Dominations: Hegemon

Description

First of all, the Hegemony tiles. These tiles are essentially a new common objective system that replace the ordinary Objective cards in the game. When playing with the Hegemony tiles, players do not draw a personal Objective card at the start of the game as they normally would. Instead, they will all be trying to satisfy the demands of the Hegemon. These demands are determined by drawing three Hegemony tiles, which will each have a criteria based on Cities, Knowledge cards and colours of Nodus. Players will then battle it out for dominance over each objective dictated by the tiles: at the end of the Age, the player with the highest number of each of the 5 criteria is awarded additional victory points! In the case of a draw, no player gets the points – the Hegemon is only interested in the best…

However, as time passes, old leaders shall fall and new ones will arise… The start of each new Age will bring a new Hegemon to power, and their demands could be very different this time around! Two of the objectives are constant: the number of Monument levels in your possession, and your Influence score. However, the old tiles will be shuffled back into their piles, and three new tiles will be drawn. As a result, your objectives could remain the same (at least in part), or change completely for the next Age!

This new mechanic brings a whole new dynamic to the game, making it both more interactive and making players decide whether to adjust their strategy during the game to gain additional points (or at the very least stop other players from scoring them), or concentrate on their initial plan! But with a possible 150 Victory points to be won over the course of the game (5 objectives per age, each being worth 10 points), you may have to be a little opportunistic if you don’t want your opponents to score them all!

The Hegemon expansion also introduces Omen cards to the game. Will these portents bring hope or despair to your Nation?

This deck of 48 cards (24 different Omens in 2 copies each) comes into play each time a player closes a Locus (a wheel of 6 dominoes), or reactivates a Locus using the Inventor Character card. As well as scoring their additional resources in usual manner, the player who closed the Locus also reveals an Omen card. These Omens bring additional conditions to the game, which can be good (such as bringing you additional resources or extra actions) or bad (by causing you to lose resources or destroy your Cities).

These two mechanics can of course be played separately, or both at once. Either way, they give a very different feel to the game, making it much more challenging with constantly changing conditions!

So, if you’re an expert player looking for more replayability and an additional challenge, this is definitely the expansion for you! The Hegemon expansion will come in its own box, with an insert that will allow you to draw and display Hegemony tiles and Omen Cards easily throughout your game, check out the concept in the image below, and let us know what you think!