This is a fantastic game with ooodles of replayability, the cards are well made and the artwork is very good. Due to the large amount of shuffling required during your game it is advised that you sleeve the cards (no mean feat as there are 500 of them!!)
You only play with 10 Decks of cards, which means there is a lot of potential combinations available and the rule book has suggested scenarios to play out. You also have a randomiser deck which has one of each type of card allowing you to draw the 10 decks at random.
You all start off with the same hand of cards and each turn you have a hand of 5 cards you use to play an action card (if you have one and if you want to play it) and follow its effects then buy a card from one of the piles, these can be higher value money cards, action cards or Victory Point cards. You use various combinations of action and money to buy a hand of cards that allow you to buy higher value VP cards or specials that give you VP's based on (for example the number of cards in your hand). The aim is to have the most VP's at the end of the game to win. However the trick is balancing the VP cards which have no other use (except in combination with some action cards) and the action/money cards. There are some cards that effect other players, some defensive cards etc. Each game is unique as it depends on what cards are available, the end game is triggered when 3 decks are exhausted or the province cards run out.
This game plays quite quickly, is very easy to pick up and you always want to play another game. It is just FUN!! I recommend this to anyone for their collection.
