Colonial: Europe's Empires Overseas

Colonial: Europe's Empires Overseas is a boxed game done by Christophe Pont for Stratagem Games. This is the Second Edition from 2013.

Colonial: Europe's Empires Overseas is a board game about colonial times, from the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution.

In Colonial players are the rulers of mighty European states and send their ministers to explore the earth, establish missions, ascertain scientific supremacy, and trade in exotic goods. These commodities will have to be exploited on an industrial scale and resold in Europe or in the colonies.

Set against an epic historical backdrop and using a branded Character Card-driven system, conventional dice and custom dice, this fast-paced board game requires careful management, knowledge, diplomacy and a degree of luck to lead to victory in the race for prestige.

 Exerpt on the "feel of the game" from Andrius is Lietuvos's BGG review of Colonial:

This is the strongest part of Colonial from my point of view. The World may be yours. But it will never be. Did you manage to explore a good territory? Well, wait for other nations to visit you. Were you lucky rolling the dice during the war? Get ready for an alliance to come after you. 

You may use all of the diplomatic methods you can think of here. Try to buy off the war with cash. Try to be good by shipping other player’s goods to the market and hope that when the time comes you will not be attacked. Even the map does not limit you much. You can start your game by going to Japan. If you are lucky, you will get there. But if not, all of the other moves that you planned can be ruined.

In my opinion, Colonial gives you wide range of options. But also, gives a lot of tools for other players to keep the balance. This particular quality delivers very realistic feel. Sometimes it reminded me of Catan. Will I be the one who will get robber when the 7 rolls? Or will everyone concentrate on the other guy who looks like doing better…? You may complain loudly that you are out of luck after several bad dice rolls. Well, maybe everyone will leave you be for a while. And that’s how the balance works here. And it’s brilliant.

Components:

• 85 x 66 cm game board
• 1 six-sided die
• 5 special six-sided dice
• 240 wooden counters
• 56 prestige tokens
• 35 Unrest/Mission markers
• 24 Treasury counters
• 5 Booming City markers
• 1 First player token
• 6 sets of 6 character cards
• 5 Nation cards
• 6 players' Nation cards
• 1 Rules booklet