Inca Empire: The Card Game

Sometimes the good perfumes really do come in small bottles. Inca Empire: The Card Game takes the idea of the Z-Man game of the same name—roads, temples, and imperial ambitions—and squeezes it into a much lighter, faster package that still gave me comparable satisfaction.

The game lasts five rounds. In each one, players acquire a set of cards through a semi-draft process and then use it to develop roads and cities. The central aim is to have built your network well enough by the end to make the most of your hidden goals.

Although its first impression says “easy card game,” it asks for a little more thought and planning than you expect. Interaction mainly comes from draft choices and from everyone building their own structures around their objectives, rather than from any aggressive edge. The rulebook is not especially helpful, but it never pushed me to the point of calling it a real problem.

On the table, though, the finale can turn into something of an archaeological dig. With more than 200 tokens spread over the cards, the display takes on a mildly chaotic charm, and final scoring is not the most elegant ending. Do not play it somewhere windy. Otherwise, it is an honest semi-filler with plenty of replayability: friendly enough for a holiday group that is not entirely made up of gamers, yet substantial enough not to feel like mere entertainment until the next game.