Eight-Minute Empire

Eight-Minute Empire, published by Red Raven Games, is a beautifully simple game. It comes in a 6 x 9 inch box with some very nice box art on the cover. Inside the sturdy box you will find five sets of 14 small wooden cubes and wooden disks, 1 double-sided board, 42 cards, 44 coin tokens, 10 goods tokens and the rule book. All the components of the game, including the cardboard ones are of good quality.

The board folds out to 10.5 by 8.5 inch map of two fantasy lands. Like was mentioned above the map is double sided so you can try your hand at controlling two separate worlds. There is a third map, a map of Europe that can be downloaded from Board Game Geek for even more verity.

The title of the game is a bit misleading, unless the authors meant that you could read through the rulebook in about eight minutes, which seems about right. One round of the game will take you between twenty and thirty minutes and for longer play, it is recommended that you play through the game three times and add up your “victory” points from each round.

The game is card driven. Cards are chosen by the player form the six cards, placed at the top of the game board and are always available. Once one is chosen by a player the remaining cards are shifted toward the left and a new card is added to those that are available. Cards are chose by each player according to what they are willing to pay or the player’s individual needs or strategies.

The object of the game is too tally-up as many victory points by the end of the game. A game is ended when player‘s accumulate a set of cards, that depending on the number of players that are playing. For a two player that is 13 cards. You gain victory points by the number of continents, territories, and goods you control by the play of the thirteenth card.

It looks like it should be fun game to play and I hope to get a try at it over the weekend.