Warbringer!: Volume 5 (Way of the Tiger)

‘The Way of the Tiger’ series continues to explore what is possible within the scope of an adventure gamebook. The previous book, ‘Overlord’, saw the reader adopt the role of a monarch, making political alliances and social decisions for the city. ‘Warbringer’ develops this in another direction and the reader becomes the military general for the city defending it against an invading army. The reader decides what tactics to use and what allies to make.As you might expect from the title, ‘Warbringer’ has a different style of gameplay from the rest of the series. The emphasis is more influenced by war-gaming than adventuring. After freeing your city from occupation; the initial stages then involve consolidating your forces and preparing for the defence of your city. There are some fights to be faced during this period but essentially it involves recruiting allies, organising forces and listening to your advisors. I’m not entirely sure how much of all this is that relevant to the outcome of the adventure, but some are highly advantageous and some catastrophic.The bulk of the book is concentrated upon the major battle against your opponents. Honoric (who you will probably remember if you have read a couple of the other books in the series) has assembled a vast number of dread allies from across the land of Orb to join his Legion of the Sword of Doom and extract vengeance upon you. There are a multitude of maps showing troop deployment and battle terrain and a lot of strategic options to select from. It all seems tremendous interesting and exciting, perhaps overwhelming, from initial impressions. However, it is a lot more simple than it looks and there isn’t a great deal of war-game elements involved. The course of the battle is based more upon your decisions than on dice rolls or some form of combat system. Playing it cautious whilst judging when to strike seems to be the best policy. Even so there is a lot of fun involved in all this and the authors successfully create the illusion that you doing more than you actually are.Despite the focus on battle there are a lot of good characters. They do rely, however, upon the adventurer having read other books in the series as there isn’t a great deal of time for character development and they come fully established. In a way there are also other old enemies to encounter than just Honoric.‘Warbringer’ is a positive development in ‘The Way of the Tiger’ series. It is not as original as ‘Overlord’ but is certainly as gripping and entertaining. It is probably not a good starting point to be introduced to ‘The Way of the Tiger’ adventures as it relies heavily on the previous ones. It is also a little short and could benefit, perhaps, from being a bit more complicated (but probably the authors didn’t wish to risk making it too different when it was originally published).

War!

A fighting warrior, a master of political alliances and battle strategist...wow!