Strategy board games are not particularly popular in Poland. It's partly the result of little knowledge of their power, and partly the result of their inaccessibility. However, there is a chance to change this state of affairs. A swallow is the board game WarCraft.
Once again, a shadow has appeared over the fantastic land of Azeroth. This time, however, it was not Orcs but a powerful Undead Legion that caused the war. Representatives of all free nations decided to stand against hordes of monsters, trying to save their fellow countrymen from destruction. Of course, each race takes care of its own interests, making possible alliances only as a last resort. How will the fate of this new war, from which everyone wants to emerge victorious? That depends solely on you.
The above story is well known to all fans of the WarCraft series - a trilogy of real-time strategy games, which for nearly ten years warms the hearts of subsequent generations of players. Few people know, however, that Blizzard Entertainment in cooperation with Fantasy Flight Games has also published on the market a completely different vision of the war for Azeroth, this time in the form of a board game. Courtesy of Rebel.pl, we can introduce you to this masterpiece and share our impressions, which accompanied the first games using dice and pawns.
What's inside?
As you can see on the attached pictures, WarCraft is a huge package, published in a truly exclusive style, containing many elements necessary to play battles. The set includes movable board parts (hexagonal), which can be arranged in any configuration (keeping in mind the number of players participating in the struggle, however); more than eighty pawns symbolizing melee, shooting and flying units; Four cards representing the races you can control in the game (Humans, Orcs, Undead, Night Elves) along with tokens of armies and buildings; 84 experience cards divided equally into four parts, as well as plenty of other cards (wood, gold, quests, etc.) and, of course, dice, with three dice in three parts.) and, of course, the dice, with three standard and one non-standard.
The package couldn't lack the instructions. On twelve pages all the nuances of gameplay are described in the simplest possible way, some sample scenarios are also included. Although the manual is only in English, buyers who don't speak British have no reason to worry. The Polish distributor, Rebel.pl, also includes a well-translated Polish manual. Probably many of you would prefer simple, wooden pawns to be replaced by solid figures. I thought so at first, too, but if they were included in WarCraft: The Board Game, it would certainly affect the final, already high, price of the set. Keep in mind that the box doesn't only contain the risers, but also tokens and cards - and the latter are made really wonderfully. How does it play? Strangely. For someone whose only contact with board games so far has been through a Polish invention called Eurobusiness, getting through the complicated rules of war battle in WarCraft may seem like a torturous journey at first. There's no denying that the board version of the game is also haunted by the spectre of its computer prototype. When you sit down at the table and place your pawns on it, you have to take into account that this is a flesh-and-blood strategy game, not an arcade warfare game where quick judgement and instant reaction play first fiddle. WarCraft: The Board Game is a proposition for demanding users who prefer to base their victories on painstaking and tactical planning rather than on a bit of luck with a smooth mouse click. Of course, the initial difficulty resulting from the need to learn the rules of the game disappears after the first trial battle. The manual is written in such a simple way that the general scheme of actions pops into our brains after a few rounds, and when we encounter a new situation, we can always reach into the notebook once again and quickly find the issue that interests us. After a moment of concentration and understanding all aspects of the gameplay, even a ten-year-old can play WarCraft: The Board Game freely.
