WW2 in a small box

General Orders: World War II is an abstract little war game for 2 players. I am particularly enamoured by the aesthetics of the game. A small box format with a small board and colorful wooden pieces. Let’s see how it all works! 🕵️

The game is a bit like a cross between chess and worker placement. You have these hexagonal pieces (commanders) that you can place to do actions - either on the separate supply board to do things like bringing in new units or drawing cards; or on the game board to move units, bombard territories or paradrop in new soldiers. As commander slots are occupied, certain actions will be blocked: most notably, if you conquer a territory, your opponent won’t be able to march in or retaliate in that round.

The goal is to have more points after 4 rounds than your opponent by controlling more territories with stars on them, so defense is important. Some territories also have bonus tokens - if you control these, you have powerful ongoing bonuses.

There are also action cards that spice up the standard flow of the game. They all state when they can be played, and change some rule to catch your opponent by surprise. Alternatively you can discard a card to reroll dice. 🎲 Yes, there are also dice in the game unfortunately.

I feel like the fun and strategic nature of this tiny war is kind of upended by dice randomness. Battles are mostly deterministic, as both attacker and defender will simultaneously remove units until only one side survives - however before that the defender gets to roll a die and remove that many attackers. The bombard action is worse, as it involves rolling 2 dice and removing that many units from the target area.

Even though dice have four ‘1’ faces and only one ‘0’ face and one ‘2’ face, it is still too much randomness for our taste. A bombardment could be a 0 damage wasted action, or a 4 damage devastation. I wish the designers went with a bit more nuanced system.

💭 Otherwise I really like the framework and how small the game is (both box size and table space), so we might explore the game further. It also comes with an alternate board where aircraft and air zones come into play.