War Room demands and takes far more from you than any reasonable person will typically expect from a board game night and whether or not it yields rewards in equal measure is going to really depend on how open-minded you are about the concept of what “gaming” is. This is not just a game that wants to be played, it’s an event that wants to be experienced and explored. War Room puts you into a role of a commander of one of seven nations involved in world war II in what I can only describe as a deeply strategic and very intricate war game that comes with all of the sensory inputs money and good, albeit often unconventional game design can buy. Mega Civilization is a game for 5 to 18 players! Its average game time exceeds 12+ hours and they don’t even make tables big enough for this one. In a way, I think War Room is a kind of lifestyle game, a hobby in a box if you will to be played, studied, debated and explored over the course of years. Really the only other game I can think of that might actually be able to give this one a run for its money in sheer size, scope and length of play and out-of-the-box thinking is Mega Civilization (originally Advanced Civilization). It’s a game that lives in the world of excess, with few expected barriers and presumptions about what a game should be, no matter how you measure it.
It’s a game designed with little regard to cost, your available table space, or playtime, not to mention the lack of adherence to design principles that might be considered “standard” in the industry for the genre. War Room is a massive world war II event game the likes of which I can safely say is rarely ever seen in this hobby. This game has been in my collection for over a year already, it’s time! Despite feeling that doing this review has a kind of a prematurity to it, at some point, I had to put something to digital paper. While It would seem almost mandatory to do so to do a review justice, I can’t wait that long to do a review of a game. In fact, getting sufficient plays of a game that takes 8-10 hours to play, that has as many intricate gameplay elements as War Room has, could potentially take years to assess fully.
#Warroom games full
Doing a review on a game like War Room is an intimidating proposition for a number of reasons not the least of which is knowing full well that a game of this size, scale and subject matter would require a tremendous effort just to fully grasp before you could speak intelligently about it.