Eight-Minute Empire: Review

Eight-Minute Empire: Review

Information:

Mechanics: Resource Management, Area Control, Drafting
Player Age: 13+ 

Player Count: 2 - 5 Players

Time to Play: 8 - 20 Minutes 
Game Designer & Artist:  Ryan Laukat

Publisher: Red Raven Games

Year Published: 2012

BGG Weight: 1.63
Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher.

Objective:

It is time to amass your army and deploy units to build up your soon to be undefeated empire. Your goal will be to establish cities and take control of lands within a set amount of turns (based on player count). At the end of the game, each player will gain one point for each region and continent they control. You will control a region if you have the most armies in a space, and you will control a continent if you have the most regions in a landmass. Lastly, you will gain points based on the resources that have been collected through cards (in a set collection manner) where the more resources of the same type you have, the more points you gain.

Component Anatomy:

Armies and cities:

Each army is represented by a cube and each city is represented by a disc of your colour. 

Cards:

Each card will have a resource at the top. Of the five possible resources in the game, the card will either have one or two resources, or a wild. The card will also display a chart to show how many points that resource will score at the end of the game. This will be based on how many resources of that type the player has. At the bottom of each card is an action which will activate when taking the card.

Key actions:

These are represented by images to associate with four possible actions;

Place new armies:

To place a new army you will play a card which shows how many armies can be put down. These armies can be placed either on the starting location, or in any location where you control a city.

Move armies via land/sea:

The card will show how many armies can be moved or how spaces you can move singular armies. This may be that you can move one army three spaces, or three armies once if the card contains an image of three armies. These movements can only be across land unless the card contains a ship icon, in which case the movement can be used to cross the sea following the blue dotted line.

Build a city:

You may build one city anywhere you have an army, and on future turns you can use this location as a basecamp for new armies.

Destroy an army:

This action allows you to destroy one opposing army piece anywhere on the board.

Setup:

- Place the board in the centre of the table.
- Remove any cards with '5' displayed in the top right corner if you are playing with less than five players.
- Shuffle the deck and deal out six cards above the cost track on the board.

- Give each player a set amount of coins based on the player count:
2 Players = 14 coins
3 Players = 11 coins
4 Players = 9 coins
5 Players = 8 coins
- Give each player 14 armies and 3 cities of the same colour.
- Each player places 3 armies on the starting spot of the board.
- if playing with two players, there will be a uncontrolled player that will have 10 armies of their colour on the board, to create this each player will place one army on the board at a time until all 10 armies of that colour are placed. This dummy player is to keep the competition fierce when it comes to gaining board supremacy.

How to Play:

To begin the game there will be a bid to determine who is the first player (following the first player, all other players will take their turns in a clockwise fashion). This is done by each player placing an amount of gold of their choice in a closed hand. Once all players do this, the hands are revealed and whoever has spent the most gold coins will decide who will be the first player. The winner of the bid will spend their coins whereas everyone else will keep their coins.

For this game, a player’s turn appears extremely simple yet also elegant in design. On your turn you will choose a card to pay for, the far left cost 0 coins and the far right cost 3 coins to play. You will never gain more coins during the rest of the game so make these decisions count and plan ahead. When the card is taken it is played immediately and the gained resource is kept for end of game scoring.
Whenever a card is taken from the line, each other card will move towards the left and a new card will be drawn and placed to the far right.
This will continue in turns, where players will establish and move armies to try and gain majority in regions and continents.

Based on the player count the game will end when each player has gained a certain amount of cards:
2 Players - 13 cards
3 Players - 10 cards
4 Players - 8 cards
5 Players - 7 cards
To score, each player gains one point per region they control (the player with the majority of armies in that region), one point per continent controlled (whoever controls the most regions per continent), and lastly wild cards which can be allocated to any group of resources. Then each resource will score based on the amount of each individual resource the player has (this will be identified on the card).

Final Thoughts:

Pros:

- Clever resource management.
- Quick game, with crunchy decisions.
- Double sided board and variant included for further replay ability.

Cons:

- An area control game with no combat, only pure resource management Which may bother some people

'Eight-Minute Empire' is a clever resource management game layered in the guise of an area control game reminiscent of risk. The game ultimately comes down to managing your currency, turns, armies and resources efficiently so that you can achieve an optimal score. However, it never outstays its welcome, the turns happen fast and the game only lasts 10-15 minutes. In this short amount of time, you are left with clever decisions in relation to what cards you want and if the resources, cost or actions meet the requirements you seek. This game is heavily recommended for a fast resource management and area control game. Eight-Minute Empire will be earning a Go to Golden Game Seal.

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Eight-Minute Empire on BGG
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