by Jon Høj
Abraham Lincoln built the pyramids, Mahatma Gandhi created Gladiator Combat and Columbus invented the GPS. Re-write history as you pit your civilization's historical leaders against your opponents in order to establish the most influential civilization in the history of time. Oh and there’s also aliens.
Presentation
- Time: 30-45 min
- Players: 2 – 5
- Language: Danish/English
In Great Leaders, each player will take control of a civilization and it’s 13 historical leaders and over the course of 4 epochs will try and become the most influential civilization in the world, by developing their nation, creating global end game objectives and allying with powerful aliens.
In each epoch, players will draft 3 cards from a common card offer. Players will simultaneously bid 3 of their remaining leaders towards establishing a draft order in which cards are drafted from the common offer. Drafted cards goes into the players civilization where they count toward the final scoring after the 4th epoch, in a tableau building style.
The offer cards come in 6 different suits (science, culture, economy, politics, military and wonders) and each suit scores influence points in different ways. Additionally, all leaders have a favorite suit and a leader bonus. If the leader is used to draft a card of a suit matching their favorite suit, the leader is also placed into the players civilization, thus unlocking the leader bonus. The leader bonus can either be additional progress icons, end game scoring effects or immediate effects that alters the current game state.
Great Leaders is a competitive blind bidding drafting game, with simultaneous play that ensures a fast pace, where players constantly are engaged with interesting decisions. Players must keep an eye on their opponent’s civilization and try and guess what cards they need from the offer and what leaders they will play to get them and then play around that. Finally, the theme and using a leader out of their typical remit, creates many fun and quirky stories.
About the designers
Jon has been designing games since 2015, but as a father of 3, some periods have been less active than others. This is the first year he has a game at Fastaval, as well as the first year he is attending Fastaval.
He prefers heavier games with a rich theme to get lost in. His all-time favorite games are Mage Knight and Sid Meir’s Civilization the board game.
When not designing games, he works in a playground company where he creates quirky play spaces that aims to invoke the children’s fantasy.
Kasper has played board games for more than 40 years. As a science librarian he loves to deconstruct games and scrutinize what makes a game bigger than the sum of its parts. He favors strategy games with historical settings. Kasper first Fastaval board game design “Witch Hunt” won an Otto for best board game and was published as “Pagan: Fate of Roanoke” in 2021.
