War on Terror Review

Satire.

If there’s anything that Britain is good at, it’s moaning. And satire. Charles Dickens. Cleese, Barker and Corbett. Chris Morris. The incredible Armando Iannucci.

We love satire in Britain. It tends to come in and out of fashion. (What this actually means is that comedians with something to say tend not to be very common. We use the “fashion” thing to excuse comedy’s regular inadequacies.) But overall, we have a huge affection for those who take a pop at those that need to get popped at. Or take a poop on those who need to be pooped on.

At the moment I have a big corkboard on my wall, with lots of Post-It Notes stuck there. The Post-It Notes have things written on them. Things like “DRUGS THING” and “THING ABOUT SPERM.” I’m in the middle of writing a sketch show with a heavily satirical slant, so it feels like a good time to get War on Terror on the table.

War on Terror, from TerrorBull Games, is a satirical board game. I’ll talk about the board game first, then I’ll talk about the metagame, which is where it becomes clear that the satire is a blistering success.

War on Terror has a board that looks, to a complete idiot’s eye, like something that might be a wee bit like Risk. Worrying times, indeed. But WoT doesn’t play like Risk. Not at all. Sure, there’s land-grabbing and aggression. But there’s something far more clever going on in here.

In WoT every player plays as an Empire of a different colour. You start the game by developing villages on the map, and then in every turn that follows you can expand out and up, like a man with an inflatable suit who’s found some telescopic stilts. Grab more land and develop more villages, or turn your villages into towns and cities. The land-grabbing is all about oil. Not cod liver oil, fish fans. Oil oil. Black Gold. Texas Tea. Brown Shower. Each country has an oil counter which gets flipped when it is conquered. There’s a number on the oil counter. If that number comes up on the dice roll at the end of a turn, oil gets produced. You get rich. Settlers of Catan style. It follows, then, that you want lots of land and lots of oil counters.

You can screw over the other Empires by hitting them with cards. You get to draw cards at the start of your turn, and can buy more. Cards, baby. We all love cards, right? Cards.

And there’s something else you can do on your turn. You can sponsor terrorism. You can buy terrorists from the world bank and place them on the board. Drop them into your opponents’ countries. Or you can keep them in a terrorist training camp until you’re ready to use them. Nice, right?

An extra angle is provided by the Axis of Evil spinner in the middle of the board. Sometimes a card or a dice roll will activate it, and the spin will turn one of the Empires into the big fat walking target. The bad guy. The Empire everyone gets rewarded for taking a shot at. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never bought even one terrorist – you could suddenly be named the Big Bad and be handed the legendary Evil Balaclava. Which is a balaclava that says ‘EVIL’ on it.

NOTE: Playing War on Terror on a hot night is hilarious. Watching one of your opponents sweating to death under the balaclava is a wonderful treat. Not to be missed.

Here’s the key element of the game: at any point, a player can turn terrorist. You can just turn all your developments into terrorist cells and columns, swap your Empire Cards for Terrorist Cards, and have at it. As players sponsor terrorism, and more terrorists are unleashed onto the board, it starts to become just too tempting to turn “bad” and take control of that big swarm of black counters. Players who go bankrupt or are wiped out also turn terrorist, so as time goes by, the game will almost certainly split into two sides. The good guys and the bad guys. No. The bad guys and the good guys. No. The good guys and the good- No. Wait.

The guys and the guys.

We’re knee-deep in metagame now:

SESSION REWIND – In the early part of the game, Robert and Joanne made a secret pact to squeeze Richard out of the Americas. Bad rolls and bad choices made it impossible, and Richard retaliated with a nuclear strike, sending Robert to his knees. Robert’s only option is to somehow survive, and try to claw his way back in.

Meanwhile, in Eastern Europe, Kenny is starting to swarm Louise. As Kenny pushes on, Richard is promising Robert a swift death. Robert is sure that he’s going to be reduced to rubble if Richard gets another turn at him. Kenny plays a card.

The card causes a surge of terrorists. Kenny is making an aggressive move to suit his own ends, but it’s a pleasing sight to Robert too. “Look at all those terrorists,” he swoons.

Robert decides to flip and become a terrorist. Better to take control of all those units than just play into Richard’s hands. But could he persuade Louise to flip too?

Secret messages are traded. Frantic negotiations. Richard’s turn begins.

“I’m playing this card,” Richard says.

“WAIT!” Robert yells. He looks at Louise.

Louise nods.

They quietly remove their developments from the board, and move black terror cells in. They trade their cards for Terror Cards. They say nothing.

It begins.

And here we are. The meat of the game. Here’s Louise saying “I don’t see why we’re the bad guys, to be honest.” And she has a point. I’d just been nuked. I was without a home because of Richard’s aggression. All I wanted was to be free. The game suddenly starts to rise up off the board. The game is in the room. A bit of roleplay. A bit of antagonism. A bit of “Wait a minute. Which side is which, exactly?”

Me: We’re not terrorists. We’re freedom fighters.
Joanne: You’re the bad guys.

As part of the terrorist team, you share a turn with your comrades. Your objective is now to wipe out all the empires and free the world. You need to put your heads together and come up with some serious plans. You need money? You have no oil, so no joy from the oil roll. Your cards are all you have. Choices, choices. Steal some of that oil? Hijack a plane, maybe?

Louise: Joanne, we’ve hijacked one of your passenger jets.
Joanne: I do not negotiate with terrorists.
Louise: You should have said at the end: “Now watch this drive.”

When you’re a terrorist, you don’t feel like a bad guy. You feel like an underdog. You’re scratching and scraping to survive. You have these massive Empires swatting you down like flies, so it’s hugely satisfying when you manage to rise up, RISE UP, RISE UP! over and over again.

The game provokes some wonderful debate. I don’t want anyone out there thinking that this is just a cheap and nasty “Ho Ho Hijacks!” kind of game. There were comments at the table along the lines of “They should make this game compulsory in school history lessons.” It paints an amazing demonstrative picture of how nations manufacture their own downfall, and how it’s often difficult to see who the heroes and vilains are.

The game has a beautiful gameplay choice at its core. And that choice is wrapped in a lesson. Do you sponsor terrorism? Do you use these people to further the goals of your empire? Do you do it despite knowing that ultimately, inevitably, the very same terrorists will be at your door in the endgame? Do you do it anyway?

The terrorists lost, by the way. Louise and I watched as our cells and columns and vanguards were systematically picked off by the three capitalist machines sitting opposite us. The three then chose to end the game with ‘World Peace,’ which saw all three of them shaking hands while we promised them this:

You have only cut off the snake’s tail…

As a board game, War on Terror is a success. It has straightforward rules and a reasonable playtime, it generates some quality table-banter, and it’s a lot of fun.

As a work of satire, it’s quite brilliant. It might not tell us anything we don’t know, but it gathers up what we already know, stuffs it into a big boardgame shoe, and kicks us firmly in the balls with it. And it’s funny. It isn’t just funny in itself, it encourages the players to be funny too.

Fun, funny, intelligent and it matters.

More games like this, PLEASE.

ONE MORE THING: The secret messages system (a notepad and a pencil) allows for notes to be passed between players at every point of the game. I love it.