V Wars Review

When you have a hand in one of the most successful board game releases of the past decade it’s a monumental task to follow that up. If Pandemic Legacy is Abbey Road then V-Wars is certainly Let It Be. Yet overlooking this interesting thriller would be a mistake for fans of hidden roles and backstabbing treachery. And vampires. Lots and lots of vampires.

V-Wars is a comic property of parent publisher IDW, featuring a world beset by a sudden affliction of vampirism amid political turmoil. Humanity is conflicted as a certain degree of sympathy exists for those infected, particularly for the members of long-tooth society that suppress their hunger and embrace peace. A portion of their twisted population has taken to guerilla warfare as they incite riots and inflict chaos while trying to subvert the government. It’s a shadow conflict of sorts that brings about parallels to the War on Terror. There’s definitely some moral fat to chew on in the background with riots and massacres being represented in the context of gameplay mechanisms.

At the beginning of play each participant receives a role card. One is a vampire and working secretly against the humans. Depending on the player count you may have one or two infected players that begin without an appetite for blood but may turn suddenly in the course of play. The rest are humans, fighting the good fight like a combination of Steve McQueen and Van Helsing.

To achieve victory humans must quell riots and push the political climate of cities into Martial Law. If the people will turn a blind eye to the bloodshed and horrors of the fangs then grab them by the back of the neck and wake them the hell up. The vampire on the other hand wants to gain control of cities and increase sympathy across the globe. Hearts and minds and gallons of warm blood.

The two win conditions are interesting because there are similarities between the paths to success while still maintaining asymmetry and a distinct playstyle. The combination of these goals butting up against each other and a relatively short playtime that incentivizes early reveals makes V-Wars a much more confrontational and combative title than its peers Homeland and Battlestar Galactica. When the Nosferatu unmasks in mid game and starts chucking down little Draculas all across the globe and offing your soldiers - that sense of war on a grand scale bleeds through like two huge spikes puncturing your jugular.

On the opposite end of that spectrum players go turn to turn spending action points to hop around and generally put out fires. This lends itself to the common comparisons of Pandemic meets Battlestar Galactica. The Crisis check that was perfected and streamlined in 2015’s Homeland makes another appearance as the core moments of crescendo in the design.

Each city on the board is divided into a separate Region that influences some game effects. The areas themselves can be difficult to delineate at times as the board reaches for “wow” over function. Each of the Regions has a small deck of positive and negative cards used to resolve Riots at the end of each player’s turn. There is a small amount of prescience in knowing the areas hit with turmoil a turn in advance, allowing for some strategy in preparation.

The Riot check itself has a unique twist in that not every card is revealed, rather we just accumulate totals until the flip of a card pushes one side over five. If you achieve victory with 6-7 total strength then you either defend the city or it switches sides, depending on its original allegiance. Success with an eight or more is still success, but the kind that results in bodies strewn about the local populace and mom and pop shops up in flames, Vancouver style.

There’s opportunity for sabotage in this unique mechanism from multiple vectors as you can toss bad cards into the pile as well as choose a single card to secretly discard after the resolution of a test. You can also chuck cards into the deck that spawns Riots down the line or throw down militants to eat up enemy cards as they’re revealed. Nuance and variety amid an unsettling violent climate with unknown loyalties is the name of the game.

Fully grasping all of this procedurally can be somewhat difficult for a light/medium weight strategy game. While there are a number of sophisticated mechanisms at play, the overarching structure is surprisingly awkward at first blush. Your second play will feel much more natural and smooth but you’ll have to power through that first play and hope not to lose anyone lightly committed. Admittedly, this is a quality that comes with this type of game and something that afflicts the previously mentioned Homeland.

The soft spots of the design lie in its dramatic swings and occasional random outcomes. This game can throw you for a loop by ignoring your mitigation at key times and pushing your boundaries. Part of this is its modest playtime of 60 minutes and compressing an impactful experience into that dimension. The game gives you tools and you certainly have agency, but sometimes it can be capricious and swingy despite your best efforts.

It also plays best at five and is still solid at four. Three technically works but is the least interesting as it chucks out the brilliant infected mechanic. This perspective of kicking off the game as a good guy with the possibility of turning evil during play is exhilarating. What’s particularly interesting is that it puts the narrative completely in the player’s hands as the vampire must be out in the open and move to the infected player’s space, spending an action to then turn them.

What’s so damn fun is the unpredictability of the whole thing. You’ll kick off games with the infected player ready to just state aloud their loyalty. The problem with this is the infected may be a human baiting the vampire into wasting precious actions later in the game. Also, what happens if you tell the group you’re infected and start tanking Riots but the Strahd decides to shove a boot in your face and never spend the effort to bring you to the dark side? Yeah, you’ll feel like Hayden Christensen getting shoved into the lava on Mustafar. Only you don’t wake up in a badass black cyborg suit, instead you wake up in a full body cast and your spurned allies are pointing fingers and having a laugh at your expense. A loud obnoxious “NOOOOO!” works either way.

While you can certainly see Daviau’s recent Pandemic work bleeding into this design, I can’t help but make background connections to Betrayal at the House on the Hill. The unstable state of a traitor and lack of definition in your strategy is classic Betrayal. Couple that with the sometimes clunky outcome due to reliance on players and the swirling chaos of random elements and you can see the picture start to take shape.

V-Wars is an interesting game that certainly brings something new to the table while mostly adhering to old recipes. It’s not as tight as Homeland but not nearly as cumbersome or baroque as Battlestar Galactica. It lies somewhere in between, embracing theme and some streamlining while managing to offer a surprise or two with a new traitor mechanic and those sweet Riots. If you dig a compelling metagame atop a global struggle in roughly an hour, then Let It Be may have your head bobbing along and a foot tapping to the beat.