tabletopgaming.co.uk 55T
alk about bad luck. “ e chances
of anything coming from Mars are
a million to one,” famously went
the chorus in Je Wayne’s musical
version of e War of the Worlds.
So what does that make the chances of the
defeated Martians not only returning just
a few years later, but deciding to shift their
invasion of Earth only a few hundred miles
north from Horsell Common near Woking to
an isolated spot in Scotland?
Upcoming board game War of the Worlds:
e New Wave doesn’t dwell for too long on
the mathematic improbability of its opening,
which takes place several years after the
dramatic conclusion of H.G. Wells’ science-
ction classic, itself set at the end of the 19th
century. We’d put a spoiler warning here but,
honestly, if you don’t already know the ending
of e World of the Worlds, where have you
been for the last 120 or so years?
“ e original story ended with aliens’ death
by Earth viruses, so we decided not to base the
game on that exact story,” says e New Wave
designer and creative director Denis Plastinin.
“In our interpretation, aliens considered
Earth’s atmospheric dangers and arrived the
second time, fully prepared this time. is
allowed us to keep the question ‘Who will win
in the War of the Worlds?’ open.”
Armed with the knowledge of their past
mistakes – as well as the heat-rays and
ghting-machines that wreaked such havoc
during their rst attempt – the Martians arrive
in a “backwater district” of Scotland, emerging
from a gigantic spaceship with the destruction
of humanity on their agenda. First of all,
they’ll need to go through the rest of Great
Britain. Round two is on.
“We love e War of the Worlds by H.G.
Wells, so, as the book’s fans, we nally
came up with the idea to create a board
game in this setting,” says producer Roman
Shamolin. “We were aiming for a dynamic,
easy-to-learn game, which would also
have vast strategic depth. And, of course,
we wanted to keep the spirit of this
amazing classic masterpiece.”
MARS ATTACKS
Like the Martians’ second run at turning
humanity into space dust, e New
Wave has been in the works for a
number of years, taking the necessary steps to
survive its rst contact with players.
“ e game was being developed for quite a
long time,” reveals Plastinin. “Initially, in 2016,
it was a Euro strategy with several resource
types and a quite clumsy combat system.”
After multiple attempts to get its War of the
Worlds Eurogame prototype o the ground
unsuccessfully, studio Jet Games made the
decision to move away from the concept.
“In our opinion, it didn’t work quite well,”
Plastinin continues. “And we really didn’t want
to just exploit a popular setting.”
Two years of experimentation followed,
the team avidly testing a variety of gameplay
types and di erent approaches in an attempt
to capture the essence of the human-alien
con ict. Eventually, they struck upon the fusion
of an asymmetrical deckbuilding card game
with a board-based skirmish between units.
“We’re actually really happy that we
managed to bring this project to life; we’re
also very proud of creating an easy-to-learn
and easily-understandable game engine,” says
Shamolin. “You can explain the rules of play
to any person in ve to 10 minutes, and at
the same time the game has a great strategic
experience and depth. Apart from that, we
believe we managed to keep the atmosphere
of this amazing masterpiece properly.”
One signi cant step was the decision to
limit the game to just two players: no more,One player controls the
invading aliens – the other
humanity’s last hope