How to Bring Order to the World

Last time we went over the theme of 🌎 World Order - a game of power struggles between the world’s great powers. It’s a 2-4 player game of area majority, and while you might see some tanks in the pictures, there is no direct combat in the game. This time we are here to take a closer look at the gameplay: 🕵️

Players interact with the game through the use of action cards. 👉Each turn you will choose a card and play it either faceup to do its action, or facedown to gain money or activate a one-use faction-specific asset. After 4 such turns you go into the next phase where your leftover cards provide you with bonus resources and research 🔬 points that are used to buy new cards.

So  it doesn’t just matter what cards you play but also what you keep, and you can customize your playstyle a bit via deck-building! 🙃

The game lasts 6 rounds, with a scoring phase after the 3rd and 6th one. There are multiple sources of points but the most important is to have the most influence in the different regions around the map, which is not an easy task. 🧐 You need to get/have allied countries first and use different actions to influence their region, so you have to plan ahead.

Each round you also choose between a Domestic, Diplomatic or Military Focus, which affects your options. Furthermore you will produce basic and advanced resources, import and export them to gain money which you’ll be able to invest 📈 into different countries to gain influence or build military bases 🏰 to keep your neighbors in check when evaluating threat levels in each round. 

💬 There is quite a lot going on but learning and playing the game feels simpler than Hegemony as there is less asymmetry. It also means that it will be easier to get it to the table for many players. It clearly was designed with 4 players in mind, otherwise you have to use a small low-maintenance dummy deck that adds influence and military forces for the missing factions. It works quite well, though I think the game will be best at full player count! 🙂