Greg J. Schloesser wrote in message <3ADC773C.BE39D0E3@earthlink.net>... > Michael Ward wrote: > > > But are the 64 Event cards still in the new version? The changes made to History of the World were all done with the idea of reducing the time length of the game and making it a bit more accessible to those folks who are not normally into these types of games. If you keep this in mind, the changes they have made do make sense. The good news is that, even with these changes, the game still has the same 'feel'. Further, following our suggestions, they are inserting a page in the rulebook for 'experienced' players, wherein they can play the game using the same rules as the original game. A brief listing of a few of the changes: Event Cards: These are now combined into 2 decks: Lesser and Greater events. Each player receives 3 Greater events, and 7 Lesser events. Optional rules provide for an equal distribution of Leader, Weapon and Minor empire cards. Game Length: The major efforts to reduce the lenght of the game involve 2 changes: 1) In combat, ties result in the removal of both armies. Bloody, but this has proven quite popular with everyone who has played so far. 2) You can only leave one army per territory (plus a fort). They have also reduced the strength of many empires due to this change. At most, this has shaved 30 minutes or so off of the game. It is still close to a 4 hour game. In my opinion, however, that is NOT a drawback. One more major change that I thought I'd mention. This concerns the situation in HotW wherein the leader is usually bashed by everyone else. Thus, one of the main strategies in the game was to hold back and NOT be the leader, making your run later in the game. Well, the new version adds preeminence chits. These have values of 3, 4, 4, 5, 5 and 6. If you are the sole leader following an epoch, you draw one of the face down chits and place it in front of you WITHOUT looking at it. At the end of the game, these chits are revealed the their values added to your total score. Thus, there is now a bit of an incentive to go for the lead. At first, I balked at this idea, feeling it added unnecessary randomness to the game. Following detailed discussions with Rob Daviau at AH, however, I now see the reason for these chits and don't think they are a bad idea. However, like most of the changes made, you can play without them if you desire. The game does look great. I was a bit worried that all those miniatures (which are different for each Epoch) would clutter the board, but they really don't. The colors chosen for the map are a bit bright and garish, but not overly so. They have also included small scoring placards for each region which really do help in calculating the scoring. Further, they have simplified the scoring system somewhat, making it easier to gain total dominance over an area. There have been other changes which I'm not as enthusiastic about, but they can easily be removed by those who prefer the original rules. Still, I think this is a fine effort and hope it does well. -- Greg J. Schloesser The Westbank Gamers: http://home.earthlink.net/~gschloesser/ Strategy Gaming Society: http://pages.about.com/strategygames