A War of Whispers - Game of Thrones in an Hour? (SU&SD Review)

[Music] have you ever played the epic day-long Game of Thrones board game and thought to yourself oh this is very good but maybe it will be better if it only lasted an hour and didn't cause all of my friends to be emotionally scarred well if you did then good news that's exactly what the designer of a war of whispers thought and the great news is they succeeded because it's exactly what this game feels like now hold on a second I know what you're thinking it how can this game of wooden cubes on board possibly compare to the smorgasbord of Marvel's plastic that comes in the big box beauty that is Game of Thrones well the loudest voice doesn't always have the last word and in the war of whispers you win or you the crucial difference between war of whispers and other area control games like Game of Thrones the board game is that these armies on the board well you'll be shifting them around and fighting with them and reinforcing them but you don't directly control them you might not even like them so rather than putting you in the thick muddy boots of Royal Family's clomping around the land trying to collect the most real estate this unusual war game sees you playing as the spies the figures just behind the curtain making sure that they only get their hands dirty when no one else is watching are you familiar with Lord Varys the ultimate big lad of knowing cool secrets well that's you that is so the words of the Crimson army the armies to the east remain completely undefended in their castle let them throw themselves against a wall of arrows leaving both sides to their demise Raven [Music] to carry this message posthaste and who are these fractions you're going to be brutally manipulating throughout the game there's a lot of subtle variance here especially in the central area low it's a fantastic castles in the middle of the board but enemies on all sides meanwhile people in the north have no castles if they want to try and win they're gonna have to do some serious invading but they also have the best capabilities to both defend themselves and reinforce their armies it's all very subtle stuff but don't get too hooked up with all their stuff because that is not who you're gonna be playing us players will instead get to choose one of the shady creepy crawly factions such as the supplicant spider the pale Raven the endless serpent or the cult of them all sorry I'm not supposed to tell you about this occult at the right at the start of the game you're gonna shuffle around your five faction tokens on your player board and peek at them to see who you'd ideally like to win the war who you'd like to almost win it who you hope is still alive to some extent and finally the faction that you literally don't care about at all and the people that you quietly hope we'll all die there are four rounds in the game which zoom by with alarming speed which are each going to place a couple tokens somewhere on this ring of things that each of these represents an action that are then going to play out in sequence completing the round each space does something slightly different than some of them allow you to choose one of two actions but it's always something simple you can train more troops mount an attack or take action cards from that factions pile but it's the fourth space on each faction slice of the wheel pie where things start to get interesting here one of the actions allows you to swap your token with another from that section and instead carry out that action and the last juicy morsel of rules here is that if there's ever any free spaces to the left of a place token within that section you get to do all of those actions for free so if I place a command token on the fourth and final slot of the blue army and then nobody else during that round fills up any of the other slots well that means I get three free actions four actions for just one token that's an incredible bit of it come my zing until somebody inevitably puts down a token in the third slot and then I just get one action and they get three once all of the tokens are in place you whip around the circle of things with each player taking in turns to take their actions eliciting a chorus of moves and hours as everyone tries to suss out the allegiances of these mysterious other players and after that you do it three more times and that's the whole game it goes around remarkably quickly the interesting thing is from the second round onwards before you take it in turns to put new tokens on the board which stay in place for the whole game you'll first remove one of your tokens from the board deciding which army or which bit of control and no longer interested in for some of these games alliances you're going to be dipping your toe in and out like an indecisive jacuzzi baby but most of the time for the first half of the game wherever the tokens get placed on the board it's going to be where most of them are at the end of the game so when it comes to looking out for your favorite BFF top forever army you really don't have time to be playing your cards too close to your chest speaking of which Tom what do you think of this game I can say really yeah it's quite interesting isn't it yeah quite well at least we're having there you know mm-hmm fascinating combos do you like it what do you think well well it's a very interesting topic to think about isn't it yeah would ya hmm of course yeah well it is it's it's a very interesting entry get gone questionable Oh me I think it's you know you're not totally sure where that boy's interests lie a game of war of whispers doesn't contain many major surprises it's very quickly evident that you're in the pocket of the big green I want the blue boys of the nerf to do incredibly well in this war everyone can kind of tell that but being a winner in a game like this isn't about backing a lion the wolf or the Wardrobe that wins the war it's about being on good terms with whoever comes second in the war the vassal states who comes third and sometimes that means changing your mind change of plans promised the skin of your family to make [Music] mittens lots of love yes how much extra is it to have it tracked at the end of the first three rounds of the game each player gets an opportunity to switch the allegiance tokens on their board but in doing so has to reveal them but don't worry it's not that big a deal I mean it's not ideal but it's certainly better than flogging a dead dragon in a war that you'll flood out losing it's not unusual to see most of the players around the table once on the same faction to win by the end of the game and this alternative framing of a war makes for a game where yeah when you were never to bleed aside that someone's friendship is no longer useful Oh stab them in the back it's not actually a real person around the table who's getting betrayed they're fake people inside the board locked in a permanent struggle where they bend to the Wills of unseen figures Oh - and forth why do they fight they know only violence it is no longer their will to fight but their purpose without war they are nothing nothing but kill herbs so you're constantly watching all the other players like hawks trying to unpick the exact meaning of their moves and alliances but you're not actually ever gonna be betraying other people or blind to their faces about things in ways that will hurt them and on the topic of honesty I think it might be time for me to reveal exactly how I feel about this before you can disparage this beautiful game with your vile words I will reveal what I think of this game I think it is brilliant it is brilliant as well oh sorry I didn't maybe we have the same we are the same thing you don't have to do that we were on the same team you you didn't have to push me off the chair I feel really bad now the thing about this game is it's not really about who you're opposing it's more about the timeless in which you're actually on the same side you see much of war of whispers isn't about looking for fights but looking for places where you don't have to fight because somebody else wants the same things that you do like if it's quite obvious that you're rooting for the red army just as much as me then I'm not gonna be putting down my tokens to compete with you well I could just be putting them somewhere else and you know you're already completely looking after the yellow army so fantastic I don't need to do anything over there why are they throwing all of the yellow army into a fortified Castle and wiping out everyone it was oh gosh that wasn't supposed to wheels within wheels the thing about this game is it's not about who is at the end of either side of your sheet it's all about the positioning of affections in the middle yes we both want the Red Army to thrive but do you want them to be the yellows or the blues or the greens because I've got a slightly different order maybe in so much of the game is about I'm picking this subtle puzzle looking for ways that by the end the game you can have one or two more points than other people just because the setup of your allegiances will be exactly the same but maybe two tokens the other ways round and that's enough to lose or win the game and looking for these minor ways to tweak the balance of power really kicks into overdrive at the point of which you use the advanced rule in the manual which allows you to place a command token on a location on the board making that little slice of the map count as a city for scoring purposes at the end of the game which might be huge but only for the player whose token is there and other players can draw it in and other player can be like yeah sure I'll get my token on the same place so it counts the city for me as well but the crucial thing is if you then lose control of that location it goes to another army then maybe that's not as good for you or maybe it's just straight-up bear and instead of getting you an extra four points at the end of the game it's gonna be minus one point gah honestly this game is phenomenal a speedy cyclone of cunning and wits a game where knowledge is power that you only give away but grudgingly in the event that you are otherwise completely shafted this isn't a game of smashing up shields and armor with giant axes this is fencing by moonlight it's all footwork and care dancing around each other waiting for the perfect moment to make a decisive clean strike and the deepest cuts here well they come with the way that you play cards the powers here seem wild and unpredictable when you first draw a card after your attack you may make an additional attack with any surviving banners instead of using the current agents position action use a position action held by one of your other agents and your other board are huge that's crazy but all of the cards in each of these five decks are almost identical so after a couple of games you reliably know exactly what a player can and likely will do with their cards with three or four players the excitement of these cards really shines you only get to do a couple of big things during the game and it these really cool exciting pivotal moments with two players it becomes a little bit swing gearing a little bit more math because with fewer people putting tokens on the board the more people who are getting cards comparatively it's a lot of power take that it's still very fun it's still very exciting but as you might expect the best sweet spot to hit with a game like this is about three or four players although it's worth mentioning with four if you don't play with the advanced rule that lets you place tokens on the map instead of the ring by the very end of the game the ring is utterly crammed and don't really have many decisions to make there but that's not necessarily a bad thing a game that ends without the option for insane analysis paralysis at the very end I'm not gonna like that sounds pretty pretty sweet but again these differences between player counts they're not a problem it's not better or worse it's just kind of different with different numbers of players this is a game that takes ten minutes to learn and teach and it's over in an hour and plays well with two three and four players what is this is it Christmas Oh apparently you just did Christmas it's not Christmas but it feels like Christmas it's not there's really not a great deal here that's not to love now we talk a lot about games being bloated with components and bits and bobs but here the only real issue with the game is the fact that the cities and the towers and the granaries on the board you need to be able to see them at all times and as I just drew on the board and the way that's really cool-looking but maybe doesn't pop out sometimes you have to shuffle around cubes to see what's underneath them and that's not a huge deal breaker because you might check a space on the board for any myriad of reasons throughout the game it's not gonna give away your tactics and strategies but it would have been maybe better to have some little signifies and I think in the deluxe edition of the game that's the thing but we're not reviewing that we're reviewing this the only other thing I could say is it would have been cool if I come in a smaller box it's already a pretty small box but it could have made into something up tiniest what's always let's call this a half of these bits don't have anything in them and the things don't even fit in them it doesn't it doesn't make doesn't quite make sense anyway I I'm going to be penning a letter to the creators of this game telling them if I don't like this game that's all when in fact I wholeheartedly recommend it chaos is a stepladder Raven take this letter to the publishers posthaste fly high ah ah girly boy Wow you do know how this works right oh no no not really I mean you make friends with a bird and then Raven fly fly can't really think of a satisfying way to to put an ending to all of this with me something to tie up all the end that make everyone feel like that was all rounded nice cohesive piece of work with a satisfying end do the short out and sit down video please like and subscribe to the video and this video has been sponsored by stark space the you wants to make a website but you can't because you're a bird and you don't have black fingers and thumbs and and that well stop space thank you very much [Music]

Channel: Shut Up & Sit Down

Views: 348,300

Keywords: Shut Up and Sit Down, SUSD, SU&SD, Board Game Review, Review, Board Games, Board Gaming, Boardgame, Board Game, Gaming, Tabletop, Fun Games, Matt Lees, War of Whispers, Game of Thrones, War Games, Varys, Littlefinger, Tom Brewster

Id: dYBf_BAZBH8

Length: 16min 49sec (1009 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 22 2020