War on Terror Blog
Thursday 17th July 2008
War on Terror in 'Top Ten Historical Board Games of 2007'
The prestigious Historical Jury of the Origins Awards in the USA have placed our humble game in the top ten "2007 Historical Board Games" for the 34th Annual Origins Awards.
It sounds pretty impressive and we're dead chuffed to get so far, especially as we were up against some big, well-established names. Sadly we didn't make the final short list of 6, so we're between 7 and 10. We also have to admit that we don't know how many entrants there were. Maybe just 7. In which case, we effectively came last. So we're not cracking open that champagne bottle yet (that's being saved for the day the real war on terror ends... by which time it will probably be nothing more than syrupy vinegar).
As a bonus, we were given a glowing review by Frank Chadwick, co-founder of Game Designers' Workshop and a legendary and prolific historical game designer. Here's the review in its entirety.
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I had a chance to play The War on Terror boardgame with friends over the weekend and it is an enormously entertaining game. Very dark, but also very funny.
High Points
Excellent rules layout, easy to read and understand, about five minutes of explanation gets you playing. The core mechanics are quite simple but the cards provide lots of variety in terms of game activity, and most of the rules are actually on the cards themselves. This is nothing earth-shattering -- lots of games do this -- but it is very well executed here.
An enormously entertaining game. Very dark, but also very funny. Good component quality. Lots of cartoons on the map, rules and, especially, the game cards, which establish the tone of the game very firmly. Plastic pieces are functional and professionally produced. And there are a couple of wonderful extras, which add to the fun and the sense of completeness, specifically the Axis of Evil spinner (a plastic spinner built into the playing board) and "The Balaklava of Evil," which is a genuine knit black balaclava (whole-head mask) with "EVIL" in big red letters on the forehead. If the Axis of Evil spinner points to your color, you become the current Evil Empire and are required (by the rules) to wear the Balaklava of Evil until that honor passes to someone else.
A lot of multi-player games end up with a sense of cascading advantage for one player. War on Terror does not, which I really appreciated. I never felt as if someone was so far ahead that they couldn't be overtaken. Also, players are never completely out of the game. Everyone starts with an Empire, but as empires are bankrupted or their territories taken over, the players become the terrorist player. There is only one terrorist faction, but all eliminated players jointly play it, and it is possible to win as the terrorists. My initial impression was that it was difficult to win as the terrorist faction and that play options for them were limited, but that was due largely to us playing some rules wrong. It's actually tough to win as a straight faction against the terrorists, which is an interesting wrinkle -- the "consolation bracket" has teeth.
Finally, and probably running through all of the above, the game has a great sense of dark humor.
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War on Terror: The Boardgame, Review by Frank Chadwick Origins Awards Historical Jury www.originsgames.com/aagad.
- posted by TerrorBull Games on 17 July 2008 - 0 comments
Tuesday 8th July 2008
Join us at the Flea Pit
The marvelous Dr Richard Barbrook, one of the founding members of Class Wargames, has invited us to give a short talk about our game, followed by an evening of booze and gaming at The Flea Pit in London on 22nd July.
This event is open to everybody. The Flea Pit can be found near Old Street in the East End and is a good looking converted Victorian warehouse. It's now a pub and cafe which hosts a whole myriad of artistic and political events, with one of the regular club nights belonging to Class War games every last Tuesday of the month. These guys are an interesting bunch who are great advocates of Guy Debord's board game 'The Game of War'
Richard has just returned from California, where he was collecting the Marshall McLuhan award for his book Imaginary Futures. We can't wait to buy the man a congratulatory drink, and of course it's a great oppotunity for you to buy us a drink too.
Whilst a rather interesting looking political film night takes place in the dingy back room of the Flea Pit on the 22nd, Class Wargames will be entertaing us in the swanky front parlour. You'll be able to ask us any questions you like during the evening such as 'What made you do this in the first place?', 'How many death threats have you recieved?' and ' Is Andy Tompkins hair actually real?' and we'll be happy to answer them all and more besides. Club night times are 6:30pm till 11:00 pm, and we'd love to see you, the more the merrier. If you want to go as far as challanging the inventors to a game that might just be possible too, but be warned...we're shit hot.
- posted by TerrorBull Games on 8 July 2008 - 0 comments
Thursday 12th June 2008
You make the rules
Want to be credited with changing the path of the 'War on Terror'? How could you refuse? Now is your chance to help us develop the 2nd Edition of the game.
The official version won't be released until next year, but we are making the new rules available for FREE during its testing period so that you can tell us what you think. We've changed rules, added rules and introduced new cards so there are now such evils as permanent military bases, extraordinary rendition and terrorist groups with indigenous territory claims...all in the interests of improving game play and keeping it as up to date as possible. We are keeping a few ideas back until the official release so you will just have to wait for those surprises, unless of course we leave our top secret details on a train for anybody to pick up - We've checked with our government and these things do happen quite often apparently.
Because we want Edition 2 to be the best it can all constructive feedback is welcome and for those ideas that make it into the final game you will receive a respectful accreditation. If you fear that having your name associated with our board game would bring a cloud of shame upon you and your family, you'll lose your job and maybe your home, or you simply think that receiving the odd death threat would niggle somewhat then you are welcome to use a false name when submitting ideas. But then the terrorists would win.
You can download a document which will help you to convert your existing set without too much trouble. And you can see what everybody else is thinking about these changes on this board game geek thread. So let the games begin...and we look forward to hearing from you, you crazy bastards.
- posted by TerrorBull Games on 12 June 2008 - 0 comments
Thursday 22nd May 2008
A quickie with Naomi Klein
On Tuesday, journalist and best selling author Naomi Klein made a special appearance at Housmans Booksellers in London. We went along to buy a copy of her latest book 'The Shock Doctrine' , and as the sun was out we decided to treat the lady too - so we slipped a copy of our game across the table into her welcoming hands, and she appeared to like it!
We were in a chipper and up beat mood, which was lucky, as Andy was 'surprise interviewed' by a Finnish journalist whilst queuing to see Naomi. Well, if you can't get to the main attraction because the room is too packed then why not talk to a satirical board game inventor whilst you wait? So for all the Finns reading this, the next time you pick up the 'Helsinki Journal' keep an eye out for Andy's off the cuff, clear and concise interview ramblings.
Interview over and it was time to meet Naomi who was all smiles when she was presented with a copy of War on Terror, and was amused at the possibility of being able to play it when 'on the road' - which we gather she is a lot at the moment. Perhaps we should develop that magnetic travel set version after all? An in-flight version could be pretty special. If anybody has any ideas for different formats of our game then drop us a line at the usual address. If you're not familiar with Naomi Klein's work her previous book was the hugely influential No Logo, an International best seller no less. If you fancy a taster of Naomi's new book then have a look at this 6 minute film.Thanks once more to Housmans for organising this event and to Naomi for being so friendly.
- posted by TerrorBull Games on 22 May 2008 - 0 comments
Sunday 18th May 2008
11,000 games sold so far ...
We meant to post this after we sold 10,000, but we forgot, so we thought, sod it, eleven is as good as ten, if not better. One better. We'll just wait until we pass the eleven boundary. Why be slaves to the decimal system anyway?
And then we passed 11,000 and still forgot. So here it is, a glorious celebration post to commemorate 11,763 games, or something like that ... Whew! It's been quite a ride.
Naturally, we're really chuffed with how well War on Terror has done. For a first, independent release, this is phenomenal news and we have to thank each and every one of you for buying the game, being so supportive, spreading the word and generally recognising what it is we're trying to do. In fact, some of you seem to understand better than we do. Thank you. Without you, obviously, we couldn't achieve what we have - so the Playboy endorsement and the New Internationalist review, the appearance on the IT Crowd, the Imperial War Museum, the V&A, the ICA, the WoT tournament in L.A. and more ... all these successes are yours too; you helped carry it this far.
Thanks each and every one of you for buying the game, being so supportive, spreading the word and recognising the game for what it is Of course, we've had our fair share of problems too, as followers of this blog will know only too well. We'd like to report that these troubles are behind us, but far from it. We're still prevented from reaching the mass market in any way, the result being that we can never generate the level of sales we need in order to move TerrorBull Games forwards and publish the many games we have in various stages of development.
So the fight continues. It's a long war, as we've pointed out many times and there'll be a press release soon, exploring this aspect in more detail. In the meantime, we've written a press release that celebrates hitting the significant 10,000 figure and reflecting back on a year of War on Terror. Enjoy!
- posted by TerrorBull Games on 18 May 2008 - 1 comments
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