Deluxe Edition

Actual score 4.5. Great Value for fun pieces,beautiful board and cards! Wish the transports had had a small sail, they're kinda of a rowboat? Wish the "gold" was all the same color. Some of the cards will not be used in future play, especially the hull strengthen card--made one players ship invincible. Better instructions for some aspect of play and a component tray would have really been appreciated. Fun once you get into the rhythm of the game, sequence of play printed on the board would have been nice. Enjoyable, card driven game with elements of luck (draw and dice) more than strategy in play. I think this is a nice game for the younger gaming audience to hone their skills, while their older family and friends can still enjoy playing. Quality components and some fun historical elements make this a repeatable, fun experience. Play time around 2 hours.

I love the genre and was really hoping this would be an outstanding game. First lets go with the the great:the components. For the price point the components of this game are excellent. The good: The rules are pretty straight forward and easy to understand. So why only a 3-star review? There is nothing about the game that makes it memorable. I actually forgot I even owned it until I was going through the games I owned to make way for some new ones. Again, nothing bad to say about the game. I love the genre and components, and I enjoyed the game. My home is a home of gamers and I can't get any buyers to want to play it again. No one hates it, but no one is clamoring to play it either.

If you are a hardcore gamer, and you only play games like Agricola and Through the ages, this game won't satisfy you. The game is too light for hardcore gamers, and these type of gamers do tend to get really angry at the mistakes, which this game does have; they have little patience for that kind of thing. However, These are the type of people who will laugh at you if you even mention games like Monopoly or Yahtzee.Having personally made the transition from such games, I can be more forgiving with the mistakes, especially when the game is a self published, and first game by a couple. I see this game as having great potential itself and for the couple. I know they are working on a second edition that fix the mistakes in this game. I mean, Through the Ages had it's mistakes and problems in the first edition which was corrected in the second edition. So I'm willing to see how this game works out in the next edition. As for the couple, for this being their first time publishing a game, I think it's a good start. I have no idea if this was just an idea that they wanted to make a reality or if they are looking to becoming active game developers, but if it's the latter, I'd say this is step in the right direction.Again, this game is lighter than you would expect, so if you are a hardcore gamer, you won't like this game. However, this game can a great tool to introduce people to the wonderful world of Euro style games. Maybe you've been intrigued by these kinds of games, but you struggle with the complexity of the games and the heavy strategy it takes to be any good at them... this is a good game for you. Maybe you want to introduced people to the world of Euro games, and lure them away from the dark side (games like Monopoly, clue, and Yahtzee, I'd say $25 is more than reasonable to buy this game and use it as such a tool. This is a good enough game that give people a taste of these types of games, but the keyword is TASTE. For a hardcore gamer, a taste not enough, but it is enough to wet the appetite to new gamers, and who knows, through future editions and maybe some expansions, this game can become more than just a taste, and if that happens, you will have gotten a $50 plus valued games for half the cost. To me, it's good enough to take a chance with and hope it happens, and even if it doesn't, I'm happy enough with what it is.

Not what I thought. I thougbt this would be a more advanced veraion of risk, but cooler because it included history and ships. Not very well thought out. The gameplay is confusing and limited. The pieces are okay, but could have been made a little better. The instruction booklet is lacking. It really needs to do a better job of explaining how to play and what pieces are what.

We somewhat enjoyed it but the rules were written in an unusual fashion as though the game designers were not familiar with a lot of other game layouts. A future Improvement would be to give players more of a sense that the player pieces are on the sea and not on some grid pattern

Overall a fantastic game. Resource and military strategy combined with arbitrary wind changes and political fortune/misfortune. High quality board and pieces. Empires could use a more nuanced rule book in addition to the quick-start(ish) pamphlet provided, as we had to determine a few house rules as we played. That said, it is easy to fill in ambiguous portions, make up entirely new rules, change game length, etc.A great buy.

Never made it through a full game of this, movement mechanics were clunky although the playing pieces were top-notch.

Big game, lots here... well designed. I like the rules, though I haven't played yet it looks great.