THE BATTLE OF VALANCE VALE
I was intrigued from the very moment I unpacked the components of Wartime. You see, there are no turns in the game. The flow of the game is instead moderated by the use of sand timers.
There are two factions in the game:
The humans and their allies of the Valance Vale are signified by tokens ringed with a yellow color. Typical units in this faction are Archers, Knights, Pikemen, and Wizards.
The Firebrands are ringed in red color and include goblins and the other miscreants that comprise their uneasy alliance like giants, orcs, minotaurs, and shaman.
Review Of Wartime includes a gigantic hex board on which cardboard tiles can be placed to create terrain barriers. This allows flexibility and the creation of unique scenarios like a playing field with mountain barriers or thickets. (It’s not wholly unlike Memoir ’44 in this regard.)
Scenarios also allow for the placement of different Valance Vale and Firebrand units, giving factions a different starting point, setting the stage for the skirmish. Wartime uses a clever and simple solution for creating units. Each unit has a hit point value. You simply count out that many units and place them on the included clear plastic standees.
For example, a Wolf Rider has 4 hit points. Placing a “stack” of 4 Wolf Rider tokens represents a Wolf Rider unit. If another unit does, let’s say, two points of damage to the Wolf Rider, you’d simply remove two tokens off the stack to account for the damage. It works excellently.
Speaking of working excellently, the sand timer mechanic is straight fire. Each unit has a sand timer in an increment of 30, 60, or 90 seconds. Let’s say you want to move your orc two hex spaces. You’d declare your move, slide your unit to the new space, then flip over your sand timer. That unit must hold tight until the last grain of sand falls through.
But while you wait, you best be looking toward your other units. Maybe you are in a position to attack with one of those. Declare it. Your opponent will remove the number of tokens equal to the damage, then you’ll flip that sand timer over because that unit can’t attack again until the sand runs through the timer.
Speaking of your opponent, their hands are flailing around like Animals playing the drums, because they are working their sand timers simultaneous to yours. The entire experience creates a near-perfect feeling of exuberance and movement, all without feeling hurried or frantic.
There are other elements of the course (like blue timers that allow the use of spell cards), but that is the gist of it. And what a gist it is!
Review Of Wartime game I played with my 9-year-old daughter had her yelling “GO! GO! GO!” as she willed the last grains of sand to slide through so she could get a move in before mine. But it wasn’t meant to be, as my timer cleared first and I was able to make that last attack to take her last piece off the board.
She immediately asked if we could play again and, had it not been her bedtime, that would have been an easy ‘YES’ because the skirmishes only last 10 minutes each. Wartime plays quick and whets your appetite for the very next play.
REVIEW OF WARTIME: MISCELLANY
- Based upon if you win or lose, you’ll be steered toward a different scenario in the campaign book. This is a nice touch. Wartime is also a game where I can easily see additional scenarios being generated by fans.
- The art is crisp and engaging but I’m a little meh on the graphic design. The terrain tiles in particular didn’t work for me. For example, it’s nit-picky, but the graphic used for “line of sight” just didn’t flow visually with the overall piece.
- Three of my plastic standees came broken in the box, which is unsurprising considering there isn’t an included box insert. Everything is expected to be tossed in plastic baggies. Adding the last two bullet points together, I can’t give the production values higher than a B-. I will say, however, that on balance, you’ll be pleased with the sheer volume of components you find in the box.
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REVIEW OF WARTIME: FINAL THOUGHTS
I’ve been thinking for a bit about what I’d say for my final thoughts. Here’s my bottom line: Wartime: The Battle of Valance Vale is a special game.
The overall gameplay with the stacked units and pace set by the sand timers feels important. By that I mean I feel that Wartime has brought something innovative to board gaming. While the fantasy theming was solid and worked, this system is something great. I can see a re-theme in space, as a zombie rush, for licensed properties, and more.
My point is that I hope Wartime: Review Of Wartime Valyance Vale gets the attention and praise it deserves because I want to play more with this system and see it continue to evolve. The game doesn’t seem to be getting much buzz now, but I honestly feel it deserves consideration in the “best of” 2017 conversations.
One final thought: Wartime: The Battle of Valance Vale will be wholly unlike anything else you have in your gaming collection. When you couple that with the fact that a skirmish is played in under 10 minutes, this is the kind of game that makes for a no-brainer decision for your gaming rotation. Why reach for yet another worker placement or deck-building game when you can add a game to your collection that does something entirely new and does it well?
GAMEPLAY OVERVIEW:
TWoM accommodates between one to six players. As for game length, this will be discussed later in the review.
Players must carefully manage their resources if they hope to survive.
The objective of the game is to survive until the end of the siege. The game is played on a double-sided board (one side for the normal game and one for advanced) that represents the house that the survivors occupy. The phases of the game, consisting of a full day/night cycle, are as follows:
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Morning – Draw and resolve an Event card
Day Actions – Each character (you start with three) can perform up to three actions, depending on their health and/or mental state. These are usually used to build items in your shelter, rest, make food, or other actions that help your group survive. Players must carefully manage their supplies to make what they need.
Dusk – All characters must drink and eat – failing to do so will weaken them until their hunger issues are addressed
Evening – Assign all characters to sleep, scavenge the city for supplies, or stay up all night on guard duty.
Scavenging – Characters assigned to the Scavenge action explore the city (one of three random locations) looking for supplies to help them survive. This involves a press-your-luck mechanic with card draws and occasional dice rolls.
Night Raid – Draw and resolve a Night Raid card
Dawn – Supplies from the Scavenging phase are added to storage in the house, a fate card is drawn and resolved and a narrative action card is taken
If the siege has not ended at dawn, another day/night cycle is performed. This will continue until either the game ends or the character(s) survive the siege.
GAME EXPERIENCE:
While I enjoyed playing TWoM, I did not like it anywhere near as much as I thought I would. The combination of a thematic cooperative game should have been mana from heaven for me, but this game had several issues that kept it from being great. Everything I liked about the game was a double-edged sword that also had a downside.
Theme: The best aspect of the game, by far, is the theme. This is one of the most thematic games I have ever played. If you do not believe me, please read this post from a BGG user that lived through the Siege of Sarajevo, it’s very impactful. The choices you make can be downright difficult if you let yourself be immersed in the game. The struggle of finding food, water, and the right supplies to improve your home and balancing when to rest versus pushing your luck can weigh on you.
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HOWEVER – You need to make sure that you play this game with people who are ready for what can be a depressing experience. This is not a light-hearted game of One Night Werewolf! The theme is dark and can have some disturbing scenes.
This War of Mine Book of Scripts
The Book of Scripts provides a ton of narrative experiences for the players.
Game Rules: The game does not have an actual instruction book, but includes two different books. The first is the Journal, which walks you through the phases of the game. You simply open the Journal and start playing. When cards are played directly you to the second book, the Book of Scripts (BoS), you turn to the entry of the 1,947 possible entries in the BoS and read that entry.
HOWEVER – After one playthrough of the game, the phases and what to do are nowhere near as daunting as your first time through. Relying on the summary level rules in the Journal tied to FAQ entries included in the BoS can be very frustrating. Luckily, BGG and the publisher have summaries of the FAQs that can be printed separately.
Replay Value: The game has what appears to be significant replay value. The double-sided game board, 195 cards spread across 15 decks, and the previously mentioned 1,947 entries in the BoS. Combined these three characteristics of the game provide significant replay value.
The exploration deck definitely needed to be bigger.
HOWEVER – the Scavenging phase is one of the most important phases of the game. It is when survivors choose one of three locations on the board and try to find supplies. The type of location is thematically tied to what has the best chance of being found (medical supplies in a hospital, for example). Unfortunately, the deck only includes 26 cards. This may seem like a lot, but midway through the first game, I was already seeing repeat cards. After three full playthroughs, I would just rapidly flip through the cards and knew what each one was without reading more than its title. This deck should have been bigger.
Also, even with the amount of variability included in the game, I often felt pigeonholed in my decision-making. For example, when assigning characters in the Evening, you usually post a guard because you don’t want your hard-fought supplies to be stolen. Most Evening phases for me were as follows: the best fighter is on guard duty, the character who can carry the most is the scavenger, and the third character scavenges or rests if tired. Repeat this every evening.
Game Length: This game is not a campaign-style game. Each game is its own individual experience with no carry-over from previous games.
HOWEVER – Our first game took almost five hours. Players need to be prepared to commit to the game. The box says 45 – 120 minutes. MAYBE if you play solo and have played many times and you get really lucky and win in two hours (or die in 45 minutes).
FINAL THOUGHTS:
I really wanted to love This War of Mine. It is a unique theme in a market that is being over-saturated with games using common themes/mechanics that include a slight tweak to create a new game.
At best I enjoyed This War of Mine, but it will not remain in my collection. Please do not get me wrong. It is an amazingly thematic experience. Unfortunately, I did not find that the game maintained its fun after three complete playthroughs. It began to feel repetitive to me. I found myself looking forward to some of the phases of the game while dreading others.
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That being said, I think everyone should at least play This War of Mine at least once because it is getting increasingly rare to find unique game experiences.
Final Score: 3 Stars – An incredibly unique and thematic game that could use a bit more variety in some of the phases.
3 stars:
• Very thematic game
• Some choices can be legitimately difficult to make
• Save system allows plays over multiple sessions
Misses:
• Can get repetitive, especially the Scavenging phase
• Game length can be an issue
• FAQs for each phase of the game are buried in the Book of Scripts
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