Not sure what to make of this game.

A draft of the rules is up on consim world.

I asked Wray the desgner about the game briefly via email. Here is his response:

“The main inspiration for the design started out as a card-driven wargame where the participants would build their deck as the game progressed rather than starting with a prebuilt deck.

However pretty quickly the focus shifted (due to the game being a slog to play) to a deck building game where the circle was complete. In other words the cards in your hand directly impacted what you could do on the board and your position on the board directly impacted the cards you could buy.” [emphasis added]

Here is a rough draft map from the same:

Humourous:

This is a rule set that says ‘ put the map in the middle of the table’ but tells you to select a random player to start the game if more than 2 players in Rule 3.3! Too funny.

I guess its still early days!!

But to the meaty good stuff:

The game relies on cards for the representation of Political Capital. Different colored cards represent the different types of influence – military, senate and populace.  All provinces have some level of influence which in turn accumulate to allow you to buy cards from the deck.

Interesting:

So right there is a nice linkage of card and game functions on map mentioned by Wray.  Various actions can be executed via the spending of influence points of various types.

They might involve placing a Governor, constructing a building or raising and moving armies.  Thus we are faced with more choices. At this time it is unclear if this means you choose between buying cards/trashing cards and or actions on the map or that you may do both.

The game includes, major crisis’s, historical figures, a combat procedure and breakaway empires.

Must try:

I have it on Pre Order!

Love to see more from them regarding game play, art and rules refinement.

Game play video coming the 12th.