There are many games where players move armies around a map to seize and hold territory in order to secure victory. These games can have a King of the Mountain energy where obvious winners inspire other players to set aside their differences to unite in dragging them down or neck and neck players try to convince everyone else at the table that their rival is the real danger, not them. From classics like Risk to Diplomacy to big chunky wargames like Twilight Imperium or Game of Thrones, these games are often big, long, affairs where hours of planning and maneuvering are rewarded or not. War of Whispers by contrast is a fast game lasting only 4 rounds and around an hour and yet in that time it manages to capture a lot of the elements that makes those larger games so compelling while also subverting them.
In War of Whispers, players are not representing the different empires and kingdoms at war but rather the secret societies, cults, and conspiracies maneuvering in the shadows and manipulating these larger forces. They’ll share control of the kingdoms and try to manipulate the wars to their favour.
At the start of the game players randomly shuffle their ranking of the different kingdoms that will determine how many points they’ll gain or lose depending on how the war shakes out. In this way the game has more in common with gambling on a horse race or buying stocks than with just straight up trying to grab Kamchatka before anyone else. These rankings are secret and keeping that information privileged helps prevent your rivals from sabotaging your goals. However, empires fall and sometimes it pays to switch bets so between rounds, players can swap their rankings between two kingdoms but in so doing they flip over their tiles and reveal what their new rankings are.
Every round, players assign agents to the different officers tasked with running this war which gives them the ability muster troops, draw cards, and attack rival kingdoms. There are no restrictions on how many agents from which factions can be on any given kingdom so you can very well see a turn where one player raises an army and another player sends that army in the complete opposite direction of where the first player wanted. Combat couldn’t be simpler with armies canceling each other out, no dice needed. The cards allow players to swap out actions or move armies around unexpectedly or can even cause dramatic upheavals.
As the game goes on, more and more agents get added and control gets more complicated as everyone gets a better idea who is in favor and who isn’t. By the end some kingdoms will be mighty empires astride their conquered rivals or burnt out war zones, or colonized husks of their former selves. When the smoke clears, players reveal all their rankings and score based on how many cities the kingdoms control.
War of Whispers is a deeply clever game that plays remarkably differently every time we bring it to table. There isn’t a great deal of table talk because so much of the game is trying to misdirect and hide your intentions although it can be a lot of fun to roleplay the hapless kingdoms who just can’t seem to catch a break. If players have similarly ranked kingdoms they can be unknowingly working together. Similarly when one kingdom is everyone’s bottom pick that creates hilarious devastation. It feels almost like a meta-war game with the grand schemes and bold tactics being reduced to opportunistic sabotage and sudden betrayals. The cards create the most unpredictable chaos and I can see them frustrating players with the way they can upend things but I appreciate the threat they pose and the arms race of collecting one’s own cards to have on hand to even things out.
I have the deluxe version which comes with the larger pieces which makes the board pop and apparently makes reading the board state a lot easier. It also adds additional cards that provide more variety. Not a deal breaker but definitely adds to the game experience. Whichever version, I have had great success putting this in front of my friends and heartily recommend.