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

Product Information

During the first round of War of Whispers, the students were focused on understanding the rules and mechanics of the game instead of applying the information lessons and concepts. However, after a complete run-through of the game, the students understood the game mechanics, and we started a second round. The next play-through was noticeably different. Being more comfortable with gameplay, the students were more engaged and focused on what they were doing and what others were scheming. Students began to leverage deceptive tactics, form alliances among warring parties, and “talk trash” across the table, attempting to influence their opponents to act or not act in specific ways. We could debate the efficacy of actual students’ subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) table talk, but we saw the students demonstrating the art of influence as they played War of Whispers. 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. 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. I really, really like A War Of Whispers, and it’s going to stay in my collection for a long time. The way it manages to wrap-up the intrigue of something like A Game of Thrones, and throw it into a game that only takes an hour (once you’ve learned the game) is fantastic. It’s an easy teach which relies on the interactions of the players to create some fantastic tension and raised eyebrows. It’s at its best with three of four players, two-player can just get a bit swingy. A closer look at the council spaces for one of the empires The components are solid, and the circular board works perfectly for this game. The empires are asymmetric in set-up, which I’m glad for as it makes them feel at least a little different. The tokens and cubes representing the organizations and empires are fine, but they don’t really enhance the epicness this game is trying to capture, though they certainly don’t hinder it (a collector’s edition with miniatures is available if that’s your thing). The artwork is good, but they reuse a lot of the same illustrations for the cards, which is a missed opportunity for additional world-building.As for ideal player count, A War of Whispers is playable at 2, but best with 3 or 4.

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. At the start of the game you randomly place five empire tokens face down on your player mat. These are crucial to your score as they tell you which Empires will score you more points for control of cities.UPDATE 1: Thanks goes to Plat for uploading the models that spruce up the game board and help a lot with map marker visibility, which is essential to the game! Now it looks like the Deluxe Edition of the game! The last step is the Cleanup phase where players make sure they do not have more than 5 cards in their hand. Each player then removes 1 agent they control from any one council space. Scripted Empire Control Scorecard. The amount of cities/forts/farms each Empire controls is updated in real-time and easily visible to all players. Using the state changes now automatically updates the Scorecard. Makes final scoring and performing certain actions a breeze! 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.

As soon as the game starts, you can almost hear the collective cogs turning in brains around the table, as they form their diabolical machinations. You’ll find your first instinct is to play it cool. Don’t make it obvious you really want yellow to win, for example. The trouble is, the rest of the table is doing the same thing. So then you might think “Okay, let’s get clever. I’m going to go all-in on my preferred colour, and let them think I secretly want another.” And as sure as day follows night, that double bluff turns into a triple bluff, and then a quadruple. In one game I played, I’d convinced myself I wanted to red to win, and ended up bluffing myself out until it was too late to do anything about it. High IQ play, I’m sure you’ll agree. You have varying loyalty to each of the factions and it is important for you to manage this throughout to ensure you maximise your points once the game ends. BE warned though, as once you decide to change your loyalty, other players will see where your loyalties lie and may just be able to take advantage of such information. 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. Of course your interpretation of these factions may differ to mine. It is this sort of emergent narrative that I absolutely love in games. A core set of easy to understand mechanisms, allowing for a story to emerge of what every player is doing each turn. Twists are a common feature of a lot of stories, and War of Whispers narrative is no different.As the rounds progress, players will add more agents to the council positions, which is a nice progressive mechanic that makes things feel tighter as decisions start to matter more. Because council positions can get overcrowded, with players increasingly unlikely to benefit from 2 or more actions from each agent, the option to switch allegiances is an excellent self-balancer. Maybe you were supposed to help the eagle empire spread its territorial wings, but other players took those council positions so you ended up controlling most of the bear empire’s council. You can switch those 2 on your board so you have more of a fighting chance. Sure, other players will know where your loyalties lie, but it’s better than guaranteeing yourself a loss. I feel that A War of Whispers has a really tight niche that taps into my desire to be a conspirator and control the world from the shadows. The unique way that players interact with the board is a really fun “third party” connection to victory or failure and that is fresh, new, and enjoyable. There is enough asymmetry in the Empires for them to feel different and alive without needing to grab a rulebook to reference things throughout the game. A War of Whispers is easy to teach, easy to play, and satisfying to master. If you are looking for a unique (I know I have said that adjective a lot) take on area control and hidden objectives, A War of Whispers is sure to be a hit with your gaming group. To begin setup, each player will choose a color to represent them throughout the course of the game. At this point, the player will collect the loyalty tokens, agents, and player board that matches their chosen color, placing them in front of them. The game board is placed in middle of the playing area, with the first turn marker placed on the starting space of the board. The remaining turn markers may be placed beside the current turn marker. 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 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 Actions

A War of Whispers reimagines war games and sees you, the player, take on the role of a secretive society intent on changing the course of history by influencing 5 warring factions. Gameplay consists of turns, with each turn consisting of four phases. The board will direct the players to which phase they will complete. The players will complete the following phases: Deploy Agents Phase, Empire Turns Phase, Cleanup Phase, and Swap Phase. They will complete these four different phases completely before the next round begins.

The third action is a hybrid between that Empire and one of the other four Empires in the kingdom and requires one card from that corresponding Empire. These actions are unique and very powerful; they will allow you to change the face of the board in a major way. A small team of us at the U.S. Army War College, the service’s senior professional military education school in Carlisle, PA, recently noted how commercial games can help foster new levels of thinking. In an elective course entitled “The Joint Warfighter and the Information Environment” (JWIE), we incorporated the commercial wargame War of Whispers into the curriculum to help students stretch their intellectual muscles and apply information, influence, and deception concepts studied and discussed in bold and creative ways.