{"id":3656,"date":"2004-11-05T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-11-05T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2004\/11\/05\/struggle-of-empires\/"},"modified":"2004-11-05T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2004-11-05T11:00:00","slug":"struggle-of-empires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2004\/11\/05\/struggle-of-empires\/","title":{"rendered":"Struggle of Empires"},"content":{"rendered":"

Struggle of Empires<\/a><\/h2>\n

reviewed by Moritz Eggert<\/i><\/p>\n

The “master” (Martin Wallace) has struck again – fresh from Essen we played
\nhis new labour of love, the ambitious “Struggle Of Empires”. In this game,
\nWallace tries to meld some ideas from his earlier games and form a larger whole, and he
\nis, to keep it short, mostly successful.<\/p>\n

“Struggle Of Empires” is a simulation of the Victorian Age, an age of
\nconquest and increasing European domination of the planet. The players play the Empires
\nof Britain, Prussia, Spain etc. and battle it out for world domination (=VP). The
\nrelatively small board (for the amount of counters) depicts literally the whole world: We
\nfind Europe and the “Colonies”, Africa, the Americas, East Indies… all
\ndivided into a relatively small number of “areas”. The game is played in three
\n“wars”, consisting of up to six player “phases” which consist of up
\nto two actions. At the beginning of each “war” (and they are rightfully called
\nlike that, because players will find it necessary to use their military force to win the
\ngame) 10 country counters are drawn, which represent “opportunities” in the
\ndifferent areas. Some of them can be won over by war (which involves dice rolling and the
\nelimination of the counter, to be replaced by a “control token”), some can be
\nwon by other means (the “slave” counter can be exchanged into a control token
\nif the player has a fleet in Africa, for example). Control tokens can in turn be attacked
\nby other players, which will certainly happen after opportunities become sparse at the
\nend of the a “war”.<\/p>\n

The heart of the game is the ingenious “alliance” system, which bases
\nalliances on a bidding mechanic at the beginning of each round. Basically, two
\n“sides” are determined, and you can never attack your ally once these sides are
\ndetermined. In the first “war” these alliances are of less importance than at
\nthe end of the game, where it really helps to be on the same side as your worst
\nenemy\/competitor. However, you will have to pay for being on his side!<\/p>\n

The simple system works nicely as an anti-kingmaker mechanism. A clever player can
\nmake it virtually impossible to suffer from “bash-the-leader” attacks in the
\nendgame, but at the same time he has to weigh the amount of cash he spends for this
\nprivilege. Players can take unlimited cash, but they pay for it (and for the loss of
\narmies) with “Unrest” markers, which can only be lost by expending extra
\nactions. In addition, a certain number of “unrest” makes you lose the game in
\nthe end, and the players with the highest unrest at the end will suffer VP penalties.<\/p>\n

\"StruggleThe “meat” of the game is the
\n“upgrade tiles”, though. If you thought “Princes of the Renaissance”
\nwas daunting in this respect, the possibilities (and number of different upgrades) will
\noverwhelm you in this game. Even our dauntless group went very silent in our first game,
\nwhile we desperately studied various playing aids with tiny writing. Everybody felt that
\none would try out different combos in the next game, which is a good sign.<\/p>\n

At the end of each “war” victory points are awarded for majorities in areas
\nin typical Wallace fashion (if both players have the same number of control tokens, each
\ngets the full amount of VP). After three “wars” the game ends.<\/p>\n

The Warfrog rulebook is – as always – an eternal mystery. While you read the only 2-4
\npages the rules usually have you think “hey, this is not too complex”, but when
\nyou get to actually play the game one is always surprised at the sudden complexities and
\nabstract handling of certain aspects. Wallace tends to be a minimalist in his rules –
\nthere is not one superfluous sentence in any of the rules – each sentence states
\nsomething very essential to the game, so that you often overlook the details. Whereas
\n“Euro” rules tend to be very verbose and filled with examples recently, even if
\nthe rules are simple, Wallace takes exactly the opposite approach.<\/p>\n

His games are also always full of unique mechanics, which often need a bit of getting
\nused to while usually making a lot of sense. But also here the Wallace fan (and I would
\ncount myself as being one) recognizes certain elements, like the VP distribution.<\/p>\n

The final question is if there is enough novelty here to demand a buy. I personally
\nfind the not-too-recent “Princes of the Renaissance” more to my taste, but one
\nwould be hard-pressed not to admit that “Struggle of Empires” is an excellent
\ngame in its own right. It is one of Wallace’s more aggressive and bleaker games,
\nwhich has to do with the theme. Interestingly there has been no attempt to avoid certain
\nissues like the depiction of slavery for the sake of political correctness. The cover
\neven has a naked, sad-looking black slave on it – will it be published like this in the
\nUS, I wonder? I can already see the discussions at “boardgamegeek” shift from
\nthe silly anger about the brown colour of the population markers in “Puerto
\nRico” to discussions about this game. Hey, it was even supposed to be called
\n“Birth of a Nation” once!<\/p>\n

There is no question that players of this game have to play “evil” to win –
\njust like their historical counterparts, they exploit the world for their own devious
\nmeans, and the game has no intention to hide this sad historical fact about the history
\nof Europe.<\/p>\n

If you can get along with that, you will be in for an intense gaming experience.
\nHowever, do not complain if you are backstabbed – it will happen!<\/p>\n

\n
<\/form>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Struggle of Empires reviewed by Moritz Eggert The “master” (Martin Wallace) has struck again – fresh from Essen we played his new labour of love, the ambitious “Struggle Of Empires”. In this game, Wallace tries to meld some ideas from his earlier games and form a larger whole, and he is, to keep it short, … Struggle of Empires<\/span> weiterlesen →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spieleabende"],"views":4,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}