WarBonds: Battle For Vitoria is a grand strategy war game where players deploy, maintain, and mobilize a medieval fantasy army in an effort to reign supreme amidst the war torn lands of Vitoria. Players start with a unique warlord that’ll serve as the leader of their army, and the first unit deployed onto the Battle Map. Each warlord is vying for control and ideological dominance. All units, warlords included, have an ideological alignment that will be tried by the brutalities of war. Players will make nuanced decisions that will affect the leadership of their warlord, and the loyalty of their units. One such decision is whether to assault or protect a settlement. Assaulting a settlement is looked upon favorably by your chaos alignment units, but unfavorable to your law alignment units. Such a decision will cause these units to gain or lose loyalty. Units without loyalty are susceptible to leaving your army; or worse, be persuaded by the leadership of an opponent's warlord to join their army. There is no randomness; players must out-think their opponents to achieve one of many possible victory conditions.
WarBonds: Battle For Vitoria is wholly owned and developed by Punk This Studios.
Achieving Victory
A player is declared the winner if any of the following victory conditions are achieved.
Be the last player with a surviving warlord and war camp. If your warlord is killed, or your war camp is destroyed, you are defeated and eliminated from the game (the conquering player gains 3 war tokens). You can optionally concede and eliminate yourself from the game during the Concede event. In 3+ player matches, when a player concedes, all remaining players gain 1 war token. For every 3 war tokens gained, your war camp will gain a level token, which improves its power and capabilities.
Be the first player to protect a settlement until it grows to level 6. A level 5 settlement that has gained its third growth token becomes level 6. A level 5 settlement can only gain growth tokens while being protected.
When the dragon reaches the end of the End of Game event, have the majority votes to wield the sword capable of defeating it; winning the game. Your army size determines the number of votes you have. First tiebreaker is held leadership; the second tiebreaker is based on player order, starting with player 1.
Round-based Gamplay
When a game is fully set up and ready to start, the gameplay runs through a cycle of game rounds until one player wins the game, claiming victory over their opponents. A game round consists of a series of ordered turn handling for the deployed and enabled units, settlements, and war camps; followed by the handling of various ordered events at the end of each round. The next game round starts after all aforementioned game objects have completed their respective turns, and each ordered event has been handled. To assist with tracking and management of a game round an Initiative Table is used to indicate which in-game object’s turn must be handled next. The Initiative Table also indicates the ordering for processing the end of round events. This cycle of starting and ending game rounds repeats until a player achieves a victory condition, or the dragon triggers the End of Game event.
Initiative-based Turn Handling
Players will act multiple times during a round, via the enabled in-game units, settlements, and war camps that they directly own or control. Each game round is subdivided into initiative-based turns taken by the in-game units, settlements, and war camps; rather than larger player-based turn handling. This allows players the opportunity to more readily react to the actions of their opponents; giving the opportunity to adapt their strategies midway through a round. During a game round, turn initiative is laid out on a physical game board called the Initiative Table. The Initiative Table is structured to have units acting first at the start of a game round. Settlements take their respective turns next; then war camps. Finally, various events and rules that occur at the end of every game round are handled in the order indicated by the Initiative Table. The Units section of the Initiative Table is further subdivided by initiative score number ordered columns and lettered ordered rows that allow for multiple deployed units to share the same Initiative Score value.
Game Setup - 5 Player Example
A Simple Start
In WarBonds: Battle For Vitoria you and your opposing player(s), must select a single warlord from a pool of warlords for which you will start your campaign with. The order of warlord selection has a suggested order of oldest player first. When selecting your warlord’s card, also grab their paired Unit ID pieces from the recruitment bin. After all players have finished selecting their respective warlord, these players will then select their starting war camp location on the Battle Map in the same order of warlord selection. Upon placing the war camp, encampment form facing up, on the Battle Map and Initiative Table, the player also places their warlord’s battle map ID piece on top of their war camp. The other warlord ID piece, which has the initiative icon, gets placed in the appropriately numbered column on the Initiative Table.
Once war camp and warlord placement is complete; the final step is to distribute starting gold, player warbanner / protection markers, and the universal rules and abilities reference cards. Each player starts with 100 gold. The game can now begin, starting with the player whose warlord has the lowest initiative score indicated on the Initiative Table.
Warfund: Gold Management
Each player starts their war campaign with the same initial amount of gold. The proper management of gold, referred to as a warfund, is critical to achieving victory. Gold is used for any of the following activities:
Deploying a new unit onto the Battlefield map.
Paying for end-of-round unit upkeep costs.
Restocking missing squad members.
Resupplying a unit’s depleted limited-use Supply.
Purchasing Loyalty for units.
The player can also be forced to payout gold to other players through the following activities:
Being forced to pay tribute to warlord Anna’Xandra.
Gold was stolen by an enemy unit with thieving capabilities.
As a warlord, you’ll quickly realize that more gold must be acquired in order to lead a successful campaign. Gold is primarily earned in one of four key means:
Settlements can be offered protection, in exchange for gold at the end of the settlement(s) turn.
Instead, you can assault and pillage a settlement for an immediate and substantial amount of gold and some war tokens.
If a player levels up their war camp, they’ll start to earn gold each round at the end of their war camp’s turn.
A harder option is to defeat another opponent and take your claim in the spoils-of-war.
Another method is to recall already deployed units on the battlefield for a refund of half of their listed deployment cost.
Some units have a natural albeit nuanced means of producing additional gold as well.
Unit Alignment & Loyalty
All units have a listed alignment, which is the combination of a good vs evil scale, and a separate chaos vs law scale. Each scale has a balanced neutral middle-point as well.
A Warlord’s alignment affects whether a particular unit can be deployed and upgraded within it’s army.
Units that are neutral on both scales (good vs evil, and chaos vs law) have an alignment referred to as True Neutral.
A unit’s alignment effects whether it will gain or lose loyalty when certain global or local conditions occur throughout gameplay.
Alignment also has an impact on combat, where certain units can gain bonuses or penalties when interacting with enemy units of another alignment.
Chaos and law units are more heavily influenced by loyalty changes than good or evil units.
Chaos units prefer aggressive or rebellious behavior.
Law units prefer cooperative or protective behavior.
Neutral aligned units are intended to be the most diverse and adaptable units within your army.
Neutral units have few restrictions in terms of deployment and upgrade options.
The added flexibility of neutral alignment, especially on the chaos vs law scale, leads into a trade-off of slightly slower loyalty generation.
Unit Deployment
At certain points during a game round, you can spend gold to deploy a unit onto the battle map. Whenever a unit is deployed, the owning player grabs the unit’s reference card and associated pair unit ID pieces. These three game pieces are needed in order for a player to uniquely identify and manage their unit’s current status, battle map location, and initiative order.
Newly deployed units start disabled for the current game round, and are not yet ready to act until the next game round. At the end of the current game round, all disabled units become enabled and ready to act for the new round. Disabled units cannot lose loyalty, and skip their end-of-round upkeep payment.
Deploying a unit requires the following conditions to be satisfied:
Pay gold equal to the desired unit’s listed deployment cost.
When units leave the battle map either through being killed, recall, retreat, or upgrade their reference card and ID pieces are returned to the deployment bins.
If your warlord is good, you cannot deploy an evil unit.
If your warlord is evil, you cannot deploy a good unit.
There are other rules and nuances to learn within this game. However, at its core, WarBonds: Battle For Vitoria is all about combat. You won't stand a chance against your opponents if you fail to strategize, and tactically execute on your plans. Like with the game of Chess, there is no hidden information; when you fail, it will be due to your own mistakes. But don't worry, with every failure comes a well-learned lesson; which will sharpen your wits, and hone your skills for the next oncoming battle. So gather some friends together and...
icon, gets placed in the appropriately numbered column on the Initiative Table.
, player warbanner / protection markers, and the universal rules and abilities reference cards. Each player starts with 100 gold. The game can now begin, starting with the player whose warlord has the lowest initiative score indicated on the Initiative Table.
