Have you ever played “Warhammer: Fantasy Battle?”

Or, perhaps, “Warhammer 40,000?” “Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay?” How about a  little “Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online?” How about a little “Space Hulk,” “Battlefleet Gothic,” “Dreadfleet: Pirate Battles on the Warhammer High Seas,” “Warhammer: Chaos in the Old World” or “Dark Millenium” CCG action?

I guess my point here is that Games Workshop’s Warhammer line of products is at once diverse, broad in scope and more than a little intimidating.

The two flagship products, “Warhammer: Fantasy Battle” and “Warhammer 40,000,” are both classic, long-supported tabletop miniature games.

The dedication of the fans who take part in both of these games can sometimes be staggering. These are, after all, people who buy miniatures en masse, put them together, paint them in extreme detail and then devote hours upon hours to using them in complex army-on-army battles.

Heck, I got a little intimidated just expressing that thought in sentence form.

However, if you happen to be anything like me you’re probably drawn to mythos that provides the background and flavor to all things “Warhammer.” I’ve always wondered what makes either of the two major settings (“Fantasy Battle” is a fantasy setting and “40,000” is a fantasy/sci-fi setting) inspire such dedication. That’s not to belittle the games themselves, which are without a doubt addictive, but what makes a Chaos God tick within the confines of this pseudo-gothic, strangely Germanic setting?

With such questions as those floating around my encephalic landscape, it was inevitable I would eventually dig into the confines of “Warhammer: Invasion,” one of Fantasy Flight’s living card game (LCG) products.

The initial starter set for “Invasion” is quite similar to other Fantasy Flight LCG offerings: It has everything that’s needed to play a two-player game ready to go. Once you’ve had time to parse the rules a few (hundred) times.

That didn’t turn out to be the case, though. In actuality, my opponent and I both had the rules figured out (sans the ever-present strange corner cases that come up in any game) within two play sessions.

That aspect, combined with just how strategic a game it is, proved quite shocking. Here is a collectible (sorry, “living”) card game with a virtually nonexistent learning curve. Not to mention strategic play, elegant design, a cool universe of flavor in which to exist and fascinating card interactions.

Each player has a capitol that’s comprised of three zones: Kingdom, Battlefield and Quest. Each zone has 8 hit points that it can sustain before it catches fire. If two of your zones are on fire, you’ve lost.

The Kingdom zone is what provides a player with resources to cast cards each turn. The Battlefield is where units can be sent out to attack the opponent’s capitol. The Quest zone defines how many cards a player draws per turn.

What defines how many resources or cards one gets per turn, is the amount of power present in each zone. The Kingdom has a base power of three, the Quest a base of one and cards, whether they be units (creatures) or support cards (buildings, ships or fortifications) have an amount of power which they add to that zone.

Power also represents how much damage a unit does when attacking from the Battlefield to one of the opponent’s zones.

And, that’s it, those are the basics. There are more types of cards and other rules, but that’s what one needs to play his or her first game of “Invasion.” All the other minutia is fairly self-explanatory and easy to parse while playing the game.

There are, of course, weaknesses within the system. No game can escape that.

“Invasion,” like any other deck-based card game can easily fall prey to frustrating bad draws. Sometimes a player’s deck strictly refuses to cough up anything useful. This is, however, ameliorated somewhat by playing cards into one’s Quest zone allowing one to draw more cards on subsequent turns.

There’s also another problem distinctly related to the LCG model. That problem is overpowered cards.

LCGs start with a base box with a first set of cards to build with. From there expansions are released on a monthly basis with the occasional “large” expansion that provides more cards.

The problem that comes from this is that certain factions (currently there are six) will tend to have power cards that outclass other decks’ either in shear power or in the number that come in an expansion.

What it comes down to is that certain decks will inevitably be something slightly more than just “the deck to beat.” There’s some real potential for frustration there.

It’s fortunate that the rest of the game is so engaging that those games that end in great frustration tend to be overshadowed by the truly great games.

Those great games invariably involved deep thought on play choices, some well developed boards, a tense battle for the upper hand and a well deserved sense of accomplishment, victory or not, afterwards.