"WarBonds: Battle For Vitoria" is a strategy war game where players deploy and mobilize a medieval fantasy army in an effort to reign supreme amidst the war torn lands of Vitoria. Players start with a unique warlord that’ll serve as the leader of their army, and the first unit deployed onto the Battle Map. Each warlord is vying for control and ideological dominance. All units, warlords included, have an ideological alignment that will be tried by the brutalities of war. Players will make nuanced decisions that will affect the leadership of their warlord, and the loyalty of their units.
One such decision involves influencing the public to incite revolt or enforce order across the land. Inciting a revolt is looked upon favorably by all chaos alignment units, but unfavorable to all law alignment units. Such a decision will cause these units to gain or lose loyalty. Units without loyalty are susceptible to leaving your army; or worse, be persuaded by the leadership of an opponent's warlord to join their army. There is no randomness; players must out-think their opponents to achieve victory.
To achieve victory, a player must satisfy any one of the below conditions:
Be the last player with a surviving warlord and war camp.
If your warlord is killed, you lose the game.
If your war camp is destroyed, you lose the game.
Be the first player to gain a level 3 war camp.
If the dragon arrives, when it reaches the End of Game event, have the largest army size (IE: victory points).
When a game is fully set up and ready to start, the gameplay runs through a cycle of game rounds until one player achieves victory. A game round consists of a series of ordered turn handling for the deployed and enabled units and war camps; followed by the handling of various ordered events. The next game round starts after all aforementioned game objects have completed their respective turns, and each event has been handled. To assist with tracking and management of a game round an Initiative Table is used to indicate which in-game object’s turn must be handled next. Players only take their turn when one of their owned and controlled in-game object is designated to take their respective turn. This cycle of starting and ending game rounds proceeds until a player achieves a victory condition, or the game reaches its final round triggering the End of Game event.
In WarBonds: Battle For Vitoria each player selects a single warlord from a pool of warlords for which to start their war campaign with. Afterwards, in the same order, all players select their starting war camp and warlord location on the battle map. Once war camp and warlord placement is complete, the game can now begin, starting with the player whose warlord has the lowest initiative score indicated on the Initiative Table. As each round progresses, players will select and deploy various units to make up their army.
—description from the designer
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- my life is a complete Master now but we'll figure it out don't worry we we always do
- Fire and Ice award assembly from last year
- twelve thousand dollars to put together and everyone that's not also not including travel for everyone that traveled out of state
- I would love to hear ideas about possible funding options
- I still want to have like a round table discussion of us going deeper into our games
References (from this video)
- Tactically engaging gameplay with deep strategic choices
- Duels between warlords add tension and strategic depth
- Leadership and loyalty mechanics create meaningful decisions
- Recall mechanics allow adaptation and resource reallocation
- Apprentice version emphasizes direct combat and is intricate
- Prototype copy and rules/components may not be final
- Medium-to-heavy weight complexity may be challenging
- The need to reference multiple systems (Camps, loyalty, auctions) could be confusing
- fantasy warlords vying for land and loyalty
- land of Victoria
- strategic, tactical duels and political maneuvering
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- auction/leadership auction — End-of-round public bid event gaining two War Points
- combat resolution — Attacks per turn, base damage, modifiers, resistances, and possible immunity; tracked with dice (d10)
- Duels — Long-lasting duels between warlords; outcomes determine eliminations
- Initiative/turn order — Each round uses an initiative table with scrambled order among players
- leadership/loyalty resource — Leadership and loyalty accumulate and are spent on powerful actions or auctions
- Movement types — Units move by land, mounted, or flight; encampment movements and caravan transitions
- recalling units — Players can recall units from the main board to reconfigure troops
- War Camps and actions — War Camps take turns; can perform actions and convert between encampment and caravan
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- there is nowhere to hide in this battle of wits
- The Apprentice version of the game makes for an intricate and bloody battle
- it's slow but it's more rewarding than letting them perish