War Chest – Impact Review – Board Game Impact

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Ready to put your medieval strategies to the test? Think your archers can take on the powerful knights and lancers? In today’s review episode Bruce looks into the 2 or 4 abstract medieval strategy game War Chest designed by Trevor Benjamin and David Thompson, published by Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG).

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To learn more about War Chest:
Purchase a copy of War Chest: https://amzn.to/2COZ8c4
Visit AEG’s Website: http://www.alderac.com/warchest/
Visit War Chest’s BGG: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/249259/war-chest

Transcription

00:00:07 - 00:05:10

Today. I'm looking into the two or four player abstract medieval strategy game, war-chest published by Audrey entertainment group, AG, and designed by Trevor Benjamin and David Thomson. My name is Bruce Brown and this is board game impact a podcast or a look into board games and related topics. So that way, you can know the impact that they may have for your gaming group, you can find me on board game geek as Bruce Brown and on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and patriot as board game impact so war-chest is a game that I actually learned about and got to play for the first time when I attended board game, geek, convention back in November of two thousand eighteen now how I found out about is kind of fascinating actually, so on. What's called the board game geek, hotness? Or geek, buzz, the geek buzz, essentially, what that is. When you check in for board game geek, you get this little name badge. And then on the back of it, you've got a little card, and it's got your own personal code. They are in on these computers that they put up in the lobby. Once you type in your code you can click the games that you've liked so far at the convention from all that they aggregate that data out, and they create. Create what's called essentially, this hotness list of the top one hundred games. Now, of course, there's over six thousand games available to play at the convention, but these are just someone so you can like narrow down your choices on what you want to choose, how this plays in with war-chest is was number one for the first three days of the convention now, should note that the first day of the convention for November twenty eight teen they did not have up the projector screens. There's just too much going on, on Italy. And it makes sense so days two and three both had war-chest number one. So that was the first sign that it's like I need to check this out. Well luckily in the dealer hall, one of the two dealer halls that they had AG was there and they did have a setup of or just because it's a more recent game. That's come out came out in two thousand eighteen so I spent about twenty minutes with one of the demos and random gentlemen. That I just met right there. And we learned how to play the basics of how works works out and there was a. A lot more depth that I wanted to explore and another buddy of mine who didn't get the demo it I was like you know what we're going to get our hands on one of these, and we're going to try this, so we kept going in and out of the library over the next day and a half. And eventually, it was there, and that was on the last full night of the convention. And so we sat down we played it and we, honestly played it three times in a row and you're probably curious like what's going on in this game? They played three times in a row. So an overview, it's two or four player game. So it's university other person or you create a team of two people against the team another team of two people. So each side, whether it's the two player or the four player will have their own unique set of units that come from a total sixteen units that are in the base box. They'll use those units to move around the board fight their way around the board and place. What's called control markers around the board. First person in a two player game. Came to place out all their control markers wins or in a four player game. It's the first team to put out all their control markers, where you're putting these control markers out are on certain spaces of this board that essentially looks like a blank Catan board now it's not modular not moving the stuff around, but if you think about that hexagonal overall shape with heck's 's inside of it. That's what it looks like. And then there's a certain number of those spots that have a little symbol on them that's where you can put control markers. And they're usually at least two spots away from another control marker. So some interesting notes about this game first of all, it's really a bag builder in that you're going to be collecting your units and recruiting your units, and you're going to be putting them into the your bag bags that you have these really nice velvet bags. So it's almost like a delta where you first get the unit and you put it to the discard pile. And then it's going to go into your bag once your bags completely empty, and restock it. And you'll mix up the bag Polat your units all the units have one health. And once they're destroyed their removed from that current game. You can't get them back now. What's interesting about it is, these units are actually on. These cool little poker chips. One side has that unit symbol in its color. And then on the other side, it's all of them have the same thing, and that is this lock symbol almost like the lock and key of a chest. Now, this two ways you can play these poker chips. The most easiest way is the face up way. And you just take that unit from your hand because you're gonna have a hand of three of these chips at the start of each round. You play one and play continues. So you take one of these ships, you put it out on one of your control. Markers, face up and economic limited only having one of each unit on the board with special exception to a certain unit that can have two which we'll get into here in a second.

00:05:10 - 00:10:00

The other option you can do is to take a face up chip and put it on the board wherever that matching unit is already on the board. Now why you would do this is called bolstering, essentially what it does it increases? The health of that unit by one more than the unit gets hit. It'll get hit for one and it will be still removed from the game that one ship so that other one left on the board. So can be very helpful in some situations. The other things is you can play the that chip face up to your discard pile to move your unit one space on the board. The other thing you can do with it is by playing a face up discard pile is fight and adjacent unit and the other option for fling. It face up is to activate it activating it can go one of two ways. One of one way is to place that control marker on that space or remove an opponent's control marker from the space, you're on. And the other thing is that all the units except for a couple have what's called a tactic. Some of this might be moving one moves to. There's one unit in which you can run to and stab. That's the Lancers essentially, if you think about going in go into a renaissance fair and you've got the jousting. It's running in the straight line in stabbing I, so it's pretty. Cool and then some other ones like an Archer will that can shoot who spots away, all of them have their own things, which I'm gonna let you discover now the other way you can play your chips. It's to blame. Face down with that Locke facing up. Now, why, why am I wanna do this is? That's how you'll get to recruit more units from their card in front of you to your discard pile again. When you're when you're draw bag runs out, you'll take everything in discard pile, put it in your bag and mix it up. The other thing you can do playing chip face down to gain the first player marker as you can imagine in strategy wargame, it's really important sometimes to be able to make that I play. And so this is how you'll gain it. Now if you're playing four player game and your teammate already has the first player marker you cannot do this. You have to be taking the first player marker from the opponent. The opposing team the other thing you can do is just play one face down to pass. Now it's almost never advantageous to do this. But you can. Do it almost as a stall tactic. But again, I would not ever recommend it except in very, very limited situations. Okay. So now let's get into the components and what you can expect when you get a copy of war chest, or you are playing with the friends copy, or you see it near curious, what is in that box, because it's not a normal size box first of all, and the start with the box. It's not normal size, and that it's more. More is exactly like a chest. So it's, it's wider in some parts and fatter in other parts but was really cool. Is it opens like HSA feeling this inside box with all the contents on the inside of it, it has an insert that perfectly displays all the factions. And so that way they are nice on display. It's going to look elegant. And it's also got a nice, transparent screen that can go on top of that to hold them all in place. So that way, when you're transporting, it, they're not gonna get mixed around my favorite part of the box, and many people probably skip over this don't and that is the story on the inside of the box. The story of essentially a king passing on this chess to his kid who eventually is going to take the throne presenting it as a toy and by playing this toys are growing up. They're going to get better and better military combat. So that they'll be able to rein in control the military and. News its tactics for the advantageous for the empire, which is really cool. And if you've ever watched game of thrones I've been watching that with my wife to get ready for season eight, and they're planning with the different fights, and they've got the different units. That's kind of what this game is medieval strat abstract strategy, wargame, using medieval units, moving around this board to control his different areas. You can think of him like countries if you want to, but it is just really cool to be playing this so other things. The row book is short. It's well laid out. It has the recommended to player learning game and the four starting units for each of those players. It also explains how to hike in draft between the sixteen potential units two and four player games, the coolest thing, though it has ancient battle reenactments with unit recommendation, so an example of a battle being a fight between the English and the French that occurred during medieval times recommend these of the units for the French these of the units for the English. That is just really. Really cool. The chips. They are high quality poker chips, similar to the chip wait used by chip theory games. If you've ever played with any of their stuff, specifically in there too many bones game, and it's similar to the weight of the iron Claes in rocks.

00:10:00 - 00:15:02

Sleaze deluxe edition of brass, if you have your hands on that are played that just see. No, you're going with these things. Looked like they had to be expensive, especially having so many different ones. So kudos to AG for putting in the effort into getting this high quality component now the problem is that your side, your faction also has those control markers, which I've talked about which are in design, like poker chip, but they're kind of a letdown because you're holding the super awesome, heavy weight poker chip for units. And then you have your control markers, which have your faction on it, and they're just like a generic board game cardboard component ship is kind of sad. Now I understand. I can see the need for the really high quality for the one and also there need to be a difference in size for the control markers. But the thing is like you drop a unit. It's not going to dent. It's not gonna chip anything these control markers. Like it's just cardboard that honestly was a letdown for me, but I still play with it makes sense. It actually gets covered up really well by the poker chips. But that's one of the things I wish I wish it could be a little better the cards. You have one card per unit type. They're made of a really nice, quality, the bags that I talked about these things are super high quality. They are two per team. The teams are and haven't really talked about this because it's really not part of the game. It's just kind of there, but the two factions are the wolves. And then there's these crows that are the darker color. I assume they're crows it's looks like a crow and those are actually stitched onto these deep dark green velvet bags in this really nice like yellowish gold color. On the outside of them that takes up like the whole bag. These things are legit. These things really set the bar for the quality of baggy should be putting into game. Okay. So some other things sucked by the impact of, of this game. And really what it did for me. So first of all. I've talked about this in a previous episode, but that is that I am a night found out high school. My family met up with this long lost relatives over in Italy and ends up that we are knights of the holy Roman Roman empire and anyone born to the bloodline is knighted at birth by birth. My full name is not Bruce Brown. It's surburbs David Brown Bulich department Berg, and that's that was signed in by king. John the second so being that I have that family connection to these things, obviously, that's really not ineffective anymore, but it's just a cool story, but that being said, I do have an affinity towards things Miller medieval, it's just one of the things that since finding out kind of fascinates me. And so just know that going into all this, but the table presents for this every time I've played this, whether it be a meet up, whether be at my brother's house over the holidays or actually BG ahead, a good number of people stopping by to check out this game. And the box itself do the different size calls for people ask, like, ooh, what's that, which is a really nice thing kind of satisfying as game owner, the chips in the velvet bags? When you're mixing, those up, it's just got a really nice sound that when they're clinging together. But then, also when you reach in and feeling the way to this chips is just super satisfying. And that noise that creates Walser capture the attention of non-players. Ooh, I saw you playing that game last time. What was that? And can I try it which I've had it happen? Number of times the game can be longer or shorter, depending on how the players long the players choose to take their turns. I can see some players getting a little bit of analysis paralysis. When the first trying to learn this almost like that first time somebody plays chess with how does this unit work? What does your unit do, but honestly, as we got going, so I told us told you the first time I really played this was at BG and played it back three times by the third game. We're playing this in a in a simple like twenty thirty minutes, which was so, so cool because every game is going to be slightly different, which is really, really cool in some online posts have actually referred to this as like a perfect whiskey game. Now I'm not saying you have to drink whiskey. But just like I wanna wanna walk you through this. So what I mean by whiskey game is a game where you're just going to have a nice glass of whiskey or a Cup of tea or a Cup of coffee, that kind of thing, and what you're doing is you're, it's more about having the experience with somebody else because once we got going with his game, we didn't think that hard about what we're doing. We could just sit there and play enjoy the Cup of whatever we were drinking but really, really really it was more about coming together as a friend, and so my buddy and I were just to sit there talk about things and hang out together him and I don't live in the same state. So it was just that really cool moment. And honestly, for me that was kind of the moment of the convention and why.

00:15:02 - 00:19:46

Had own this game. And so I do own this game I had on this game because the memories created by just getting to have that personal moment with another player. What's interesting about the four player game is you're not sitting on the same side as your teammate. You're sitting actually they're sitting on the opposite corner from you. And so you are surrounded on your left and your right by the opposite team. And so play flows between each other between the two teams back and forth back and forth back and forth in a really cool way. Some other things of note when you're playing that four player game, some of the units, actually lied activate your your teammates units, and you can utilize some of the things of your teammates units on your turn. Which is cool just to explicitly say this, it's not a three player game. So if you're always finding yourself oh we have only three people all the time. That's just not gonna work out like it's a two player game or it's a four player game those your options. My overall thoughts on war. Chest are that it's a game that I know can have in my collection for a long time. I say that because of them those memories that were fostered by create by playing it, but also because it's really cool and on how every time I play, it's can be slightly different, but also have undertones of being the same, which is also really just nice in cathartic is a really nice game for just sitting down to somebody or with three other friends and having Kartik experience, where de-stressing but also coming together as friends and that's just awesome. And then game that does that it's a game usually. To hang onto now the component quality on this chips and those bags and the box, it self really, really nice. There were again those concerns about the control markers, just wish the quality of those a little higher in honestly, my friends, and I were talking about this. We could honestly see a has down gift version of this game coming out in which it's made out of the boxes made out of wood. It's got super high quality on everything, which, like, just to raise the bar of the other components in the box that currently exist. It's just one of those games they all felt like whoa. Like this is cool. I would love to have a wooden box version of this, that, I can just hang onto for the rest of my life. That was the experience created. And so that is something that interests you checkout were chest. It's a fun game. The price point is very reasonable for the high quality components that you are getting in there, plus that different. Slightly over time. But the undertones of similar experience. Again. My name is Bruce Brown and you can find me on board game geek as Bruce Brown and you've been listening to board game impact as wanna thank you for listening to the show, and I hope that learning about experiences that I've been having are making positive impacts for you and your gaming group if you wanna learn more about me and the show, you can visit the website, which is board game impact dot com or the Facebook page game. Impact if you have a topic that you'd like to have discussed, please Email me at board game impacted gmaiLcom, please do make sure to follow us on Instagram, which is at board game impact, and like that Facebook page, which is again is board game impact and take a quick moment. You thank our phenomenal patriot backers for supporting the show that your support means more than you could possibly know. It's this has been the show's been going on for less than a year now. And just hearing from you and the experiences that you've been able to have and seeing the impact of, how of the show on you. Just been awesome. And so just thank you. And you know how much it means to myself, and my family, speaking about the show after doing some reflection over the past couple weeks. Updated some things on the patriot for board game impact. So what I did is that created a slack channel. So that we can all connect share experiences and tell our game and some non game stories with each other. So the kick off the new year and close out this year, you can be added to the slack channel simply by backing board game impact on patriot at the one dollars supporter level. In addition, I have added some goals that these are secret goals that went on locked, I'll surprise you with them their stuff that really relate to the show, and that I've been working on behind the scenes that I just wanna give you some of them are actual tangible things. Some of them are digital go. Visit the patriot so it's patriot dot com slash board game. Impact, that's Regan, find all the information about the tears the goals as well as getting, you can get access to that slack channel and become an awesome backer. So until next time Joe have a positive impact on the world.