About this deal
The only two on top of my head would be Lords of Waterdeep‘s Scoundrels of Skullport and Viticulture’s Tuscany. A tech dial for each player, when advanced, gives you access to more powerful focus cards to replace existing ones. In this fast-paced and approachable adaptation, players guide their nations in a race for territory, technology, and game-changing wonders. You can send trade caravans across the map to collect trade goods and gain new abilities through diplomacy.
You might surround yourself with natural wonders, allowing you to plop world wonders in your cities like flowerbeds in a garden. The default way to play for this reviewer will be for players to build the map from scratch thereby adding even more fuel to the conflict in the game. This new 2017 Fantasy Flight and 2K Games collaboration is designed by James Kniffen and has been reworked with the introduction of a new player focus system.
At the start of each game, players draw a random leader card that they will embody for the duration of the game.
Examples include attack or defense bonuses as if the two Civs are allied, additional trade tokens and extra resources etc. I like it enough for the things it does well but dislike it in equal measure for the things it does not. Predictably, as the tech level of your cards increase, so does their relative power/ability (caravans move further, you can place more control tokens, your military strength is increased, etc) and of course, the further they are along the Focus Bar, the more powerful they become. I even started to create them by myself… I like the focus row mecanism, it’s very original and satisfaying. No longer are players caught unaware of some stray control token that threatens their entire empire.
There’s even a hex-gridded map with plastic miniatures, control tokens, terrain types, and barbarians. However, true leaders want their civilization to not only survive, but thrive by advancing their pursuits and completing agendas. That passion of mine urged me to express my hobby in more tangible way, thus The Boardgames Chronicle (https://theboardgameschronicle.