Watch out! He’s gonna toss the game board and cut your head off!

War On Terror board game seized by police

A War On Terror board game designed in Cambridge has been seized by police who claim the balaclava in the set could be used in a criminal act.
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War on Terror, similar to games like Risk, revolves around creating empires that compete and wage war. But there is a twist – players can poke fun at the rhetoric of world leaders like George Bush and Tony Blair.

The game was born from the frustration of its creators as they sat watching the news in the run up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Each player starts as an empire filled with good intentions and a determination to liberate the world from terrorists and from each other. Then the reality of world politics kicks and terrorist states emerge.

Andrew said: “The terrorists can win and quite often do and it’s global anarchy. It sums up the randomness of geo-politics pretty well.”

In their cardboard version of realpolitik George Bush’s “Axis of Evil” is reduced to a spinner in the middle of the board, which determines which player is designated a terrorist state. That person then has to wear a balaclava (included in the box set) with the word “Evil” stitched on to it.

Kent police said they had confiscated the game because the balaclava “could be used to conceal someone’s identity or could be used in the course of a criminal act”.