This is how a war in the shadows evolves. When your agents are deployed to one of the 20 action spaces in the 5 different courts at the start of each round, we can proceed. Moving around the board you take actions based on your agent’s position in each court. Any spaces unoccupied before your agent are also yours for the taking, giving you multiple actions with one agent. Then you will move around the edge of the board activating the Empires one at a time. This means that the blue 'flappy wing' Empire will always act first and the brown 'donks' always last. Herein lies my potential worry about long term gameplay - it seems to me that browns always have the advantage. I have played the game around 8 times now and although I'm still not 100% I always think my job easier if Brown is my best scoring Empire. Had my regular Cthulhu Wars crew over today. We usually try to start with something else (we've been playing a fair amount of Tiny Epic Crimes lately) and when talking about a couple other games, I... Pre-pub link is up, and the game is getting great numbers to start. https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1083-wings-for-the-baron-deluxe-gmt-edition.aspx

Finally there are actions that allow you to draw cards. Each Empire has unique cards that you can play before or after any action that your agent controls. These cards have a variety of rule breaking effects that allow for some dynamic plays, repositioning, extra actions, or even just straight removal of enemy banners from the map. These cards have an inventive play system that adds to the tactical subterfuge of A War of Whispers. It’s All About Who You Know All that scheming, planning and manipulating is enough to cause a headache, however the satisfaction from pulling a master strike from behind the scenes, while outwitting and out bluffing your opponents around the table, just might be worth it. During the first round of War of Whispers, the students were focused on understanding the rules and mechanics of the game instead of applying the information lessons and concepts. However, after a complete run-through of the game, the students understood the game mechanics, and we started a second round. The next play-through was noticeably different. Being more comfortable with gameplay, the students were more engaged and focused on what they were doing and what others were scheming. Students began to leverage deceptive tactics, form alliances among warring parties, and “talk trash” across the table, attempting to influence their opponents to act or not act in specific ways. We could debate the efficacy of actual students’ subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) table talk, but we saw the students demonstrating the art of influence as they played War of Whispers.For each Empire, place all banners (cubes) of that color beside the board in a pile near their associated councils to create the Banner Reserve Piles F. There are 4 rounds in War of Whispers, and each round has 4 phases. In phase 1, players will place their agents on the empire’s council positions. In phase 2, players will execute their council position actions for each faction. In phase 3, players will move the turn marker and discard down to 5 cards. In phase 4, players can opt to switch loyalties between 2 of their face-down tokens, switching them and placing them face-up for all to see. During setup, you and your opponents will each need to place your initial loyalty bets on the five Empires. To do so, shuffle your five loyalty tokens and randomly place them face-down on the five indicated loyalty slots on your player board. Despite this I find myself entranced by the game. The interplay of trying to work out what your opponents are doing works so well. The game plays in under an hour and every choice feels important. Obviously you need to bluff your opponents so they don’t torpedo your favourite empires, but unless you grab an advisor in those colours early there is no guarantee you will get one at all. You start the game with five loyalty tokens, each corresponding to one of the five different empires, bet randomly on a loyalty value. Your primary goal is to ensure that when the game ends, the empires you are most loyal to control the most cities across the globe. Gameplay consists of turns broken down into four phases:

Executing council positions is how the empires move. As players take their agents’ council actions, empires will grow in power, invade other empires, and generally move around the board like a Risk game in fast-forward. It can be a lot of fun trying to deduce what empires your opponents are loyal to based on their actions. Some choose the blunt approach by filling their favored empire’s council positions and conquering cities left and right, while others prefer the more discrete approach, seemingly supporting an empire while working slowly to increase another’s territory. Let us return to the beginning. Our loyalty is set with the 5 tokens. The course of our actions set in stone. Of course stones can be lost, destroyed, or replaced. At the end of each round, apart from the last, you can reveal two of your faction tokens, and swap them. Once done you can never do this again with those factions, and with only 5 tokens you can only ever do this twice. In future iterations, the instructors will incorporate changes to the gameplay to better replicate different aspects of fog and friction for the player’s decision-making. Further, we plan to make the game a more successful learning event this academic year by making the students outline their strategies with the principles of influence before gameplay to reinforce our educational objectives. Hopefully, these actions ensure that the War of Whispers experience aligns more with our teaching outcomes. We are also actively seeking out other wargames that can help us apply the tenets of influence and military deception basics.

Game Play

A War Of Whispers is a streamlined, fabulous piece of design. It’s brilliant, and up there with El Grandé and Brian Boru as my favourite area control games. The war is the same every time. The board set in stone for the conflict to come. Our circular board tells us everything you need to know about the positions of the factions, but also how each turn will go. The wooden cubes themselves are fine and likely better suited to the constant moving about than the upgraded plastic flags. But the punch board is average and not cut neatly, the player boards are flimsy and there is not actually much in the box. In fact your first thought upon ripping off the shrink will probably be ‘I paid how much for this?’ Despite this, and some up coming gameplay worries, I still love it. A Gaggle(?) of Whispers

Your primary goal is to ensure that when the game ends, the empires you are most loyal to control the most cities across the globe. You seed your agents into the world, hoping they will establish themselves as the Sheriff, Steward, Marshal, or Chancellor of the various courts around the land. You place your agent on the space you want. Contemplating the actions your new position allows you to take, you smile and put your plans in motion. What’s this though? Another faction has taken the position below you and now all your plans are for nought!I really, really like A War Of Whispers, and it’s going to stay in my collection for a long time. The way it manages to wrap-up the intrigue of something like A Game of Thrones, and throw it into a game that only takes an hour (once you’ve learned the game) is fantastic. It’s an easy teach which relies on the interactions of the players to create some fantastic tension and raised eyebrows. It’s at its best with three of four players, two-player can just get a bit swingy. A closer look at the council spaces for one of the empires For each icon present across all regions controlled by this empire, add 1 banner to any region(s) controlled by this empire. A War of Whispers is a competitive board game for 2 to 4 players. Five mighty empires are at war for the world, but you are no mighty ruler. Instead, you play a secret society that is betting on the results of this war while pulling strings to rig the results and ensure their bets pay off. A War of Whispers is a game of deep strategy, hidden agendas, and shifting loyalties. A small team of us at the U.S. Army War College, the service’s senior professional military education school in Carlisle, PA, recently noted how commercial games can help foster new levels of thinking. In an elective course entitled “The Joint Warfighter and the Information Environment” (JWIE), we incorporated the commercial wargame War of Whispers into the curriculum to help students stretch their intellectual muscles and apply information, influence, and deception concepts studied and discussed in bold and creative ways. I can't remember the exact moment, but I think in season 2 he just really lets his anger get the best of him, beating people up on the sidewalk for the most trivial stuff. Just his explosive temper,...

Identifying potential risks and opportunities – Wargaming allows individuals and organizations to explore challenging scenarios and identify potential risks and opportunities. By simulating different situations, wargaming can reveal unexpected outcomes and highlight areas of weakness in strategic plans.UPDATE 2: New game board uploaded! Minor but important changes to setup. Apparently, the original board I had uploaded was not the final print version. That has been rectified.