Empire’s End Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Empire's End, a game where you struggle to keep disasters at bay for your civilization. Published by Brotherwise Games, Empire's End is also designed by John D. Clair.

Empires rise and empires fall. It’s an inevitability that’s happened time and time again throughout human history. From the overextension of the British Empire to the inner divisions of the Roman Empire to the inability to establish peace by the Mongol Empire, whether from internal strife or external pressure, these entities are meant to break.

Empire’s End is a new two-to-four player design from John D. Clair and is published by Brotherwise Games. It asks players to control an empire at the height of its power only to find destruction on the horizon. Do you have what it takes to thwart the disasters that await? Can you salvage the ruins using innovations and military might? Or is your empire, like all others before it, on the brink of utter annihilation?

The height of your empire begins with eleven healthy locations randomly arranged by the starting player. All other players match their locations to this setup. Each empire begins with two of every resource type (wheat, axe, hammer, and coins which are wild), a private screen to keep these hidden, as well as a hand of four disaster cards.

There is a central board that displays the phases of play and these alternate between four distinct options. A phase is fully completed before the time tracker moves to the next phase. Once this reaches the end of the track, players score based on their healthy locations as well as any end-game innovation bonuses.

The disaster phase happens immediately and begins the decline of your empire. During this phase, a disaster card is drawn, and it shows which location is being targeted for destruction. The disaster card also features an innovation that is obtained by the player who takes it. The first player may either accept this disaster or pay a resource. Each disaster has a different resource requirement.