War on Terror, The Boardgame is a satirical, strategic board game, produced and published in 2006 by TerrorBull Games. War on Terror was originally conceived back in 2003 by Andy Tompkins and Andrew Sheerin, two friends based in Cambridge, England. The initial inspiration for the game came from the imminent Invasion of Iraq but, as a whole, was intended as a reaction and challenge to the counter-productive pursuit[1] of the wider War on Terror. In 2005, Sheerin and Tompkins founded TerrorBull Games and gathered enough financial support from a mixture of friends and acquaintances to put War on Terror into production .
Widespread notoriety has meant the game has had a colourful and, at times, troubled history. Its initial release was met with a barrage of criticism, particularly from the tabloid press. Other businesses refused to be associated with the game and it was also banned from a number of industry fairs around the world. The British police even confiscated it at one point (see Controversy further down). More recently, however, opinion has turned around and War on Terror is now praised by various highly-respected institutions and individuals, among them Amnesty International and John Pilger (see Cultural Impact - Education below).
The gameplay has been likened to a cross between Risk, Diplomacy, Monopoly and Settlers of Catan. Like a number of war board games, the basic goal is to dominate the entire world (or "liberate" in the parlance of the game itself). However, the scope of War on Terror stretches to cover all aspects of war-time politics, not just battlefield tactics. The creators of War on Terror have correspondingly claimed it is the most realistic war simulation around
Concept
War on Terror, The Boardgame can be described as a Risk-like war board game inspired by modern day imperialism and geopolitics. In terms of board game style, it is a mixture of both European and American approaches - utilising elements of chance and chaos as well as strategy and player interactions.
Starting with a tiny presence on the map, each player takes on the role of a budding empire, intent on "liberating" (dominating) countries and continents, controlling oil production and building cities to win the game. An empire controls a region when it has a development there: a village, a town or a city. To expand, an empire can build developments at the border of its current empire if the regions there are unoccupied. Much of the time this will involve some fighting. There are two primary ways to interfere with other empires: fighting wars against them or funding terrorist units in the hope of making them attack your opponent. The game play is essentially card-driven - including the aforementioned warring and terrorist attack. Players obtain two such cards every turn. Additional cards can also be bought using money, which is obtained from oil. Oil is randomly spread out across the map and varies from game to game. An important issue is that when terrorists are no longer dormant and leave the training camp, they act outside the control of the empire which initially funded them, and can turn on that empire if triggered by an opposing empire or the terrorist player. An in-game twist is that defeated players are not out of the game - they become the "terrorist" players, and can still influence the result and perhaps even win. It is also possible to join the terrorist side voluntarily. An important aspect of the game centres around diplomacy and off-board negotiations and dealings. A 'secret message pad' is provided to this end and sees heavy use in a typical game.
An iconic part of the game is the "Axis of Evil": a spinner in the centre of the board which determines which player is "evil" - that player must then wear the Evil balaclava and gets two terrorist cards per turn. Other empires also have a financial incentive to fight wars against the evil empire.
The 'Evil Balaclava' itself has developed a life outside of and independent of the game - something the designers encourage with the Gallery of Evil - and was responsible for the police classifying the game as an offensive weapon (see below
Minimum System Requirements
OS: Windows XP
CPU: Pentium or AMD 1.5 Ghz
* RAM: 256 MB
* HDD: 4 GB free disk space
* Sound Card: DirectX 9 Compatible
* DirectX: Version 9
Supported Graphics Cards:
GeForce 4 or Equivalent with 64 MB RAM (Except Geforce 4 MX
Recommended System Requirements
OS: Windows 7
CPU: Pentium or AMD 2.0 Ghz
* RAM: 512 MB
* HDD: 5 GB free disk space
* Sound Card: DirectX 9 Compatible
* DirectX: Version 9
Supported Graphics Cards:
GeForce 3 or Equivalent with 128 MB RAM (Except Geforce 4 MX
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