Wrath of the Lich King: Save the world, no subscription required (First Impressions)

By Chris Renshaw

Probably the worst timed board game next to Pandemic: Rising Tide*, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King came towards the end of last year. The game, using the "Pandemic System", simulates the "thralls" of undead minions ransacking the continent of Northrend in the popular game World of Warcraft. From the beginning, I immediately knew that this would be worth trying out. The Pandemic model seems like a perfect set of mechanics to mimic the spread of the undead. In fact, it kind of brings the whole situation full circle, as an event leading up to the Wrath of the Lich King expansion has had scientists studying it for over a decade.

*Clarification: Pandemic: Rising Tide was announced right after Hurricane Harvey seriously flooded large portions of Texas. Z-Man Games pulled the announcement and had to re-announce it at a later time. Weird how both of these were related to Pandemic. Huh.

The Starting Zone

As a lifelong WoW addict fan, I really wanted to try this game, and luckily Z-Man was able to provide me with a review copy of the game (although sadly I found out there's a Brann Bronzebeard promo I missed out on). However, unlike some of the other games on my unplayed shelf, my wife is responsible for it taking a bit to get this game played. She's just as big of a fan as I am, so I showed her the game when I got it in. Her first response was, "So you're gonna paint those minis right?".

I wasn't *planning* on it, but I guess I was now. Took me awhile, but finally got everyone painted! Take a look:

Ok, problem number 2: I haven't played a real game in person with friends since Pax Unplugged due to high COVID numbers. It took me until the other day to realize that oh, Pandemic is a Co-op game. Meaning I could just test it out myself. Time to break it out!

Looking for Group

First things first - the game uses these clip on sliders to keep track of your hero's health. I've seen a lot of sliders in board games, and these are probably the worst. They aren't "sliders" as any time you touch them the sliders just fall off and you just reattach them where they need to go next. Personally, I'd rather a plastic token to just set on the health instead of these things. Secondly, I decided to do just 2 heroes, so of course I'm going to go with the most iconic couple in Warcraft: Thrall and Jaina Proudmoore. I'm sure there's a couple of fan fics written about these two. After choosing did I look at their abilities, which seem pretty awesome: Thrall has a chain lightning attack that hits attached spaces and Jaina can teleport up to 3 spaces away. 

Learning your rotations

So how does the game play? When you look at the board setup, and realize this is a Pandemic system game, you might already have an idea of the gameplay. Instead of disease cubes, there are small ghouls that are scattered across the board. A hero takes 4 actions, then draw cards. Then, locations are drawn to see where the ghouls spread to next. Lastly, in an aspect unique to the game, the larger Abomination minis activate, moving closer to the nearest hero and attacking them.

There is no curing of this disease though. Except for with the blade of an axe. The heroes have to fight the ghouls/abominations to hold back the plague, while traveling to three pre-determined locations to "quest". Both the fighting and the questing take advantage of two six sided dice to see how much damage/progression you make with those actions. Once you finish all three quests, you can advance to Icecrown Citadel, the Lich King's castle. There you can do a final quest to defeat the lich king. 

But is it fun? 

I enjoyed playing this game! Definitely gave off vibes of the MMO, and every time I used Thrall's chain lightning I imagined one of the cutscenes from the original game's release. I'm interested in seeing how the game plays at higher player counts. At first, though, I thought the game was *too* easy, as I found myself managing things really quickly. Halfway through the game, I realized it's because I've been playing FFG's Arkham games too much: instead of "players go, enemies go" like most of the Arkham games, Pandemic has always been "Player 1 goes. Disease goes. Player 2 goes. Disease goes." I had been drawing the correct amount of cards, so the plague spreading was on time, but I was only spawning half the number of ghouls that I should have been. Whoopsie. 

Once I was playing the game correctly, the tension ratcheted up. There are only 3 abominations in the game, and if you have to spawn any component and there are none to spawn, the Demise tracker clicks closer to game over. So once an abomination spawns, you really need to take it out ASAP because a "Plague spreads" card automatically spawns one. So if you have 2 out already, you're on pretty shaky ground.

I remember this platform being larger

I've been actively avoiding Pandemic games since I binged through 7 games of Pandemic Legacy Season 1. That burned me out on Pandemic hard. Yet, I was eager to get this to the table, and I'm eager to get it played again. I'm curious to A) actually play the game right from the beginning. B) Play with some other characters and their powers. And C) See what it's like at the 4 player count. Only "downside" I see to the game is that the final confrontation doesn't have the same impact that it did in the video game, but I'm not sure how anything can. Most wow players will remember that moment forever, so that’s a weird moment to try and recreate in a board game. Have you played the game? Do you remember that moment you killed the lich king? Sound off in the comments and let me know.

Note: I generally assume I know nothing. So if I've missed something, let me know in the comments. Or let me know on Twitter or Facebook. If you like these types of posts, consider subscribing to our patreon.