I’ll admit the box didn’t sell me, the cover art is a little busy compared to how gorgeous the actual card illustrations turn out to be once you’re playing, and I know I’m not the only one who almost passed on this one for that reason. What kept me in was somebody describing it as El Grande with a card drafting engine bolted underneath, and once I understood that comparison the whole design clicked, area majority as the core scoring, but every action you can take comes from a small hand of drafted cards rather than a fixed menu, which changes the whole texture of planning a turn.

Teaching the basic rules takes maybe fifteen minutes, do what the card says, control the most territories, and you’re most of the way there. What takes longer to teach, and what a lot of new groups miss on their first game, is that the Deeds mechanic, the way you actually win by claiming specific achievements rather than just holding the most land, is the real engine of the whole thing, and skipping it or not explaining it clearly leads to games that drag on forever with nobody able to close it out. Explain deeds properly up front and the pacing improves enormously.

The player count swing here is real and worth knowing before you buy. At two players it plays fast, tight, almost chess like, calculating exactly what your opponent can and can’t do based on the cards you know they don’t have. At four, the same drafting depth that makes it sing at two starts producing kingmaking, whoever’s about to win gets ganged up on by the table, and games can run noticeably longer without that tension paying off the same way. I’ve had a rating swing in my own head depending entirely on which player count I’d played most recently, which tells you something about how differently this plays depending on the table.

Four stars. Best at two, still very good at three, and I’d think hard before bringing this out at four unless everyone at the table already knows the cards cold. The combat is genuinely mean, you will lose clan members most rounds, and if you can’t make peace with that, this isn’t the dudes-on-a-map game for you. But the drafting alone is worth learning.