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Gray Eminence (Kickstarter – Deluxe Edition)


60m - 90m

2 - 5 Players

Ages 15+
This mechanic requires you to place a bid, usually monetary, on items in an auction of goods in order to enhance your position in the game. These goods allow players future actions or improve a position. The auction consists of taking turns placing bids on a given item until one winner is established, allowing the winner to take control of the item being bid on. Usually there is a game rule that helps drop the price of the items being bid on if no players are interested in the item at its current price.
Auction/Bidding
Card drafting games are games in which players pick cards from a limited subset, such as a common pool, to gain some advantage (immediate or longterm) or to assemble hands of cards that are used to meet objectives within the game.
Card Drafting
Hand management games are games with cards in them that reward players for playing the cards in certain sequences or groups. The optimal sequence/grouping may vary, depending on board position, cards held and cards played by opponents. Managing your hand means gaining the most value out of available cards under given circumstances. Cards often have multiple uses in the game, further obfuscating an "optimal" sequence.
Hand Management
In games with a trading mechanic, the players can exchange game items between each other.
Trading
Voting allows players to influence the outcome of certain events within the game. The vote may be all or nothing, choosing a target for an effect, or to determine the results of certain situations. Players’ votes may not have equal weight, and blocking a player from voting can be a valid tactic.
Voting

Deduction

49.00€

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Board Game Geek Reviews


  1. 3 out of 10

    Big, big KS dissapointment. The good: the theme is great. Few games even attempt this, let alone make it work. The idea of tweet cards, factions such as CIA and Wikileaks is awesome, the USA centric power balance is smart, and last, the mechanic of playing cards for common good - from a common pool, personal gain - from a personal pool is neat and fun. Art is very thematic, I love it. Then you start playing: 1) You have a scenario with objectives. Well, the objectives have a production mistake (i.e. "search for #this hashtag.. there's no such hashtag 2) A mistake in goals?... wow.. ok, let's go to setup first.. "Replace UN with Iran, UN is out of the game" , fine! .. then... half of the scenario cards say: "When this happens.. UN gets -1 influence" ... Seriously !? 3) Ok nevermind, let's look at my neat character.. he has his own goals: "If India is neutral..." Wait.. there's no India !? !$%$## ... There are tons of misspelling errors, there are reference to tweet cards with a blue tag.. but there are no tweet cards with blue tag.. there are missing or wrong icons everywhere.. it just goes on an on, so players quickly get the feeling that nothing in the game can be trusted: "is it a feature, or a bug?" *) On top of all that there are serious graphic design issues: the most important text on a BIG card with enough space in it.. is the smallest font!, same for icons in action cards *) There are serious balance problems.. objectives are very random both in points and in condition (some of them you get and need to do nothing to score, while with others you have to bleed out). Actions, while fun, are very chaotic and swingy.. So to conclude the big rant.. The game was obviously scarcely tested at design stage, and it seems it was NEVER TESTED after first production. A very high amount of cards have errors (20-30% or more). Worse still, a game with so many moving parts NEED A LOT OF TESTING to be a balanced race. This game is not tested, specially the "deluxe" scenarios. It should get 1 star but it's one of those game that I seriously WANTED to love.. there's so much potential in it.. and while my group hated it.. me and my GF actually had a pleasant time playing it (3 and 4player count) even through all the obvious mistakes and lack of balance, just because of the theme and we wanted to play something that requires little thinking (which the game is not designed to be, but due to huge imbalance and problems, ends up being the only way to play it) At $59 + delivery I feel also a tad.. unhappy about the acqusition component wise. If this company doesn't do a reprint and make up its backers for this mess.. then avoid at all costs..

  2. 3-5 players 60-90 minutes Strategy Action Queue, Auction/Bidding, Hand Management, Open Drafting, Trading, Voting

  3. 6 out of 10

    This is an ambitious design and, paerhaps, inevitably works better in some parts than others. Perhaps best played over a few beers in an evening when the satire might be best enjoyed. Certainly worth giving a go if you ever get the chance.

Be the first to review “Gray Eminence (Kickstarter – Deluxe Edition)”

Gray Eminence is a 3-5 player game lasting 60-90 minutes, in which players take the roles of powerful puppet masters in the modern world, each working towards common goals as well as their own secret agenda. Each shadowy figure uses money, power and influence to steer the course of multiple factions toward their own inscrutable ends.

Gray Eminence does not pretend to observe political correctness or historical accuracy but rather aims to induce discussion about the world we live in. We also claim that all events in the game are plausible and event resolution options are within the range of real-world possibilities. We do not, however, pretend that our event resolution options cover all possible eventualities – If you find that you end up discussing event resolution options we didn’t list, that would count as a success in terms of our game design.

The person with most progress toward their winning conditions at the end of the game wins.

An éminence grise (French pronunciation: ​[eminɑ̃s ɡʁiz]) or grey eminence is a powerful decision-maker or adviser who operates "behind the scenes" in a non-public and unofficial capacity. In this game the players adopt roles of the gray eminences working toward their own victory conditions. It’s a game about intrigue, politics, bluffing and (questionable) morality.

—description from the publisher

Ages

15+
Players

2 Players, 3 Players, 4 Players, 5 Players
Play Time

60m – 90m
Designer

Timo Multamäki
Mechanics

Action Queue, Auction/Bidding, Scenario / Mission / Campaign Game, Card Drafting, Hand Management, Trading, Voting
Theme

Bluffing, Deduction, Negotiation, Political
Publisher

Dragon Dawn Productions
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