Starling Games - A War of Whispers (2nd Edition) - Board Game, HPSSTG1804EN

Product Information

You start the game with five loyalty tokens, each corresponding to one of the five different empires, bet randomly on a loyalty value. Your primary goal is to ensure that when the game ends, the empires you are most loyal to control the most cities across the globe. Gameplay consists of turns broken down into four phases: Each empire council consists of 4 council positions (Sheriff, Steward, Marshall, and Chancellor) on which you can place agents. Once that is done, it's time to set up the empires. There are 5 empires in the game, each represented by a different color and animal: The Bear Empire (blue), The Lion Empire (yellow), The Horse Empire (brown), The Elephant Empire (green), and the Eagle Empire (red). Now, this problem can be easily sourced and fixed. I found a solution for 12 dollars on Etsy which makes the game great but I will note that without some form of marker, the table presence and actual functionality of the game is slightly diminished. I would have loved for those items to be included. Truth be told though, that is it for my critiques. That speaks volumes about how much I enjoyed this title if a big concern is just about some aesthetics. Area control board games are nothing new. Families have been falling out over Risk for decades, while modern interpretations like Root rule the roost now. Most games of this ilk are pretty up-front about what’s going on. You can see who is trying to control what, and try to make sure your tiny empire reigns supreme at the end of the game. A War Of Whispers turns this on its head, with a game full of subterfuge, misdirection, and cunning. Look at that board – pretty!

Some people don’t like games where you’ve no idea who’s winning until the end of the game, so I can see this being a turn-off for them. To go into A War Of Whispers like that is to miss the point of the game. It’s an hour of ludological foreplay, leading up to a knee-trembling climax, which hopefully doesn’t result in disappointment for you. CDR Michael Posey is an active-duty Navy officer. Col Steven Tofte is an active-duty Air Force officer. Mr. Joseph Wheaton is an Army civilian. All three currently teach in the Department of Military Strategy, Planning, and Operations for the resident education program at the School of Strategic Landpower at the U.S. Army War College. Then you will move around the edge of the board activating the Empires one at a time. This means that the blue 'flappy wing' Empire will always act first and the brown 'donks' always last. Herein lies my potential worry about long term gameplay - it seems to me that browns always have the advantage. I have played the game around 8 times now and although I'm still not 100% I always think my job easier if Brown is my best scoring Empire.

A Day In The Life Of A Spy

Since these actions are the same, you can start to get a feel for what your opponents are planning based on the cards in their hand… but just as often in A War of Whispers, things are not what they seem. The flexibility of multiple actions on a single card will give you a lot of choice on when and where to use them best. A Day In The Life Of A Spy Each Empires have slightly different actions, leaning towards fights or deployment more. Also Blues have only one city in their home region but start with the most cubes on the board. Browns however have four cities but no cubes. A Whisper of Wars The cards are...mostly stupid. The event cards are the worst offenders. Not-Starks get good events while Elephants get events that ONLY HARM THEM. Cards that allow for rules to be absolutely shattered are, in concept, awesome. In practice they are too frequent to plan around. Elephants make armies just teleport across the map...because. With some of the card effects, they shouldn't have been scared of brighter colors. Building strategic empathy – By assuming the role of “Red” (the adversary), strategic leaders can better understand the enemy’s capabilities, intentions, and likely courses of action. In addition, this firsthand experience helps players anticipate and counter the adversary’s strategies and tactics during real-world operations.

So, I wanted to love this game. I heard the basic premise of it and just went bananas. My entire group thought it would become one of our new favorites based on concept alone. Boy...were we wrong. Finally there are actions that allow you to draw cards. Each Empire has unique cards that you can play before or after any action that your agent controls. These cards have a variety of rule breaking effects that allow for some dynamic plays, repositioning, extra actions, or even just straight removal of enemy banners from the map. These cards have an inventive play system that adds to the tactical subterfuge of A War of Whispers. It’s All About Who You Know Determine which player will go first by any means. That player takes the first player marker J. The first player marker will change hands throughout the game, and the player who holds it will be referred to as the first player. Loyalty Informing and refining strategic plans – Wargaming provides a platform for decision-makers and military strategists to develop and refine their decision-making skills. It offers an opportunity for commanders and strategists with different strategies to assess the potential outcomes of their decisions. In other words, wargaming can help our senior-level war college students refine their decision-making skills and make better-informed decisions in real-world situations. This covers the main overview of A War of Whispers, but the real fun is in the actions you can take and how they affect the Empires and the map, so let’s take a moment to discuss these in more detail. It’s All About The ActionsFor each icon present across all regions controlled by this empire, add 1 banner to any region(s) controlled by this empire. All Forts, Farms, Cities are multi-state to make switching colors easier. Thanks goes to tracerterent for the suggestion. Identifying potential risks and opportunities – Wargaming allows individuals and organizations to explore challenging scenarios and identify potential risks and opportunities. By simulating different situations, wargaming can reveal unexpected outcomes and highlight areas of weakness in strategic plans. Lastly at the end of every round bar the last, you may swap your loyalty between two Empires – but only if you now have those tokens face up. This gives your opponents a lot of information with which to deduce which Empires are move valuable to you. A Game of Two Halves