First Impressions of The Fog Of War

In the run up to the D-Day landings in 1944, the allies engaged in a massive campaign of deception with the aim of drawing German troops away from the intended landing site. Entire fake armies were created in the north and south of Britain, commando raids were launched against targets in Norway just to get the German’s to believe that would be where the allies intended to invade. This campaign of deception, the not knowing what your enemy has planned, is exactly what The Fog Of War aims to capture. And, oh boy, does it ever succeed!

On the surface, The Fog Of War is a war game (it’s set in WW2 so obviously…), but if anything this is a fair bit of resource management… and an absolute mountain of hidden information and bluffing. This is the all out logistical level of warfare, and more importantly the information war. Where are the enemy attacking? What kind of troops are they committing to the attack? How well defended is Odessa!?

The genius mechanism of the game is the operations wheel. Each player can commit troops to their wheel on their turn, and if this is a new operation you’ll choose where this vast pile of steel is being sent. Then you’ll wait. As the turns go by (each represented by an extra 3 cards for you to commit somewhere), the wheel spins and your operations get more and more favourable. You can also bolster planned operations during later turns. But while you are planning an assault, your opponent is planning their own, so perhaps you need to commit some of your troops to defend your territories, as these let you built new units and earn VPs and God knows you can’t afford to lose them! But maybe you can snatch a quick win with a small operation elsewhere? The North Atlantic is poorly defended right now…

On top of all these decisions you have your spies, represented by a pile of cardboard magnifying glasses because of course they are. These can be spent to look at a random half a pile of cards, either defences or attacks, but the evil genius is that the owner of said cards won’t know which cards you’ve seen! This appropriately magnifies an already tense game into something utterly spectacular. Because the stakes of this game are high. Horrifically high!

A successful blitzkrieg slaughter requires a 2 to 1 numerical advantage to the attacker (with your cards having variable values). If they fail to achieve this, the battle bogs down into a brutal quagmire. Both sides lose half their forces and the battle will be re-fought next round, allowing both sides to throw more and more troops into an endless meat grinder until finally someone blinks and the battle is won. But at what a cost!

The Fog Of War does focus a little too much on extra rules that ensure certain countries behave similarly to how they did in history (the Balklans ally with Germany in 1940 and the USSR sides with the allies whether they’ve been invaded or not come 1943) That’s fine for history buffs but I’d be more interested in having the freedom to make my own history.

But that’s a minor issue: The Fog Of War is great! A magnificently tense game that perfectly captures the fear, the not knowing and even the brutality of armed conflict in the second world war. This was my hit of Essen!

This first impression was based on a 3 round demo at Essen Spiel. To see what other games I played at Essen, check out this article.