Wroth
- Board's Eye View
- 21 minutes ago
- 3 min read
We quite often see games that, commendably, make design concessions for colour-blind players. Open up your copy of Wroth tho' and it looks like the board is the work of a colour-blind designer. Maybe Manny Trembley isn't colour blind, and maybe he wasn't on mindbending drugs. Maybe there was an error in the instructions Chip Theory Games sent to the printers. Whatever the reason and however it occurred, the first thing that strikes you when you set up Wroth is the psychedelic palette that's been used to create the neoprene mat playing board. The board itself is otherwise simply a map showing the different regions of an island but if you play it in view of passersby don't be surprised if you get complaints that you've triggered their migraine.
Mapboard aside, Wroth is a fast-playing area control game where the 2-4 players are vying for majorities or, better still, exclusive occupation of the various regions of an island. You get points each round for each area you control, and the game is a race to be the first player to collect 30 points. Wroth is the name of the island; it's a homophone of wrath not a mis-spelling of the synonym for anger.
Components are mostly what have become standard fare in Chip Theory games, albeit that means they are of higher quality than most other publishers' 'deluxe' productions. There are high-quality stitched-edge neoprene mats for the central board and players' individual player mats, and printed custom six-sided dice - complete with storage trays. The one difference - apart from the fact that Wroth comes in a relatively modest-sized box in comparison with most previous Chip Theory titles - is that players have small plastic tokens to represent their armies rather than the poker chips to which we've become accustomed. The army tokens for each faction aren't just moulded in a different colour; they each have their own distinct design. In addition to their 'basic troops' army tokens, each faction comes with its own set of custom dice; used as markers representing elite troops rather than rolled to generate a randomised result. You will usually have to pay 'Corra' (the green crystal currency) to deploy an elite troop. Players are given 1 Corra at the start of each round but some regions will generate additional Corra for the player that controls them.
Each of the factions in Wroth have their own asymmetric powers, mostly affecting the way in which that faction's elite troop custom dice are used. The cards for each faction give players some choice at the start of the game over exactly which powers to play with. There is some dice rolling tho'. Players each have a similar 'all-seeing die' that gives them a once-per-round use-it-or-lose-it special action. At the start of each round, a number of action dice are rolled (how many depends on the number of players) and players in turn draft dice to determine the actions they'll take. Mine lets you take a Corra; Extend lets you deploy two troops to any region where you already have at least one army; Maneuver lets you move up to two troops to an adjacent region; and Battle lets your troops attack opposing troops in your region or in an adjacent region. Paradoxically for a game with some many dice, there's no dice rolling to determine combat - you simply remove an enemy troop for each Battle icon on your dice.
This all makes for a highly tactical wargame that's comfortably playable in an hour, even with a full complement of four players. The game comes with five different asymmetric factions and two more (the Paldeyn and Venna) are available if you add those expansions. The expansions don't introduce any new rules - each just offers another player mat, set of custom dice, faction cards and another set of troops. Doubtless some folk will try to use them all in a house-ruled seven-player version of the game but the intention is simply to offer players more choice of asymmetric abilities and more replayability. In terms of options tho' the game incorporates an AI so it's playable solitaire or as a cooperative game with the 2-4 players working as a team.
Tho' there's depth in the drafting choices and the interaction between the various asymmetric factions, Wroth's relatively straightforward rules make it a remarkably accessible wargame. If you can get over the shock of colour on the central board, it's a game you will want to return to time and again.
