Portal Games 331603 Imperial Settlers, Multicoloured

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To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Last week we had a contest on our FB pages (both PL and EN) with a very simple task – your goal was to guess what 5th faction we have for Imperial Settlers. Whether or not you were a fan of the original Imperial Settlers, I think Empires of the North is definitely worth a look.

When you don’t draw those cards—and, look, even the base game has this issue—you are going to be in for some games where you never draw the cards you need to be successful. The expansion includes a new faction board, faction deck, technology tokens, and expansion cards for the original factions. To setup the game, each player selects a Faction to play, takes the corresponding Faction deck and board, draws 2 Common cards, and then 2 cards from their own Faction deck as their starting hands.I’ll get to the various actions in a little bit and will refer to this as ‘the common action’ when I do so. There are Faction decks for each of the four different factions (that only the player controlling that faction can use) and there is a deck of Common cards which will be available to all players. In Imperial Settlers, players take control of one of four factions (Romans, Barbarians, Egyptians and Japanese) and attempt to build and expand their empire to be the most powerful and successful. Also, since most Faction locations require the player give up an already-built a Common location as part of its cost, you’ve got to plan ahead by getting some Common locations to the table, if you want to build any (usually more powerful) Faction locations later.

The first 5 minutes the rules made my eyes cross a little - but the rulebook is actually written very well with good illustrations and the first game went smoothly and was fun.I find this to be a great little twist on the usual resource production mechanic, and adds one more element to the strategic thinking needed during the game. As the game went on, they became more understanding of how to maximize their civilizations for earning potential. In Imperial Settlers Review – The Empire Packs – Part 02 I talk about the first two small box expansions.

I think these are a nice step up from the civs in Imperial Settlers that had different cards, but didn’t feel all that diverse (until you got to the expansions). As four cards are available at the start of the round to either conquer or pillage, players can see what is available and decide if one really fits into their strategy. It’s like a new, collaborative song from a well known band, you instantly know its them but its different enough to make you second guess what you are hearing. During the game, players can gain Victory Points (VP) in various ways: from deals they make, from actions they take, and from Location features. In my second play of Empires of the North, I selected the Ulaf Clan, which needs to Conquer islands to be most successful.We’ve seen a few questions floating around about how the Technology Tokens interact and there have been a few different interpretations. Feels like settlers but the fighting element begins much quicker than in the PC game (I have only vague memories so please forgive me if you think otherwise).

I feel like the replayability of this game is mainly for solo gamers, which unfortunately isn’t something I do. The barbarians are aggressive, the Japanese value trade, the Egyptians have plentiful gold and the Romans are builders extraordinaire. Each player has his own deck of cards that are unique to his faction, and in addition, there is a large deck of “common” cards which are used by all players. Even when the characters depicted are involved in doing something nefarious, they are unquestionably adorable while they are doing it.Edit: I should also mention the existence of the solo campaign that wouldn't be available in Empires of the North. Each player selects one of four factions (Romans, Egyptians, Barbarians, or Japanese) and uses the corresponding Faction deck in conjunction with a deck of Common cards to produce resources, acquire more cards, build locations, and to score points. At this point, each player’s faction locations will be worth 2 victory points apiece and their common locations will be worth 1 each. Although the game is up to 4 players, you can get an expansion with a new faction which allows a 5th player. To coin another term, Empires of the North is a Two-Handed Game TM, with one hand you’re managing your hand of cards, with the other your triggering actions and commands and all the while you have one eye on the Expedition board and the other on your opponent’s empires.