WORLD WAR IV

The fine folksat Ziggurat Games sent me a promo copy of WORLD WAR IV and since there's practically nothing about it online yet I thought I'd give F:AT my world-exclusive rules/components review. I'm going to do a full feature at Gameshark, of course, but consider this a pre-play look at the game to figure out if it's something you might want or not.

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.

Sounds interesting except for the ending a game on a die roll thing....

Michael Barnes wrote:

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.

Well, that's something where I don't think the design is going to go far enough. The idea is cool- basically, humanity has to reclaim all these techs lost in WWIII. So it's kind of supposed to be a lead-up to a civilization rediscovering nuclear weapons. That's a pretty great idea for civ game, but yeah, probably not so much a DoaM game.

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

Oh, and just how tiny are those tanks?

That's SUPERPOWERS that has those really small tanks. These are about A&A size. The minis are pretty good, mostly custom. Although I'm not sure how P-38s survived World War III.

You do get a bag of black and white poker chips with the game though. HIGH CLASS

I'd be curious to know how often that event deck is used up so that the nuke roll can even happen. It could be a kill switch for a stalemate game (and everyone might be pleased) or perhaps a Hail-Mary strategy for someone that is on the ropes. Do you have the ability to make drawing cards more likely, or is it something where everyone draws at the start of their turn? If the player is giving up options for other progress the nuke roll may be a reasonable risk, for both the nuker and the nukee.

Are the rules online?

Sag.

It's a once-per-turn thing. Shoot, I can't remember if it's once per player turn or once per round. Don't have the rules right here with me.

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.

Sounds pretty cool. A good old fashioned DOAM game with a cool theme and sweet plastic bits. I'd totally be interested if I did't already have a closet full of 'em.

Photos of the pieces and the board are up at zigguratgames.com/ for anybody who wants to see it.

You could make the game shorter by randomly removing part of the event deck.

I know I'm going to get my F:AT membership card revoked for this, but what does "DoaM" stand for? Google's got nothin'.

"Dudes on a Map"

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.

No clubs?

Someone's uploaded some photos on the BGG:



The board looks rather bland, but all the pieces look great.

The "C" looking number in the boxes is the money the territory generates, the bottom "F" is the food (i.e. stack limit).

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"