War Room

At the continuation of the traditional Christmas BLTG extravaganza, we ultimately ended up with five people on the day after Christmas. The original plan had been Mega-Civ for nine, 18OE for seven, or War Room for six and below, so Larry’s little monster was set up in no time. We took the usual powers we had held in previous games, and the table was ready for another grand wartime spectacle.

In War Room, players write down their orders, and all of them are carried out simultaneously at the end. That process is the heart of the experience: you do not simply see what everyone else does and react immediately; you commit to your plan, then watch anxiously to see where it collides with your opponents’ plans.

Our game made that very clear. Rather than the usual drang nach osten, Germany attempted an early invasion of England, abandoning the Eastern Front, while America had put everything into the Pacific. But unlike AA, as its designer has also pointed out, the game has been tested against such blitz openings and aims to portray the endless grind of World War II: the random appearance of the Russian fleet in the Channel, along with Lord Reppington’s sound HouseKeeping that preserved the oil and prevented the German landing forces from becoming unpinned, sent Axis plans to join Davy Jones. With the Red Army a breath away from Berlin, we stopped, since an Allied victory was guaranteed.

For me, it is one of the truly great games, provided you have the space and time to put it on the table every so often. The whole business of hidden, simultaneous orders alone is enough to produce very intense feelings.