A region may only contain 4 banners at the end of an empire's turn. If at the end of the turn there are more than 4 banners, return banners to the supply until there are only 4 left. If a region contains a farm, it has a higher limit of 6 banners. Army doctrine reminds us that the MILDEC goal must always support the military objective. When crafting the friendly advantage that hopefully results from employing deception, Joint Publication 3-13.4, Military Deception, emphasizes the importance of how deception must always support the military objective. This idea proved true during the game. Although it is fun to cloak your intentions and mislead your opponents in “War of Whispers,” the winners of the match always noted how they focused on ensuring their #1 and #2 supported kingdoms captured the most cities. Deception for deception’s sake is not a proper use of resources in military operations or during a wargame.

The end game is usually pretty crazy. Players play cards left and right, trying to remake the board how they see fit, and what makes the end game even more fun is that, most of the time, players have no idea who’s actually winning! Everyone’s just trying to maximize their city scoring, minimize their opponents’ scoring, and hope for the best. It captures the chaos of hidden agendas and secret organizations very well. All that scheming, planning and manipulating is enough to cause a headache, however the satisfaction from pulling a master strike from behind the scenes, while outwitting and out bluffing your opponents around the table, just might be worth it. 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.

A Little Finger Told Me

Despite this I find myself entranced by the game. The interplay of trying to work out what your opponents are doing works so well. The game plays in under an hour and every choice feels important. Obviously you need to bluff your opponents so they don't torpedo your favourite empires, but unless you grab an advisor in those colours early there is no guarantee you will get one at all. One of the most distinctive things about A War Of Whispers is the circular board. There aren’t too many games that do this these days, so it really stands out from a design perspective. One of the things I really like about the game is the way the shape of the board is integrated into the design. Each of the warring empires has an area around the side of the board with four slots, representing its council. Each council slot is essentially an action space, like in a worker-placement game. Thematically, this is great, because on your turn you’re placing agents into each council, influencing the direction in which that empire is going to build and grow. On each Council, there will be 1 or 2 positions with unique actions. The actions available to these positions differ in some way from their non-unique versions- typically by either reducing the actions available or by modifying them in some way. Here are explanations for the modified actions:

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 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).all but use their vast territories and resources to endure through the years of conflict. There are also eagles who have good manoeuvrability, elephants who are strong soldiers and lions who are efficient at mobilisation.

Both of the above complaints are more personal preferences, but the following are critiques: the game feels too long at 4 rounds. It doesn’t offer enough depth to go beyond an hour, yet it often does. The rulebook also could have been written better. The wording is confusing in some places, and fails to highlight some important gameplay aspects. This is especially noticeable because, at its core, A War of Whispers is quite simple. This is also the 2nd edition, so those confusing errors in the rulebook should have been fixed. Executing council positions is how the empires move. As players take their agents’ council actions, empires will grow in power, invade other empires, and generally move around the board like a Risk game in fast-forward. It can be a lot of fun trying to deduce what empires your opponents are loyal to based on their actions. Some choose the blunt approach by filling their favored empire’s council positions and conquering cities left and right, while others prefer the more discrete approach, seemingly supporting an empire while working slowly to increase another’s territory. Pre-pub link is up, and the game is getting great numbers to start. https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1083-wings-for-the-baron-deluxe-gmt-edition.aspx

Components

A War of Whispers is a competitive board game for 2 to 4 players. Five mighty empires are at war for the world, but you are no mighty ruler. Instead, you play a secret society that is betting on the results of this war while pulling strings to rig the results and ensure their bets pay off. A War of Whispers is a game of deep strategy, hidden agendas, and shifting loyalties. Let us return to the beginning. Our loyalty is set with the 5 tokens. The course of our actions set in stone. Of course stones can be lost, destroyed, or replaced. At the end of each round, apart from the last, you can reveal two of your faction tokens, and swap them. Once done you can never do this again with those factions, and with only 5 tokens you can only ever do this twice.