and their true purpose revealed. But for now, the main purpose are seasonal guild rewards, in the form of minis, cores, experience tomes, and cosmetics. You can contribute to your guild by gaining PvP rating or clearing surges. Leaving a guild leaves your contributions with that guild.

The GRID

The GRID is where you buy minis. Each purchase clears the purchases horizontally and vertically aligned with it, dropping others down and introducing new ones. Minis can be moved along the grid at a cost of 5g to avoid this. Otherwise, the bottom row of the grid is dropped each day.

Big Red Buttons are an additional reward that allows you to reset the entire grid at once. They are awarded by completing surges.

F2P Btw?

So far, all purchases seem to only enable you to reach certain power points faster, rather than giving you something a f2p player cannot. I think it is reasonably comfortable to play without spending, with the exception of the Arclight Booster, which grants you a significant increase in gold and xp generation from all sources. The price (for now) is moderate, and the rewards generous, so if you want to play ‘seriously’ I would suggest taking it as the cost of purchasing the game.

For which minis you should invest in, this is a reasonable start. There are no useless minis, but you will find it easier to slot the higher usage minis into more armies.