I saw Empire Engine on Miniature Market during a really good sale; I think it was only $1! Since the game is so small and it was such a good price, I picked up two, in case we ever wanted to play with a bigger group. If your family enjoys resource management games, war/empire themes, or if you want to work on working memory, Empire Engine would be a great choice for you.
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Game Components
The game is composed of five cards per player plus two extra, a collection of very small colored cubes, and an instruction booklet. The extra cards are a round tracker and a first player card. Each player recieves:
- Left engine card
- Right engine card
- 0/1 Gear card
- 2/3 Gear card
- Reference card
- 1 red cube (soldier)
- 1 yellow cube (goods)
Players place their engine cards appropriately in front of them (L card on the left, R card on the right) and their starting cubes to their left, in their “ready” pile. As the game progresses, players will also accumulate score cubes that must be kept separate from their ready pile.
How to Play Empire Engine
On the first turn, each player freely chooses how they want their engines to be oriented. They will be taking the actions shown along the top of each card. On every other turn, players must use their gear cards to turn their engines.
The left engine card has the following actions:
- Arm (add 2 soldiers to your ready pile)
- Salvage (1 cube of any color from the stock to your score pile)
- Produce (add 2 goods to your ready pile)
- Attack (use 1 soldier from ready pile)
The right engine card has the following actions:
- Invent (add 1 invention directly to your score pile)
- Defend (if attacked, block 1 attack and add 1 soldier directly to your score pile)
- Export (all goods in ready pile moved to score pile)
- Attack
Players can only export or salvage if they are not successfully attacked, so they must consider their opponents’ actions and possible risks. The goal is to get the most cubes in your score pile; resources in your “ready” pile only count if there is a tie.
While I love the small size of the bag the game comes with, there are very small pieces (46 cubes) so it’s not suitable to be played around small children or anywhere it would be easy to lose the pieces. Other than that, though, it’s a fantastic small game for older kids.