For the Emperor Game Review

Earlier this year, I reviewed a game called Katmai: The Bears of Brooks River. It wasn’t bad, but it was the kind of title that was just enjoyable enough to be quickly forgotten. I liked the main mechanic, though—players use a hand of cards to create dominance at one of the seven tiles running along the middle of the board. Each player would place one of their hand cards on their side of a tile, and at the end of a round, players would score based on the tiles they won.

The artwork was exceptional, but as a design I thought Katmai was only okay. When I read the rulebook for the new Allplay title For the Emperor, I was shocked to find that For the Emperor was an even lighter version of Katmai, which itself was a riff on the Reiner Knizia game Battle Line, which is a riff on Knizia’s earlier game Schotten Totten.

So, if you know that family of games, you know For the Emperor. Players have a deck of nine cards, with three cards in hand at any given time. Each card has a strength from 1-9, with most cards also having an ability that triggers when played or at the end of…

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