Preview: Call of Duty: The Board Game

Clem: We are approaching a point of interest Flawless, do you want to investigate?

Flawless: Sure Clem, as they say “Curiosity never killed the cosmic cat”

Clem: No… Flawless… It did kill the cat.

Flawless: Oh. Well, Let’s just pretend it's both alive and dead until we observe it. Let’s give it a scan, what are we looking at?

Clem: It looks like it’s a sneak peak at an upcoming game. It looks like it’s going to be big.

Howdy there folks! Three of the Cosmic Cowboys got to sit down and demo the upcoming Call of Duty: The Board Game, published by Arcane Wonders! Call of Duty is a fast paced, hidden movement programming game for 2-4 players. 

As usual with demo games, the components and rules are not final and subject to change. The team played a timed demo using the basic rules (the advanced rules add additional actions, weapon abilities, and killstreaks among other things).

Overview:

Call of Duty: the board game is a hidden action/programming game where players plan out 4 actions that map a route through the battlefield (Shoot House from 2019’s Modern Warfare). Actions are planned using a mini map kept hidden from other players behind your player screen.  If you see each other, you can attack. After each player resolves one of their actions, movement is stopped and players check line of sight to any of their opponents. Line of sight works similar to a game like Unmatched, where the color of the line between spaces determines what players can see.  If you can draw a line of the same color uninterrupted to another player, you can see, and shoot, that player. Once all 4 actions (including the shooting) have been performed, the round ends and the next one begins.

As seen in the picture,  the blue players have LOS (line of sight) to each other and the red players have LOS to each other as well.  They do not have LOS to the opposite team.

As you run through the level, you choose which path your character is facing.  This gives you an advantage when shooting, but does not prevent you from shooting.  In other programming games I have played (lords of Xidit, Robo Rally) sometimes one missed move can cost you the whole turn, I found this game to be far more forgiving.

This is showing my first action was to move into the space north of me and face the room.  My next three actions were to stand still and face the doorway that the red player had entered.  My actions that you cannot see (actions two and three) were both the same as my fourth action, and they are stacked under the fourth action.  This is a mini map you have hidden behind a screen.  The red and blue tokens make the position and facing of the other players. 

OK!  Lets hit combat.  When line of sight has been made, you play a card face down that gives you bonuses to the total combat value and possibly cover, speed of shot, or adds aim. 

Each card gives a different bonus and you can use each one once.  After you have used them all they get re-shuffled and you have all your options again.  As noted, they generally give you a bonus stat and add to your total firepower depending on where you end up on the combat track, more on that shortly.  

Then, the tactical part.  You create a dice pool from your gun’s stats.  The gun I was using let me take seven total dice.  I have to choose those from the gun's other three dice pool stats.  Those being (dodge/cover/speed of shot, aim, and or fire power.)  The gun I was using let me take a max of 5 of each and you can mix and match. 

Let's break down how this works.  The top track starts on the zero (I think of this as the “to hit” bar).  You will then move two to the right on the track if you are facing the opposing operator, another if you have an advantage (a bonus from the map or card represented by the plus sign), and if you were the quicker shot (that is determined by who has more lighting bolts added from defense dice or cards).  You will move the cube to the left if you are on a disadvantaged spot (from the map such as being on a ladder) or if you are wounded.  The token with the 2 on it represents I was on a terrain feature that gave me a bonus.  

So let's just use the above example to keep the combat explanation going.  I ended on seven after being the faster shot and looking at the enemy operator.  We take that seven and move down to the gun.  You start your cube on one of the cross airs in the white blocks.  The two tracks represent different ranges.  You use the bottom track if you are on the same space or one space away.  If you are farther than one space, you use the top track.  I was one space away so I used the bottom track.

Next we add the seven from the “to hit” bar to the bottom track moving the token to the right.  The enemy operator had 3 shields, so I moved that many down to the left leaving me at the third space in the yellow damage bracket.   The card I played shows a five in the yellow track so I end up with five to add to whatever the dice roll out for me.  That seems like a lot, but once you get the hang of it it moves smoother than you think.  

For example, I had a somewhat open shot on Wildcard, so I want 5 fire power and 2 aim.  Another example is when the fourth player at the table (a cool dude who wanted a demo too) took a shot at me but flanked me.  So I put all 5 dodge dice in with 2 aim, very flexible. 

After all dice are rolled and cards/abilities have been accounted for, you then compare the end results.  Whoever has the higher result wins the fight and the other player is removed from the board.  Now, that sounds bad.  Losing your hero usually means there will be a lot of down time where you are not playing the game.  As with everything call of duty, this is a face paced game that wants you to get back into the action. At the top of the next round, (rounds go very fast) you respawn back in letting you get back to the action very quickly.  

Takes from the Cosmic Cowboys:


Digital:

What intrigued me most was the deceptively complex attack system, allowing you to alter your approach to combat depending on your range, cover, and weapon match up. Although worthy of a full breakdown regarding success criteria, dice face values, card and weapon modifiers, ect, for now I’ll just say the amount of in the moment choice you have when deciding how you roll your attack is much more than I expected, and a pleasant surprise. This gives the game a much more tactical feel than “run around the corner, roll dice, win/lose, repeat”.

Flawless:

OK, so right off the bat I want to say I loved this game.  They have managed to hit the fast paced Call of Duty game play with a turn based board game very well.  Getting downed only takes you out of the game for a very short time, letting you get back in the action right away, love to see it.  The announced co-op game coming out is most welcome, adding something for the less competitive people in your group to enjoy here too. 

I wish I could have gotten to play it again and seen some of the deeper options the game has to offer.  I wonder how much more complexity they add to the game that may or may not affect how smooth the rounds play.  Each character will add special skills to the game that let you customize your combat deck/hand in different ways.  I am interested to see how that pans out and what kinds of strategies become dominant.  Will shotgun rushing be too strong? Will camping with a sniper rifle be a thing? Or will SMGs rule like they do in the video game now?

I look forward to reviewing the whole package when it releases! I feel Arcane has hit a home run with this one!

WIldcard:

I’m not particularly a fan of “dudes on a map,” hidden movement, or programming games. So it’s a surprise then that I enjoyed Call of Duty, which contains all these elements, as much as I did. This is mostly down to the speed at which the game plays. The planning and movement phases are simultaneous, with gameplay only slowing things down to resolve shooting once two players have moved into firing positions. Even after someone has been killed (easy here since a single successful shot will kill an opponent) that player is quickly returned to the board the next round.

If I have one criticism of the game, its that the shooting mechanism itself is overly complex. When firing, players select both a card and a pool of dice, and then have to modify and compare multiple tracks based on the results. These modifications come from many different places, including multiple symbols on the dice themselves, tactic cards, character positioning/orientation on the board, and the specific weapon being used. Despite this fiddliness, ultimately I felt most results came down to who rolled the better dice. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of clever and evocative design here, but the decisions you make during the shooting phase don’t matter much if you roll badly. It’s a good sign that, despite some absurdly bad dice rolls during my game, I still had a ton of fun with Call of Duty. Thematically, the game just clicks.

For those looking to relive the good ol’ days playing Modern Warfare (minus the hackers of course), this is an easy recommendation.

You can find the Kickstarter page here: Call of Duty: The Board Game

You can also try the game here: Tabletopia: Call of Duty

Game was demoed at GenCon.