War Chest
Today we’re checking out War Chest, a medieval themed abstract strategy game from AEG. In War Chest, players manage their armies and battle for control of locations on the board. The first player to place all of their control tokens wins. How this goal is accomplished is relatively unique in its implementation – lets check it out.
I don’t normally comment much on the box a game comes in, unless it’s particularly bad. In this case, the opposite is true. Before I even opened the box, the sturdiness of the cardboard and the clean medieval art style stood out. The top panel of the box is secured with a magnet, and unfolds. This gives it a somewhat chest-like feel, and contributes to the theme right off the bat. The insert works extremely well, holding all of the coins in place with a plastic topper, although I would have preferred if it was a little easier to get on and off. If I had to nitpick, I would say they could have gone a step further and made the box actually open like a chest – have the top half pivot on a hinge, but it works well as is.

In fact, pretty much all of the components are really high quality. The game board is printed on sturdy material, and the unit and royal coins have a surprising amount of heft to them. I will say that the cardboard control markers, while good quality, feel subpar after handling the more premium feeling coins. I would have preferred the control markers be coins of a different color. This would make them feel better and be more visible with units on top of them. As it is, it can be easy to forget that you even have a control marker under a unit coin.

To set up, each player should put their first two control tokens on the two location spaces touching the edge of the board on their side. Then determine which units will be used in the game. There’s a suggested starting army, which we used for our first few games, but you can also create your own armies, use some of the suggestions from the rule book, randomly draw from the available cards, or even draft from the available units. Drafting is my personal preference, as it gives you more of an opportunity to build your own strategy, and addresses what could otherwise be severe balance issues. There are sixteen different unit types, and you only use eight in a given game, so there are… quite a few different possible combinations. Don’t judge me, I don’t want to math that.
Once your armies are determined, put your royal coin and two of each unit coin into your bag, give it a good shake, rattle, and roll, then flip the initiative coin to decide who goes first. The game is ready to play.

The game’s rounds are divided into two phases – Draw Coins and Use Coins. In Draw Coins, players… draw coins. Three of them to be exact. Phase done. In Use Coins, players take turns doing one of the many available actions, starting with the player with the initiative coin.
I won’t go through all of the actions, because this isn’t a rule book, but it’s important to note that every action you take will remove one coin from your hand. Place a unit on the board, that’s one coin out of your hand. Want to move that unit or attack with it? You’re gonna have to discard a matching coin. If you want to recruit more unit coins, you have to discard coins to do it. Yes, even if you want to place a control token, which you should be doing, since that’s kind of the entire point of the game – you have to discard a coin. Once each player has done three actions, return back to the Draw Coins phase, rinse, repeat.
You’ll eventually run out of coins in your bag. When this happens, you put your whole discard pile back into the bag, new recruits and all, shake it up, then continue to draw like normal. If you’ve played any deck building or pool building games, this mechanic will feel pretty familiar. If you haven’t, it’s a really neat mechanic that usually adds a nice feel of progression, and it does here too. Be warned though – units that are attacked are removed from the game, not returned to your discard pile. So be sure you’re in a safe position, or able to sustain a loss.

If you’re considering buying War Chest, it is important to remember that it is an abstract strategy game first, and a pool building game second. Don’t expect crazy action packed exchanges and a climactic ending. Instead, expect an almost chess-like intense battle of wits. The game starts slow, and in most cases ends even slower. That’s probably the thing I like least about War Chest. That’s not a judgement of the game, rather a statement of my personal tastes. It isn’t uncommon for the game to unofficially end long before a player places all of their control tokens, just based on the fact that one player can’t do anything for lack of coins. Personally I’d add a clause to the rule book that accounts for one player not having any viable options. While pool building games typically have a sense of ramping up for the whole game, War Chest is more of an even, slow burn.

That said, I do enjoy the game quite a bit. I particularly like the variability in army composition. The numerous combinations allow for a lot of different strategies, and increase replayability significantly, even with the same opponent. I love the fact that it is an incredibly easy teach, while still being remarkably difficult strategically, and I’m not going to lie, I just like how the components feel. War Chest feels premium, even with the small caveat of the cardboard tokens. It’s a game I’ll bring over to my parent’s house to play against my dad. In fact, I think it’s a great bridge into modern mechanics for anyone who is used to timeless classics like chess and checkers.I don’t know if War Chest will eventually find its name on that list, but it certainly has the potential for it.
Overall, War Chest is a great game. Will it be my go-to two player game? Probably not. Will it stay on my shelf? Absolutely. I’ll likely pull it out any time someone wants to play an abstract strategy game, because within that genre, it’s one of my favorites to date.
Review copy provided by AEG
Publisher: AEG
Number of Players: 2
Age: 14+
Price at time of Review: $45
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