Shadow Wars: The Information Arms Race

Shadow Wars: The Information Arms Race is an adversarial game of backstabbing, assassination, and asset manipulation set in 1980s, the height the Cold War. The overall goal is simple, be the first to gather three pieces of intelligence and dominate the Shadow War. To accomplish this task, players secretly target other players/nations and roll dice, which represent agents in an attempt to gather intelligence.

Players start the game with 1 Asset Die, 1 Ghost Die, and 1 Attack Die. All of these dice are identical except that they have one face that shows 2 x their specific type (i.e. Ghost die has a face with 2 x Ghost icons). They also start with one piece of Intel. The Intel goes on their Home nation card along with all dice.

Each turn players put some or all of their dice on a hidden target card of their choice. They then roll some or all of their Target card dice along with 0-5 World dice, which differ from the other dice by not having a double icon face and and extra blown cover icon...Expendable agents are very risky, but allow players with few dice to continue to play and be competitive. The goal is to get three icons of the same type, Assets, Ghosts, or Attacks, without getting three blown cover which forces players to reveal their target.

When players get three of a kind, they reveal their Target nation card, who then gets to defend. If the defense is unsuccessful, players steal an Intel token from the victim along with inflicting one other insult: 3 Ghost icons = No defense allowed; 3 Asset icons = Steal 1 die; 3 Attack icons = Kill one dice.

The winner is the first player with three Intel tokens. How will you deal with the myriad of threats arrayed against you and win the information war…the choice is yours!