After the Flood

Description courtesy of BoardgameNews.com

After the Flood – a three-player game that’s set in Sumeria, with players using regional resources to trade for goods not produced in the area while also building short-lived empires for long-lasting victory points.

“Certain mechanisms were created with three players in mind,” says Wallace. “You score an empire, then remove it, so you can try to maximize points on your turn without leaving yourself in a position to get hit on following turns.” This design sidesteps the problem of a third player winning a game due to fights to the death by players 1 and 2, but that bug becomes a feature in another part of the game. Competition among the players for goods and army strength is relative rather than linear; having twice as many dudes collecting resources won’t net you twice the number of goods, so getting into an arms race with one opponent might hurt the two of you together and advantage the third player who can spend resources on better things.

Controlling different cities gives you different bonuses, with the bonus being based on the history of the city itself: Sippar lets you trade more, Babylon counts for additional armies, and so forth. Combat in the game is dice-based to avoid deterministic battles in which you can guarantee victory simply by piling up more troops, although size does have its advantages.

Game Summary

Like Wallace's other games Liberté and Byzantium, players don't represent a particular faction/nation. Instead, the game covers a long period of history (~1500 years in this case) and players temporarily control empires as they rise and fall. Score VP at the end of each turn (~350 years) when the empires fall. Players start with several resources and 2 workers in their available stock, and workers in the irrigation and weaving boxes. Each turn follows the same steps:1. Collect Resources (grain and textiles) based on relative rank of workers in the irrigation/weaving. Then take 8 workers to available stock (total 10 at start of game). Move all workers in Scribes and Toolmakers to the left (and "Unused") side.