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£24.99

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Struggle of Empires recreates the various wars fought between the European powers as they attempted to become the dominant force in Europe and the rest of the world during the eighteenth century. Build armies and fleets, make alliances, establish colonies, improve your economy, and ultimately wage war to expand your empire. Be careful, though, as a profligate country can end up being consumed by revolution!

Game contains:
* English, German and French rules
* Fully mounted map board
* 6 card counter sheets
* Plastic coins
* 4 dice
* 2 wooden tokens
* 2 player aid cards

Reviews Review Game

By	Loughborough Gamer	From	Leics in UK
Review
Tense game which presses all the right gaming buttons. It's cerebral, fun, competitive and exciting. On top of that, it's elegant, full of sophisticated mechanics (like the Allinace bidding) and endlessly replayable. The only down-side is that it can last well over 3 hours and up to 4. But as you get better at it, that time starts to come down. It works best with 5, 6 or 7 players, but is fine with 4.

By	RichardDewsbery	From	Staffordshire in United Kingdom
Review
Why is this game still in stock? It should be flying off the shelves! While we can debate at length as to which is Martin Wallace's best game to date, there is no doubt at all in my mind that Struggle Of Empires is one of the best games of its type - a strategy game for 4 to 7 players that is likely to take between 40 and 60 minutes PER PLAYER. The game models the conflicts bewteen the European powers at home and abroad during the 18th Century, and does this by having players compete for influence both in Europe and for space in colonies around the world. At its heart, its an area-control game, where victory points are handed out three times during the game to the players with the most influence counters in the various areas of the map. Struggle of Empires looks a lot like some of the Avalon Hill games of the 80's, with its map board and cardboard counters, but the actual mechanics are more akin to the modern German boardgames. It retains many of Martin Wallace's design hallmarks - that money is tight, that rounds start with bidding for things like turn order, that there are multiple resources to juggle. Combat is dice-driven, but Martin's solution to mitigate dice-based luck is to implement a system where the difference between the throw of two dice is important. Like a certain well-known miniatures game, the effect of this is to see most dice throws tend towards an average result, but still allows for tha occasional large swing of fortune. Where Struggle really scores is the sort of interaction it encourages between players, with the turn order auction also creating important "alliances" between players - and it avoids the charge of encouraging negative play often present in area majority games by the way the scoring is handled (it's rarely a good idea to attack an opponent simply to deny that opponent points, for example - it's often far easier to find a move that allows you to increase your own score somewhere else). Bags of variation occur in each game thanks to the random set-up of the neutral tokens and the introduction of more at key stages in the game, plus it has a mechanism that encourages players to develop and tweak their military and economic powers in different directions to one another. Overall, I like this game A LOT. Although it's hard to make time for a game that could take 4 or 5 hours to play, Struggle is one of those games where it is worth making the time. The more I play it, the more I appreciate its many subtleties, and the different strategies that the players can pursue. A real gem, numbers are limited and once sold out the game will be hard to get hold of. A lot of people were left disappointed once Age of Steam sold out; Struggle of Empires is just as good, and will also sell out quite quickly.

Wizball

From

Staffordshire in United Kingdom

Review

Martin Wallace's best yet and I am a big fan any way.

Played this game for the first time tonight and I love it, so many decisions to make and things to do, yet you need to keep an eye on all of them.

I personally cannot say which is better Age of Steam or Struggle of Empires it is no wonder that this game is so hard to get hold of.

If you see it buy it.

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