Subject: Fw: Dark Emperor: Any good? Gilbert Benoît wrote in message <3A059199.33660D99@home.com>... Dave wrote: > > Hi, > > Looking for some info on Dark Emperor, the Avalon Hill game - is it any > good? Anyone played it at all? There are no reports on Boardgamegeek, > which is my usual place to check out games. > I have played Dark Emperor. The game is certainly intriguing. Whether it is good is something else. It is a two player "simulation" game (i.e. in that respect, similar to SPI's War of the Ring), but this is awkward when the world being simulated is entirely the game designer's own creation, rather than reality or a well known work of fiction. The designer is a geologist (I think), and wanted to create a world not affected by plate tectonics. Basically, the map consists of meteor craters linked by thin strips of land at the edges. The idea is interesting, but makes for an awkward map. The rules are not well written. I do not own the game myself, but I have two friends who do. They could never figure out the rules, so that task fell to me. After several readings, I figured it out, although some parts are still unclear to me. Basically, the game involves both military strategy and diplomacy. Politically, the world is divided into several independent kingdoms. The Dark Emperor's evil minions then suddenly materialize out of their netherworld, and attack one of the kingdoms; the others remain neutral. The "good" player then has to send an envoy from the beleaguered land to travel to the other countries in order to convince them to join the battle. I would certainly play again, if I could find anyone willing to! ;-) Gilbert Benoit Ottawa Subject: Fw: Dark Emperor: Any good? Allan Rothberg ... Dave, The other post was, in part, correct. The map does seem like somebodies idea of what a meteor molded planet surface would look like. The rules aren't all THAT bad, but AH never had a reputation for the best rules authors out there. (Victory Games is another matter, they had what may have been the best written wargame rules.) Mechanically the game is fairly simple, movement and combat, etc. Play is pretty much as described. There are a handful of smaller kingdoms and one large kingdom, the Empire, arrayed against the Dark Emporer. All start neutral and the DE can pick them off one by one. However, as more and more small kingdoms fall there is an ever increasing chance the Empire will join the fray. The DE has to take cities and such to maintain a population base to suppotr all his vampires, so there is an incentive to attack for the DE. There is plenty of color in the game. There are magic using leaders and a selection of spells they can cast. The landscape is dotted with old battlegrounds where the dead warriors can be resurrected. There are neutral leaders that can be coerced into joining your alliance, attrition (nasty bad attrition), naval movement, magic items, and more. I have only played the game solo, and it was a bit stale, despite all the above. I suspect if I ever manage to play if ftf it might be a lot more exciting. I'd be interested ot hear of other peoples' ftf experiences with the game. The AH General (well, the now defunct AH General) has two articles on the game. They are in issues 34-3 and 26-1. I never read them, so I have no idea as to their content aside from the titles of the articles (24-3,Dark Night Strategy,Strategy,37,Player's Notes for Dark Emperor,Greg Costikyan. 26-1,New Wars for Old,Variant,19,A Variant for Dark Emperor,Glenn Rahman.) Allan Subject: Fw: Dark Emperor: Any good? orben AEgidius Mogensen wrote in message <8u65c0$mcn@grimer.diku.dk>... >"Dave" writes: > >Looking for some info on Dark Emperor, the Avalon Hill game - is it any >good? Anyone played it at all? There are no reports on Boardgamegeek, >which is my usual place to check out games. I'll add a few comments to what was already said: 1) The game has its origin in classical hex-based wargames, so the rules are somewhat complex by todays standard. 2) The game seems unbalanced. The Dark Emperor has little chance of winning unless he gets very lucky early on. 3) The other player has very little to do in the first part of the game. 4) The attrition rules seem somewhat over the top: You can basically not move anything without a significant risk of losing a significant fraction of your armies. While the latter may be done to give the DE a chance (since it mostly limits how fast the opposing player can organize his resistance), it works against him too. Torben Mogensen (torbenm@diku.dk)