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(reposted from Hardcore Ludography) On Sunday Al, Rachel, James, and I played In the Shadow of the Emperor, one of only three games by Ralf Burkert, available from Rio Grande Games. We had played it a long while back (it's Al's copy) and I remembered little about it. When I suggested it, Rachel gave a "yes, please!" as she was eager to learn it. So Al brought it by and we booted it up on the table. In the Shadow of the Emperor (SoE) is a tough game to describe. There's sort of area majority. There's elections. The money functions sort of like action points. Negotiation is possible. You can kill your opponents' characters. You have a baby every round. It's got a little something for everyone. At its heart it's a game about intrigue. The theme involves various nobles vying for power in the Holy Roman Empire, and the theme is rock solid here. Without giving you the entire rules breakdown, here's the gist. On your turn you will get money, tracked in the upper left. The money isn't really money -- you use it to pay for various actions and it tops out at 12 so it's more like an action point system. With your money you can select from various action cards. The cards do things such as allow you to put nobles onto the board, move them, add knights (underpowered nobles that can be pushed out by proper nobles but still provide influence), alter the voting conditions for the upcoming election, build cities (provide influence in a district plus some extra "income"), or just plain get victory points. There are also "doctor" cards. The 15-25-35-45 around the counters? That's that person's age. Doctors can make them younger or older (plus they will age naturally -- be rotated a quarter turn -- every round). If they get turned past 45...well, let's just say they retire from public life to spend more time with their family. All of these actions alter the power in the districts, of which there are seven. The four at the bottom are secular districts; individuals or couples can control them. The three in the middle are religious districts, and only single barons can control them (though couples can contribute to the power there.) After everyone has done all the actions they want to do, you check each district to see if control has changed. If so, the old controller is downgraded and the new controller gets the electorate seat. Each electorate seat comes with some kind of special ability. If someone picked the "Rival" action card, there's an election. The players cast their electors' votes for either the current Emperor or the rival. Then, whoever won the election gets the benefit of being the Emperor (victory points, money, "imperial cities" -- plus you get to break all ties!) You play for five rounds, person with the most VPs wins. So far, this is pretty standard stuff. However, there are a number of elements that raise SoE above the average. 1) For taking control of an electorate, you get 2 VP, plus you get to use the benefit of the electorate. For maintaining your control of an electorate, you get to use the benefit of the electorate. It doesn't take a super-canny player to realize the goal is in the taking, not the keeping. Unlike many area influence games where you are rewarded for grabbing and holding territory, SoE rewards grabbing and then ignoring. The only reason to keep an electorate is to prevent someone else from getting the 2 VP, but it won't help you much! 2) The age mechanic is pretty cool. I've seen very few games in which pieces gradually decay and are lost. Plus, it's fun to use the doctor to age an opponent's baron to death! 3) Each action card is blue or pink. When you use one, you keep it in front of you until the next turn, at which you tally up how many of each color you have. If you have more blue than pink, you just gave birth to a son! You can now place an age 15 noble onto the board. Otherwise, it's a bouncing baby girl, who you can either marry off to an opponent (they get to upgrade a single noble to a couple, which adds power; you get a VP) or ship off to a convent (since doing so earns you 1 gold, I think she might be going to a "convent".) All of these things drive home the concept that this is intrigue for its own sake. Having an electorate isn't nearly as cool as getting one. And frankly, being the Emperor isn't that great! It's hard to not see a mass of scheming nobles marrying off their daughters to each other and poisoning their rivals just for a shot at maybe getting to be head of the Diocese of Trier for a month. What's even more great about SoE is that all of this is packed into a small and inexpensive game! Thoughthammer has this game brand new for seventeen bucks! I think everyone walked away from Sunday's session with a good appreciation for this underrated game. The next day, Rachel and I joined an online game of SoE on MaBi Web. I'm looking forward to having it hit the table again soon, and wouldn't mind having my own copy. In the Shadow of the Emperor deserves a lot more appreciation than it's gotten.
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Surya Van Lierde is pure Eurosnoot and proud of it!
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While everyone in my group recognises that this game is very well made, none of us enjoy playing it, and some really dislike playing it. None of us can tell what it is that turns us off, but something does. Too bad, because it clearly is a well thought out game.
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ItSotE is a great game - I love the blue/pink card mechanic - which makes using the Bradenburg card a hard-to-avoid daughter situation. The only downside is that you need exactly 4 people to play. Recommended.
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A fellow gamer was in my office just today talking about how we really need to get this game to the table again.
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I'm in love with this game. It's this kind of quirky game, and not necessarily the perfect Knizia machines, that exemplify good Euro-ness.
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I would try it again, but my first experience wasn't the greatest. I often felt like I had no idea what my best course of action should be. Maybe it takes a few games to get the hang of it, but I got an overall feeling of "neat idea, frustrating to play."
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Well, I can think of a few reasons why it didn't go down well with me, although I'll immediately concede that I recognise the game's good qualities which will surely appeal to others:
- the colours of the board are not made for staring at them for prolonged periods of time;
- the game breaks down very easily with 2; is somewhat strange with 3, and only works 'as intended' with the full compliment of 4, all because of the emperor voting;
- there's a ton of player-induced chaos abound which makes decisions quite tactical, and in my case not very satisfying on the long run.
People who dig the mayhem of El Grande or Maharaja with 5 players should feel right at home with this game.
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cymric wrote:
- there's a ton of player-induced chaos abound which makes decisions quite tactical, and in my case not very satisfying on the long run.
People who dig the mayhem of El Grande or Maharaja with 5 players should feel right at home with this game.
You've made this comment elsewhere in the forums, and I just find it exaggerated. I think this game is not nearly as chaotic as El Grande or Maharaja, and certainly not enough to claim it has "a ton" of chaos. Where is this so called chaos?
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Apologies, wrong choice of word---not being a native English speaker it's sometimes quite odd to realise that the nuance I was trying to get across was not the right one. It comes with not thinking properly about what I write, and no matter how often I vow to pay attention, this kind of mistake inevitably slips through again sometime later in the future. Let me downgrade to 'a lot', or, perhaps even better, 'an amount I am quite uncomfortable with'. With this I mean that while playing the game, I found myself conjuring up a rough plan of what I would attempt to achieve in a given round---become the head of a province / dukedom / ... (please excuse my lack of the proper terms; it's been two years or so since I last played this game), age the emperor until he croaks, play a few knights, and so forth. What happened was that many of these ideas were pre-empted by other players, leaving me with a sort-of superfluous feeling of what I should be doing next---after all, all my plans had already been executed---but not by me, of course. On many other occasions, my actions would be countered immediately and effectively because another player followed his plan. Granted, it is quite naive to assume that for example the current emperor would allow 'his' guy to be aged uncontested until he fell of the throne, and I certainly understand that there should be some resistance to the changes induced by the players, but overall, I found that simply too much of what I did was nullified. The situation was thus that I didn't get credit for the changes which I wanted to make, if they remained at the end of the action series in the first place. This is, in my opinion at least, a sign of lack of control, but also player-induced chaos, because although it is a completely deterministic process without random elements, the overall effects for the players are to a certain and sometimes large extent unpredictable. There simply was no way to tell what actions I did would survive, and which ones would not. I am always very careful to state that this is my opinion of ItSotE, because I recognise that other players might find this (far) less of a problem, and thus enjoy the game more than I did: the author of this thorough review already being a case in point. I was replying more to Surya than to Legomancer---another mistake I made in penning down my original reply  .
Last edited on 2007-09-20 17:28:26 CST (Total Number of Edits: 1)
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I totoally agree Dave. This game is under-appreciated. There was a lot of griping in different quarters regarding the possibility of collusion between players. I've never seen it, as there are a lot of incentives in the player powers for competition. But even given the possibility, I am not sure it would diminish the experience.
I also admire the little ways the design incorporates historical elements of the Holy Roman Empire. Its also a very different game from almost anything else out there. Finally, it pretty cheap. It packs quite a Euro wallop for the price.
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I'm in the "underappreciated" camp, but y'know, rank 159 isn't too shabby.
This is one of those games that's just tense all the way through. I don't feel like I can relax for even a moment. And in spite of what you say, Dave, it's good to be the Emperor. The tie-breaking abilities seem well worth it.
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I'm not always in the mood for games as demanding as ItSotE, but it's a great game, for sure. It's one of those games which, the more you play it, the more you see in it. Incidentally, it doesn't bother me at all that it's essentially only a four-player game. What's the big deal? It's not like any of us only has one game that has to fit all situations. Actually, what I find more restrictive about it is that you absolutely cannot play it with people who suffer from AP.
Also, as you say, it's astoundingly inexpensive for such a meaty, thematic game. Usually you have to shell out for a pricey Warfrog title to get this much game in one box.
I agree with Drew, though—it's good to be the Emperor. The ability to break ties plus the influence of the emperor city is a big deal. However, there might well be times that the energy you would have to expend to gain/retain the throne isn't worth the payoff.
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I have to agree with Dave on the value of being emperor. While the tie-break ability is nice, it removes one of your few available pieces from contention for the districts, where the points are made. And though you might think the sacrifice of one piece is acceptable in exchange for the ability to win several regions on a tie, in practice no one is going to leave a district in a tie situation if they can help it, so that ability ends up breaking in your favor less often than you might expect. I've won well over half the games I've played without once becoming emperor, indicating to me that the quest to become emperor is at best a distraction and at worst a resource-drain that leaves you incapable of competing for new districts.
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I should have worded my statement better. What I was trying to get across what the idea that, while it would appear that the goal of this game is to get and retain the Emperor's throne, you can easily do well without paying attention to it at all.
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I was quite disappointed in the game, mainly because of the maddening 'gamey' bits that destroy the theme for me. The prime culprit: being able to choose the sex of your child with the blue/pink cards. This is where Euros drive me nuts: there is randomness in life, and to choose your sex reeks of 21st century manipulations, not evocative at all of the era. Also, the 'ageing/decrease aging' thing, while kind of fun, also hits me wrong. It didn't feel right in execution, and seemed a game element, as it disallowed exceptional cases of people living and showing effectiveness until their 70's, for example. In all, some elements I liked, but overall it failed for me.
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mi_de wrote: Also, the 'ageing/decrease aging' thing, while kind of fun, also hits me wrong. It didn't feel right in execution, and seemed a game element, as it disallowed exceptional cases of people living and showing effectiveness until their 70's, for example. But that's what the decrease aging thing is. The doctor doesn't literally take 10 years off the person's life, he extends their life. Use him twice on a person and they've lived to be 65.
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mi_de wrote: I was quite disappointed in the game, mainly because of the maddening 'gamey' bits that destroy the theme for me. The prime culprit: being able to choose the sex of your child with the blue/pink cards. This is where Euros drive me nuts: there is randomness in life, and to choose your sex reeks of 21st century manipulations, not evocative at all of the era. I think it works because the choice isn't really much of a choice since it depends on the cards you bought in the previous round. And I'm hardly thinking of the next round when I'm choosing cards for THIS round. As much as I might want that free baron placement, I might want the actions on the pink cards more. Quote: Also, the 'ageing/decrease aging' thing, while kind of fun, also hits me wrong. It didn't feel right in execution, and seemed a game element, as it disallowed exceptional cases of people living and showing effectiveness until their 70's, for example. In all, some elements I liked, but overall it failed for me. Of course, you have to remember that life expectancy back then wasn't what it is now. And very few people marry at age 15 these days. Also, we always think of it as "medicine" for those with failing health when the doctor de-ages and "poison" when the doctor ages someone. So I don't often think of it as literally 35 or 45 years. Just life extension or shortening one's life.
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I'd like to pick up on the chaos / control theme. It is defintiely a game element that some do not enjoy that the game is so confrontational. I myself prefer games with less direct confrontation, but I would not conceptually argue it is a bad thing. Afterall if you planned your move, played it out and got the rewards you expected you might as well play a solo game. Go and download St Petersburg, Pueto Rico or Ra on the computer without your friends. Conversely if you are just looking to hang out with friends then go walking, running, swimming or whatever your gig is.
The beauty of a great euro is not only flexing your mind to optimise your path, but to adapt those strategies to your oppponents. And may I therefore suggest that if you are getting done over by people wrecking your plans, then turn the tables and wreck their plans.
I always think that the perfect game is basically a euro with no conflict. The actions of other players will effect your position, and yet your position at the beginning of your move does not affect your capacity for success. Essentially a puzzle whose constraints are determined by your opponents. Solve it and you score the maximum points. I know it is an impossibility but it still remains the utopia of games for me.
In the meantime I enjoy conflict where I can and maximise the enjoyment of trying to outfox my competitors. The level of control is a very important element to recognise in a game, and it is also important to know what level you enjoy when selecting games.
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citylife wrote: I always think that the perfect game is basically a euro with no conflict. The actions of other players will effect your position, and yet your position at the beginning of your move does not affect your capacity for success. Essentially a puzzle whose constraints are determined by your opponents. Solve it and you score the maximum points. I know it is an impossibility but it still remains the utopia of games for me. Err, perhaps you haven't played Goa yet?
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citylife wrote: I'd like to pick up on the chaos / control theme. It is defintiely a game element that some do not enjoy that the game is so confrontational. I myself prefer games with less direct confrontation, I've just read this from a guy with a Twilight struggle microbadge. *brain explodes*
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The game is great. We've plaid it few days ago and it is a hit.
For me there is no chaos but hard fight. The game is ultra thematic, maybe most thematic euro i have plaid. The mechanics are great. The game has everything: area control, planning, voting, tactics, aging pieces, negotiations and more. It is very underrated.
i think it would be one of most often plaid games with my friends.
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Posted Thu Sep 20, 2007 1:56 pm
