That Randy Brown

Wonderland War

I recently played Wonderland's War, which was introduced as the current best game on the market. I admit I was skeptical, but not having played The Quacks of Quedlinburg, I also did not have a good point of reference for comparison.

Game Premise #

Wonderland's War takes place in wonderland, where each player is one of the many characters from Alice in Wonderland, from Alice herself all the way to the Jabberwocky. Every character except Alice (more on this in a moment) starts the game basically the same, but each character has a unique play style owing to several powers that they unlock throughout the game. I played as the Jabberwocky--you should too. If you don't, probably play as Alice.

Game Flow #

The game plays over three rounds, with each round being composed of two parts: The Tea Party and the Wars.

Tea Party #

During the Tea Party, you are building your forces, making allies, and increasing your chances of winning wars. You do this by, one at a time, moving around the table to the card you want. If a card is taken, you have to pick a new one. At any point, you can go all the way around the tea table, which allows you to re-deal cards to any open seats (so you can take one), but you also have to take a shard, which increases your chances of going mad (more on this in a moment).

The Jabberwocky can mark cards with poison, so that, if another player takes the card, they also have to take the poison token (more on tokens in a moment--this is kind of becoming a theme).

Alice is the only character that plays the tea party differently, because she goes around the table in the opposite order from everyone else.

Wonderland Wars #

After everyone has collected four cards, and resolved whatever actions come with those cards, the players place their heroes in one of the wonderland regions, and fight to control it. Fights take place as a race to a score of 25, where if all your people die (by drawing madness or poison), you bust and are out of the fight. The winner and second place in any fight get a designated number of victory points, depending on the round and the region.

If you aren't competing in a battle, you set a wager on it, meaning you bet who will win. If you get it right, you get a token, if you get it wrong, you get a shard.

Mechanics #

Cards, Shards, and Tokens #

The tea party part of the game is a bag building game. Each player starts with a basic set of tokens in a bag, with one of them being a madness token. An additional madness token is added each round and to the person who ends the tea party with the most shards. Otherwise, players are selecting cards at the tea party that allow them to, among another things, place units in regions for battle and collect tokens with a number on them, usually between 1 and 6, and a special power, like doubling the points of the next token.

All tokens collected during the tea party, and all madness tokens, stay in your bag (that is, a literal bag) the entire game. So the more tokens, the less likely you are to draw madness. However, once a token is used in battle, it cannot be used for the rest of the round unless a player goes mad.

Units, Madness #

During a battle, all competing players draw a token at random from their bag and reveal it. For each pointed token, they score those points, trying to be the first to get to 25. For each madness or poison token, they remove the number of designated units from the board. If they have no more units in a region, they lose the battle.

When a player draws four madness tokens, they get to re-add all their tokens played (including madness tokens) back to their bag. Madness tokens stay on the card otherwise. All other tokens get re-added to the bag at the return to the tea party, if I remember correctly. This didn't happen to me because the Jabberwocky has a skill to avoid losing people on the final madness token. Seriously, you should play the Jabberwocky. I think the guys I was playing with said it was so powerful that it got nerfed in an expansion. But the folks they had played with also said it wasn't great. I disagree.

Missions and More #

There are also missions in the game--special arrangements of allies, battle end states, and lands held over the whole game. I don't know much about missions except that if you don't do them, you will probably lose. This became apparent because I didn't do them, and that's how I lost.

In addition to these base mechanics, each player has special skills. The Jabberwocky, for instance, when it pulls a 3 pointed Jabberwocky token, can put a poison token in one opponent in the battle on their next token draw. These special skills are unlocked by forging, an entire submechanic to the game based on drawing forge tokens or stopping battles at forges.

Conclusion #

This is an extremely well-designed game that took four players about 4 hours to play. It's not a short game, but it's a lot of fun. It keeps players engaged even when they aren't involved, has lots of variability in play style, and really tight mechanics that I'm already thinking about how to incorporate into other games.