A WAR OF WHISPERS

OBJECTIVE OF A WAR OF WHISPERS: The objective of A War of Whispers is to be the player who controls the most cities in the world.   

NUMBER OF PLAYERS: 2 to 4 Players 

MATERIALS: 1 Game Board, 20 Loyalty Tokens, 1 Starter Player Token, 4 Player Boards, 4 Turn Trackers, 36 Agent Tokens, 100 Banner Cubes, 40 Empire Cards, and Instructions 

TYPE OF GAME: Area Control Board Game 

AUDIENCE: Ages 14 and Up 

OVERVIEW OF A WAR OF WHISPERS 

In A War of Whispers, it is whispers that will win the war fought between the five kingdoms. The players act as the secret society that bets on the results of the war, pulling strings that will put the war in their favor. A War of Whispers is a game of ever-shifting loyalties, hidden agendas, and deep strategy.  

SETUP 

To begin setup, each player will choose a color to represent them throughout the course of the game. At this point, the player will collect the loyalty tokens, agents, and player board that matches their chosen color, placing them in front of them. The game board is placed in middle of the playing area, with the first turn marker placed on the starting space of the board. The remaining turn markers may be placed beside the current turn marker.  

For each of the five empires the players will place the banners for each empire in their own pile, creating the Banner Reserve Piles. The empire cards can then be divided into five separate decks, placing each beside their matching empire. Once all of the cards are placed, the map can be oriented. If any region of the board has a banner image, then a banner of the matching color should be placed in the location.  

The first player is randomly chosen by the group. Once determined, they will collect the starting player marker. Before setup is complete, the players should ensure that they place their initial loyalty bets on the Empires. In order to do this, they will shuffle their tokens and place them randomly on the loyalty spaces found on their personal board face down. This will determine the players’ bets on the Empires. The game is then ready to begin! 

GAMEPLAY 

Gameplay consists of turns, with each turn consisting of four phases. The board will direct the players to which phase they will complete. The players will complete the following phases: Deploy Agents Phase, Empire Turns Phase, Cleanup Phase, and Swap Phase. They will complete these four different phases completely before the next round begins.  

In each empire counsel, there are four positions on which the players are able to place agents. Beginning with the starting player and continuing clockwise around the group, the players will remove an agent on the board and place one agent on any available position until every player has placed two agents. Once everyone has placed two agents, they may continue on to the next phase of the game.  

For the Empire Turns phase, the Bear Empire will take their turn first, and gameplay will continue clockwise around the group. During their turn, each council position will take an available action, beginning with the Sheriff and continuing around the board. Once all of the players have taken their actions, the turn marker is moved to the next space on the tracker. The next player will then collect the starting player token.  

During the Swap Phase, the players have the chance to trade any of their unrevealed tokens. All they have to do is switch the slots in which the tokens are found, flipping them up so that the empire symbols can be seen. They are no longer able to be swapped once they have been. After they have swapped everything, the players will discard any of the empire cards that they have in their hands until they have only five cards remaining.  

The next round will begin once the Cleanup Phase is complete. The gameplay will continue in this manner until four rounds have been played.  

END OF GAME 

The game comes to an end after the end of the fourth round. The players will then tally their loyalty tokens. The player with the most tokens is determined to be the winner! If there are two players with the same score, then the player who swapped loyalty the least, wins! 

Ellie Phillips
Latest posts by Ellie Phillips (see all)
×