So when it comes to the bidding phase, all players have an idea( more or less) of what bills their enemies have pocketed. In addition to exploiting spaces for resources, it’s paramount that you wrap your brain around the breakdown of the city. This one has enough tweaks to make it a worthy addition to the genre for sure, and any gamer who is also a fan of the film is certainly going to want to pick this one up. That designer is Eric Lang, who brings his ‘dudes on a map’ philosophy previously perfected in Blood Rage to the blood-soaked world of The Godfather. At three and four players the number of starting businesses is the same, which makes four players a restricted game.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Each player starts a game of The Godfather in charge of a set number of thug miniatures and a family member. The act closes with a struggle for control of the seven “turfs” in the city, using an area control mechanism where the player who deployed the most workers in a turf gets control, earning privileges as long as they can keep it and possibly cash at the end of the game.Play from a hand of cards that allow you to bump off other players, duck behind a car, make alliances and run off to Las Vegas or Italy. through to the climactic betrayal and deaths at the close of the gangster epic – you wouldn’t necessarily know it if it wasn’t on the box. The game builds in a way that results in the dramatic crescendo of the final act where the bullets really start flying. The only stumble here is the lack of image diversity in the job deck, but that's a minor quibble when compared to the exceptional table presence the rest of the components possess. There aren’t many games that combine worker placement, set collection and area control quite so cleverly, enjoyably at this.

I find some of the logos at the bottom quite distracting from the overall graphic design, but aside from that, the box is quite visually striking. Eric Lang brings the three layers of worker placement, area control and secret bidding together with a deft hand, each affecting the others enough to make your decisions feel impactful. This powerful effect feels quite fulfilling when you receive a handful of bonus goods, and it's a direct representation of the power that comes from ruling a local criminal hierarchy. Okay, okay—I've only played Agricola once, but The Godfather: Corleone's Empire matches mechanic to theme like no other worker's placement (WP) game I've played.This is a mob war, and any player who isn’t willing to get their hands dirty is going to find themselves rubbed out pretty quickly. Thugs are placed on businesses to “Shakedown” the front of the business affording them bonuses in the form of illicit goods, cash, extra job cards, or the ability to “Suitcase” money. While it’s certainly a beautifully done portrait of one of the most famous movie characters of all time having all of your job cards featuring it feels lazy. Production-wise, The Godfather: Corleone’s Empire is hard to fault: the board feels solid, the tiles and stackable counters feel good in the hand, and the decent-sized plastic miniatures (on different coloured bases to represent competing families) all look the part.

And yet while I found the Godfather to be an enjoyable game it always felt a little flat and lifeless.

Pick up the latest issue of the UK's fastest-growing gaming magazine in print or digital here – or subscribe to make sure you never miss another issue. The picture on the box cover is just repeated on all the job cards and the illicit good cards have very simple Art-deco styling that don’t really immerse me in the movie theme, and I find that a shame. I'll be honest, The Godfather board game isn't exactly super thematic in association to the actual film. Once the main action phase, Family Business, has come to an end it’s time to move on to the Turf War. Given the near-universal polish of the components and the somewhat fleeting inclusion of Don Corleone, it’s disappointing that the artwork for the job cards simply reuses the cover art showing Marlon Brando rather than offering similarly gorgeous oil painting renditions of the various events and actions executed by the players.

Furthermore, since businesses only have a single space for thugs there’s always a rush to grab resources for jobs before another player gets to them, although I did find the game to be a bit too generous with how easy it was to acquire the blood money, weapons and booze needed to complete jobs. Straining your voice to mimic Marlon Brando's “make him an offer he can’t refuse” line from The Godfather is an American pastime. SIMPLE STRATEGY GAME: This family board game is easy to get the hang of and only takes 30 minutes to play.But credit to Lang: it is put together very nicely and, thanks to the variable game board (due to the random new business openings every act), in a way that offers a lot of replayability. Originality: The Godfather mixes a number of familiar game mechanisms together in an interesting way: worker placement, area control, “stick it to your neighbor” card play, hidden and public individual player goals in the form of job cards, an auction.