Empires of the North plays until someone reaches 25 points. Each round consists of a Lookout Phase, Action Phase, Expedition Phase and a Clean Up phase. The art also serves a functional role. The roads leading to our settlements, for example, serve as a clever hint as to the type of place they are depicting – so that the settlements in the bottom row will have roads only go up, roads on the top row only go down, and if you see a card with roads going in both directions you’ll know that it needs to go in the middle row.

I love the original Imperial Settlers game (in fact it’s in my all time Top 6 Games), so while I was excited to see this standalone game, I had my doubts if it could live up to its predecessor. But all those doubts where cast aside after my first play of the game. As I played it more it became more and more clear: This game is simply put amazing! It builds on Imperial Settlers and takes all the feel and parts I loved about that games and make it into an even better experience. For me this is Ignacy Trzewiczek’s masterpiece. The digital version of popular board game – Imperial Settlers Roll & Write from Portal Games. The app contains settlements from Competition Set and 14 Adventure sets from classical board game. More will be added soon! Use Clan Action Pawn – A player can place one of their clan action pawns to perform the displayed action. Actions include explore, harvest, populate, sail and construct. When performing this action any cards that a player has in their hand that has a “explore/harvest/populate/sail/construct to build” can play their location card first before performing the clan action. Players can also spend a vegetable to move their clan pawn one space around the wheel giving them the option to perform another action. This then exhausts that clan marker. It is worth adding that Imperial Settlers scales very well, with all player counts being equally enjoyable. Naturally, the four-player game will take longer than a two-player one, but owing to the fact that players take each action in turns, it keeps them engaged and the downtime is minimal. Players will continue with the four phases until someone reaches 25 points. If a players reaches 25 points in the action phase then the rest of the round is played out. If a player reaches 25 points in the Expedition Phase then one more full round is played. Players score one point for each card in their empire, one point for every two resources and one point for every gold. The player with the most points is the winner. Final Thoughts on Empires of the NorthIf you can get past some of these issues, there’s a fun game here. I almost think Empires of the North is better for players who don’t know the Imperial Settlers base game, but I’m really not sure who this game is for. I’m only a few games in with Empires of the North, and this already has me excited to play the base game once again. Rounds four and five can often take as long as the previous rounds put together, but at the same time the game does not outstay its welcome. It can be easily played in under one hour for the experienced players and under two hours for the beginners, and the slow beginning to the game ensures that it is accessible to the latter right off the bat.

Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North is a stand alone game set in the Imperial Settlers universe. It’s not compatible with the original Imperial Settlers game. Created by Ignacy Trzewiczek it does share some mechanisms with its predecessor, and is still very much a tableau / engine building game. But what’s it like? And is it any good? You’ll soon find out. What is Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North like? The fifth action on the wheel is the Sail action, where you can send one of your two starting boats on an Expedition to either Pillage an island card for resources, or Conquer an island card to take the card into your tableau and grant your Clan an additional action in future rounds.Imperial Settlers was a great game. I really enjoyed it. Empires of the North takes it to another level. There is enough new additions and tweaks to the previous game that really makes this one shine. If you liked Imperial Settlers then I am pretty sure you will like this one even more. Well, there are plenty of things that I like that feature in other Roll and Writes. Things like the limitation of the rounds, and that you have so much to do, maybe even too much to do, in the goes given to you. As a result, good choices need to be made. I like that everyone plays at the same time so nobody can copy your moves. In this game you must make your own mind up on what is the best path to take. I like the special abilities of the favour tokens, and these can bring in real differences for you and your opponents and how they play.