Exclusive First Look at Stormlight: War for Roshar, the Massive Brandon Sanderson Board Game

Brotherwise Games has a strong track record as the exclusive publisher of tabletop games based on Brandon Sanderson’s epic, interconnected, galaxy-spanning Cosmere. From the Mistborn: Deck Building Game to the more recent Shards of Creation, and the still expanding Cosmere TTRPG system, fans of Sanderson aren’t lacking in board games.

Now, it’s time for Stormlight Archive fans to feast as Brotherwise is getting set to launch the campaign for the latest of their Sanderson offerings, the War for Roshar. Being the biggest and most elaborate Cosmere board game yet, IGN had a chance to check it out and play against members of the team, and we are already chomping at the shardplate to play more.

For those that may not have read the Stormlight Archive, I will give a very brief basic crash course of the nearly 6,000 pages that currently compose this series (so far). Among the lineup of Cosmere novels, perhaps the largest pillar of that work is the Stormlight Archive. It’s set on the world of Roshar, where a powerful, never-ending storm circles the planet, and the humans of the world are in constant struggle against not only themselves but the other denizens of the planet. Magic comes in the form of sentient creatures known as spren. Knights Radiant, special individuals bonded to spren that gain wondrous abilities known as Surges, help hold the line against the forces of Odium and his forces. There are some magic swords, super armor, giant crabs with gemstones inside, and an awesome dude named “Numuhukumakiaki’aialunamor” that makes some damn good soup. But, for a better look, we have a whole reading guide for the Cosmere – Stormlight included.

Described by Chris O’Neal, CEO (and one of the brothers) of Brotherwise Games, War for Roshar is a war game that strikes a balance between the abstractness of a Euro game and the analytic calculation of your typical war game. The goal of Roshar is to earn enough points that you cross a moving victory point threshold, or have the most victory points at the end of eight rounds. Players will take control of either the Coalition or Odium, moving troops and characters around the map, claiming territories, forging alliances, and, of course, facing off in battles. All while working to complete objectives or secure the mythical Oathgates to shift the goalpost closer to victory in their favor.

Each player creates a team of two leaders (Kaladin, Dalinar, Jasnah, or Shallan for the Coalition, Taravangian, Nale, Leshwi ,or Raboniel in the core box), each with unique abilities and a sort of level-up paths (representing their swearing of Ideals and using surges), and also unique cards that get added to a deck you can get new cards from. Kaladin, for example, can gain the ability to fly around the board while Dalinar can recharge your forces’ stormlight reserve, and speaking of stormlight…your main resources you will be juggling are the cards in your hand and managing your Stormlight which is used to play and purchase the better cards.

Even though I only got a couple of hours to try out Roshar, I was still incredibly impressed with how strategic the game feels and plays. Outside of what objective gets drawn to fight over or the cards that you can add to your hand to play, everything playing out is a result of the player’s decision. Even combat largely boils down to a numbers game, with the bigger force winning, though there are some tricks that both sides can play by playing various battle cards from their hand. No dice in sight! The general flow of each turn and higher level main things I could do, I was able to grasp within the few rounds I got to play, but there were aspects that I found myself feeling more overwhelmed by.

War of Roshar relies on a lot of symbols that I can foresee taking some time to really grasp. Mustering, for example, which allows you to recruit units in the various regions is dictated by small tiles and the icons on them, in each region. These tiles, depending on the shapes, can also provide additional bonuses such as returning stormlight, granting stronger Radiant units, or a free wild “surge” that can be used once to help pay for a leader’s special powers at the end of the round. Add in the additional icons for the different actions, noting capital cities, and more, and it was a lot to try and process in the two and a half hours I had, but both Chris and Hayden Dillard, the head of design development at Brotherwise, did made it clear that components and designs were still being worked on and tweaked, so I’m not too worried come final release. Though, I do hope that the final release comes with player aid for all the players.

When it comes to the rest of the visuals, even in the Tabletop Simulator Prototype that seemed to feature a mix of what appeared to be final (or near final) art and placeholder WIP sketches, War for Roshar retains the same quality artwork that the previous Cosmere / Brotherwise titles. To handle the 100+ cards, the board, and even detailed plastic miniatures, the team at Brotherwise are relying on more than 30 artists to properly convey the gravitas of the Coalition’s struggle against Odium. All of which were blessed and deemed canonical by Brandon and his art team.

“A war game for Sanderson-fans” was one of the running philosophies that the team at Brotherwise Games and Roshar’s designer, John Clair, had when creating this experience. Even setting my love of the source material aside, War for Roshar seems poised to deliver on that front. I went in expecting War for Roshar to be a more typical “dudes on a map” war game experience and was instead greeted with a deeply strategic and tactical one where the war aspects are more about turning people to your side and holding ground than simply whittling down the opponent’s forces. The fact that neutral groups that you haven’t won over to your cause will attack your troops just the same as your opponent if they are in their lands presented some wrinkles to the formula. I also found it rather nasty that these neutral powers will attack the survivors of whoever wins in a situation where Coalition, Odium and neutral forces all find themselves in the same spot.

Perhaps the mechanic I found most intrigued by was with the Oathgates, which serves as the finish line you need to cross to win, and described as a “mercy mechanism” that will prevent games from running long when a person is losing badly. At the end of each round, both sides will tally up the values of the gates they control and the resulting difference will be applied to the side with more, moving that goal post. The twist is that by default, the gates don’t have values and only gain values when given by a player. Each side has tokens that will make a Oathgate worth, 0,1,2, or 3 points for holding, with no limit (besides only a single token being assigned per gate) as to where they can be placed. If you are confident that you won’t ever lose your starting gate, then maybe you will want to lock it down as a 3, or if you are like me, when it was my turn to place a token, I made Chris’ starting oathgate worth zero. The added fact that sides take turns each round assigning their tokens adds a surprising whole other layer of strategy, as you try and weigh whether or not you should strengthen your own position or hinder the opponent. It’s something that I haven’t found much in the games I’ve encountered so it’s a pretty neat twist that I am excited to play around more with.

Much like book six of the Stormlight Archive, it will still be some time yet before us Knights Radiant prospects will be able to get our hands on War for Roshar (though this isn’t anywhere near as far off as the book). Brotherwise Games plans to take this game to Kickstarter later this year, featuring a wealth of addons, expansions, and other goodies to pick from, and already I can’t wait to get my hands on it.