This edition of Cracked LCD was supposed to be a full review of Ziggurat Games’ maiden release WORLD WAR IV, an epic-scale game of conflict and survival set against the rise of kingdoms struggling to survive and reclaim the world from barbarism in a post-apocalyptic future. However, I am afraid that I am not qualified to write a review of WORLD WAR IV in any way, shape, or form. I have not played a full game of it, and in fact the sole game that I have played was called after only two barely complete, excruciating turns. My general policy is to play most games at least three or four times before I set to writing about them in full, but in this situation I hereby forfeit my right as a critic and commentator to pass judgment on the game in any kind of authoritative way. Read everything here as you would a missive about global warming written by a drunken hobo.

Therefore, this article should not be read as a review of WORLD WAR IV. Nor should it be construed as a rigorous examination of the virtues and failings of the design, a dissection of what makes the fun and what makes it folly. This article is not a carefully considered and logically constructed argument in defense of the game, nor is it a calculated, evidence-based attack on it. It is an allergic reaction.

But I didn’t know I was going to need the Benadryl at first, let alone that we’d have to shut the game down before I had a total histamine meltdown. As soon as I received the review copy of WORLD WAR IV in the mail, I set up a game night with some good friends of mine who are the perfect bunch of folks with whom to play any game that boasts 400 plastic miniatures, a map of the world, and a pile of six-sided dice among its components. They were pretty psyched about it, and so was I- the rules read fairly well if a bit derivative of practically every RISK descendant ever made, from AXIS AND ALLIES on through the Eagle Games titles such as WAR! AGE OF IMPERIALISM. I was OK with that, if the game provided us with something fresh and gave us a good context to push army men around and roll never-ending cascades of dice into a box lid all night.

More than all that, I was really looking forward to playing a game that I had hoped would represent another opportunity to use the ol’ Cracked LCD bullhorn to raise awareness of a cool, small-press game from an “indie” publisher that doesn’t have the marketing budget of the larger companies. Lately, I’ve been making a concerted effort to cover these kinds of under-the-radar games and I find it very rewarding to help get the word out about a great game like THE WORLD CUP GAME, WAR FOR EDADH or ARCTIC SCAVENGERS. But I’m just not going to be able to do that for WORLD WAR IV.

I think I noticed the first lesions popping up as we set up the game. Although the basic, rather unadorned map has the starting locations of about 200 of the 400 pieces printed on the board, it still took us forever to sort out who went where and working around piece shortages with some included poker chips. 30 minutes or so later, we picked nation-kingdoms and we were on our way to the Armageddon implicitly suggested by the title- but it was an Armageddon that would end with the board unceremoniously swept into the box, not in the crowning of a king as suggested by the tagline “One world, one king”.

The first round took around an hour and a half for five players with everybody counting their territories, checking each territory to see if there were more units there than food, and sorting out which of the units they wanted to buy with whatever money they had. The battles, mostly fought against neutral barbarians that sort of provide a buffer between players, were painfully slow and unrewarding. Combat was pretty much like AXIS AND ALLIES but with more unit types and basic rules for routing and rallying that extend fights well past the expiration date of their drama. I think we had one fight that was nothing more than a fifteen minute back-and-forth between a handful of crappy militia men that just refused to die or run away. All for a low-value territory. Maybe it was the Falklands or Vietnam.