WARFIGHTER

2ND EDITION





When Warfighter 2nd Edition, plus all the expansions and the Footlocker arrived in an awesome package, it was like Christmas, my birthday and several other celebrations all rolled into one. But first a brief outline of the subject, which the game's subtitle -The Tactical Special Forces Card game - helps to spell out. In essence, modern small unit operations, specifically in the Middle East and the South American jungle. The main focus of my review will obviously be the core game, but with appropriate asides regarding the multiple expansions.





Warfighter may not have the word "Leader" in its title, but at a glance you

might be forgiven for thinking that it is a close relation. If you have followed my series of reviews from air to sea to air/land campaigns via Phantom Leader, U-Boat and Gato Leader and most recently Tiger Leader, you might even think that there's not much to learn or be said.





Stick with me and I hope you'll shortly agree that you would have been wrong to switch off your attention now. I have no hesitation in saying that, if my accumulating collection of DVG games were to be threatened by the classic scenario of my house going up in flames and I could save only one, then Warfighter would be the one. Once more its quality, quality, quality all the way. But, for once, before looking at the nuts and bolts of the game, I'm going to plunge straight into a major aspect of game play and the level that you are going to be playing at.





Similar to games in the Leader series, Warfighter's key element is cards. Hundreds of them and at the very heart of the game are the cards that make up your force and you can't get much more tactical than this. You have three types of unit: the individual Player Soldier, the non-player soldier and the squad soldier, in what I would describe as a descending hierarchy. But each soldier card comes with an individual name - a starting point for my love of this game.





I liked the call-sign names used in Phantom Leader that took me back to watching Top Gun, then came the U-boats with their named historical commanders on the card, followed by the named Commander cards integral to Tiger Leader. Each increased the level of engagement and identification with your units, but now we're at the level where each soldier card has the name of a serving soldier and picture that they have personally submitted for inclusion in the game. I don't think that you can get a more immersive effect than that.





You really do care for each member of your team [especially as you've chosen them], but perhaps unfairly you do care just that little bit more as you ascend the hierarchy that I talked about. Your Squad soldier really seems like the basic grunt, whose card has a simple hit table for when they fire and the number of actions that they can perform depending on how many wounds they've taken. Next in line is the non-player soldier - this time the table on their card covers purely how many actions they can take, as they come with a fixed set of named weapons, equipment and skills printed on the card.









A line up of the three types of soldier card.





But top of the tree is the Player soldier, who has a set allowance of two actions, but then everything else is what you have decided to purchase from your stock of Resource points. Even more important - each Player soldier has a hand of Action cards [depending on their current staus; typically 5 or 6 cards, if suffering no wounds] and these cards really are the engine that drives the action. Inevitably they grab your attention and they will be the ones you try to protect at all costs.









No shortage of gear for these guys.





The next feature is one that takes the world of Warfighter away from the Leader series. There are no large campaign card sheets. Instead, three sets of Mission and Objective cards: one for the Jungle and two for the Middle East, where one group of opponents are Insurgents and the other Military. There is another hierarchy here too - how tough the going will be: the Jungle set is the easiest [a relative term], next are the Middle East Insurgents and finally the toughest nuts to crack are the Middle East Military. Oh, and while we're talking about your opponents , better wise up and get down to learning the correct game parlance. These are Hostiles!





So, choose your Mission card which lists the number of Resource points to spend, the number of turns in which to complete the Mission, an Objective number*, a Loadout number [bit more about these later] and finally any specific Mission text. Then choose your Objective card. Of course, if you wish, you can just draw each of these two cards randomly for maximum variety.





From here on, the sequence of play should be pretty familiar to any of you who know the Leader games and/or have read my other reviews. Spend the Resource points to build your team of soldiers, buy their equipment and skills, draw the correct number of Action cards [that's new] and get your boots on the ground.





So, now's the right time to consider the game's playing board which is where you'll be placing your soldiers and a lot, but by no means all, of what you're going to be playing with. That playing board has come in for a lot of criticism. At first sight , it looked perfect.









Suitably dark and menacing, a seemingly very good size, clearly marked boxes for the Action deck and discards, a similar set of boxes for the Hostile card deck and discards, the Set Up sequence and Attack Sequence, an Attack Matrix, a turn track [called Mission Timer] and 10 numbered boxes, the first of which is labeled Mission and the Objective card goes in the numbered box that corresponds to the Objective number* [see above]. Unfortunately, it just isn't adequate for what has to be laid out in the game.





Consider first of all the neat, numbered

Location boxes. When you decide to play a Location card that you've drawn from the Action deck, it will be placed in the next Location box. But as can be seen, most of those boxes are in the landscape orientation, so that the all-important information on the card is harder to read.





The start of the problem.



Even worse you draw a number of Hostile cards that will occupy the Location card and these may be 5 or 6 cards. Where do you put them? After all, only one fits the Location space and then you couldn't read the Location card beneath it at all. Nor can you stack them, as each Hostile card has a combat table on them and you will also need to place Suppressed or EKIA markers on them at some point. Above the Location is too cramped and soon obscures other tables.







Even more of a problem - laying out the Hostile cards





In quite a number of on-line posts about this, the gamer simply did away with the board and you'll certainly find useful files on BGG that have been created to print out Location mats to help.





Acknowledging the problem, DVG has produced a new board, which comes in the Warfighter: Locker expansion. So, problem solved... ah, well, no [sigh]. It is an improvement. I love the top-notch, even higher physical quality of this board and its even more striking appearance.

















A partial solution





But, as you can see above, it is by no means a complete solution. There is more room for laying out those Hostile cards. In the photo, I drew 4 Hostiles that time. In my very first attempt at this Mission, I drew 6 Hostiles. Also, you'll now notice that to accommodate the Hostile cards, my discard piles have to be placed to the side of the board. And finally, whichever board you have, there is no allocation of space on it for your all-important Soldier cards, their Skill cards and their Equipment cards. To achieve that you'd have to have two boards and a price that frankly would be becoming stratospheric.





In total you have a LARGE footprint for this game. I can see why some have simply jettisoned the board altogether. That will certainly work, but not a decision I have been prepared to take. What you see above is my preferred choice. I would not want to give up the atmosphere and sumptuous feel, when I play the game using the redesigned board. But it's going to cost you. The Footlocker Case costs slightly more than the basic game itself. So, you're looking at about £95 in total. Add in all the other expansions and you're putting nearly another £115 on the bill, taking you to about the £210 mark.





Having aired the one question mark that hangs over the game - its playing board [called the Tactical Display Sheet ]- let's continue with the game play that takes place on it. Your Soldiers in the form of small numbered chits assemble on the Mission card. The Kickstarter included plastic soldiers [the weakest physical pieces in the whole product] to go with the chits. I shall be buying and painitng some quality models to enhance further the all-enveloping feel of the game.





Their task will be to make their way, Location card by Location card, until they reach the Objective card, activate it and accomplish [or fail to accomplish] the Objective goals stipulated by the card.





To help them achieve that goal will be the weapons you've selected and paid the necessary Resource points for. Below is a very small selection from the wide range at your service.









If you look closely at the lower right hand corner, you should be able to make out a small orange square where you place the designated amount of ammunition for the weapon. This is a small, but telling detail, that adds to the atmosphere of the game. Most weapons have a reload number which, if rolled, involves the topmost counter being flipped to its empty side and you'll then need to spend one of your precious actions to reload by removing that counter.





If you think a weapon is going to need more ammo than its basic allowance, then you need to buy extra before you start the Mission and you can also add refinements to these weapons from the Equipment cards that you can also buy. These are easily distinguished by their blue colour, so that they can be paired up with the weapon they've been bought for. Though, as you can see with the First Aid Kit below, some of the equipment is stand alone material that will be assigned to a particular Soldier card.









All this adds immensely to the game play and one of the reasons that you may find yourself being seduced into buying some, if not all, of the expansions. Each Expansion has a particular focus, but brings with it additional cards in nearly all the basic categories.







Here is most of the whole magnificent array. Lined up in front are the seven sets of expansion decks. Hiding behind them is the Container from the Footlocker Expansion, with the Scenario Booklet and extra rule set on top and the deep counter tray on the right. Most of the counters in the tray come from the basic game, whose box is in the top right of the picture, along with over two thirds of the extra counter sheet contained in the Footlocker.





Each Expansion also includes a set of the special bullet dice and there are four sets of them here on display. These look the part, but like many other gamers I think they're more ornamental than practical. They roll and roll and, when at last they stop rolling, it's often not easy to tell exactly which side they are lying on and the slightest nudge to your table will change the result.





Finally, here's the Footlocker itself, from the outside, with its near 3D effect!









and peering into its capacious depths.



