Eight Minute Empire Apk

[Heike Fallago]

Eight-Minute Empire continues the deluge of digital board games arriving on Switch. This torrential downpour of tabletop experiences has seen both highs and lows, but the ease and simplicity of its gameplay makes Eight-Minute Empire worthy of consideration for fans of the physical game or the mobile version, even if those qualities are also its greatest weakness.

At the end of the game, you score one point per region where you have more troops than your opponents. You score one point per continent where you control more regions than your opponents. Finally, you score points for collecting sets of resources like gems, lumber, and vegetables. Throughout the game, you will know where you stand in relation to the other one to four players, and this transparency helps you plan your next move. All this said, the core gameplay is quite simple and accessible, and each game does indeed take about eight minutes. Achievements round out the package and provide some incentive to play solo.

Thank you for checking out my thirteenth review. My aim is to focus on reviewing board games and how they play for two people and, on occasion, how they play for one person. Because my wife is my primary gaming partner, a lot of consideration goes into finding those games that play well with 2 players, and we typically prefer to find those games that do not require a variant (official or otherwise) in order to play it with just the two of us.

Eight Minute Empire: Legends is a game designed by Ryan Laukat and is published by Red Raven Games. The box states that it can play 2-4 players and has a 16-32 minute play time (Yes, it is highly unlikely that even two experienced players can play this one in eight minutes, but that is still a short game!).

Eight-Minute Empire: Legends is a quick game that implements the Civilization/Exploration theme using card-driven area control (by placing armies and cities in a small map) and set collection (by getting abilities from the cards). Players spread through the map in order to collect points at the end of the game by having majorities in regions and continents. All actions (such as land or sea movement, army production, or the founding of cities) are driven by cards that are face-up (six at a time) and available by increasing prices. Cards also belong to sets, which also give points when the game ends if properly collected.

The changes in the setup are there for two players. Once the boards are arranged and the starting area token is placed, each player puts six cubes in that starting area and then a cube from each player is placed together in one region on another board. This is usually done by the person who set up the board. Then each player takes five cubes from an unused color and the players alternate placing one of these neutral cubes in a territory until all ten are placed somewhere on the board. Each player is given 12 coins and the game will go until both players have purchased 11 cards.

The game plays very differently with two than with 3-4. The neutral armies pose no active threat in terms of removing your armies, but they do count when looking to see who has control of a territory at the end of the game. Additionally, the added coins for each player makes it possible to make a few more large purchases over the course of the game, and having 11 cards at the end makes it more likely that a player will have a respectable number of points collected from sets. Cards such as the Noble and Mountain cards, which require having all in the set to score the points, become a little easier to collect. However, not all of the cards in the deck will appear in a 2-player game so there is a chance that the card you really need will never appear (or come too late to be able to afford it).

The artwork on this game is insanely gorgeous. Everyone talks about the art of Ryan Laukat and his games, and if this is a sample of his work then sign me up as a fan of it. The maps on the boards are interesting enough, but each of the cards are unique yet common names in there are themed to where they make sense together visually. The gameplay might be buying a card to add/move cubes on a map, but the artwork makes this game feel like a fantasy game.

I hate dummy players. They are boring and often unimpactful on the game apart from a diversion or something to set back your own engine from getting underway. This is one of the few games where I think it actually enhances the 2-player game. I love that you both can put five cubes out, taking turns to do so. You might spread them out, or pile them up on a really valuable space. The former is my preferred strategy, because this game has very few ways to score points. Two of those is controlling a territory and controlling the most territories on an island. Every neutral token placed makes it that much harder to score those points, and there are so few cards in the deck that allow you to destroy an army cube. Most games will see 7-9 of those cubes still out there at the end. Which means you need to count them in your plans to control territory even though they are passive in their presence.

There are four map tiles and they are all double-sided, so you can change the layout from game to game. You can also choose between the standard T setup or having them all in a long rectangle. But with using four maps every game, and only a total of 8 choices, they start to feel too similar. I imagine that picking up the Lost Lands expansion will help to increase the variability of the boards, and there is still enough to satisfy, but a little more variety would have been welcome. With shorter games we like to play best of 3 matches, and having the ability to see four unique islands out for each of the three games would be ideal!

Those scoring cards are just not that great. I understand how they work, and I like them better than the Authority cards in Star Realms. My wife absolutely hates the card and refuses to use it. A small point track with rows of squares where a cube could fit, going from 0-25 or so, would have been able to serve the same purpose and might have been a little easier to manage for the players. Again, these cards are fully functional, easy enough to understand and use, but they are a bit more fiddly in the scoring process because of how they are laid out and used.

I love empire building games. Taking your tiny starting civilization from its meager beginnings to a an empire that stretches across the known world is a thrilling concept. If you want to to create an empire, there are many choices out there already: Civilization, Through the Ages. The problem with most of those is you have to earmark a few hours at the very least to get through the game. Well, no longer. Eight Minute Empire seeks to let you conquer the known world a whole lot quicker. Can you really create an empire and conquer the world in just eight minutes? Read of to find out!

The game play in Eight Minute Empire is brilliantly simple. It has to be to claim an eight-minute playing time. The goal of the game is to spread your troops out from the starting region and to control as much of the world as possible. The game will play over a set number of rounds and each turn, a player must draft a card from six available. Then he takes the listed action on the card. The actions range from moving troops to adding more troops to founding cities. The card a player drafts will also contain one of five resources that will give a player victory points at the end of the game. After the specified number of rounds, the player with the most victory points wins (based on areas controlled and sets collected).

Also included is a deck of cards for player actions and set collection during the game. Finally a number of cardboard tokens are included. Everything fits well inside the small box. I also want to point out that the artwork on the cover is fantastic: beautiful, vibrant watercolor-like vistas. I wish there was more of it throughout the game.

2. Take the action on your card (optional). These actions will range from adding more troops to the board, moving troops around the board, or founding a city. When you place troops on the board, they have to be placed into either the start region or a region containing one of your cities.

After a player has taken his action, the cards at the top of the board are slid to the left to fill the space vacated by the chosen card A new card is drawn and placed on the right of the current cards. Then the next player takes their turn.

I should mention that each of the action cards also has one of 5 resource symbols on it. The more of a certain resources a player has, the more victory points that set is worth at the end of the game. So players are not only just trying to control areas on the board, they are also trying to collect sets of the five resources.

The game ends after a set number of rounds (based on the number of players). At the end, players will total up their victory points, based on how many territories a he controls and how much his sets of resource cards are worth. The player with the most points is the winner.

So does Eight Minute Empire really take eight minutes to play? Actually yes, you can play a full game in eight minutes. Does that make it a weak, filler game? Hell no! I actually really like Eight Minute Empire and part of that love comes from its simplicity.

In those quick eight minutes, you will have many hard decisions to make. First, you only get about 7-13 total turns (based on the amount of players) so each card you choose on your turn will be extremely important. Do you take the card that lets you move a troop across the ocean or do you grab that third gem resource card for the extra victory points? And then there is your limited stock of coins. You will have one more coin than the number of rounds in the game, so you have to spend them wisely. One or two turns of choosing the expensive 2-3 coin cards will quickly drain your bank account. Grabbing that useful card early in the game for two coins will mean that in the later turns, you might be forced into taking the free, useless card.

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