Works well with just 2: Fine
Solo quality: Puzzle-like
Age: 14+
Playtime: 30-120 min
Complexity: 4.5/10
It's from GMT and it's a large box and there's a big board and it looks serious as all get-out BUT it's a fairly simple trick-taking game, and a fun one at that.
Hear me out.
The goal of this three-round game is to capture as many emperor cards as possible: each is worth 1 point, plus 3 points for each set of three emperors (blue-red-yellow) you manage to assemble.
Random emperor cards start the game already on the board, in the following configuration:
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| Only colors matter: text on emperors just historical info |
On each round, players take turns playing square-shaped influence cards, which are numbered from 1 through 8 in the three colors mentioned above. A card goes next to an emperor, on the side the player was assigned. So the Sword player can only play on the Sword edge of an emperor card, while the Laurels player can only play on the Laurels edge of an emperor, and so on. But the board layout makes it so that playing to the right of one emperor will also often mean playing to the left of (or above, or below) another emperor.
An emperor is resolved when it's surrounded by four cards: cards of equal value cancel each other out, and among the cards left, the highest value matching the color of the emperor wins (or else the highest-valued card, if none of those left match the emperor's color). The winning card is removed, and the emperor goes to the player whose edge the winning card had been played on. In other words, if the winning card happens to be on the Laurels edge of the emperor being resolved, the emperor goes to the Laurels player—no matter who actually played the card that ended up winning.
Each card also sports a special ability that allows for some funky moves such as flipping another card face down (cancelling it), moving a card away, or adding an emperor to the board. You'll learn them by heart eventually, but I wish GMT had gone with a simple iconography instead of text, as well as a background of a different color for ongoing effects.
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| Yes, that’s my luggage combination |
The cool thing here is that all of a rounds tricks are "available" on the table from the start, so you're playing on multiple ones every time you add a card to the board (because it'll likely touch more than one emperor). The system might prove brain-twisting at first, but give it time and it'll become second nature.
I highly recommend the game at the 3- or 4-player count, but it loses some of its charm with only two—although it's a great way to learn the rules. The solo version feels more like a puzzle than a tactical game, but it works pretty well.
Most easily forgotten rule: Barbarians can deploy AND move only to spaces adjacent to emperors.
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