Mayfair Games’ Self Declared Epic Game ‘The Colonists’

For a game to so unabashedly call itself epic, it must be pretty good.

The Colonists is a resource management and worker placement game which has the players settling new lands in the name of the emperor. Each player is a mayor of their village and must develop the land around them to allow their citizens to work. Throughout the multiple eras of the game, players must create jobs for their citizens through education and expansion while maintaining enough housing and working the land to farm enough food to feed everyone.

The Colonists is designed to allow various levels of play and depth. This gives the game a very wide range of playtime from 30 to 240 minutes.  Through a variety of various tiles to place and workers to move, every choice you make will affect the rest of your game. While other worker placement games allow you to move your workers where ever you choose, in The Colonists, you workers can only move so far each turn. Thus, where you choose to build your improvements takes on a while strategy itself.

The Colonists was the 2017 UK Games Expo Best Strategic Game Winner.

via Mayfair Games

The Colonists – $90

The Emperor has tasked you with founding a glorious new colony in his name! Send your steward out into the countryside, build residences and attract colonists to this new settlement! Attracting colonists is not enough though, you must also find jobs for them and educate them, allowing simple farmers to progress to citizens and finally to wealthy merchants. Build embassies to establish relations with distant lands and grow your colony into one that will earn the Emperor’s favor!

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Contains:

• 62 Places tiles
• 202 Building tiles
• 72 Embassy tiles
• 8 Warehouse extension tiles
• 36 Storage Facilities tiles
• 4 Market tiles
• 4 Basic Storage Upgrade tiles
• 1 Starting Player tile
• 16 Steward tokens (in 4 different colors)
• 120 Colonist meeples
• 55 Dollar tokens (various denominations)
• 40 Tool tokens
• 440 Resource tokens (brick, coal, robes, wood, clay, ore, planks, iron, food)
• 140 Improvement cards
• 28 Market cards
• 4 Balance cards
• 4 Era cards
• 1 Round card
• 3 Overview cards
• 4 Community boards
• 9 Colony overviews
• 1 Scoring pad
• 1 Rule book
• 1 Introductory rulebook
• 1 Appendix

• 1 – 4 Players
• 30 – 240 Minutes
• Ages 12+

How will you run your colony?

Author: Matt Sall

Matt has loved games of all kinds his whole life: board, video, war, roleplaying, and card. He's worked as a writer for BoLS since 2017.