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What’s this poppycock?
Hear this review in a whisper because it is really important the Germans don’t hear us. War Story is a Co-operative blend of choose your own adventure and Minimap resolution. That last bit is ripped straight from BoardGameGeek because the truth is I wasn’t entirely confident in how to define War Story. All you need to know for now is we’re sneaking into occupied France tonight so let’s go over the intel.
First, the pedigree. Published by Osprey Games and designed by Dave Neale and David Thompson. That is a great start and here’s why. Dave Neale is the talent behind some of the Unlock scenarios and Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: The Baker Street irregulars. Meanwhile we have David Thompson bringing us the Undaunted games, as well as many others. Already this is a high bar as I’ve had a lot of fun with the above but I have a very quiet and irritating voice at the back of mind advocating caution as I wonder how these immensely capable designers are going to mash up their very different styles. Will this be a peanut butter and chocolate combo or a beef drippings and durian fruit sort of thing? Well, let’s blow the turret off this thing and look inside.
*A quick note before we deploy under fire. War Story is a narrative game so just like battlefield intelligence during WW2 my review will be pretty vague. I will avoid all details that could be considered a spoiler in both the written review and photos but will instead give examples that are loosely based on scenarios we encountered.
First thing that surprised me was the weight of the box. This thing is like a little ammo crate. Turns out most of that heft is three chunky mission books, while the box also contains some wooden pieces, cardboard tokens, tarot sized cards, rulebook, pad of “team sheets”, and most interesting of all various envelopes labelled “Top Secret” and “Do not open until instructed to”. Putting those intrusive thoughts aside for a moment, I’ll also point out everything is neatly nestled in a plastic insert which is always a thoughtful touch. This must be how troops in the field feel when they open their daily ration pack after a day’s marching to find a pouch labelled “full roast dinner” beside a real chocolate bar and a Fruit Shoot or whatever. This bodes well.
Loading up and heading out
So pouring over the 20 page rulebook everything is nicely and thematically presented. Much of each page is given over to explanatory images so it’s a fast and accessible read. The rulebook outlines how to set up for a mission including selecting which four of the eight agents you want to deploy into the field, allocation of starting equipment, and setting up the team sheet - this is your handy one page campaign sheet to track key choices made, time of day, who took a bullet to the face, etc. Once I have the basics set up I progress to…. Mission Book 1 - The Maquis of Morette. Page one presents the brief and gives some set up instructions for the mission ahead and instructs you to…. Open your first sealed envelope. Reader, being asked to open a sealed envelope or container by a board game is always peak endorphins for me. Inside I found some REDACTED which certainly made us go “ooooh” at the sight of them. At this stage we are ready to go and must confront our first choice.
See, War Story: Occupied France is built around a sequence of choices. For those of you familiar with Fighting Fantasy’s choose your own adventure books this is going to feel like slipping on a comfortable pair of old slippers/army issue boots. War Story certainly introduces additional depth and mechanics but it’s hard not to make the comparison at first glance and in my eyes it’s a very welcome one. For those not familiar with the style of narrative, War Story begins with a how do you want to start this mission type question and then presents you with an option A and an option B. If you pick option A then you turn to page 132, or 432 if you pick option B. You discuss the options with your group and when you are decided you flick to the instructed page to find out how much of a problem you have made for yourself. What War Story does with this old school mechanic that is particularly interesting is it makes it Cooperative.
Comradery under fire
Hear me out, you could absolutely play War Story solo but where it really shined for us as a group was we spent the whole darn game talking to each other. Not so much banter, taunting, or idle chit chat, it was a shared discussion around every single choice we were faced with. What really stokes that fire is at various points in the game you may be asked to circle a particular letter on your team sheet. This essentially brands your playthrough with a particular choice you have made but the consequences of which may not be apparent till much later in the playthrough, if at all. This adds both permanence and consequence to each decision and you never know you will be circling a letter until after you have made the choice. What’s more, each character actually has a few basic stats (firearms, awareness, stealth, influence & technical) which sometimes affects your available choices or results. You might choose the Ask the person for assistance option and be told to flick to page 137 which tells you that if your influence is high enough then they offer to help you, or if not then they report you to the local garrison.
So to demonstrate how this system encourages choices here is a scenario similar to one we encountered: you are undertaking reconnaissance on an enemy position where you believe an ally is being held and suddenly someone breaks from the bushes running towards you. Do you shoot or do you hide? Well let’s think about this. Are they running at me to attack me? Are they a friendly escaping from the facility? Will my gunshot alert the guards? Are they being chased? Are they armed? Sure the choice is limited and you might be itching for a 3rd option but these choices often represent either adrenaline fueled gut instincts in the heat of battle or your best options anyway. Even the choices that seemed so clear cut, someone always had to play devil’s advocate with a “but what if….” and we’ll go yeah “aaaargh, yeah we don’t want that. How likely is that? Would the designers be so sneaky??” Well often they weren’t and I do think we fell into overthinking more often than not but the choices pulled a sneaky on us just enough so that we never really let our guard down.
Time to get tactical
So with each choice the game progresses. You track your achievements and your squad might start to take a beating, or if you are really lucky find some new gear. Then after a few hundred page flicks back and forth we have an encounter. Oo la la. This is where we realise everything up to now has been a bit of a prelude as the tactical map arrives. So just to manage expectations War Story is not a dungeon crawler in disguise. Instead, War Story has a fun little way of representing combat without departing far from its narrative system. You plot wooden pieces on a small tactical map at indicated points and then continue to confer with the mission book. The pieces move and interact based on choices made but are influenced by character stats and who is holding what equipment. Think of the pieces acting more as reference points for more intricate choices. Do you take position A that has a good overall field of fire but is further away, or position B right in the middle of the action. As written this may seem to lack the action-fueled mania of yeeting plastic cubes praying to Khorne for high numbers but instead consider that you are entirely responsible for your own success. Antoine doesn’t die because you just happened to roll a 1. Antoine dies because you put him, Francois, and Yannick by the front door, Christian who has Firearms 1 on overwatch in the bushes, and didn’t cover the side of the building. It’s tense but a very different kind of tense and it was a lovely palette cleanser for someone who plays a lot of wargames. No blaming defeat on the dice gods here.
Building on this and a few dozen choices later the mission begins to meander towards it;s climax. Pressure builds as we are very obviously headed towards some sort of encounter on a larger scale than as yet seen. My dudes, just know I really, really want to talk about this but refuse to spoil it for you. Here’s what I will say - the crescendo of War Story maintains the core of its choice making system but on a more strategic level. You make the toughest choices yet and you will need to decide just how much you are willing to sacrifice to save France but don’t forget…. Impacts of your choices carry over to mission 2 including agent deaths. Dearest reader, cor blimey was that a tense half hour or so. Let’s just say I wasn't disappointed with the narrative beats or conclusion.
Back to the war room to review strategy
So far I have been mostly detailing experiences based on Mission 1. Mission 2 and 3 are left entirely for you to discover as we take a step back and focus on the experience of playing War Story. In case it wasn’t obvious, I had a jolly good time with it. It helps that my friends and I are WW2 nuts. We can name like…. Loads of tanks between us. We really got into the theme of the game and appreciated its authenticity at points, and the opportunity to spew trivia at one another every time a vehicle was named or a new piece of equipment came up. That said, I don’t think a passion for the period is by any means necessary to enjoy War Story as it does not exclude those without knowledge of the setting. Instead, War Story immerses players with thematic components and builds it’s world gently though its choice system and little blurbs that go along with it to set the scene. Plus, we all have a rough idea what war times were like because films. It doesn’t need to work that hard to pull you in.
Where War Stories definitely does put the work in is in these behemothic tomes it calls Mission books. I cannot fathom the level of big brainery it takes to create a coherent choose your own resistance movement style book that doesn’t implode somewhere. I entirely confess I played only one path through each mission so it’s entirely possible I missed the bit were you get stuck in an infinite time loop. Interestly, I thought we hit a few errors and actually messaged one of the designers Dave Neale and this dude was straight back to me within the hour - woah. Together we learned three things:
1. My specific error was caused in a player mistake tracking time of day. It is really important you keep on top of this and track it in the handy slot on the timesheet. Not doing so breaks your game and it’s your fault. I would also not recommend emailing board game designers in this scenario because it is quite embarrassing despite him being a lovely chap.
2. There is actually a specific route you can take where you can double skip time which causes a bit of wonk down the line. Osprey are on it an a small errata will be published shortly just to iron out that little wrinkle.
3. I really like Dave Neal because he is a lovely man.
So that’s a lot of praise - the game fired some great discussions, the combat is breezy as it is harrowing if you mess it up, and everything is presented really nicely. Is there anything I dislike about my experience? Well, not exactly but I do think a second playthrough is likely to have diminishing returns simply because I have seen a lot of the content. Choice paths feel like they could vary significantly but I will still be visiting the CLASSIFIED, meeting TOP SECRET and fighting at the YOU ARE NOT AUTHORISED TO VIEW THIS PART OF THE REVIEW. I feel like many narrative games make a trade off between a more tailored and involving story versus a modular, less coherent tale that’s more replayable - think crossroad cards in Dead of Winter. Both have their charms but I prefer War Story’s approach being the former as it just pulls me in a bit more even if it means I don’t get as many plays out of it. Also, this game is only like £30 so at that price the fun we had with it is more than fair.
I will confess I would not play this game solo. While I can absolutely see how others would enjoy that experience for me the vast majority of entertainment within this little package is the interaction it brings about with my fellow gamers. That said I am a bit of a social creature and my attention span and discipline are not what they used to be. With nobody around to keep me honest I’d be skipping back on my poor choices in a heartbeat, and I would struggle to stay invested past the first mission or so. Those more used to solo gaming/leaning ore towards introversion may well have the complete opposite experience.
While we are at it I’ll throw out there that I felt a few decisions were a bit limited. There was the odd occasion where we were all clamouring for a specific third or fourth action, or that we disagreed with were we were being railroaded as we thought we could see where it was going. Sometimes we were right, sometimes we weren't. This wasn’t the case often and could be likened to shouting at a daft protagonist turning back to unmask the now “unconscious” killer when you know exactly what’s coming… but it’s still fun to watch. The truth of the matter is the staggering amount of work to get the available choices all working together is pretty apparent. They absolutely had to draw the line somewhere and I’m happy with where they did. I actually feel like a greedy boy for even asking…. I think…. I think I just really want more of this game.
Getting back in the field
So now I’ve experienced one playthrough how much life is left in this old girl? A fair bit actually. I am going to “run” a second playthrough for another group of friends who I think will enjoy it. Even though I’ll probably encounter plenty of fresh elements this time over, I am quite happy to act more as a facilitator to run the game so they can focus on the good bit - tactical chit chat. Sort of like a DM. Once that’s done, I will either file it away for a few years till I forget most of the choices, or pass it off to more friends to enjoy. Either way, War Story has plenty of life after your first play through.
Final debrief - War Story does the commendable. It generates tension without dice, doom counters, egg timers, diminishing counter pools, or drawing from the enemy deck at the start of each turn. With simple rules, and a simpler premise it brought my group together and drove us to engage with each other rather than spend the evening all staring down at a board as we shuffle tokens in near silence - no shade BTW, I love me some token time too. I salute both Dave and David’s massive big boy brains as I was surprised at how much fun I had with this one and I wonder if you would be too.
Lastly, here is a fun prediction. I bet my last gum ration and dry pair of army socks that this is the first game of a series. If War Stories: Occupied France does well (which it deserves too) then we will see this system applied in various other theatres of WW2 and beyond. Here are some future WW2 boxes I would love to see:
*Operation Postmaster - SOE steals enemy ships from a neutral spanish port
*Flying tigers - American pilots crash over occupied China and must escape the Japanese through difficult terrain and with the help of the locals.
*Any MI6 James Bond type shenanigans - capture an Enigma machine, steal plans for a new tank, etc. etc. take your pick.
