War on Terror the Board Game

Review From Boardgamegeek.com

The World's Most Dangerous Game!

After all of the controversy surrounding Terror Bull Games’ WAR ON TERROR and its banishment from joining the more family friendly and politically correct games on show at Essen 2006 (such as MR. JACK, a game about a serial killer eviscerating prostitutes), it appeared that it was either the world’s most dangerous game or simply another one of those topical “novelty” games destined to be forgotten as attentions waned. Because of the publicity, it also became easy to dismiss as the product of a bunch of politically charged, attention-seeking upstarts pushing all the right buttons in a world gone mad over terrorism and the United States’ hugely unpopular war on Iraq. From a gaming perspective- with the notable exception of the classic NUCLEAR WAR-satirical, political games such as WAR ON TERROR have a pretty poor track record in terms of actual gameplay and interest to anyone looking for more than just a couple of laughs. I was quite surprised to find that beyond the satire and the gimmick of including a balaclava festooned with “EVIL” in big red letters, WAR ON TERROR is a surprisingly smart design that manages to successfully merge theme, mechanics, and political commentary into a very playable and entertaining game that will likely offend no one other than gamers who prefer wooden cubes to WMDs.

So let’s weed out the audience for this game (and this review) right up front. If you have any kind of issue with spinners, games where you can literally be completely decimated in one round, or where other players can nuke you for no better reason than to make you suffer then run away screaming from WAR ON TERROR. If you want to play games where your choices are based on long-term efficiency strategies and so-called “elegant” mechanics, then save your pension check for the next Alea game. Cards and dice drive most of the action so the luck-adverse might want to check out now as well. If you've ever posted a comment on Boardgamegeek decrying kingmaking, imbalance, or that a game is "broken" because you lost, go cry in Papa Aldie's lap. For everybody else, get together 4-6 rowdy, bad-mouthed friends and get ready to have a good time as world empires and terrorists duke it in a milieu that seems as if the Bush Administration’s bogeyman paranoia of a terrorist in every cupboard has come to life.

Breaking it down on a mechanical level, WAR ON TERROR appears to combine some of the elements of RISK with the resource production of SETTLERS and the freewheeling, deal-or-die ethos of games like DIPLOMACY or JUNTA. Players take on the role of a nebulous, deliberately vague “empire” that is trying to secure continents for the purpose of gaining “liberation points” while developing villages into towns and cities to increase income- all the while, of course, fending off the ever-present specter of terrorism. The economic system is very simple, with each of the 40-odd territories being assigned a random oil production chit that works exactly as in SETTLERS- 2d6 roll produces for all players, better developments yield more money, terrorists block production. The game could be said to be “card driven” but unlike most CDWGs the cards have a single function. There are two decks, one for the Empire players and one for the terrorists, and within are cards that allow players to make war, steal, hijack, deploy suicide bombers, enhance or reduce production, and lob nuclear weapons at each other.

Although every empire can fund terrorism by purchasing terrorist units to place directly on the board or in an off-board “terrorist training camp” the terrorist units are mutually shared by all players- so the cell I funded in Iraq might be used by another player to attack me in Iran. Further complicating the geopolitical situation is the fact that players can choose to “go rogue” at any time, electing to eschew the noble cause of liberating the world from the tyranny of non-democratic governments in favor of expelling the presence of empires from every continent for the aforementioned liberation points. Further, if a player goes bankrupt or their empire is completely eliminated they by default turn terrorist. The terrorist players play as a team and although money becomes scarce the prospect of using terrorist actions to attack other players becomes fairly dodgy for the remaining empire players.

One of the more fun mechanics for the empire player is that every so often the spinner on the board must be spun to determine an “Evil Empire”. This player is required to don the “Balaclava of Evil” and is granted some special powers- chiefly they are granted access to the Terrorist deck of cards and they receive extras of both Terrorist and Empire cards each turn. Other empires are given a $25 million incentive to attack the Evil Empire, which leads to wars fought solely for profit. There’s some really interesting (and very funny in a topical sense) strategies that emerge throughout the game, such as nuking an entire continent just to rid it of terrorists orconvincing other players that the useless card you have is actually a nuke that you’ll drop unless they pay you off. It's always fun to negotiate with terrorists too- have them do your dirty work!

As you can probably surmise by this point, player interaction is extremely high throughout the game- expect a typical game to be fraught with dealmaking, bribery, extortion, threats, lying, alliances of convenience, and ruthless trash-talking. There is a secret notepad for exchanging messages, and at least in one point in our game a message was intercepted which lead to a very embarrassing international incident- I was trying to broker a deal with a player that I had earlier attempted to pay the Terrorist players $25 million to attack. This isn’t a game for shrewish, shy people nor is it a game for those whose feelings are hurt when their best friends conspire to destroy all of their developments in one fell swoop.

One of my initial worries about the game was that it would fall into the same trap a lot of games where players can negatively impact others’ level of development- fortunately, the designers have made it fairly easy to build practically from the ground up in mid game- cashflow is pretty generous, costs are where they need to be, and as the game goes on the victory conditions relax to lower points when more players wind up going terrorists. I think there’s some really smart design here that doesn’t quite put the game on the level of NEXUS OPS in terms of revolutionizing the RISK/A&A style game but it does solve some of the problems inherent in such systems nonetheless. I did feel the game was about 30 minutes too long, and I think that for the type of game it is you really want it to finish in two hours or less.

And that may very well be my biggest criticism of the game- it almost seems like there’s “too much” game here, if that makes any sense. There are lots of decisions to make each turn in terms of development, funding and deploying terrorists, using cards, mitigating damage, fighting insurgency, and diplomacy. There are no threaded turns or phases or anything like that so everyone does their entire turn at once. As a plus however, the game feels very loose, very free-form, and open to a wide range of interesting and potentially hilarious situations. It’s an odd combination, having “too much game” on one level and, at least for some people, “not enough” on another. I did feel that the “Evil Empire” deal was sort of useless toward the end of the game when helping the terrorists only hurts yourself. It also seems that the terrorists are going to win pretty much every time (as Robartin commented in his session report, it’s sort of like the DUNE alliance victory), but that remains to be seen over a few plays.

Some notes on the production- for a small-press game published presumably with relatively limited resources, Terror Bull has shipped a very nice looking game with professional components. I’m not the biggest fan of the scrawled, crude artwork but it manages to convey a frantic, ridiculous tone that really speaks to the theme quite well and preempts any humourless buffoon from possibly taking the package seriously. As I’ve already said, there’s really nothing here that should offend anyone, unless the prospect of a Terrorist column operating out of West Canada stirs your coffee. There is no blatant anti-Americanism, there’s no condemnation of either Israel or Hezbollah, and there’s no direct reference to any world leader, nation, ideology, or religion. Seriously folks, it's safe as milk.

That brings me to one of the chief points I’d like to make about WAR ON TERROR. I think the designers have done an absolutely brilliant job in conveying the theme and yes, political agenda, of the game through its mechanics. I really get a sense that these guys thought a lot about transferring elements in world politics to game mechanics in a way that really illustrates how ludicrous things are right now. This game depicts the world that the Bush Administration and others want us to believe exists out there- with terrorists ready to drop a dirty bomb on Western Canada at any time. It depicts a world where the noble ambitions of liberating the Middle East are performed by the same empire that’s funding uprisings and terrorist actions in South America. It’s also a place where the struggle of power eventually boils down to rich versus poor, first world versus third world. It’s all pretty interesting to see played out on a satirical tableau- it’s hard not to imagine “Yakety Sax” being played off in the distance when you decide to drop the bomb on China.

Is it a "Great" game? Good grief, no- but it's a good one. It’s something I can see playing every once in a while, preferably with some booze involved and my most rowdy friends. Ultimately, it’s a fun, solid, and relatively simple game with few glaring faults and even fewer that normally plague the tongue-in-cheek, "current events" sort of games. The political message and approach to the subject matter is handled exceedingly well without immaturity or childishness and I believe that in 20 years WAR ON TERROR might well take on a similar quaint harmlessness that NUCLEAR WAR has for this generation. Final opinion? This was the best game ever to be banned from Essen, and as far as I’m concerned that’s something Terror Bull should be proud of as long as the inability to laugh in the face of insanity and terror is lost.

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