Tactile Brilliance - A War Chest Review

For those of you who've played poker or have watched...

Read more...

This is quite a review, and thank you for including the photos. I almost wonder if a sound file might have been appropriate as well.

Is combat a foregone conclusion or is there an element of luck or surprise in the game? You mention things like destroying a fortification but don’t describe how that’s done.

Yeah, a soundfile would've been cool, although I have a hard enough time with pictures.

Combat is almost inevitable. It is a wargame, after all. The luck/surprise is a derivation of what you draw from your bag. Each player draws three coins every round and plays them out, one by one, in alternating turns. That's what I meant when I talked about the element of risk in moving one of your units next to an opponent's while not knowing what they may have drawn and if they're able to activate that unit that you're now adjacent to. Most unit attacks need adjacency, except for those (like Archers and Crossbowmen) who can use their tactic to attack at range.

Fortifications are coins that start on the board and can be inhabited by other units. If you attack a unit inside a fortification, the fort must be destroyed first before removing any coins from the enemy unit. (Each attack removes one enemy coin.) So, Siege allows you to pivot around strongpoints on the map, in addition to trying to control specific points in order to win.

This was a good review.

Thanks.

Awesome review, I'll have to keep an eye out for this at my FLGS. I feel that blind chit drawing/bag stuffing is a very underutilized mechanic. Yggdrassil, one if my favorite 1 hour or less co-ops, uses then extensively, and I forget which one it is but there is a nice 80's era tank combat game that uses chit draw for unit activation. At first I thought this was gonna be a reimplentation of that Pog(?) system from a ways back.

Minis have taken all the spotlight but I think there is a lot more to component design than just sexy molded plastic dudes. Who can forget the metallic display of Terraforming mars that first time, or playing Splendor with those poker chips, or the uber meaty cardboard hexagons in Survive? Even a nice linen finished card just feels better in the hand.

Thanks. Yeah, Splendor was a game that came to mind when I first played War Chest, precisely for those nice chips. One more recent game that occurred is Cosmic Frog. Jim did a really good job with the feel of that one, too, as the terrain tokens are all quite solid to the touch and the game mat was a good choice, since the texture of it prevents sliding by said terrain.

If you look up Too Many Bones buying recommendations, just about all of them rate the upgraded health chips highly. The unit chips are all heavy, high grade with foil labels. The standard health markers are lower quality and much lighter. I haven’t bought them but I’ll probably put them in another order just because yeah, that heavy tactile quality is nice.

War Chest is one I’ve been almost about to pick up many times, it looks really good and Undaunted is definitely a reason to have a look at the designers’ other work. Not sure why I always back down off of interest in it though.

Michael Barnes wrote: The unit chips are all heavy, high grade with foil labels. The standard health markers are lower quality and much lighter. I haven’t bought them but I’ll probably put them in another order just because yeah, that heavy tactile quality is nice.

I'm starting to wonder if Michael Barnes' account has been hacked.

Hey I bought the metal coins for Rococo so I am starting to wonder the same thing.

But hey, it does up the resale value...

Great review. I've had my eye on this one but the short play time is actually a bit of a turn off. 30 min games often feel like they end just as things were starting to get interesting. Do any of the expansions offer a more...expansive mode? Something that bulks it out to an hour or so?

Thanks. Siege does that to some degree, since it involves another set of markers on the board that require extra hits to destroy. And, of course, depending on the AP of you and your opponent(s), games can certainly run longer than half an hour. I guess it depends on how evenly matched you happen to be.

Cheers. I do have a regular opponent who's AP is verging on the clinical but I usually just resort to staring at him seductively until he's unnerved enough to take his turn. I'm not sure that would enhance the experience here.