Depending on their empire placement, players will score x4, x3, x2, x0, or x-1 for each city under the empire’s control at the end of the game. This is where the shifting loyalties come into play. Here’s the order in a round of A War of Whispers:ġ) Players, in clockwise order and one at a time, place their agents on available council positions.Ģ) Then the round tracker moves clockwise around the circular board, activating each council position in order, moving from one empire to another until all five empires have gone.ģ) Then players discard excess cards from their hand.Ĥ) At this point during the end of a round, players all have the opportunity to switch two unrevealed loyalty markers among the five in order to adjust their strategy and better reflect the state of the battlefield. These actions are what drives the gameplay, and they are decided upon by where players place their agents. Or it might be attacking a particular region with the active empire’s troops in order to gain new territory. That might be collecting cards from the empire’s deck to affect a later move. That might be adding banners to the board in order to defend a location or in preparation for a later attack. The Sheriff, the Steward, the Marshal, and the Chancellor are all council positions in an empire that allows players to perform a particular action. That starting placement will mean that the player wants the top three empires to expand and retain control of their territories while the bottom two empires shrink and lose ground.īut each empire has four actions that can be activated each round. These loyalties will be randomly placed down on the player board and will determine the intensity with which they try to advance the agenda of any particular army.įor instance, a player might have the strongest allegiance to the Elephant empire, followed in descending order by the Eagle, Bear, Horse, and Lion empires. GAMEPLAYįor 30 to 90 minutes, players will command armies to launch attacks into new regions and take control of cities, all while using cards to enhance their strategy and more fully influence the outcome of the war.Įach player will have some level of loyalty or interest in the five armies on the map. It’s a World War II game that doesn’t involve soldiers, combat, or normal military strategy.Ī War of Whispers is an exciting subversion of expectation in strategy games, and the narrative focus shifts to a rarely explored realm of war. It reminds me of Black Orchestra-another Starling Games strategy experience-in which players attempt plots to overthrow the Nazi regime and assassinate Hitler as members of the resistance. Retreat into the shadows and find the ones making life-or-death decisions miles from the battlefield. And take a step back from the ruling class of the land. If you don’t understand the fantasy references, imagine a conflict between neighboring kingdoms that descends into a bloody war as each one tries to take control over the known world. Imagine A Song of Ice and Fire or Game of Thrones if the narrative followed the political machinations and empire-breaking of Varys or Littlefinger. This is a war fought by empires unseen-a war of whispers. This is not a war for the mighty, with battles waged on the open field. Come the dawn, the world will be remade, and one empire will rule over them all…īut it is in the shadows that true power lies… a Serpent, a Spider, a Raven, a Rat. Their banners flying boldly, they march towards glory. Five mighty empires are at war for the world.