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The Empire, formed by three Kingdoms, lives in an era of wealth and prosperity. Each Kingdom is governed by a council of four nobles. The members of six influential families sit around in the councils and lead the Kingdoms.
The players hold the roles of rich merchants who seek to obtain permits to build their own Emporium inside the cities of the three Kingdoms. Whoever takes more permits, while also opening their Emporium in the best place, will be the most famous merchant and will win the game. But pay attention to the Emperor! He can be your ally and allow you to build without permits!
On a turn, a player can perform different actions:
- The main action is to corrupt a council, which is represented by a slide with four pawns representing four nobles. By corrupting the three councilors of the three Kingdoms, the player gets permit cards that give various instant and endgame benefits, and the possibility to build an Emporium in a specific city.
- Another action is to play a permission card to build an Emporium. Each Emporium earns the player the special benefits of the space where it's built, but also activates all connected emporiums in a chain effect.
- Corrupt the Emperor’s council to allow a player to build Emporiums without permission cards.
- Players can change the composition of a council.
There are many different ways to earn points:
- Build a connected Emporium in the cities that award points.
- Build your emporium in all the cities of an area of the board: the faster you complete the area, the more points you earn.
- Move up on the nobility’s track.
Obtain permits that give points.
Moreover, the board is modular and has eight possible combinations.
- Fun to get little guys on a map
- Triggers chain reactions
- Cool economic aspect with council members
- Was a hit of the con
- Some preferred the original art
- New art is more whimsical
- Deploying merchants to cities and influencing council members
- Kingdom
- Potion Explosion
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Engine Building — Players create chains of abilities that generate resources and victory points.
- Set Collection — Acquiring deeds from council members requires specific resource cards.
- Worker Placement — Players place merchants into cities to trigger abilities.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- it is a game that you are trying to build the best story
- this is on steroids oh I can't wait when we can we play um by all means Thursday night when we go to a gaming night we are right there we are going to have a blast with that as well
- there's going to be a big focus on board gaming because that's been the bread and butter of PACs
- The Reading Terminal Market... adjacent to that subway station it is the best food market you will ever set foot in
- RPGs and miniatures those types of gaming don't get enough love at the traditional paksas simply because there's not enough room for them
- Chris Perkins was on Twitter two days ago all his fans that yeah I'll be at PacSun plug
- the rulebook was not very good no we had to look up several times on some of the rules meant
- it is a pretty quick game which is why we like it's only played over the course of three rounds
References (from this video)
- Allows for building combos and a cool engine.
- Allows players to feel clever through combos.
- Has suspense and fun actions.
- Easy to learn and teach quickly.
- The race for bonus tiles is too dominant, overshadowing engine building.
- Significant analysis paralysis (AP).
- Player interaction points can be frustrating.
- The scoring for bonus tiles might be too high, leading to unbalanced wins.
- The game length exceeds the box estimate.
- Frustration with having useless card sets.
- Frustration with council members changing, disrupting plans.
- Ticket to Ride
- Gaea Project
- 51st State
- Imperial Settlers
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Area Control — Controlling certain spots on the board related to city colors grants bonus tiles.
- Engine Building — Players build combos and engines to generate resources and points.
- Race — Players race to claim valuable bonus tiles.
- Set Collection — Players collect sets of matching council members to claim building permits.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- This is the Star Realms killer for me.
- The analysis paralysis yeah and not being able to plan outside of your turn and let's face facts I mean we're not the greatest board game players in the world even I don't care what we think of ourselves victory points don't matter that's not that doesn't make you a great game player but winning mark two games I don't make you a great game player.
- I will always play this game with you but caution buyer beware there could be some poopoo headedness flowing near the end of that game.
References (from this video)
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- it's an ongoing ripple effect of me changing the channel up and not making reviews any more
- I've been thinking about doing this for a while and I finally went about changing my audio setup in here
- thanks for watching