This is a resource-management game with a war theme.
The theme of this game evokes two years of the 30 Years War.
Each player starts out with a number of countries and a number of armies in each country. Player order is determined randomly at the start of each turn.
A round is made up of four turns. Three of the four turns are made up of 10 phases. The last turn is a scoring round.
At the beginning of each turn, an event indicates what good or bad things are happening in general: lack of troops, good harvest, harvest failure, commercial bonus.
The order of the 10 phases is determined randomly, and only the next five phases are known at any time. The phases include ones for building up an army in a country, creating buildings, harvesting, income, and attacking. Many of these require a cost.
Players choose the countries in which to carry out each phase ahead of time. Then players carry out their phases in turn order -- everyone gets to reveal the country in which the phases occurs before moving on to the next phase.
During the scoring round, each player reduces grain. Any players who come short on grain faces revolt. Players score the number of countries they occupy and the number of buildings in those countries, additionally adding the value of buildings if he has the majority of that building type.
A novelty of this game is a combat tower. Players resolve battles by dumping the fighting armies into the tower. Armies may get stuck in the tower. The number of armies that come out the bottom of the tower determines the victor of the battle.
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