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WORLD WAR IV
- Michael Barnes
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The game's concept makes me laugh. It's fun. I mean, what about WWIII? It's post-apocalyptic, and there is some originality to it but like most DoaM games it's more abstract than it lets on.
Production is not bad for a first release from a small publisher. The art is all done by Mark Poole, famous for his MAGIC artwork. It's very CGI looking and has lots of that Kojima-style facial hair. It's weird, because the box art looks all modern but then it has this cheese-ass logo. Other production elements range from poor (B&W player mats that look like amateur hour with MS Word, thin-stock chits and cards) to pretty good (400 plastic dudes in five colors, a nice big mounted board, and a decent rulebook complete with a cornball fluff story).
One thing is abundantly clear, this is old-fashioned DoaM. No hybridization, no Euro mechanics whatsoever, player elimination, no way to streamline things, and the box tells you up front that its 4-6 hours. Reading through the rules, it's definitely in the vein of the Gamemaster stuff. Build dudes, move dudes, fight other dudes, win the game.
There's a few ways to win. You've got an on-board king figure that can be assassinated (and protected) by spies. Lose him, and you're fetching chips and drinks. It's the whole TITAN thing. You can also win by taking over everybody else's capital cities. There's also kind of a deadman's switch ending where if the event deck runs out and you have to draw, you roll a die for each city. If you get a six, your people rediscover atomic weapons and nuke everybody else. It sounds cool at first, but it's kind of a stupid way to end a 4-6 hour game.
Combat is pretty much exactly what you'd expect but it has rout results involved. Land, sea, and air are present.
One wrinkle is this random events deck. Generally bad stuff comes out of it. There are technology cards too, and one thing I thought was kind of cool was that you roll for each innovation card on your turn. On a certain result, the tech becomes common knowledge for all players.
The map is big and shows the world. Old timey. Each territory produces dollars and food. Food is required to support the troops in a region, and if you have excess you might face starvation by (wait for it) rolling a die.
At first, I was thinking "trainwreck" because I was reminded a little too much of BLOOD FEUD IN NEW YORK but I think I was just being a negative nelly. The game could be fun. It's really easy, it's the kind of thing a group of friends could pick up at the FLGS on a saturday afternoon and spend the rest of the night playing. A couple of the idiosyncracies might make for a pretty fun time. What remains to be seen is if they add a lot to the game or not or if this turns out to not have enough differentiators to warrant existing. It's definitely a far cry from radical DoaM games like STARCRAFT. A throwback, if you will.
We'll see how it goes...it's the perfect game for Pseudointellectual and his crew, and I'll probably rope Branham and the other Inglorious Bastards in on a game.
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One wrinkle is this random events deck. Generally bad stuff comes out of it. There are technology cards too, and one thing I thought was kind of cool was that you roll for each innovation card on your turn. On a certain result, the tech becomes common knowledge for all players.
Overall, it looks and sounds like a trainwreck, but the tech becoming common knowledge is a cool twist. However, I think that idea is more suited to a civ game than a DOAM game. Come to think of it, the event cards sound straight out of Civilization, though thematically, I think they could work just as well in a post-Apocalyptic DOAM game like this.
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- Michael Barnes
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As for the endgame thing...yeah, I think that's going to be crap. The thing is, you'd probably never roll more than 1-2 dice for it. There's only five cities. But still, "Hey, a 6! I win!"...OMG the Eurogamers were right! :-O
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- Michael Barnes
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You do get a bag of black and white poker chips with the game though. HIGH CLASS
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- Sagrilarus
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Are the rules online?
Sag.
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- Michael Barnes
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Actually, Sag, you've already made me think of a cool variant. When the deck runs out, nuclear war starts. Every turn the player rolls the dice and for every six gets to knock another player completely out of the game. The more cities you have, the better your odds. But an upstart can decide to nuke you, too. It's kind of a SUPREMACY ending, I guess, with everybody blowing each other to bits, but that could be fun.
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Photos of the pieces and the board are up at zigguratgames.com/ for anybody who wants to see it.
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- Sagrilarus
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Jeeze, it's been in common usage for ten days now -- where the hell have you been?
fortressat.com/index.php?option=com_mybl...ing-.html&Itemid=240
Sag.
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- Michael Barnes
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The green and purple areas are the starting zones for the African and Arabian nations, respectively.
One thing that's kind of nice is that each area lists the starting units (by color, too) that go there. At first, I saw in the rulebook this two page chart that listed them and had a head-slapping moment, thinking about how I was going to be calling out units and somebody else was going to be putting them down. For thirty minutes. But then I saw they were just printed on the board. Smart move.
It is a very dull-looking map...but yeah, the pieces are good. 11 different units. Greys are barbarian/neutrals.
1 spelling error on the map- "Deseret"
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