Review – Empire’s End

I would make a bad emperor, I think.

I’m not the quickest of thinkers, and when disasters happen (as they always seem to), sometimes you have to be quick on your feet, dealing with the situation at a moment’s notice.

The perks would be fun, though.

But the disasters thing is kind of a deal-breaker.

In Empire’s End, your empire is crumbling as disaster after disaster happens, though you can always bid to see if the disaster can maybe affect one of the other emperors out there instead.

The game was designed by John D. Clair (one of my faves) with artwork by Kwanchai Moriya. It was published (or the Kickstarter fulfilled, anyway) in 2023 by Brotherwise Games.

Near the end of all empires, as they fall into the ashes of history, disasters of all sorts can happen. Rebellions, outside invasions, earthquakes and massive fires, the works!

In the game, you have an empire that looks exactly the same as all of your opponents’, at least at the beginning.

How it morphs into something else, and how much of it is destroyed, is dependent on how the game goes.

Because disaster also brings innovation!

At least in other aspects of your empire.

What the hell am I talking about?

Let’s take a look.

Empire’s End is a “managed destruction” game, which I have never really heard of.

However, it uses a mechanic that I don’t think gets used enough, the No Thanks mechanic of bidding to avoid taking something bad.

The first player randomly distributes their empire tiles in columns 1-11 and all other players have to match that.

Then the disasters begin, or at least the game, which is full of disasters (really, is this Ancient Rome in 475 AD?).

Phases of the game are as shown on the main board in the middle of the table. Usually there will be disasters to bid on (bid to avoid, anyway, though you may decide you’re ok with it) but there will also be production, wars, and phases where you can build stuff!

The disaster mechanism is the beauty of this game, though. Using the No Thanks method of “bid something to avoid taking the card”, players will bid resource to pass it along to the next player.

The main board has a 2-player side which I haven’t used, but the side I have used has either 3 or 4 players on it. In a 3 player game, there are many “1 disaster” phases, but in a 4-player game, almost every one of them involves 2 disasters.

That can be brutal, though there are 4 players to spread the disasters among.

What am I talking about?

In a disaster phase, one (or two!) disaster cards are flipped over and put up for auction.

Each disaster has a resource that can be bid to avoid taking it and destroying one of your empire tiles.

In the picture above, both of them require food (because sick people want food, I guess). If you don’t want to take the disaster, you have to place a food on it, assuming you have some (each player has a screen hiding what resources they have available).

If you can’t bid, then you have to take the disaster. Coins are wild, they can be any resource.

If you take the disaster, you have to destroy the empire tile in that disaster’s position number (shown in the top right corner).

However, as a bonus, you get all of the resources that were bid to avoid that disaster! If you let it go a few rounds, then you could get a lot of food, or hammers, or swords, or whatever.

You also get to place the disaster as an innovation on one of your healthy empire tiles. Because we all know that disaster brings innovation.

The innovations are at the bottom of the disaster tiles.

Maybe the disaster will add to your military, like under the “8” spot above where you get extra military for each adjacent army.

You’ll be placing the disaster (placed so that you just see the innovation) under one of your healthy tiles and it will hopefully give you some benefit.

Some of these benefits are endgame scoring, or some will add to your production or industry phase, or maybe even the war phase.

That is the cool thing about this game. While your empire is crumbling to some extent, you can make the rest of your empire more efficient and possibly make it a huge point scorer at the end of the game.

That’s what “managed destruction” means, in that you choose which parts of your empire are going to crumble, and try to make sure you take disasters that will help you in other ways.

Look at position 4 in the above picture. The innovation below that tile is that during production, you get 2 points for each adjacent destroyed tile. In the picture, that means that each production phase got me 4 points!

The hard part is that innovation tiles only take effect when the tile they are under is healthy. So when disasters come up that will affect that position, you have to decide whether it’s worth making it so that innovation doesn’t trigger anymore.

Maybe if there are enough resources on the disaster? That’s assuming you have enough resources to keep the bidding going, anyway.

In that way, Empire’s End is also a resource management game in some way (though only in the same way that No Thanks is a chip management game).

You have to take a disaster if you can’t afford to bid.

As phases go by, you will get production (which will activate the green portions of your empire) and industry (the brown sections). Production will get you more resources to spend, and industry will let you spend hammers to either rebuild some of your destroyed empire tiles or build up to two of the innovations in your hand.

Yes, each player will have a hand of four innovation cards, which during industry turns they can build two of.

This lets you gain the innovations without actually taking the disasters, which is always preferable.

The other phase during the game is the war card. Whenever a conflict phase is entered, the top war card is flipped.

Players will have a number of swords based on their empire tiles and innovations, and then will bid additional axe resources that they have. The bids are secret in that you choose a number of axe tiles and put them in your closed fist. Then they are simultaneously revealed.

This is one minor flaw in the game, or at least the rules, which can be addressed at the table though it would have been nice to have it addressed in the rules.

The number of swords a player has determines what the result of the combat is.

In the above war card, if you have 4-7 swords, you get 4 points and get to reset one of your “one-time only” innovations.

If you have 8+ swords, you get 9 points and get to do the same.

If you have the highest number of swords, you get 3 additional points and a gold.

If you don’t have enough swords, you can lose victory points.

Those who don’t have the most swords/axes for victory will then have to do the “Upheaval” portion of the card, switching an Empire tile to the position mentioned (nothing happens if it’s already there).

Ties are friendly as far as victory goes. So if two players have the same number of swords and they win the battle, they get the 3 extra points and the gold.

In one of our games, players negotiated and said “I’ll only bid enough swords to reach the victory level if you’ll do the same.”

Thus both players (or all 3, I don’t remember) were able to get all of those extra resources and avoid the upheaval effect.

When this happened, part of me was thinking that ties should not be friendly, and thus negotiating like that wouldn’t be an issue.

Anyway, that Upheaval effect (along with an Industry phase ability to switch tiles if you wish) is where players’ empires can become different than others.

The “2nd highest value” empire tile can differ based on the disasters that players have taken, causing a lot of differentiation.

Once the game end is triggered (the last phase is entered), players get points based on their remaining Empire tiles as well as any endgame innovations that will give them points.

This actually demonstrates how there are multiple ways to victory in this game.

You can’t avoid having your empire crumble in some way, but you can make sure the disasters you take are worth it for the innovations they give you.

In my last game at Terminal City, I managed to keep a large part of my empire together and got a lot of points that way.

Robin had more of his empire destroyed, but he had a bunch of endgame scoring innovations and he ended up beating me 146-141.

You only have so many resources, but if you can manage them, or get lucky in having the lower-value empire tiles destroyed, maybe you can do well?

I love that you can go a number of different ways and still win.

The other thing I really like about the game, and it extends from my love of No Thanks, is that you get the resources that are bid on the disaster when you take it.

If the disaster is going to destroy a tile that you don’t care as much about as maybe your opponents’ do, then you can afford to keep bidding up that disaster, making them spend resources, before taking them all and putting that innovation in your empire where you want it.

Sometimes you’ll decide the innovation is worth destroying the tile that’s going to be destroyed.

Especially if it has a bunch of resources on it!

There is many a time where somebody takes a disaster and the next player says “I was going to take that if you didn’t.”

These types of decisions are what make the game for me.

Yes, it’s a game of managed destruction, trying to keep as much of your empire together as possible.

But it’s much more than that.

You’re managing the destruction, but in doing so you’re gaining resources and getting better abilities.

Sometimes that’s better!

It can hurt when you destroy your 32-point City, but sometimes it’s worth it.

Yes, there are random cards as the disasters come in a deck and players are also dealt innovation/disaster cards that they can build for their city.

Sometimes you can’t use any of those.

If you don’t like randomness, you probably won’t like this game. But the randomness isn’t that bad.

Some of my more discriminating friends played this game with me and actually enjoyed it.

I think that’s a well-deserved vote of confidence, which I happily share.

This is a game that I would play at any time, even though it can be painful to decide whether to destroy part of your empire.

Empires fall.

There’s no getting around that fact.

Let’s just see if you can manage it better than everybody else.

That’s the sign of a real winner.

If you get the chance to play this one, give it a try.

You may like it!

(Unless you’re like James, who feels for the fantasy people who are being displaced by these disasters…then you might not like it).

(This review was written after 3 plays)