<< So, anyway, before I lay out the cash and encurr the wrath of my significant other (and undermine my own righteous lecture on frugality and the need for a secure retirement), anybody got any comments on these games? Ease of play, suitability for children, quality of miniatures, etc...? >> Opinions on AGE OF IMPERIALISM vary. I suppose what you think of the game depends on your tolerance for badly written rules and play mechanisms that make you wonder whether the game was ever tested with them or not. One gamer I know was rather incensed at spending this kind of money for what is, esswentially, a game kit. I can see his point. There are a lot of interesting ideas in AoI, not least of which is that, with some liberal rules interpretations, the game is playable in a semi-reasonable amount of time and does not require either an electronic calculator or a CPA to figure out. And, again, depending on your tolerance factor, there IS fun to be had with the game. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things that are downright annoyances. The biggest of the game's fault, in my opinion, is the value of the Native Armies you have to get rid of. Each of the board's provinces starts with a native counter and a resource counter. These are face down and are only revealed when someone enters the province to attack it. However, the values of the NAtves are so high as to make it impracticable to even attack them. In some instances, a Native army can be stronger than Britain, France, and Prussia combined (and this is not an isolated vase). As I recall, optimum strategy is, instead of initially building armies and infrastructure -- all the things you seeming SHOULD be building -- you buy a bunch of explorers (or whatever they're called), who eliminate the natives by rolling higher than the Native combat value. (Which means you need to roll boxcars to eliminate the big boys). What further makes hash of the game mechanism is that most of the resource counters are blank (and its possble that some of the non-bank ones may never even get placed on the board). So you end up performing a ridiculous strategy for something that generally turns out to be pointless. Further, as I remember, the rules in the different versions sometimes conflict, so you kind of have to figure out which set of rules you are going to play withand often ending up mixing and matching rules from the Basic and advanced rules. I tend to agree that this is a game kit. There is the framework of an interesting system here but you're going to have to do a bunch of work to enjoy it. This is not to everyone's taste, particularly since this is not a $20 game. (Although some folks have said that the game is worth it just for the counters). There are people who do enjoy the game. I would put it int eh "Valiant Failure" category; maybe they'll put out a second edition rules set with it.