The Ming Voyages Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review The Ming Voyages, a two player war game published by Surprised Stare Games. In The Ming Voyages, the emperor is facing off agains the overlord in a game of treasure and conquest.

I don’t know much about Chinese history, but the background of the Ming voyages is pretty interesting. Apparently, the Ming Empire’s maritime fleet was more technologically advanced than that of Europe until the 18th century. According to legend, in the 1400s, Chinese treasure fleets circumnavigated the globe and discovered every continent except Europe. But is the gameplay as interesting as the history in this one, or has entertainment been lost to time?

The Ming Voyages is an asymmetric strategy game from Surprised Stare Games designed by David J. Mortimer and Alan Paull for 1-2 players and plays in about 30 minutes.

The two players begin a game of Ming Voyages by each choosing a side, either the Ming Emperor or the Barbarian Overlord. The Emperor’s goal is to complete 7 treasure fleet journeys while protecting the Chinese Borderlands from barbarian invasion. The Overlord will attempt to take control of the 5 Borderlands before the Emperor succeeds in making all 7 voyages.

The primary mechanism of the game is a single deck of multi-use cards that have both Emperor and Barbarian actions on them as well as a number indicating the command point (CP) value of the card. On a player’s turn, they’ll play a single card from their hand and use it in one of several possible ways. The most common usage will be to convert the CP value (1 to 3) into actions of a single type. Most cards in the deck have both an Overlord special action (top portion) and an Emperor special action (bottom half). So, if possible, the player can use the special