Friday, February 17, 2012

Eminent Domain








Eminent Domain is one of the top releases of 2011 and with good reason it is absolutely fantastic!!!
The designer is Seth Jaffee and its US distributor is Tasty Minstrel Games.

The goal of the game is to gain the most influence points which is done in several different ways:

1) Settling planets
2) conquering planets
3) trading goods into the bank
4) gaining them trough actions

Eminent Domain is in the deck building  genre of games. What this means is that throughout the course of the game you will be purchasing cards off the board to add to your discard pile which will in turn be shuffled back into your deck, thus building your deck as you go.

The mechanics of the game are flawless and everything you can do in each of the phases of your turn with the cards is printed in the cards which is choice.

One each players turn there are three phases they are:
1) The action phase: This is only done by the player who's turn it is or better known as the leader. It is optional and they pick one of their cards in hand and do the action on it. Once again all the information is written on each of the cards.

2)   The role phase: This is mandatory and the lead player will pick a role card on the center board pick up one of those cards and perform the role on it they can augment this with cards from their hand with the same symbols (found in the corner of the card) to boost the effect. They will get the leader effect of the cards. Then each of the other players in turn can either follow suit by doing the "role" on the card which can only be done from cards in their hands not from the board that is reserved for the leader. Or they can dissent and draw a card from their deck.

3) The clean up phase semi optional: The leader can now discard any number of cards they want and draw back up to five cards, or the leader can just opt to keep all their cards which is usually a better choice if they have more cards in hand due to dissenting in previous players turns.

The game end is triggered when 2 of the piles of cards on the main board are depleted although the round is still played until all players have taken their turn.  The player with the most influence wins the tie breaker is goods.

This game is great with a lot of re-playability and can easily be played in the 45min suggested on the box unless you are playing with total turtles. The components are very well done and the card stock is nice and sturdy. The game plays with 2-4 players and is great with 3 and 4! 

Here are my plays:http://www.boardgamegeek.com/plays/thing/68425?userid=312147


Click here for more information: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/68425/eminent-domain

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