War Bosses
In a time long forgotten, the world was fractured into realms, each ruled by mighty warlords wielding power to be reckoned with.
At the heart of those lands rose the ancient Towers, monuments of forgotten power said to hold the key to destiny itself.
Now it is your time to march. You are the War Boss, driven by ambition and sheer strength, ready to seize the Towers and carve your name into history.
The arena awaits…
First Impressions
When I was approached by Lis Luna (the creator of War Bosses), the first thing that enticed me to try the game was its inspiration source: MOBA video games. Reliving those legendary battles through a print-and-play is what truly made me eager to try it.
For those who don’t know: MOBA stands for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, a type of strategy game. I used to spend hours playing MOBAs like League of Legends. It’s the kind of game that stays with you!
When I got my hands on the game files, I was impressed by how the map and character sheet captured the theme so well. A battlefield with towers, with each player wielding unique strength…game on!
A bit on War Bosses
War Bosses is a fast-paced control-and-write game for 1 to 4 players. You take on the role of a Boss, leading your units from the core and using special powers that grow stronger as you control more towers.
Each choice you make on the battlefield has consequences, and the asymmetric turn-based system promises to keep the battles unpredictable and thrilling. The objective is to be the first player or team to destroy the opposing Core-Boss.
Preparing the game
I printed out the Map Sheets, Character Sheets, Action Cards, Attack Cards and the Initiative Card on cardstock paper. If you’re playing 1v1, that would mean printing 10 pages, max. You also need 2 D6 dice and 4 small tokens per player.Â
You’ll be marking on the map and character sheet, so laminating them is an option if you want replayability. I personally preferred not to mark the sheets. Instead, I used tokens to track gold, damage, as well as to mark the towers I conquered. Feel free to try it out if that sounds interesting!
Findings
So here I am, after playing War Bosses for a good couple of weeks, with my fair share of findings:
More than a game of battles
When I first started playing the game, I thought it would be solely focusing on the battles. It’s not!
In War Bosses, you get to upgrade yourself with each tower you conquer, leverage your fury to attack, earn gold coins, and use them to gain more advantages as the game progresses. So it’s impossible to go straight for the kill; you have to build yourself up to give your best.
You get this nice flow in the game where you start by attacking enemy units, then daring to take on the Special Enemy, and finally meeting your fate in the finale with the Core Boss!
The asymmetric gameplay also makes things more interesting, since there are no fixed turns among the players. What really amazed me is how the Action Cards balance out the advantage for each player! Let me walk you through it.
On each turn, both players draw an Action Card at random. The player with the lower number gets to take the first turn. For example, if you draw a 2 and your opponent draws a 4, you take your turn first. However, you can only perform 2 actions, while your opponent gets 4!
The actions involve moving, teleporting, attacking, respawning units, etc.
Expandable
This dawned on me before I even tried the game. Having varying maps and characters with different strengths and weaknesses opens up the game to a wide range of experiences, making it highly replayable.
I tried the game on the 1v1 Map Sheet and played with four different characters on multiple occasions. The shift in each player’s attributes is versatile, yet fairly balanced; not so big that it poses a huge advantage, yet not so small that it can be ignored.
The Attacks
While trying out the attacks for the first time, it felt pretty simple. When it comes to attack, you rely on rolling a die, playing rock-paper-scissors, or a mix of both with the opponent. It does sound simple, doesn’t it? But in the context of the game, it made sense to me pretty soon.
Why?
Because the game is not only about attacks. If it were just full-on attacks, then maybe having a more advanced mechanism would have made sense. But with the frequent clashes between player units and enemy units happening almost every round, any complicated attacking mechanism would have slowed down the momentum of the game.
The game design focused on building up the players to the final stage, leaving the attack part to a roll of the dice or a round of rock-paper-scissors, while still keeping the balance intact. And frankly, I didn’t mind that at all.
Also, it’s up to the players how they want to attack. So if you want to lower the influence of luck in your game, opt for rock-paper-scissors. You’ll be surprised how strategic (and dramatic) it gets once you keep playing it with your opponent on repeat!
Tag Team!
I’ve yet to try it, but the aspect of a 2v2 in the game feels like a big win. The more I think of the battles and player upgrades that will unfold in a 4-player mode, the more I believe it’s perfectly tailored for a highly entertaining game night.
There’s also a 2v1 mode in War Bosses with slightly different rules. I can’t wait to try both of these modes!
What I’d love to see
I really enjoyed playing War Bosses. It’s entertaining, took me back to my days of playing MOBAs, and I can already see myself playing it with friends on game nights.
As a fan, I’d love to see more Map and Player Sheets to bring even more variety to the game. It would be awesome if the characters had a background story or narrative to connect with them more. Just throwing ideas, Lis!
Two weeks to enter the battle arena
The Kickstarter campaign for the game is up and running, and it’s already funded! So if you are a fan of MOBAs like I am, War Bosses might just be the perfect game to take a trip down memory lane!
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Game Overview
Publisher: Pulprint Games
Designer: Lis Luna
Number of players: 1 to 4
Difficulty level: Easy to Medium
Rounds of gameplay needed to learn: 1 to 2 rounds
Game duration: 30 minutes
Available on: Kickstarter
Theme: Control-and-write | MOBA-inspired battle
Number of pages and color: 10 pages (color) for 1v1
Assembling difficulty level: Relatively easy. Need to prepare the Action Cards and Attack Cards
Lamination: Recommended for replayability (only for Map and Player Sheet)
Additional elements required: A couple of D6 dice, small tokens, player pieces (4 per player)
Time to learn: Within 30 minutes
Travel-friendly: 8.5/10
Shelving friendly: 8.5/10
Rating from PnP Time: 8/10
Tasliman is a board game developer based in Bangladesh, with the dream of exploring the world of games and introducing it to anyone new to it. He is the founder of Kraftz, a brand that develops board games commercially, as well as with reputed entities like BRAC and The Gates Foundation.
