Street
Date: December 18th!
GFX96757
A
Study in Emerald 2nd Edition
$59.99
SRP
It
is 1882, and the Old Ones are already here.
They
arrived seven hundred years ago and have been ruling the planet ever since. The
majority of people just get on with their lives, accepting their monstrous
rulers. However, a growing band of revolutionaries wish to free mankind from
their slavery. These freedom fighters call themselves the Restorationists. A
secret war has already broken out between the Restorationists and the forces
loyal to the Old Ones. The invention of dynamite has changed the balance of
power, and a lone assassin now has the capacity to destroy an Old One. In this
shadow world of assassins, informers, police agents and anarchists, nobody is
quite sure who is who and which side they fight for.
The
game A Study in Emerald draws its central plot from the award-winning short
story penned by Neil Gaiman, in which the worlds of Sherlock Holmes and H.P.
Lovecraft are combined to telling effect. However, to create a world detailed
enough for players, much has been added from real history. The nineteenth
century was a time of unrest, with many colorful characters fighting both for
and against the authorities. A Study in Emerald is the outcome of the merging
of these three worlds.
Deck-building
forms the core of the game. You use influence cubes to bid for the right to
draft cards and take control of cities. Each player has a secret identity,
either a Restorationist fighting against the creatures or a Loyalist attempting
to defend the status quo. Which side you are on determines what you score
points for. An additional twist is that the performance of other players on the
same side as you can stop you from winning if they are doing particularly
badly, so you really want to know who is on which side. More specifically, when
the game ends – and this can result from multiple causes, such as a marker on
the War or Revolution track hitting 15 or the assassination of a Restorationist
player agent – then the sides compare their scores; which side has the lowest
score automatically loses, then the player with the highest score on the
remaining team wins the game.
This
second edition of A Study in Emerald sports new artwork by Ian O’Toole and
Tatiana Kuzilova along with a streamlined set of rules that will hopefully help
those folks who found the first version a tad complicated. Inconsistencies have
been removed and the number of available actions has been reduced to the
minimum, whilst still retaining the mood of paranoia from the first edition.
2-5
players
Ages
13+
60 minute play time
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