You can read other reviews if you'd like to understand the rules or how to play the game. I'm interested in getting more involved with BGG.com and felt that writing a recommendation/review for SoE, would be a nice start.

A little history.....I've got a strong group of "gamer" buddies. Many of us have known each other for a long time and over the years our favorite games include D&D, Puerto Rico, Princes of Florence, Magic, PowerGrid, El Grande, and most recently SoE. I grew up playing, BloodBowl, DungeonQuest, Talisman, CarWars and many others, but it wasn’t until I played Settlers of Catan that I realized a true new era in Board games was upon us. So, for the last 4-5yrs I’ve been slowly buying the top games listed on this site and introducing them to my friends.
We are in the +30 crowd, and still manage to meet up at least once a week.

I’ve always been looking for a “War” game that was based in the real world and wasn’t Risk. Reason being, once I realized you didn’t need dice to play a board game (thank you PR); Risk, Axis and Allies, Titan, Warhammer FB and whatever else ceased to have much appeal. This doesn’t mean Dice based games aren’t any good (SoE uses dice), it means that games that rely too strongly on which player gets the better rolls, require less skill or strategy to play. Real world history as a theme can’t be beat either. You have a working knowledge of what accents you need to adopt for smacking talking. “You filthy swine!” vs. “I must break you.” Sort of thing.

Our first introduction to the new modern “War” mechanics was with GoT (Game of Thrones). One of us read the books and then 6 months later everyone had read them, btw anyone heard of when Dance of Dragons will be printed???
It was my first experience with using a limited number of orders to move units around a board, and with a form of solving battles that didn’t require dice. We liked it. However in the end it found its way to the bottom of the pile due to its length of play, discontent with the random events and how abstract game end was. There are lots of pieces, a lot going on and it takes a lot of time and patience. The end result is not always satisfying; the game can end on the 3rd turn or the 10th without a clear winner. Crazy. (If you’re a fan of the books, A+ on theme though!)

I did more research and finally picked up Shogun. My First experience with the battle tower! Again we liked it and it got a few good plays in before we opted for the quicker more familiar Euro games instead. Shogun also a great game but did lag in order placement, random events although not as bad as GoT were disconnected from play, and lacked deep strategy. Movement is limited so it’s hard to better position yourself and every time you battle someone you need a few rounds to build up your forces again. Then the game is over before you know it. It ended in a reasonable amount of time and the theme is fun but doesn’t contribute much to game play. (However, a sumo/samurai accent is one of my favorites to perform.)

So my search continued for a multi-player game, which included real world domination. I disregarded “Mini” games (BattleLore, Tide of Iron, Commands and Colors, etc.) because I wasn’t interested in collecting more crap. I’ve got MTG for that. I found Struggle of Empires. I read all the reviews and it seemed like what I wanted, however the thing that kept me away for the longest time was that right on the box it says it takes 4-5hours to play. Our crowd normally does not have this much time or patience to dedicate to a game. We’ll play multiple games of magic for hours, but the idea of sitting down to one board game for 4-5 hours was an issue. GoT and Shogun took us a long time and I couldn’t get anyone to play either of those anymore, so I was apprehensive. The price was right, only $30, great deal I thought.
…..I finally bit the bullet and bought SoE.

Rules were pretty straight forward and easy to read. There not Rio Grande rules but they were good. Any questions you have can be answered here. http://web.archive.org/web/20070707144013/innovan.freelinuxh...
If fact if you are going to own this game, print them out and read them. They have helped me several times.

SoE can handle from 2-7 players. Great benefit. I’ve played it with 3, 4 and 5. I would say 4-6 is probably the sweet spot. If you’re going to be playing 3er, try some of the variants, it should make for a more enjoyable game. I heard 2er is good and 7er must be crazy but I would love to give it a try.

The game is great and should be raked higher. It’s got a great balance of war and development. The neutral counters help to ease the tension between players. Because you don’t always have to attack each other, instead you can gobble up “Neutrals” increasing your influence and not pissing off your competitors. Bidding for Alliances is an amazing mechanic. The phrase “keep your friends close and your enemies’ closer” never rang truer. The actions you can choose from, 2 each round; similar to PoF, are well thought out and make for some grueling decisions. This makes for constant involvement on your part, not only do you have to plan ahead you also have to watch your opponents closely. Player interaction is through the roof, in fact we’ve yelled at each other a few times. Yes, things get serious some times, in fact I’ve recently shelved this game because I don’t want anyone to burn out on it or throw down over a loss in the German States.

The Battles are exciting and fair. Even though war is settled with dice, it doesn’t favor the reckless player. Beating down someone with a +2 advantage over you is a rush, and losing a battle with an advantage like this drains you. However, unlike Shogun or GoT you can easily create more armies on subsequent turns so the sting is short lived. As unrest mounts you must become more conservative in your approach to win the game. Snapping up “Slaves” and “Pop” counters is critical for victory in the colonies, while pure military strength is more important in Europe.

The game has made a few of us obsessed with it. Which is good, any good game should act like a good drug or at least have something about it that feeds or creates addictive personalities.

It’s never the same game twice. The number of players, the tile choices and the randomly placed counters help to keep things fresh. No need to invest in new boards or game pieces! As one of your 2 actions every round you can improve your nation and gain the upper hand on your opponents by selecting Alliance, Company, or Improvement tiles. Some are more popular than others but there’s many different ways to go about it. This coupled with the different starting positions (similar to GoT) are great. Not only is your homeland never the same, you start the game with randomly placed control tokens and each war begins with 10 randomly placed Neutral counters on the board. This helps to make each play a unique experience.

I strongly recommend this game for anyone who has a good group of gamer friends that enjoy Euro-game mechanics, History, and talking smack with a Russian accent. The strategy is deep, and each War is palpable. It leaves you wanting more, its price is incredibly low for what you get, and I can’t say enough about it.

The only thing I don’t like about this game is the low production quality. The money is really bad, we use poker chips instead. I’m not saying what you get for the price is bad; everything (except the money) is very nice and adequate. I will just hold out hope for a deluxe edition with little army men, little flags, maybe some cannons, and cool little boats.

~VonRoo