Successors (Fourth Edition)

Fourth Edition Successors arrives as a properly fed beast: a huge map, miniatures, careful production, and all the polish Phallanx could reasonably apply. Its subject grabs you at once and makes no effort to be subtle: Alexander the Great’s successors are fighting over the throne, and over who gets to bury him.

At heart, this is a heavy CDG, with cards and generals defining your position in a contest for power. The random initial distribution of generals matters a great deal, so you need a few games with the same group before you properly understand what you have been handed and what you should be pursuing.

You are not merely gathering forces here: you are playing to bury Alexander and seize the throne. Battles are murderous, the cards can be decidedly nasty, and your opponents are not there to keep you company; they are there to shift the ground beneath you just when you thought you were secure.

The new, doubled rulebook genuinely helps with learning — a respectable B in that department — but it does not help enough when you need to locate something during play. Our first outing took around five hours including teaching and food, and the repeated rules searches brought the expected fatigue. This is not a game you unfold casually to see what happens.

For a large group with time, appetite, and a willingness to return to the same battlefield, Successors is a demanding but wonderfully lively clash of successors.