After the Empire: Competitive Medieval Fun
A fun and intriguing board game with cards, resources and building.
Set up a colorful board filled with options for gathering resources, cards for bonuses and more. Be careful to build your castle before the invasion!
Choose your region (with you be the North men or the vikings?) Then start your castle of wood and begin to upgrade. But beware! At the end of every round – after you have made your selections for that round, you will be attacked! Your castle may or may not make it with your soldiers and mercenaries.
The Set Up:
- Main board piece
- Shows the multiple options you have to select per turn if you want resources, want a card with a bonus, buy soldiers or mercenaries,
- Personal board for castle
- Choose a faction with the color for your pieces
- Set up your farms, wood frame of your castle and your character meeples, take your initial resources of grain, iron, wood and stone
- Gain one card for your main quest and one card for your player
- Cards
- Set up your stacks of scout cards (a task you can take that helps with movement and bonuses)
- Card types of medical,
- Meeples
- Army attack cards
- Resources
After the Empire Game Play:
Your goal: To gain the most money without your castle being ransacked. Easier said than done! You may have all the resources in the world but if you don’t have enough soldiers to fight off the invasion at the end of the round, you may be ransacked and lose it all!
This is a fast paced game that is always changing and always adding intrigue. You may make the perfect choices to have the most grain or soldiers for the fight, but then catapults come in and you lose your walls. You are ransacked and have to rebuild. Never fear! You can gather more resources, feed and heal your soldiers and get back to building but it’s going to set you back money, time and resources. How will you make it to the best build in time before the rounds are over?
The Challenges & Intrigue of After the Empire
Multi Layered Resource Management
Players must juggle food, wood, stone, and iron for hiring troops, building structures, and upgrading fortifications. Balancing economic growth and military is vital and challenging.
Constant Threat of Invasion
Each round escalates with barbarian attacks and raids (using cards you flip over per round). Predicting attack directions and reinforcing defenses accordingly creates strategic tension. One miscalculation can cost you the whole building fortification you just made!
Castle Customization Complexity
Rebuilding a castle involves modular construction (walls, towers, gates). Efficient upgrades are critical but can become overwhelming.
Player Conflict & Timing
There’s no attacking each other but plenty of attacking. Players compete fiercely for key worker placement spots. Choosing between economic gains and turn order (first player advantage) often involves difficult trade-offs to make you the first to win your battle.
Uncertainty & Hidden Information
Invasion cards introduce a mix of known and unknown enemy forces, creating suspense and risk assessment decisions that require intuition and adaptation.
Our Board Game Pick & Why
This game has a mixture of everything we love about board games. Strategy, intrigue, excitement, challenge and constant changing. Fun for kids too! But recommended for 12+ since it requires quite a bit of planning and detailed organization of materials.
Visually Satisfying Castle Building
Players can physically construct and upgrade castles using miniature walls and towers that are decent quality heavy plastic. It’s highly tactile and provides a rewarding sense of progress as you battle and build.
Dramatic Fun That Builds on Itself
The blend of economic rebuilding and military defense captures a post-collapse medieval atmosphere well. The constant back and forth is adventurous and fun.
Dynamic Tension Between Rounds
Every round feels like a mini-puzzle. You must grow economically, prepare defenses, and read opponents — the rising stakes and decisions you make affect everything – but it all unfolds before you know it!
Multiple Strategic Paths
Players can focus on military superiority, economic efficiency, victory points via objectives, or even mercenary recruitment. No one-size-fits-all strategy means replayability is high.
Interplay of Risk and Reward
Choosing when to invest in risky upgrades or military expansion often makes the difference between failure and victory. The game rewards bold decisions but at what risk?! You never know.