Front Page

Content

Authors

Game Index

Forums

Site Tools

Submissions

About

You May Also Like...

O
oliverkinne
December 14, 2023
Hot

Mycelia Board Game Review

Board Game Reviews
O
oliverkinne
December 07, 2023

River Wild Board Game Review

Board Game Reviews
O
oliverkinne
November 30, 2023
J
Jackwraith
November 29, 2023
O
oliverkinne
October 09, 2023
O
oliverkinne
October 06, 2023

Outback Crossing Review

Board Game Reviews
O
oliverkinne
October 05, 2023
O
oliverkinne
October 02, 2023

Forests of Pangaia Review

Board Game Reviews
O
oliverkinne
September 29, 2023

Bagh Chal Review

Board Game Reviews
AL
Andi Lennon
September 28, 2023
O
oliverkinne
September 25, 2023

Castle Panic Review

Board Game Reviews
GS
Gary Sax
June 21, 2023
Hot
O
oliverkinne
June 09, 2023
Hot
O
oliverkinne
June 02, 2023
Hot

Ahoy Board Game Review

Board Game Reviews
O
oliverkinne
May 26, 2023

Village Rails Review

Board Game Reviews
O
oliverkinne
May 19, 2023

The Spill Board Game Review

Board Game Reviews

War Room: First Impressions Review

Hot
KK Updated December 15, 2023
 
4.5
 
0.0 (0)
34963 2
War Room: First Impressions Review

Game Information

Players
2 - 7
There Will Be Games

Let’s get this out of the way. “You Can’t Fight in Here, This is the War Room.” 

There, obligation fulfilled. 

If you enjoy Axis and Allies, but wish it had a bit more strategic complexity, then War Room might be your dream come true. War Room comes from the same designer, Larry Harris, and covers much the same ground —World War II, the big picture. War Room is a happy marriage of Axis and Allies’ scope with an emphasis on deeper management of your maneuvers, economy, and morale. The copy I played this past weekend was also a visual treat and tactile delight. This leads to the game’s biggest drawback—all those nifty bits may break some gamers’ budgets.

War Room comes with a few scenarios for differing numbers of players, but I joined in a seven-player global campaign. War Room is designed for two-seven players. The smaller scenarios use fewer nations and only part of the map. We did not complete our game in about 5-6 hours of actual playing time, excluding teaching and lunch, but hope to finish sometime this month. (That’s why this is a First Impressions Review.)
As the global campaign begins, WW2 is already in full swing. Germany has conquered France and a few other countries while launching the invasion of the Soviet Union. Japan is already at war with the U.S. and whittling away at China. Italy is in North Africa, and Great Britain waits with trepidation for a possible German invasion.

IMG 20200229 113810

Turns in War Room use a fairly standard formula. Each player gets income/resources, consults with allies (all planning—there is no real diplomacy that could cause a change in sides), plans moves and bids for turn order, executes moves, resolves combat, resolves morale and economic issues, purchases new units, and starts again. This is a simplification, as there are several steps to each phase of a turn, but it covers the general flow of the game. The turn structure is not unique. The design is so tight, though, and the bits are so well designed, that War Room moves very smoothly if you just take it step by step. It’s a long game, however, and you will probably want to conduct some phases simultaneously to maintain momentum.

So what makes War Room different?

The components are great and very functional. I played on a very large, round map of the world, printed on a mouse-pad-like material. It was thick and heavy enough to stay in place, even with seven players moving around and reaching across the “board.”

IMG 20200229 181204

The main bits are the units which make up your forces. The units are stackable plastic pieces, coded by shape and color. All land units are square, air units are round, and naval units are rectangular. Yellow squares are infantry, blue squares are artillery, and green squares are tanks, with similar color schemes for the other arms of service. You stack units of the same shape together to make a force, topping it with an identifying piece of the same shape and marked with your flag and a number unique within your nation’s forces. This is a great solution to the problems of space and stability. A stack of eight pieces (the maximum allowed) plus an identifier takes up A LOT less room than eight plastic tanks/soldiers/guns, and the interlocking pieces has far greater stability than a stack of cardboard counters.

There are also pegboards for tracking resources, battle boards for managing combat, 12-sided dice, pads for planning your moves, cards with info on territories, and a few cylinders and cardboard counters for marking situations on the map (such as a battle in progress or an aircraft mid-flight). The rules are nicely printed with color illustrations.

IMG 20200229 181230

The planning process is the biggest difference between War Room and Axis and Allies. Using a planning sheet, a player can order up to nine of their nation’s forces to move per turn. Giving orders is simple—write the number of the force and the name of the area you want it to move to. Territory names are printed on the map and pretty intuitive—Berlin is in area G1, for instance. Before moving, everyone takes a few minutes to scheme with their allies. Then everyone writes orders simultaneously.

The trick is that writing orders includes bidding for turn order. Bids are in the form of your most precious resource, oil. The player who bids the most selects their place in the turn order (but everyone in my game was bidding for first). Turn order is important because forces can be pinned by enemy forces moving before yours. A pinned force equals a wasted order that you’ll never get back. Of course, there’s a cost to spending all your oil on turn order. Planes and tanks and ships need oil. Run out and you can’t build any.

The combat system is not revolutionary, but it’s fun. At heart, it’s a bucket of dice—up to 30 per side in sets of 10 (roll 10, resolve 10, then roll more if you can). There are decisions to be made, though. Each side’s units are placed on a battle board, and each unit has a “stance” which you have to decide. Are your tanks set up for offense or defense, or split between them? Defensive tanks and troops roll more dice than offensive tanks and troops but survive more hits. Air units can have more dice for air combat or for ground support—your choice. Submarines can dive and escape a sea battle.

The 12-sided combat dice are printed with dots the same colors as the units, plus black and white dots. In land combat, for each yellow result, you get a hit on an infantry unit. Green hits a tank, and so on. Black dots are wild, and white dots hit any already-wounded unit. But War Room forces you to think about combined arms. If the enemy has more types of units on the battle board than you, you ignore your black and white results and waste those dice.

Finally, there’s stress—on your nation, not on you (hopefully). Lose control of an area and your nation takes stress equal to the area’s strategic value, printed on the map. Lose your capital and take a lot more stress. Lost units cause stress and sometimes make a victory pyrrhic. There’s a board for tracking all of your nation’s stress and, when it hits a certain number, your morale deteriorates. Falling morale has consequences ranging from annoying (lose three resources at the start of each turn) to dire (no rail movement for you, and only six orders) to catastrophic (no more resources for you!). There are also ways to relieve stress—take an enemy territory, buy consumer goods instead of military units—but the stress generally builds faster than the relief if you play aggressively.

IMG 20200229 181211

Which is why, after conducting a successful invasion of England, my Germans troops were soon marching everywhere on foot instead of taking the train. It turns out holding off a Soviet offensive is difficult when a significant chunk of your ground forces are in England. And let’s not even talk about what happens when the Americans and remaining British come to take England back…

War Room also has simple mechanics to cover key aspects of strategic war, such as raiding convoys and strategic bombing.

In short, War Room is a great evolution of the Axis and Allies style of wargame. It adds enough complexity to make it more interesting strategically, at a cost in (probably, in most cases) a longer playing time.

Whether the game is for you depends on your tolerance for luck and simplified designs. Those battle dice determine a lot, and one good series of enemy rolls can wipe out turns of unit building. One design feature commented on by the British player was that the abstract rules for troop transports probably make invasions easier than they should be (ahem!). But more complex rules could bog the game down, so it’s a matter of taste. Ask yourself: does the luck in beer & pretzels games bother me? How about the sometimes ahistorical mechanics? If you can get past those questions, you should enjoy War Room.

Then there’s the cost, monetarily. War Room is not uniquely expensive in the age of Kickstarters with hundreds of miniatures, but it isn’t on the same cost level as Axis and Allies, either. At this writing, the base game is $240 from the Nightingale Games web site. The jumbo pack of extras, including the mouse-pad map, is another $115. I’m not questioning whether there is enough value in the box(es) to justify the cost. It just seems fair to warn anyone interested in the game that it ain’t cheap. (Full disclosure: the copy I played belongs to someone else.) I suspect the base game is just as enjoyable as the expanded version, since the bonus items are nice but don’t change the rules or mechanics.

I had a grand time learning and playing War Room and look forward to another go at it.

Photos

War Room: First Impressions Review
War Room: First Impressions Review
War Room: First Impressions Review
War Room: First Impressions Review
War Room: First Impressions Review

Editor reviews

1 reviews

Rating 
 
4.5
KK
Kevin Klemme (He/Him)
Associate Writer

Kevin Klemme is a transplanted Midwesterner who has played board games for as long as he can remember. Wargames and RPGs became staples in high school 40 years ago. Wargames remain Kevin’s preferred game type, especially card-driven games like For the People and Paths of Glory. Kevin also enjoys other board and card games with lots of player interaction, as well as the occasional game of Crokinole. His favorite game, though, is backgammon, which is better than chess because of the dice.

Articles by Kevin

User reviews

There are no user reviews for this listing.
Already have an account? or Create an account
Log in to comment

hotseatgames's Avatar
hotseatgames replied the topic: #307798 09 Mar 2020 11:14
I'm not a war gamer, but this game looks so fantastic, I'd love to play it some day. Unfortunately, the player count and time pretty much means I never will; if I can get people together for that duration, I'll be pushing Dune.
Gary Sax's Avatar
Gary Sax replied the topic: #307800 09 Mar 2020 13:31
I'm out at the mention of Axis and Allies, but these component choices are so welcome. Axis and Allies is a game that makes a lot of sacrifices with regard to readability of the board state to put in the plastic toy soldiers.

The map perspective is also super striking!
DWTripp's Avatar
DWTripp replied the topic: #307802 09 Mar 2020 14:03
Very impressive. if this had been published in the 80's or 90's when I actually had 7 people who would cheerfully commit to 10 or more hours in a day for such a beast then money would have been no object. It doesn't seem overly expensive even now based on what I see.

I may buy this, plus the upgrades just have have the damned thing. Actually playing it would be the gravy on the main course. Good overview.
dysjunct's Avatar
dysjunct replied the topic: #307805 09 Mar 2020 17:08
That looks amazing. Thinking of getting a copy to squirrel away for a couple decades until I end up at a retirement home with a bunch of other gamers with nothing but time.
Msample's Avatar
Msample replied the topic: #307807 09 Mar 2020 17:45
I saw a copy of this at a friends house a couple weeks ago. Physically its a pretty impressive package - almost imposing. The box is ginormous, easily bigger than the old FFG coffin boxes and unlike those, packed to the brim with components. So on top of the already hefty price tag, shipping this thing ain't gonna be cheap.

I have a hard time getting enthused about Axis and Allies on steroids, esp at this price point. Granted it has a lot more depth than its predecessor. A few years from now I suspect it will be available second hand a lot cheaper.
southernman's Avatar
southernman replied the topic: #307808 09 Mar 2020 18:04
"War Room is not uniquely expensive in the age of Kickstarters with hundreds of miniatures"

I think $240 just for the base game must be close to unique, apart from the games rolled out just for the quality miniature suckers collectors - for a deluxe version of A&A that is pretty jaw-dropping.

Probably a game I would have wanted to play 10-15 years ago, maybe I'd still try it now though there's no way I'd find enough players for even a European war. But I'm sure the gaming masses are vast enough just in the US that there will be a decent market for this.
Msample's Avatar
Msample replied the topic: #307809 09 Mar 2020 18:22
I went and looked at the KS page - they got like 1700+ backers. I had never even heard of it til well after it released so I am guessing those backers were died in the wool Axis and Allies fans. There is a somewhat similar game that has been played at CSW Expo for years - think mega Axis and Allies, the map is like 8 feet long and 3-4 feet tall. Here is the website:

www.ww2wargame.com/
hotseatgames's Avatar
hotseatgames replied the topic: #307810 09 Mar 2020 19:57
At PAX Unplugged they were giving out coupon codes for free shipping so that may be an option.
Kevin Klemme's Avatar
Kevin Klemme replied the topic: #307811 09 Mar 2020 20:34
War Room was $149 for the core set on Kickstarter, and $245 with the extras, so that is comparable to the KS miniatures extravaganza games. The Batman game on KS now is $125 for the core game and $225 for the all-in.
Kevin Klemme's Avatar
Kevin Klemme replied the topic: #307812 09 Mar 2020 20:35
dysjunct, I thought about that, but with two kids in college next year, it's not an option.
waddball's Avatar
waddball replied the topic: #307880 11 Mar 2020 16:56
Thanks for the overview. It's impressive. Too big and too long, but so it goes. I esp. like the hidden orders for some planning tension. A splash of Shogun.

But come on: the victory conditions are ridiculous. Once again, it's Axis high tide and then resignation. There is no incentive to play it out to the end, for D-Day, island-hopping, etc. This problem was perfectly solved with A&A Pacific (the original Hasbro/AH one), or any number of wargames that use an "outperform your historical counterpart" condition. Ugh.
Msample's Avatar
Msample replied the topic: #307884 11 Mar 2020 17:04
I noticed in the write up that the game starts on the eve of Barbarossa . While it allows the designers to neatly sidestep the issue of a political system, it robs the players of developing much of an alternative narrative for WWII which is one of the things I like about CATACLYSM and TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY .