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“Ladies and Gentlemen...and Feline. We are going to war. May I introduce you to some of the combatants at your disposal: a deck of cards, a rabbit with ADHD, some chess pieces, and an Egg. In other words, it is properly mental.”
Prepare to go though the looking glass...like, going directly through the looking glass akin to a wrecking ball, shattering the already unhinged reality of Wonderland. Even a description of the mechanics at work in Wonderland's War seems like throwing flamingos at a buzz word dart board: Bag Building. Area Control. Push your Luck. Asymmetrical Powers. Rondel Drafting.
Before we go to war, we must have tea. While that sounds like a line from a Monty Python or Black Adder skit, it is exactly what happens in Wonderland's War. Using a Rondel drafting system, each player will take four cards during the Mad Hatter's Tea Party phase that will add tokens to their bag, place followers into the locations of the board, and generally increase their faction's power for the upcoming festivities...and I don't mean crumpets. As I may have mentioned, we are going to war. You can also pick up Wonderlandians with unique powers like the White Rabbit or Walrus, add their chip to your bag and place them into any area on the board.
With a name like Wonderland's War one would assume there would be an attacker and a defender in each conflict. Instead, conflicts are resolved by each player pulling from their bag. Sure, all players draw and reveal at the same time, which feels like a showdown. However, it never seems like targeted aggression. Instead, it is you versus, well, you. Or at least what tokens you have added to your bag. Madness Tokens are the bane of your bag. When you pull them, your followers “lose faith” in you and abandon the area. If you run out of followers in an area, you are out of that conflict, resulting in zero VP. While you will be trying to progress on the Battle track, there will be plenty of times where you will stop pulling tokens well before you lose most of your supporters. Part of this is because of the goal cards like “Finish a Battle in Tulgey Woods using only three tokens.” If you have a goal card like this, do you want to be involved in a conflict in Tulgey Woods. Definitely. Do you care if you are the winner? Maybe? While the number of Victory Points will vary by region, the three VP you get for accomplishing the top half of a Goal card are guaranteed points, ones you won't want to simply toss away on the chance you might win a specific location. And the bonus you get for completing both the easier top portion of a goal card and the harder, lower portion can make each card easily worth as much as winning any conflict.
The battle phase demands your attention even when you aren't involved in a skirmish in that specific area. In a three to five player game, you can bet on the outcome of the conflict you are not involved in. Win the bet and you get a good chip for your bag, lose and you have to roll the shard dice to add madness to your pool. The results from each area will likely impact exactly what you will want to do in the next location. If a player has surged into the lead or closed the point gap between you and them, you might want to take more chances when pulling from your bag or, conversely, you may want to lay back if you are comfortable with the margin you are leading/losing by if someone busts during the previous combat.
Since all conflicts are resolved via pulling from your bag, you are the architect on your own demise. Which is why you will want to improve it every chance you get. Well, almost every chance you get. You will also want to balance unlocking various enhancements on your player board. This is done via Forging, which is an awesome mechanic. After you pull a forge token or end on a forge space on the Battle track, you have the option of unlocking a power on your player board, at the cost of a taking a good token from your active tokens and playing it on your player board. Do you want to lose a token to improve the value of your castles on the board, unlock new powers, or add more followers to your available pool? As Alice asked 'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?' 'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
I love that the game has both a plethora of chips and that it also has adjustable chip set powers. The game suggest starting with set powers A and going upwards to D in subsequent games but I think it's just a matter of finding a set that fits the immersion level you are looking for and sticking with it. I'm not opposed to changing the set every game but a level of familiarity helps with both teaching and retaining.
“It's astounding, Time is fleeting, Madness takes it's toll.” Shards are those little pieces of madness that accumulate from various choices you made throughout the game. They do have a significant impact upon a player during the game, since the player with the most shards puts an additional Madness token into their bag at the end of each round. The key word in that sentence is a player. If you aren't one of the players with the most shards, it's a non-issue. I'm not saying it is a bad mechanism but it ends up being something that doesn't impact most of the players during a specific round.
One the the reasons it took me so long to try Wonderland's War was people bemoaning the play time. Yes, it can take three Hours. But not like “This game can drag out for three hours” but more in the way of “Set aside three hours of your day to experience this.” Some of my favorite games feel like they put you through the wringer, and you can feel drained by the end of the session. That hasn't happened in my plays of Wonderland's War, it just has a lighter touch. Your mouth might hurt from smiling like a Cheshire Cat but you really find your brain burning in an unpleasant way.
Wonderland's War does “that thing” to me that other great boardgames do: I find myself thinking about it way after the game has finished. Or, in the words of Alice in Through the Looking Glass "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don't exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something: that's clear, at any rate."
Like Kemet and Western Legends, this game screams “Lifestyle Game.” As in, I'm going to want to pick up upgrades. I want bells, whistles, and a custom teapot or whatever. The Deluxe version comes with minis which are grand. You'll also notice the custom tokens in some of my pictures. While they don't come in the Deluxe version, one of my gamer friends has this upgrade and I requested they bring them along so we could try them out. And now I really want to add them to my version. Not only do they feel great, I can also pull out the “Hey guys, I got the custom tokens, so per the unwritten bi-laws of the board gaming group, we need to play another game of Wonderland's War to try them out.” (Yea, I'm sneaky like that).
You can play Wonderland's War at two players but it's not the best way to experience it. The asymmetrical player powers can clash in unsatisfying ways (Like the Red Queen's ability to place a follower when you pass someone at the tea party is greatly impeded with only one other leader and exacerbated when playing against the Mad Hatter and his head of the table ability). It plays best with three or more players. It doesn't seem to strictly follow the “X number of minutes per player” formula with additional players adding a fraction to the total play time. I've had two-hour two player teaching games and three-hour five player games.
If there is a Jabberwock in the experience, Set-up is the jaws that bite and tear-down are the claws that catch. But, after a few games you realize that the insert might be great for keeping things organized but not choice for keeping things playable. The vorpal blade at your disposal is organizing it using the included player bags. When you tear down a game, you can prime your player bags for the next play by putting all of that characters applicable tokens, markers and cubes into the character bags. That way, the next game, you simply toss each player their bag and have them set their personal board up while you set up the main board. The deluxe version allows you to pull the castles and Wonderlandians miniatures out in one fell swoop and simply set them aside, ready to be used.
The more I explore Wonderland's War, the curiouser and curiouser I get about where it will lead me next. It's a mad experience. We're all mad here. I'm Mad. Druid City Games is mad. The mixture of mind bending art and deliriously dominoed mechanics proves it. You are formally invited to sit down and join the madness. It wouldn't be very civil of you to sit down without being invited. Plenty of room, plenty of room.
A review copy of this release was provided by the publisher. Therewillbe.games would like to thank them for their support.
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