Last night I played my first game of Warriors of God (WoG – very unfortunate acronym) with wifwendell and it took about 4 hours or so including rule explanations from go to woe.

I hope that this little piece it is of interest. I’ll write up a session report to go with this review.

Your first port of call for a WoG review should be the excellent piece by Tom Hancock – http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/319977 - this was the review that first got me interested in WoG.

Anyway, what follows is my own brief review based on my first game.

Initial Impression and Components

My initial reaction is that WoG is a pretty good little game with some interesting mechanics and a good feel for the period. The board is also very well designed and the counters are also very nice, but then again, I’m a real sucker for heraldry.

So, the components are good, very good in fact. The map is of heavy paper as opposed to something mounted on stiff card or something like that. I would personally prefer a sturdier map a la 1960: The Making of the President, but I understand this can be a major expense so this is more an observation than a criticism.

I also would have liked a red and a blue die to use for initiative, again a minor quibble probably due more to my own personal preferences than anything else.

Other than that, full marks for excellent components.

Rules

The rules themselves took wifwendell about half an hour or so to explain to me and I think I picked them up quickly enough.

The game plays smoothly and I think that once initial explanations were done it was easy enough to play through the turn (and great to have the turn sequence on the board).

Even though it was the first game for me and the first non-solitaire game for my erstwhile opponent we only had to consult the rule book three or four times for specific matters.

So, top marks for well written rules.

Gameplay

The key with this game is leader death. A fair bit has been written on this elsewhere so let me suffice to say that it is a great balancing mechanism as well as being frustrating which makes it fun.

Rolling for leader death is much more than an irksome administrative task, as has been suggested elsewhere, it is a key activity of the game and failure to take into account the possibility of a leader dying can at best inconvenience you and at worst give your opponent a unexpected windfall of free troops.

The placement of new leaders also presents challenges to the players and really does force you to think strategically in the deployment and disposition of your forces.

The game has a lot of other distinctive features most of which I am a fan of.

Features of the game I liked:

• Non-aligned leaders. This balances out the dis-advantage of being the non-initiative player and really forces both sides to plan for future possibilities. The fact that the can change sides if they are captured and ransomed also adds to the uncertainty of it all.
• WoG has, it seems inbuilt opportunities, to regain your position if it all goes wrong for you in a few turns.
• Fog of war – no hidden counters or anything like that, but nobles can have the most unfortunate habit of dying when you don’t want them to – or living when you would rather they shuffled off this mortal coil. In the game I played English dungeons seemed to be the key to a long life in this game.
• Each side has their own “edge” the superiority of English sea movement and longbows balance throughout the game balance out the huge advantage Joan of Arc has during her short life.
• The leaders can remove a control marker of an enemy controlled area. This is a great way to simulate pillage and rapine which was a feature of warfare in the era. The locals may not go over to your cause, but they will cease to support a liege who fails to protect them.
• Mercenaries are brittle, unpopular and great to use as “ablative” troops. This makes you question yourself if it is really worth the inherent disadvantages they bring to employ them on the battlefield.

Features of the game that didn’t rock my world:

• “Kamikaze runs” - A leader who is about to die the next turn can be sent off on a suicide run to attack anywhere just for the sheer heck of it. When he dies then the player will lose the troops anyway, so why not get some mileage out of the old warhorse and see who he takes with him.
• The ability to engage in “pinning” attacks (turn up, fight one round of combat and withdraw) which occupy an enemy leader is a bit frustrating. I imagine that some time over the course of a decade the superior force would succeed in forcing a major engagement. Maybe having a fleeing leader dice to be captured, routed or killed regardless of the losses (if any) they take in the “+1 free shot” might discourage this sort of thing.

I have not played the “Lion in Winter” variant, but would be very keen to give it a go in the near future.

Conclusion

From the above you might conclude that I have a few gripes with WoG. I would like to emphasise that these are minor points and overall I am very impressed with WoG.

The game has a lot going for it in terms of quality components, compelling theme and unique mechanisms that really pose all sort of strategic questions for the players.

I would recommend WoG to anyone who enjoys wargames games, likes games of a strategically challenging nature or has an interest in the history of the period.

Edited for spelling