Designer: Hisashi Hayashi (Trains, Trains: Rising Sun, Yokohama)

Artist: Ryo Nyamo (Sail to India, Trains, Yokohama)

Publisher: Tasty Minstrel Games (Amun-Re, Aquasphere, At the Gates of Loyang, Belfort, Chimera Station, Colosseum, Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done, Eminent Domain, Gentes, Gold West, Gugong, Homesteaders, Luna, The Oracle of Delphi, Orleans, Ponzi Scheme, Rialto, Scoville, Village, Yokohama)

Genre/Mechanisms: auction/bidding, set collection

Funding Status: At the time of this posting, Emperor’s Choice Deluxified Edition is already fully-funded.  In fact, pledges currently total more than 1.5x the initial funding goal with 1 day left to go on the campaign.

Player Count: 3-5

Solo Mode: no

Complexity: heavy

Risk: low

What It’s About: Help Emperor Qin Shihuang build the Great Wall in 221 BC; amass troops and carriages, recruit philosophers and academics, and collect important literature.

How It Works: Emperor’s Choice is played over 6 rounds, with each round sub-divided into the following 4 Phases: Auction, Management, Imperial Decree, and Setup. During the Auction Phase, players bid for turn order using their Character Cards and Soldier Cubes. Once a player passes, they may NOT re-enter the bidding on a later turn. Character Cards are worth the amount of power as printed on the card; Soldier Cubes are worth 1 power each. Players may only increase the bidding by 1 Character Card each time bidding cycles back to them. When a player passes, they trade their Character Cards and Soldier Cubes in for the tile with the highest value; this way the last player in the Auction Phase will acquire the tile with the lowest value and go first in the following phases.

During the Management Phase, players take turns based on turn order, the lowest player going first. On their turn, players choose one action from among the following: Gain Qin Dynasty Tiles, Use Immediate Effect Tiles, Collect Income, Use Imperial Treasure Card Effects, and Resupply. To Gain a Qin Dynasty Tile, the player simply chooses one from the the tile display and places it in front of them. To Use the Immediate Effect Tiles gained this round, the player simply triggers them, receives the indicated items, and discards the tile. A player must trigger all Immediate Effect Tiles in their possession when taking this action. Rewards gained include 4 Emperor’s Trust points, 1 of 3 Royal Treasure cards, 3 Gold, or Choosing a Policy card without an Executed Policy disc and scoring it. To Collect Income, players gain 1 Gold per Castle Tile (or if the Extravagance Policy is face up, instead gain 1 Gold per Canal tile). To Use Imperial Treasure Card Effects, simply activate any number of Treasure Cards the player owns. And to Resupply, players do the following actions, up to one time each, in any order: Recruit a Character Card, Hire Soldiers, and Increase their Palace Level.

During the Imperial Decree Phase, players score and flip Policy cards based on the following steps: identify the player with the highest Emperor’s Trust, with any ties broken by the smaller turn order tile; the identified player chooses one of the two Imperial Decree tiles, carries it out, and flips the tile over; the player reduces their Emperor’s Trust points 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 10 points depending on the round (1-6); repeat the process, and the identified player executes the remaining Imperial Decree (it can be the same player who executed the first tile). In round 6, proceed to end-game scoring; for all other rounds, proceed to the Setup Phase. During the Setup Phase, players draw more Qin Dynasty Tiles and refill the display, flip all Auction Withdrawal tiles and Imperial Decree action tiles to their face-up sides, discard all Character cards in the Recruitment Display and refill the display, and advance the Round Marker.

At the end of the game, players score the following: the front of all Policy Cards, one time each, from left to right; gain VP equal to half of each players’ Emperor’s Trust bonus points, rounded down; gain the amount of VP shown to the right of their player disc on the Palace Level of the Palace Board; gain 1 VP per Gold token; score all the game end effects on Character Cards; gain 3VP for each Imperial Treasure card the player possesses; and gain VP as stated on the Tribute Cards. At that point, the player with the most VPs is declared the winner, with ties broken by the player with the most Character cards, then by the player with the highest single value on one of their Character cards, and finally by the player with the lowest turn order tile.

Comparisons:  Other games in TMG’s Deluxified line includes Chimera Station, Crusaders: The Will Be Done, The Flow of History, Gentes, Luna, and Yokohama. Of course, the best comparison is Yokohama, also designed by Hisashi Hayashi. Gameplay is somewhat similar, and also involves a point salad of scoring centered around set collection.

What Should I Pledge?:
$100 Emperor’s Choice Deluxified: one copy of the Deluxified version of the game.

Add-Ons:
None.

KS Exclusives:
TMG’s Deluxified games are always KS-Exclusive. You may seem them sold at conventions, through the publisher’s website, or occasionally at retail only if the retailer pledged for the game via the Kickstarter campaign. Other than that, copies of Deluxified TMG games are not sold at retail

All-In Total: In the continental U.S., you’re looking at $100 for the Emperor’s Choice Deluxified plus $10 shipping for a total of $110 .

Emperor’s Choice Deluxified Edition completes its Kickstarter on Friday, November 8th and tentatively ships in October 2020.