Nations & Empires Review

Nations & Empires has players adding leaders to historical nations in order to gain resources to attempt to become the most prosperous or powerful empire. Each player is given a pair of nations at the start and they can play one or both of them to begin adding leaders, scientists, or buildings to them. When a leader is added, a resource from their card is added to the nation and on the 5th round, another one is added. They also contain symbols at the bottoms which function as special abilities during their reign. Leaders are discarded after their 5th round (they can't stay in power forever, right?) and a new card is drawn from the deck. Scientists function similarly but they generate science tokens each round. Players can also play buildings which can create resources or action cards that will serve as more a gotcha than anything else. Resources can be spent for new cards and combat. Players can also go to war with each other and trade. If you go to war and destroy another players nation, you have the option to raze or annex it. If you annex, you must defend it for a set amount of rounds and it will then join your empire. The game ends when a player is the last empire standing from destroying other players or if someone collects enough of certain resources.

The Good: The Civilization video game vibes are extremely apparent with this game and it works really well. You'll start with a relatively small empire and it will grow throughout the game into a powerhouse of war or diplomacy. I love the use of real historical figures but it's worth noting that there are some less than upstanding ones in the game. The rulebook addresses it and they can be removed if you do not want to play with them. The game scales up to 8 which is an impressive count for this type of game. If I had 8 friends I would play it with them.

The Okay: Tracking lengths of time with numbered dice is clever but it's also somewhat of a challenge to remember to change the die every round. You can have a lot going at a time potentially and if you miss a round, you can throw things off until they've cycled through.

The Not So Good: The content on the cards is too small to read from afar. There is plenty of room in the boxes where it could have been reworked a bit. Also, I did notice some typos on the reference cards and in a couple of other spots in the game. It's minor and the team that created this game is pretty small.

Final Thoughts: Nations & Empires does a great job of simulating a civilization builder without taking a substantial amount of table space. It scales to a high number which gives you another option for a game night with a lot of people beyond party games and social deduction. Ultimately, the game is a really unique take on the genre and I absolutely could recommend this. I'll be excited to see what's next from this team.

Thanks to Scott Stark Games for providing a review copy.