Tips & Strategy

How to teach World Order, what to expect from a first game, advice for each power and the player counts — from tutorials, reviews and the designers.

About this page

Everything here is advice, not rules. It comes from video tutorials, playthroughs, reviews and the designers’ own posts (listed under Sources), paraphrased. Where a video teaches a rule differently from the v1.0 rulebook, the rulebook wins — the differences are listed under Videos vs the rulebook.

How to teach it

Use the Teach the Game script. Framings from the videos that help:

• Focus is your posture for the round — home, diplomacy or military — and the bonuses that come with it. It never limits which cards you may play.
• Temporary Influence is a conveyor belt: high points now, but it moves along and falls off. Permanent Influence is safe but cheap.
• Armies are a cold-war arms build-up: they cost rivals points in their zones of interest and break ties in Region majorities.
• Same rules for everyone: the powers differ only in decks, resources, Trade Deals, allies and geography.

Your first game

• Use the fixed starting hand — the 6 cards marked with an arrow — so everyone opens sensibly. The setup checklist switches to it with First game.
• Expect a long first game. The box says 2–3 hours; reviewers report 4–5 hours for a first 4-player game including the teach. Experienced 2-player games can take about 90 minutes.
• Keep the player aid in front of you. Even experienced reviewers say they skip steps between phases without it.
• Plan your Research. Cards you buy are on top of your deck: you know you’ll draw them next round, so buy for next round’s plan.
• Don’t starve your economy. A common beginner pattern is spending everything on Influence early and being unable to afford actions later; production, Trade and investments keep you going.
• Watch your zone of interest. Rival Armies there cost 2 VPs per rival every round, not only in scoring rounds.
• Fill the permanent slots. A Region scores only when its permanent slots are all full — an empty permanent slot can deny a Region’s points to everyone.

Playing each power

United States

Starts with the most money and good Base options. Its scoring ability punishes leading in fewer than 4 Regions at each scoring (−12 to −2 VPs), so it has to spread out across the map rather than dominate one corner.

European Union

Starts with 5 allies and strong Diplomacy and Services; its deck leans diplomatic, with few military cards. NATO means the USA’s Armies never cost it points — build on diplomacy and trade rather than an early military.

Russia

Lots of Energy, little money (15). Sell Energy to fund Armies and Bases, and keep the most Armies in the Regions of its zone of interest: each one pays 2 VPs at every scoring, whether that Region scores or not.

China

The trading power: 3 exports and 3 imports per Trade. Its end-game bonus counts the number of different Regions with a Chinese FDI token, so spread investments across the map instead of stacking them in one or two Regions.

Player counts

• 4 players — the designers’ favourite: the full area-majority fight with no automated powers.
• 3 players — any three powers; the fourth is run by the Auto-Influence cards. Some players warn that leaving out Russia or China puts the two NATO powers together against one rival.
• 2 players — one Western power (USA or EU) against one Eastern power (Russia or China), because of NATO; the four pairings each play differently. The designers chose to show the next round’s Auto-Influence placements in advance, so you can plan around them.

Videos vs the rulebook

Some videos were made with prototypes or contain slips. Follow the v1.0 rulebook:

• Improve Relations gives no VPs. Pre-release videos scored the Country’s cost.
• A full temporary row: the new cube enters on the right and the leftmost cube leaves. Some videos describe it the other way round.
• Trade Diplomacy bonus: once per Trade if you bought from any player. The “all 3 or nothing” condition applies only to Russia’s 3-resource Commerce cards, not to every purchase.
• Building a Base always moves at least one Army, and only on a ready Country — early playthroughs sometimes skipped this.

Sources

From the owner’s NotebookLM notebook for World Order (video transcripts and articles): tutorials by Meeple University (“Start Playing in 14 Minutes”), Peaky Boardgamer (“How to play World Order + Visuals”), Epitrapaizoume, slickerdrips and Rahdo Runs Through; reviews by ThinkerThemer, Liege of Games, Weekly Game Night and 3 Minute Board Games; the designers’ article “Game experience for 2, 3, and 4 players?” and their Reddit AMA; Talking Shelf Space’s preview and interview.