Empire: The Macedonian Punic Wars, 350-150BC

Too basic for my tastes. Commendably delivers plausible outcomes in a very portable package with minimal rules (though the many combat DRM exceptions are a bit of a pain)

As part of Lost Battles Deluxe. Very simple. Very limited decision making and lots of luck. But nice as a framework for lost battle campaigns.

Counters have been mounted,maps in 2 parts on card-stock. 8-page rulebook (looks fragile). Clever mechanisms with the situation at the end of the game giving an historically accurate situation. Could be used as a campaign system for a game like Ancients (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1782/ancients). Otherwise, this could be used as a filler / introduction game.

Very simple and straighforward game that give players a very general and abstract overview of the struggle of empires during 4th and 3rd BC in the Mediterranean and Middle east. The playthrough starts with a random revolt activation followed by a chit pull activation. Essentially each player rolls one die per turn to see if they are successful or not in his expansion designs. Solo well despite being a bit repetitive but I need to have a experience with four players to rate it. Components (card map and counters) are very poor, the 2 pages of rules are straighforward and clear, accompanied by two more pages of Designer notes plus one table for Revolts and one for Campaign DRMs. It is beyond my understanding why the SOA does not publish this title as a PNP version! Each turn represents 10 years with 20 turns total.

Can be played in 45 minutes. AAR: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2914222/empire-macedonian-punic-wars-350-150-bc-illustrate

Ordered it. Very curious on how it works. :)

UPDATE Played a couple of full games on Vassal. Very simple strategic wargame. Your choices are important as well as taking advantage of new situations that arise. If Alexander doesn't go to great lengths to KILL the Persian Empire it will win with an astonishing amount of points. After the Persian empire has been killed it is up to the Roman to kill both Carthage - easy enough - and the Macedon empire - a little more difficult.

Nice little game but I cannot imagine to propose this to my group, it may be easily played solo. I'd prefer to have at least a nibble more of meat on this one.

UPDATE Played in three and had a lot of fun! This is getting to a solid "8" for me. :)

Included in Lost Battles