This War of Mine Final Thoughts

everybody final thoughts time once again for this war of mine and I gotta say wow I already thought this game was something special back when I played the prototype a long long time ago and it has only gotten so so so much better now with the final version this is definitely one of the best games of the year I would be surprised this doesn't make my top ten it's just absolutely amazing I mean at its heart it's a combination of work replacement kind of a pusher luck exploration thing and then a ton a ton a metric ton how many 1947 different little stories although actually some of those are rules so around 1900 different little stories that will unfold over the course of the game and all three of these things to come together to make something really very very impressive and I have to say - I mean there are definitely elements of this game I would not never really normally be predisposed to like specifically the fact that there is a lot a lot of dice rolling at one point this was called the fate die I think it's now just called the black die or something like that um but you know in the original prototype I mean it got rolled way too much but the streamlining has been done especially with these you know one-stop-shop fake cards that you know tell you aha you know whether people are gonna get more sick whether their wounds are gonna Fester whether they're gonna heal what their emotional landscape is gonna be like every day I mean really really clever really streamlined and then on top of that the dice rolling has two really cool elements one like I said there is the push your luck as you're out at night scavenging and you know having to make choices predominantly around okay we're out here to find stuff I can just rummage through this stuff and make a lot of noise but push my luck and maybe have to encounter some resonance of the place that I'm ransacking or I can burn a lot of my very very limited time to try to find another way to go so that I can stay quiet so I don't run the risk of running afoul of anybody and I'm you know the the intensity of you I mean as time is getting shorter and shorter and you don't have much time left and it's about to be morning and you got to get back home do you did you find what you came to look for whether it was bandages whether it was um you know parts to build the radio whether it was an old busted guitar cuz you've got two people who could play the guitar and cheer everybody up if you can just find an old busted up guitar and you haven't found it yet um do you say to heck with it I'm in a hurry now let's just make some noise find the thing and then sooner or later the residents appear but then the interesting thing at the beginning of the game the residents are all pretty much like you just poor starving sick miserable people who can't put up much of a fight and as often is not the thing that's really amazing you would expect pretty much any other game out there oh crap I've gotten caught well let's put on our combat boots it's time to fight that's not the case the people you run into don't want to fight either because they realize just how destructive it's gonna be so you can continue to explore provided you don't cross certain boundaries that would you'll be stealing directly from them they'll live in that um you could even get the opportunity to talk to them or engage in trade so smart and so confounds the normal expectations you'd get of a game like this this is a game where you could play a campaign that might take you up words of eight hours long and never get into a single fight the entire time and you'll be thankful for it because one single fight if it goes wrong could wipe you out and that is a testament to just how seriously this war mine treats its subject matter it's not trying to trivialize it or make it into something cool and sexy this is a a moody intense and somber experience that you are gonna have while playing this game it's not gonna be you know laugh-a-minute is everybody's you know having a great old time and oh let's take out those thugs and woohoo let's see how I did oh no they hit us back I mean um if you actually do have to start fighting people it's gonna be a very very intense experience not because you're worried about the rules all of that but because you're worried about the long-term effects even if you survive this fight I mean even if you win there are gonna be psychological implications because we're not soldiers we're not superheroes we're not no the cold-hearted mercenaries we're just regular people if we get into a fight and we kill somebody that can scar us emotionally scars emotionally and you know that could hurt just as much as a bullet wound I mean that could lead to us um you know killing ourselves or running away in the middle of the night never to be heard from again it's it's amazing the the stories that can naturally evolve that are so incredibly evocative and incredibly true to life in fact it's interesting there is there's been a review for this game on BoardGameGeek from an actual survivor of the civil war that tore apart Sarajevo I'll post a link to it down the shownotes it's I strongly recommend it he's played the game he's a huge fan of it particularly because he's been through these experiences in real life himself and he is able to articulate what it means for him and how the game captures that I it's a very powerful and effecting little review for a very powerful and affecting game although like I said earlier this is a moody somber expansion you have to know that going in this isn't gonna be for everybody some people just want to have fun while they play their games and not have to you know to confront the darker side of man's inhumanity to man and all of that but if you can't embrace the subject manager and immerse yourself in this world I think you'll be better off for it honestly this game is important um this is a very bold experiment that pushes forward the platform the artistic platform of board games in several different ways like I said if this is not glorifying war this is actually trying this is a work of art that is trying to you know a ludic eight and you know I guess educate but um you know I mean inspire a million different things the players about experiences they would likely never have or never even really encounter in their day-to-day lives or their day-to-day entertainment this game is really amazing that regard but it's also very experimental and brave in a couple other ways the biggest one being the journal um this game sets out because they know full well that the target audience of this is much broader than your average cube pushing euro or your dice chucking fantasy venture game this is something you know that should be played in classrooms this is something that should be played with parents and their kids so they have a better understanding of the world there's a lot wider broader audience for this game because it's important it has something to say and and so because they know that they set out the near impossible task of having a deep rich and complex simulation game that doesn't require a 20-page manual that you practically memorize before you roll the die the first time because there's so many rules the fact that this just leads you through step by step and very important I don't think they stress this enough but it says right here on the front page that don't worry if you stumble across something and you don't know what it is don't worry about it just ignore it whether it's a mysterious icon or a number that's out of place or some kind of parameter on a car - you don't know it means it says right here don't worry um when you need to know you'll find out just um you'll only pay attention to what you do know it in game time and the game drip-feed you kind of spoon-feed you the the rules step by step I'm not gonna say it works a hundred percent because again this is a bold experiment and every time you experiment you're gonna have some failures but on the whole I would say this is a net success this is definitely a game I played this by myself a long time ago with the prototype and now instantly I have sat down and played it with other people this final version and so I got to experience again the notion of somebody sitting down for the first time not knowing anything about the game and learning it as you go just in bite-sized pieces and while there are some stumbling blocks I complained them some about this in the past like you know not knowing what money means on carts cuz they didn't just put a money symbol on it dumb little things like that I know a lot of people get confused about the poke about thing because it says hey if you roll well you could get four would slash four components does that mean four or four or can be three of one and one of the other what does it mean and you know the rules never tell you there's gonna be a few things that slip between the cracks like that although another thing the rules do say is not to worry about it too terribly much you know look for the answers if you don't find the answers don't let it hang you up just go with what makes the most somatic sense because every rule in this game is grounded fanatically and you know like I know I saw some people online complain about hey the rules never explicitly state that after I um you know complete a task that required a wait token whether I remove that wait token and put it back in the box so that I can activate the item again and then wait a full day before it goes does that mean once I've activated at once does it work forever obviously not matically that would make no sense so as the rules say if you if you can't find the answer or something just go with what thematically makes sense because chances are that's what the designers intended but that said 95 times out of a hundred you're gonna find the answer you're looking for there's just a few little outliers like um I on the main side of the board the guys I played with they got very very confused because the rules make clear that oh these little hands you move a person here to where the hand is and that means you do the action unfortunately the install fittings is in a space up here that's literally just floating in space it's in yellow so what do I come up here this isn't a physical place I can get to am I supposed to build a library to get up there and you know that was a dumb oversight it's just at every blank space on the board should have a little hand so you know oh I will move here and if I interact with that hand it says build a fitting and then I go to the list you know so there's a few dumb little things that could have been a bit smoother but the vast majority works really well and so I mean I think this is a great stepping stone I hope pretty much any kind of thematically grounded designer plays this game learns from it you know both the good and the bad so that people can grow know that you know the whole notion of this learn the game as you play the game because really forget four board games to break through to broader culture or pop culture awareness the bigger zeitgeist they got to get past these twenty page rule books that your average muggle just will not read this is something that anybody can absorb and the interesting thing is it's designed this is something I think some hardcore gamers you know like I know you know game geeks like myself will find themselves not liking I don't want to be spoon-fed I want to know everything I need to have every critical bit of information before I can make any decision because otherwise how can I make an informed decision this is it this is the thing I ran into when I sat down and played it with a couple of friends of mine here in Malta and they hadn't played it and they were having to make their first session I think it was the decision about where to travel the first night out and uhm you leave to look for cars there's all these different things and I don't know what any of them are how am I supposed to make this decision and again the rule book says if you don't know just go with what seems thematic and I added go with what you think would be appropriate for you to do if you were in this circumstance and then you'll find out what happens because this game is supposed to replicate regular people who have no idea what to do in a war zone they don't have perfect information they should not and therefore you as a player the first time you play this game should not have perfect eidetic identically memorized information about their the cause and effect change of every single decision this is a game of exploration not only of physical locations but exploration of the rules the more you play it the more the game will open up and you will become an experienced survivor that's an interesting thing that you as a player go through kind of the same journey as your characters they you know they were there were chefs and reporters and and car mechanics they didn't know anything about war and so they just made the best decisions they could they didn't know what the consequences were gonna be so you as a hardcore player you've got to put that gamer mentality of I need to understand everything about this game or I can't have fun making decisions you shouldn't because the first time you're in a war zone you won't have perfect information now the interesting thing is I've actually played this game about four times now including once through these little hyperaccelerated scenarios that are really really cool these are awesome I can only hope that is the game finds a life and more people pick it up that it gets more and more sport more more expansions and more of these I mean heck I'd love for the developers to release them online so you can just print them out because these are very very awesome particularly cuz they cut the length of the game so that's a big deal but anyway so I've played this a lot now and I've kind of gotten into the rhythm I would actually kind of consider myself for the PERT within the confines and then the context of this game and experience survivor and now I can make informed decisions I do know what it means to give up this particular resource to pursue this particular Avenue what the potential outcome of that could be that's because I'm experienced I've gone on a journey and I have a richer understanding of the rules now I have grown as a player I didn't need to know everything the first time I open this book the first time I had to make my first decision and I think that's actually great it helps put players in the mindset of these characters that they are trying to you know trying to help survive so I think that's really really cool um I mean that said I mean I'm oh yeah there are as amazing as the game is in you like I said just in terms of gameplay it's a great fusion of work replacement push your luck and storytelling I mean those are all work really great but there are some mistakes like I said there are still some unclear things like um you know the description of level 4 fatigue the first time somebody hits level 4 fatigue and you read in the rulebook what the special rules are you didn't need to know what it was until you hit level 4 and then it says hey go open I think it's number 150 or something like that and you read that and I read this and said wait a minute this seems inconsistent with how what the game has led me to understand the way fatigue works it suddenly works differently when you cross this threshold and you know and I don't think the what do you call it the the thematic consistency is there so there's a few little things like that but like I said the lion's share of the gameplay mechanisms they work they make sense and while I have heard some people complain bitterly that they do not like the system where okay the very basics are in here and then if you need to know more go look in the rule book I have had no problems with this whatsoever now maybe that's in large part because I'm using the app um that has made playing this so much more pleasant there's nothing wrong with this book of scripts it's nice to hold a book in your hand but I gotta say it is Oh much nicer to just have a phone or a laptop and say oh I need to look at 150 150 please boom there it is and I don't have to look around and find and circle and wait let me go back to the other pages and stuff like that just type in 600 type in 150 and all the information is right there oh and what's in it if I choose this I go to here okay I'll just push the button and go there instead of having to switch to 1253 or something like that the app does make this much smoother not only in terms of you know the narrative flow and story but also in terms of being able to look up rules um because the rule book um you know 90% of what you need to know for scavenging or combat or night raids or day actions are summed up in here and if you get to a spot where you're like okay I don't really know what to do right now I'm in the day actions what about X well as it says right there go look at the fact what is it number 5 300 so you come in here number 300 and then hey there's a whole bunch of advanced rules you know like a whole page of them chances are your answer is gonna be in there and and I think that works I do think that it was maybe a mistake on the developers part to scatter them throughout here instead of following the fantasy flight model of just basically having an encyclopedia a book that is nothing but you know a system where hey there's an alphabetic index on the back if I want to know everything there is to know about how the hatchet works cuz a hatchet is a special weapon it has you know you know different uses for it's a replacement for a pick lock it's a special thing in combat and stuff like that different characters can use it you know the hatchet is a really big deal and you're right now okay well I need to look up the hatchet in the pic locking section in in the day action but it functions differently it'd be really great to have an encyclopedia where you know there's an alphabetized index hatchet it's mentioned in this this and this and boom I can just go there those work great on the Fantasy Flight Games I think they would have been better off doing that and then rather than scamming them around in the one book also another interesting thing I have to admit I'm really kind of tickled pink by the hidden rules if you don't want to talk about you can watch the run-through I kind of revealed how that works again I think that's something that some players are gonna be Emily hate I get a give me all the rules don't hide rules from me that's the worst thing you could do but again I think you have to look out from the point of view what the developers intended this game to be in terms of mass-market audience acceptance your average muggle who maybe has never played anything other than Monopoly before but was interested in this because they like the video game or because you know they heard that wow this is a game that really tries to do something different so they check it out they don't need to know all those hidden advanced rules if they knew all that stuff right from the get-go it would be paralyzing to a non gamer geek it's a non game geek I mean for us it helps us jump in and make really deep interesting decisions the game doesn't want you to do that right up front because they want you to grow like I was talking about earlier grow into this role as a survivor not only because it takes you on the same journey that your characters go on but also because it means for muggle players it's not as deep a pool it's not as big a barrier to entry because you only need to know a little bit at any given time in the game you only need to know this much and now okay now you're done with that mode okay now you only know this much I think that works really nicely on the whole some people I've seen hated vehemently they say I can never find this one particular thing I need to look up and I don't understand how that is I have not had that problem at all you look at the fact you look at the advanced rules that refers to you look in the journal if it's not there you look in the FAQ which is like I said kind of looking in the encyclopedia if it's not there there's advanced rules and like I said there's a few cases so far very very few and I have like said I've played this game a lot I've experienced a lot of stuff here I played it a lot by the way because for the last month I've been here alone my wife Jen has been in England so I've had no one to play with so I've had a lot of good solo time with this game and I have not had a problem looking up information and you know the few times where it did I just fall back on to what the rules say that hey you know if if for whatever reason if we made a mistake and you can't quite find something do what makes the Mattocks sense because that's what you're supposed to do I've not had any problem with the rules whatsoever and again I think they're a bold new way not new actually legends of and or did this years ago and there's a few other games that are experimenting with this notion of hey just sit down and start playing you'll learn the basics as you go the second time you play you'll start learning some of the advanced stuff that's the way we want to happen grow as a player add the more you play the game I think that works great here I think there's a lot of good lessons learned and some mistakes made that other developers can piggyback on but I think it's a net positive hmm I mean there's a couple of little things to like okay I know talking about the you know the target audience of this game is you know somebody who's maybe new to games and doesn't want to be overwhelmed lot of decisions I think one big mistake one Wow for the most part this game is so radically improved over the prototype I played all those months ago you know the fake cards one fake card replaces like seven or eight die rolls everyday that's a big big deal you know the you know getting rid of specific stages for having ideas and going visitors and just making you another worker placement action just makes things simpler and more consistent overall a much smarter thing one thing I think they made a mistake on the original prototype I played at the beginning the game you only had access to like four or five fittings just enough to make oh well there's four or five things I could build what should i do what should I save up for um and over time as you start having ideas more and more of them get seeded in you draw I figured was you draw three and pick one that system was so much better than what they have now because now you start with ten things you can build all of them are radically different and if you have an idea if you choose to spend time having an idea that gives you ten more cards to choose from that you can add to the ten you've already got that is too much that is way information overload and I think the developers made a big miscalculation there considering the fact they want this game to be more pickup user friendly I'm just ready to play throwing ten things you get well I should collect water yeah for size every oh of course I need a bed to sleep of course we need a deadfall trap to catch food of course I need a heater because it's cold of course I need a stove to cook the food of course I need a metal workshop to make weapons of course I need an herbal garden to grow food and I mean I mean there's just so much I mean it's a bit too much again the the rest of the game is so smart they just introduce you to stuff to you in bite-sized pieces the old system for our ideas introduced building things in bite-sized pieces and by the way gave the game just a little bit more replay value I love the fact that okay well I start with these particular ones I always start out the same but then if I have an idea I don't know what kind of idea I'm gonna have then I'm just gonna draw three cards and Oh which of these is most interesting that means every time you play the stuff you get to build takes you in different directions the way they've gone here you could follow the exact same blueprint every time you play because you found yeah I think this is the ideal way first I always build a bed than I do water collection and then we focus on everything else I think that was a mistake I think they've taken a step backwards for a couple different reasons that's that's kind of a bummer um anything else you know thing I don't think that they strongly recommend enough on the last page of the journal and they get to say they say oh by the way you can save I think they should more importantly say you should save now because this is a game debt to play through the entire if you don't play one of these short ones which these things can take you know upwards of three hours maybe four if you're playing with more players and you have a lot of conversation but if you want to play a full campaign and provided you don't die early it's gonna be six seven eight hours long I've tried it and I can confirm this game is not ideal to be played in a non-stop seven hour marathon I know there's a lot of games out there you're Twilight Imperium Zin you're eighteen X X's that people love to play for eight or nine or ten hours straight but here's the thing most of the time games like that are really deep and you know and they're they have a lot going on to the there's a lot of depth to the simulation to support that length of play this war of mine is a complex simulation it has some good media decisions but it is much much lighter than your average game that's gonna last for ten hours and a game that's lighter like this don't go wrong it's a very challenging game this game is very hard until you start learning the tricks I mean I can actually survive pretty readily now it's just a question of can I survive with nobody dying that's kind of what I'm working on now or you'll have do I need to start adding stuff to increase the difficulty level of the game but when you first you time you play you think oh my god there's no way we can make it in you and everybody's gonna die and chances are the first time you play you will but what was I saying why was I going off on oh I think it's ideal for okay play through a day you're getting your feet wet play through the second day and now use the save system it's brilliantly realized it is so smart this is such a really cool way to do it you just make a few notes you stack all the cards into a stack rubber band them up or put them in a baggy the game comes with baggies and then I'm just put it away come back to it a few days later because chances are after three hours you're starting to get fatigued and you know and and you know and I think the game could wear out it's welcome but I've done this you put it away you come back a few days later and even though you're coming back to something it seems like oh my god they're all gonna die and we'll all we've done is we've said to be continued it was the end a cliffhanger EPS ending of an episode you knew they were all dead two people were gonna starve tomorrow what are you gonna do just put it away come back a few days later and you'll find yourself kind of reinvigorated ready to go ready to start seeing new ideas get through connections that you might not have gotten after playing a marathon three four or five hours session I think it's a real shame did they just say hey you know what you can save if you want I think they should say trust us do this you should save you if you want to make it through an entire campaign if you're new at the game you should expect to do it over three or four sessions you should expect to do that it almost takes on like a miniseries style feel then you know it always ends with a cliffhanger what's gonna happen the next day with the event hits or whatever are they gonna survive are you gonna find the food then you come back and you find out what happens in the next episode um you know once you get good at it I think you can probably play the whole thing in two sessions still I don't know that ever want to play it all in one session because you just need to take a break you need to take a break from the omnipresent threat and pressure and danger I mean imagine playing ghost stories which is a very popular and very challenging cooperative at board game imagine playing that straight non-stop for six hours it will wear you down it's and it shouldn't be experienced like that this game should not be experienced in some kind of marathon thing it will make you feel less about the game than you should you will feel better about it if you put it away and then it's so I mean it takes like a minute a minute and a half to reset up because of the really well-designed save system and you're up and going again and you're excited you're reinvigorated you can't wait to get back in there and try and solve those problems I think they made a mistake by not stressing that two players enough I also don't think they stress two players enough they mentioned right up front hey don't worry if you see an icon you'll fix it we'll tell you what it is when you need to know they should have put that you know it's kind of mentioned here they should have reinforced that message over and over because I have now played this game with hardcore gamers and the message didn't come through and I had to deliver that message you know when Gordon was like how can I make a decision here I don't know what any of this stuff means and I'd say dude dude what would you do in real life you would know you would not have perfect information how would you make a decision and then like there was a click and it is he suddenly you know he stopped being a gamer and he started being a survivor that's the mindset you're supposed to go into this game and I think it's really important and I don't think it's stressed enough in in the intro to this game I've seen what oh here's another thing that drives me nuts this is probably the cardinal sin of rule books and I've complained about it so often it drives me nuts here's the back page of the journal completely blank this is a crime this is a sin this is wasted real estate because here's the thing this journal is what is it um I don't even know how many pages it's I don't know probably 14 15 pages you know lots of white space but here's the thing the the crux the truly crucial stuff you need to know what you pay through a day you know most of this stuff but you constantly have to keep using this as a flow chart to make sure right god remember to do today's stuff and then we feed and it's not till after we feed do we assign people their night jobs and stuff like that it takes a while before you get so you spend a lot of time looking through these and looking through these here's the thing on BoardGameGeek here is the entirety of what you need to know from the rule book or from the journal I don't know if you can actually see that let me get it closer this is it this is everything I don't keep the journal at my side while I play the game anymore I keep this at my side because this is a quick reminder of right for special stuff I have to remember like lock-picking is a 1 2 3 vs. a 4 2 6 and you know beds are + what are they actually have to look right now or yeah beds are negative to fatigue you know I mean little things like that there's a few things you have to look up for pili and you have to remind yourself of the order of Flo and here's the thing this could have easily fit on here this even has the reminder of which facts to go to which pages to go if you have more detailed questions such a mistake not to prance pose this here so you just have it oh that drives me nuts nothing drives me nuts more than wasted real estate on a rule book the last piece of your rule book should always be the most frequently referred to thing is players you know I'm charged with all the stats need to look up a lot or you know you know your turn order your flow structure this is this makes me mad that they did that I hope they fix that in future reprints and have a summary like this right here you know there's another thing I was really surprised by this mostly I played this solo and now I eventually played with some other people and while I think the cooperative nature of this game works provided you're gonna play with a group of players who respect each other and will listen to each other's ideas and we'll all come to the table with ideas it works great there's a wonderful sense of collaboration and what I found playing with other people is so often in this game the decisions you have to make or literally make a break they are do or die do we take run the risk of this person starving so that we work them a little bit harder so we can achieve this thing we need to do even though it might kill them the amount of times you get faced with questions like that truly thematically just ah type questions it happens a lot this game it's one of the most compelling things about this game and what I found playing with other players was whoever's turn it was you know we'd all give our input we'd all give our feedback and then you know the guy having to make decisions like well what should i do I don't know and we'd all just say dude you got a call it's your call we can't make this call because this call is probably gonna get somebody killed is this person this person gonna die you got to decide that's how we played it and it was amazing you know there's kind of a weird flow to it because sometimes you might get one of these little the sections devoted to you there are no particular interesting questions you'll just do I mean heck if if you're the one at the beginning of the morning who has the event all you do is you just draw the card and read the event and tell everybody what it is that's really crappy actually quite frankly this is another dumb mistake after the end of crime wave it should not say next player um you know after the night wave a crime raid I'm sorry no no no yeah after the narrative action it shouldn't say an ex-player cuz the next player doesn't get to do anything other than read a card it should be narrative action plus the event and then you switch over that's just a dumb little thing I mean you could do that as a house rule to make sure everybody always has at least one interesting decision simple little choice just get rid of one of those arrows dumb decision they made there in my opinion anyway but um like I said playing with these other guys the system worked we were you know even though none of us and I'll be honest when I first sat down to them one of the wreck you know what I can't get I can't invest myself in this if I don't actually have a character who I say is me and I'm like dude these are all us you know we are trying to make Shepherd all these people through survival and you can't get attached to anybody because they are gonna die if two of these people die what are you just done you're not gonna play the game anymore because maybe we'll find some other people later you know life is too short and fickle and there's too much danger you can't get a SAS or associated with anybody you can you can have a favorite if you want but you have to think about the group as a whole you can't think only about yourself that's really important anyway what I was saying is I think he came to terms with it he got involved I think overall that works there's one thing another thing I think is a mistake the I didn't mention this in the run-through but the journal itself is basically a first player marker what's supposed to happen is okay I read along I do the thing I make whatever decisions end next player I give this book to the next player and then they turn the page and do the next thing and then when it says next player they give the book to the next player and then the next players are sponsor for the next thing here's what happens with that you end up getting a group of players who have each player has limited a limited idea of how systems work because yeah I'm the one who read how the event cards work or how I'm the one who read the thing about how the objectives system works or I'm the one who read about how the weight system works oh oh battery low hold argh I don't think I was gonna talk this long and the battery just went out on me I have no idea where I was okay I was just talking about the journal so the interesting thing is you you you know you do an action and then you hand the book off to the next person and over the course of the game you have imperfect information how everything works and I think that has an unfortunate side effect of confusion raining because eventually you know when it comes around second time oh somebody else is gonna be in charge of this thing and there's somebody else who thinks they kind of know how it works and now I'm trying to learn how this particular system works I'm reading the same stuff that somebody else did it creates almost you know as a group as a whole in theory we know everything but no one person has perfect information about everything and therefore can start to draw connections between oh I see this system DuckTales this system quite nicely because of the way these two things intersect on this particular element or whatever it's very hard to make those kind of synaptic connections because the book told me don't read that next section give it to the next player um it works but it makes it harder going in my experience it's generally best to play a board game where somebody at the table knows the game really really well and is the expert who can who's the one you know if people aren't quite sure how what a particularly is supposed to be they can ask this one guy because he's the one who's read the rules he's the one who's read the FAQ s or whatever warm I never get never casts anybody in that role of the the you know the the lead rules reader everybody's sharing that responsibility there's a result everybody has kind of a schizophrenic narrow view like you're playing with blinders and if we could all put our brains together we'd have a full understanding of how the system works after one day but you don't quite get that when you're playing with other players obviously not promise solo at all and I found the game it was much easier to grok the rules played as a solo game played as a multiplayer game and this is a shame because of course this is a game that's supposed to be very open inviting and getting a lot of people to play for the first time but playing with other human beings is fundamentally harder than playing by yourself because you're only ever learning a small percentage of the rules and it'll take quite a while before you start getting a full view of things I think that's a mistake I think the fact I think the way the game should work is still have the arrows in that the responsibility to make decisions keeps changing brains okay oh we've done our morning stuff now Betty what are we gonna do in the afternoon okay everybody's asleep now okay who's gonna who's gonna eat who's gonna drink and who's gonna go hungry Jim it's up to you buddy yeah well I think this you think that but you've got to make the decision I think there should be one player who is the referee who holds on to this journal and doesn't let go and instead says right okay Jim right it's time to figure out remember okay so here's what you need to know here make your decision and done again we can talk about the strategy but if that means Jim and Betty and Joe and everybody else they all know that me righto I'm the expert at the game because I've held on to this journal the entire time I've advocated responsibility of making decisions because it's cooperative game but I'm the one who can start to make connections and see the bigger picture I think that's really really important and it's a real shame that the game doesn't allow for that um I think it was a another one of those bold experiments and I think that one didn't work as well as it could and I think sometimes if you have people who are complaining about I can't find this one particular rule it's probably because you weren't playing solo and if you had played solo you'd have a better understanding of the whole system and you could have figured it out you would have known where to look for the answer you don't know where to look for the answer because you weren't in charge of the journal when the question came up that's the problem and I I think that's a misstep that's how I would strongly recommend I mean you know give yourself um you know some kind of token that passes around not the book itself one person is the referee one person who's the rules Master they're the ones who look up facts they're the ones who answer questions but and the other token is what passes around so everybody makes decisions on their own I think that would make it much much better oh uh yeah it's also I guess I was gonna say it's maybe kind of machine the games very the first time you play it's very hard very unforgiving and in fact could be kind of demoralizing I don't know if that's necessarily that's thematically appropriate it's war it should beat you down it should leave you saying oh my god we never had a chance um you did have a chance you were just learning I do wonder if for that first time you play it would have been wise to have some kind of introductory difficulty level cooperative games usually ship with normal difficulty a expert difficulty and beginner difficulty so if you're a beginner you play at this this one doesn't have it it just has normal and I do think maybe that's kind of a mistake but it's not the end of the world you'll know whether you won or lost you'll know whether you've been drawn into this world and you want try again trust me if you try a second time you'll do much better because you will grow and become more of a survivor the more in this world the more you play it I think oh one more thing you know I was talking earlier about how much I love the app for you know as a replacement for this I mean I never opened this the app is so much nicer but the app does some other cool stuff as well which I didn't show on the run so I kind of meant to but the run-through was already so long I ran out of time come on wake up app I I mean they're very very cool in the interesting thing is on BoardGameGeek the developers have posted a thread saying hey if you've checked out the app give us suggestions we're continuing to develop this we're adding more stuff and we want to know what you think should get added and yeah I mean I'll tell you one thing that should get added a you know when you type in six three eight I'm glad that it's there again in case I need to look it up but if I want to type in a number I have to erase erase erase that's kind of annoying I mean it's it's good to erase one in case you made a typo but I just want to clear so I can just clear the line instead of having to bap bap bap ok now typing there were some minor difficulty but still that's not important there's already some interesting stuff first of all there is this save choice which unfortunately says coming soon but when it works it will be a total replacement for these that's going to be awesome I love that but there's two other elements as well when you start scavenging you can turn on the scab Ajmal whoa hold on there cowboy sorry folks it's actually incredibly hot and humid in here right now and I totally forgot while I was filming that I'm actually only in my underwear and I've tried to run a family-friendly show here so let's try to show you the app once again without exposing myself all righty so there is this scavenger app and there's two functions in here both of which are very very cool one is that there is a timer I forget I think it's three minutes long and what it does is it makes a timed element to the nighttime scavenging where you are having to make decisions about do we know kick down the door do we try to find another way and burn through time and how much time do we have to talk and discuss this you know and move on and it just creates this extra level of tension and pressure that you don't normally feel because you can sit and deliberate and count cards and do everything first long as you want but with this timer you really feel that sense of urgency that you would feel in real life if you were sneaking around in somebody's and potentially abandoned house maybe not and so you can see time is constantly going now the rules do say that if you want you can pause when either you have a a reality event which you know you'll have to stop and you'll read a longer chunk of a dialogue or also if you get into combat with residents so you can pause while that goes on and then once that's over and you're back to just going through the exploration deck and making those decisions well you got to make those decisions fast you don't have a lot of time to dilly-dally because the timer is always ticking and now there is a reward to taking this extra level of tension when you're done basically and if your runs out of time you're done even if you haven't finished it's time for you to go home and get back to the house but if you're done early you can actually hear the tick tock you can go on ahead say hey I'm done and you will get a reward choose any one token worth ten or less and add to the findings pile there is a reward for playing with this extra level of intensity something that you wouldn't get normally and no so that's very cool in and of itself having this timer that you know really put you under pressure but there is another element as well you can turn on the microphone of your smartphone and you'll notice it's now actually paying attention to how loud I am but now I'm actually just talking at a normal volume level and what's going on here is the app is keeping track of how loud you and your teammates are and if you make too much noise for too long you don't know exactly how long it might be ten seconds it might be thirty seconds oops too much noise role for noise so in addition to having to roll for noise because a car tells you to do it because you've made a tactical decision about how to travel through this exploration deck you will have to roll the die and potentially get caught if you talk too loud in real life and that is amazingly awesome because let's say I rolled for noise and we didn't get heard and so we continued on yes because if you can keep your voice no actually Wow even quieter so these are just a couple of fun little things you can use also there is the lock pick game if you are ever gonna go on ahead and lock thick normally you just roll the die and I think if you roll better than a three you succeed if I recall correctly you know something like that really simple standard stuff but instead if you're gonna go and pick a lock instead of rolling the die and hoping for the best you can play the game and you can see there's the little lines that line up with the other line you have to tap the button let's see if I can do this looking at the screen through my camera monitor let's see here Boop ah correct Boop alright we're doing good Boop okay all right one more ah yes I've done it I've managed to open lock and I didn't have to destroy the lockpick normally when you do the die roll you you go through the trouble and yeah so if I recall correctly if you if you mess up you get three mess ups or maybe it's four I forget how many well you get a certain number and then you fail so it's another way to go again just to try to increase the sense of immersion that you are there nests and I can only wait to see what else they come up with for this app over time like I said when the save system works that's gonna be awesome I know one thing they're working on is new additional storytelling snippets I read somewhere like 200 new stories that will actually be read by dramatic voice actors that's very very cool as well so the app really can enhance the experience beyond just the being able to look up rules and stories really quickly and easily and follow hyperlinks and all the rest of it I mean you know that's in and of itself is a really really valuable tool but um the other stuff that this can do for EM you know immersion and whatnot is absolutely amazing you know and speaking of immersion of you are there one thing I forgot to mention in the rest of my final thoughts as long as they were oh my gosh is I talked about how this is a very somber game a very weighty game it could be really heavy stuff the interesting thing is um I mostly played this by myself and then as a solo game yeah I mean there's no one to talk to no one to share the experience with I'm just internalizing everything that happens it's very an emotional roller coaster it takes you on but I found when I played with other people yo you can only keep up that level of somberness and a so limit salinity for so long when there's other folks sitting around the table and what we found happens is certain amount of gallows humor to develop where oh my god I can't believe this is happening and you know and you just can't help but laugh and there's a you know a kind of a solidarity I'm you a unification between players that we're all in this together and sometimes the only thing you can do is laugh I was actually very pleasantly surprised by that I was curious to see how it would work you know and it's interesting when you're playing with other people and you know and there is um yo some social fun and people do make jokes um you know when you're just having to deal with the hardships of not having enough food or not having enough water but then the game will sucker punch you everyone you know maybe you're even having a good time for a while but then something really terrible happens and like a pall falls over the table and everybody just gets hit so hard and it takes a while to get back into the groove of things you know that I actually found was an absolutely amazing social element to this game which I had not expected would exist at all when I was playing solo anyway back to the rest of the particular final thoughts I was wrapping up I mean I've certainly waxed rhapsodic long enough about this game I think it's really special and surprising coming for me because this is not a game that I should like this is a Meritage game through and through and I'm pretty well-known for my disdain for that but this game so rises above its peers um you know again it's a great combination of worker placement and push your luck in storytelling all that stuff to comes together really nicely um no this is from the designer of nourish emo hex he's used to making much deeper richer complex meaty deep games and while this is light it's not shallow at all but it is more emotionally deep than any other game you're gonna play this year or this stuff decade maybe who knows it's so good it does so many things so well yeah there's a few complaints here and there um sometimes the wording in the scripts is a little silly because it's clear that this was not proof read by a native English speaker because okay that's not how you would say that although I always just take it you know that's just okay well it's kind of the charm of the game I mean these are not Americans or our Brits or Australians or somebody who are native English speakers this is in some country where okay yeah if you're reading the English it's kind of broken just like their English me bro some fuel is like oh one more complaint I do have I will say that I think there are probably fewer events and objective cards than there should be because I mean you put more I think almost more than half of all the events that come with this game into the simulation every time and man I'd love to see three times as many events three times as many objective cards as what currently comes like I played this several times you still get unique experiences every time but that's driven more by the you know the reality impacts you have the little storylines and some of these reality impacts by the way I didn't mention this you didn't see it in the run-through they can really really change the simulation like you could say oh well I'll meet this particular person or we'll have this particular event or your reality impact during an event and they could be things on that like suddenly oh um you can't you don't have access to half your house anymore yeah anything anything's in there you just can't do it anymore because of flooding or I mean you know there are big game-changing things that happen in the game that suddenly make you feel but there's no guarantee you're gonna run across those what you're guaranteed to run across is these events and these objectives and there aren't very many of them I really wish there were more um if if I wouldn't mind that so much if the game just didn't give you access to all of the tools every single time if you only had access to four randomly chosen at the beginning and then every time you have an idea you draw a few and pick one I know that would make the game play very differently that would make baby push you towards you know him I never bother with radio but I totally went for it this time because it was one of the only things I had at the beginning of the game and oh my gosh it totally changed the way I look at the radio a few little things like that bother me here and there but on the whole this experience is transcendent it is so much more than the sum of its parts and it like I said it's a brave beautiful bold experiment yes it falters some every experiment will but the end result is something absolutely amazing I think this is a game that everybody should play at some point every board gamer should play every person should play at some point so that they can you know see another side of the world yeah they kind of know about they have some idea they've heard about on the news but they haven't lived this experience and I think it's important to live this experience um you know I think this game has the potential to make you a better person quite frankly um you know no guarantees but it certainly you know it's it's it's art again and I mean that in the best possible way yeah I have nothing but mad respect for it and the only real complaint about it at all is the fact that the subject matter is so dark and so heavy that Jen will not want to play this with me you know I've explained it to her I've told her about it I've told her some of the adventures and the experiences I've had and she's been moved by some of the things that I've faced and she's even I just don't know it's so uh and you know not only is it dark but it's it's stressful this game it puts you under law stress although to be fair this game does have a lot of highs and lows you're a lot of pressure things are really going terrible somebody dies somebody else gets depressed about that and leaves it looks like everything's going bad but then you have a really good scavenging run and suddenly you've got tons of stuff and you can start building again and you can start you really feel like you're rebuilding your life after some tragic event that's happened in this game it's an amazing roller coaster coaster I think I'm gonna make one more chance right one more time to convince her that she should give this a try because like I said I think everybody should this is an amazing game this is an incredible achievement this is one of the best games of the year this war of mine had yeah yeah sorry um anyway that's it thanks for watching have a very nice day talk to you later so long

Channel: Rahdo

Views: 23,825

Rating: 4.8947368 out of 5

Keywords: board games, baord game, baordgames, radho, boardgame, baordgame, rahdo, baord games, rhado, board game, game, boardgames

Id: OxJ_iXPPZVE

Length: 52min 30sec (3150 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 11 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/digitaldavis]

Among the most thought provoking and emotional board games ever made; I can't think of another board game that makes me feel more than this game does. There is a tangible sense of dread and sadness that permeates from every aspect of the game. I'd say this is probably the most important board game to be made in decades, and it's also one of the most thematic ones.

It takes everything I love about Ameritrash games, and twists and turns all the fun and adventure into something far more horrifying and harrowing. While in a game like Warhammer Quest, I might feel excited for having discovered a powerful weapon, or an upgrade to my warrior, bringing him closer to god-like status, in This War of Mine I get the same feeling when I find some extra water to drink, or I finally fix that broken guitar. This game, more than any other, makes the mundane exciting and meaningful, because it is not dealing with strict mechanics, but it is instead dealing with theme and drama.

[u/Erikthered65]

TIL they made a board game of This War of Mine.

[u/WreckerCrew]

BTW, for anyone that is on the fence because of the Learn as You Play Rulebook, the designers have addressed this issue through the KS. Their plan is to do a more traditional rule book but they are going to distribute it through the app. Hopefully, this will move a more people off the fence, because I think the game is just great. My wife and I love it.

[u/Jay_Thomas1]

I haven't listened to the Final Thoughts yet but from what I've read so far, the things Rahdo likes about this game were things he didn't like about Robinson Crusoe.

[u/thejesusfish]

When does this game get released?

[u/Veneretio]

Intriguing... I found the video game simply boring. I couldn't immerse myself in the struggles of the people at all. I wonder if this does a better job of it. Maybe by the looks of it.

[u/Kayin_Angel]

I backed the kickstarter and am really enjoying it. Was worried about the complaints before I actually got the game and realized it was exactly what I was expecting it to be.

It did take a bit of playing to 'learn to not worry and love the journal'. I kept slowing myself down while playing trying to figure out how such and such worked, or what something or other was for. Then it finally clicked that it was okay to not know right now, and that when it was going to be important, it would tell me. That makes playing the game, especially the first time, difficult to play like you would any other board game - expecting a clear goal to "win", having clear outcomes of "fail", and knowing all the details of the mechanics right from the beginning - and I can see how some gamers might not be okay with that.

[u/Thesonofben]

I won't lie. The first response to this was pure excitement. The follow up was a bit of buyer's remorse, hearing it's clunky. I'm back to the statue of pure excitement. I'm fine with a bit of research as long as theme overwhelms the need for perfect rule knowledge (at least with a game like this).

[u/barf_the_mog]

You could also read Love Thy Neighbor or My War Gone by I Miss It so for the full effect.