This War of Mine: Board game review

I finally received This War of Mine the board game early this week, I backed the game through Kickstarter over a year ago. This is board game based on the PC (and now Android/iOS app) version which I thought was one of the best games I've played, and it is extremely true to the digital version. You can read my review of the PC game HERE.

I've been playing this game solo and with Caroline for most of the week and we managed to survive through the entire campaign once, so I figured it was time for a review.

Basic idea of the game
Just like the PC game the board game version is about players controlling a small group of civilians trying to survive war in an abandoned building. During the day you try to make the building a bit more habitable by clearing debris, building furniture, water collectors, animal traps and boarding up holes in the walls to increase security.

During the night phase you can send people from your group out to scavenge locations in town for supplies and perform trade. Scavenging is always combined with a risk of running into the wrong kind of people - be it soldiers, thugs, hobos or other survivors. You may also run into regular civilians hiding in locations.

At the same time as members of your group are scavenging the town, your own house regularly comes under attack (from other people and raiders also scavenging!). You have to post guards, arm yourself and board up holes in the walls to prevent injury and theft.

At the start of each new day a card from the "event deck" is drawn, it tells you the main event going on during the upcoming day. Events could be artillery fire hitting your house, cold weather getting worse, spreading of sickness in the town, items becoming more scarce etc. The game ends when the "event deck" runs out, which is randomly determined as the final couple of cards in the event deck include one "War is over" card. In the basic campaign  you have to survive with at least 1 member of your original group of survivors in order to win.

That's the basic idea of the game. Talking about specifics now, let's start with characters.

Caverna: The cave farmers boardgame review

This one I bought on sale in our local hobby store, it had reduced price as the box was slightly damaged which brought down the price 25%, which was enough to get a fair price for this game which I had been interested in for a while but always thought it was a tad expensive.

Caverna the cave farmers is a worker placement, resource gathering and base building game. You can play it solo against a specific victory condition or play 2-7 players competing against other cave dwellers attempting to get the most points. The game adjusts itself against the number of players taking part in the game with some boards with additional actions only being with x-number of players.

The idea behind the game and the rules are quite simple. You control a dwarf family, and over a number of turns you have to expand your cave, farmlands, livestock and food supplies. At the end of the game points are earned for various conditions. It is also a worker placement game with lots of planning involved and a TON of choices of what to do each turn. The main board has starting actions on which you can place workers to receive resources or build rooms/farmland. As the game progresses new additional actions are unlocked each turn.

The options for you to gather victory points are vast. You get points for building and expanding rooms in your cave. You get points for food and farmland and keeping livestock. You get points for the number of family members you have. Points for resources and a huge amount of room bonuses also apply. This in turn allows you to focus on what you find most appealing. Do you want to gather resources by sending your dwarves on adventures or do you want to gather resources from playing actions on the board. Do you feed your family by growing wheat and vegetables or by breeding livestock - or the both? Do you intend to buy a room that offers bonus points for mined ore or do you want to buy a room that gives you bonus points for livestock? The ways to score points in this game are vast and players do not necessarily compete directly with each other than in ways of blocking actions on the board by placing your own workers on them.

Frostgrave Wraith Knights

Painted up the Wraith Knight this evening, kept the colors similar to the cover image from the blister. Quite nice models, larger than the plastic soldiers, but roughly the same height as the undead skeletons from Mantic games.

Now I only have some giant rats and two wraiths from Otherworld Miniatures left to paint while I wait for the remainder of my Frostgrave order to arrive from Wayland Games. Last couple of minis have been delayed for a few weeks now...

Bear and Boar painted up

Adding some more wild animals to my collection, primarily for Frostgrave use but it would be great to play a Revenant type scenario with my French & Indian war collection.

The boar is from the Frostgrave range, quite nice model and took me less than 30 minutes to paint. Will try to get the accompanying giant rats from the same blister painted up later this week.

The bear is a plastic mini from the Dungeon & Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon boardgame. I cut away the molded base and stuck it on a 40mm flat base from renedra. Trimming the mold lines was difficult with the knife I have since the material of the D&D boardgame minis is like a mix of plastic and rubber which does not lend itself to easy trimming.

Had a good time painting the bear, a process that took less than an hour. I look forward to adding both creatures to our Frostgrave games, finally spells like animal companion and control animal will get useful.

Ghoul King, Vampire and Wraith

Having finished the Frostgrave soldiers I moved on to paint some newly purchased monster encounters. These 3 were speed painted last night for todays Frostgrave game. I really like the models, but I was slightly dissapointed in the size of the vampire and the wraith if you compare to the size of the plastic models from the soldiers box.

I also noticed some static grass stuck to the models prior to taking pictures, that has since been removed.