Wonderland’s War is a twisted tabletop take on the classic setting from the makers of The Grimm Forest

Pick a side and gather fantastical allies in Wonderland’s War, the next board game from the creators of The Grimm Forest.

A board game for two to five players, Wonderland’s War has players going into battle as leaders of one of the game’s five factions: Alice, The Mad Hatter, The Jabberwocky, The Queen of Hearts and The Cheshire Cat. Each of these leaders wishes to right the wrongs of Wonderland, but must defeat their opponents before they can begin.

The board game is played in two phases - the tea party phase and the war phase - with players taking turns to gain supporters, recruit allies and craft magical weapons before going into battle.

The tea party phase gives players the opportunity to prepare for war by moving around the board and gaining valuable resources to put into their individual token bags. However, players will have to be careful to not collect shards of the Looking Glass, as these become minus victory points at the end of the game.

As an asymmetric board game, each of the leaders in Wonderland’s War has a unique ability that players can use to gain an advantage during the tea party phase, such as the The Queen of Heart’s power to place supporters from a single card into multiple regions or Alice’s ability to move counterclockwise around the board.

Once the tea party phase has ended the war phase then begins, with each player competing in the regions they occupy with supporters, allies or their leader. The war phase involves a push-your-luck mechanic where players take turns to draw tokens from their individual bags, with the aim of pulling out more resource tokens than madness chips.

The more resource tokens a player draws the further they move up the strength track and the closer they get to victory. Should a player draw more madness tokens than they have available units on the board, they go bust and are placed on the zero mark of the strength track, ensuring that they receive no victory points that round.

Once they have drawn their first token a player can decide to stop drawing at any time, with the war phase ending when all players have either gone bust or have decided to stop. Players can also decide to complete quests, forge weapons or build castles to gather victory points during the war phase - as long as they have enough resources to do so.

The winner of Wonderland’s War is whoever holds the most victory points at the end.

Wonderland’s War is designed by Ben Eisner, who co-created beginner board game The Grimm Masquerade and the upcoming Tidal Blades: Heroes of the Reef.

Publishers Druid City - the company behind tile-placement game Sorcerer City - and Skybound Games, the creator of party board game Superfight, previously worked together on The Grimm Forest and its sequel The Grimm Masquerade. Skybound Games is the tabletop division of The Walking Dead comic book publisher Skybound.

The Kickstarter campaign for Wonderland’s War is currently live until March 4th, with a pledge of $50 (£39) getting a core copy of the game, estimated to arrive sometime in March 2021.