2014 · Ancient
ZhanGuo
Players act as imperial emissaries tasked with helping unify Qin’s newly expanded empire during the reign of the first emperor. Over five rounds, players play a small hand of cards either on their personal board to develop their own power or on the central board to recruit labor, erect infrastructure, call reinforcements, and move armies among the former Warring States. Actions advance construction projects like roads, canals and the frontier wall, increase administrative reach, and generate economic resources, while public satisfaction tracks popular unrest. Players balance contributing to imperial goals with avoiding citizen dissatisfaction and uprisings; the player who best supports the emperor while keeping the populace stable scores highest.
- Players
- 2–4 best 4
- Playing time
- 60–120 min
- Age
- 12+
- Complexity
- 3.8 / 5
About the game
- Publisher
Expansions
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Where to buy it
Shop prices and second-hand copies, checked every day.
On Ludoya's tables
Full stats in Ludoya- 37
- Plays logged
- 60
- Players
- 2h 27m
- Average play
- 11
- In collections
- 6
- On wishlists
5.4/10
from 14 Ludoya reviews
Evan4.6 In this game, you play 5 rounds and each round you get a hand of 6 cards. On your turn, you either tuck one of the cards, which might enhance future actions if the number on the card you play meets the criteria, or you play the card to the board, and do a thing. You compete with other players for board positions for being firsties for achievements. The game is fairly complicated, and your strategy needs to line up between the cards you happened to draw each round and the available achievement tiles and wall bonus tiles. The significant decision point in the game is when to stop tucking and when to start acting. Players can unwittingly block you because of the number printed on the card they last played. Some actions require a card lower than the previous played card, and some want one higher, in order to get to use the bonus effects you spent so much time constructing. This blindly blocking other player's plays seems underdeveloped as does the "corruption" marker mechanic, which can sometimes cause minor trouble for you when you want to add new cards to your board, but otherwise doesn't come into play much. For a game this complicated, I wish it had a little more flexibility, as when I play it I don't feel I have many meaningful choices to make. I just do my best to get the achievements done as fast as I can, and I hope other players don't happen to get in my way. :star: Art, Iconography and components functional :star: Clever or interesting mechanisms :star: Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players :nostar: Multiple plays stay interesting :nostar: Low or mitigatable luck elements :star::star::star::nostar::nostar: Raw enjoyment
Garfield2.0 After reading the rules no desire to ever play it. Just too dry for me.
Free, on web, Android and iOS
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Game facts (players, playing time, age, credits) from BoardGameGeek.