Virgin Queen

In Virgin Queen, I did not merely take England. I inherited a desk full of fleets, Catholic Scottish rebels, and the certainty that everyone else was plotting behind a diplomatic note. Our first encounter was wonderfully strange: the Ottomans opened an early route to the sea, the Protestants spread through the Netherlands, France arranged marriages, and the Habsburgs appeared committed to doing anything except stopping the Ottomans. Then we saw what Spain collects when left alone. That was when we all learned how the game worked.

Each power has its own route to victory, and that is the point. The Protestants apply religious pressure; Spain tries to hold Catholicism and empire together; England looks to the sea, piracy and openings; the other powers may put their effort into marriages, colonies, diplomacy, or even a glittering court of artists and scientists. Event cards and dice are not background colour. A successful marriage, a queen surviving, a rebellion at exactly the right moment, and the table belongs to somebody else.

Then you start wrecking each other’s plans. Piracy and naval battles around Gibraltar, attempts to secure the Queen of Scots, minor states tilting towards Spain, an English landing in the Netherlands: you are not playing alongside the others. You are playing on their nerves. What looked like a direct English military win was stopped by a Spanish card, treasure, and an Irish rebellion; that is the game in one sentence. The rulebook needs opening more often than it should in the middle of the noise, and England did not always give me enough to do, but the tension never lets the table go to sleep.

By the fourth turn, it was all or nothing. England and Spain both went beyond 25 points, only to lose on the final card to a Protestant religious victory through 50 regions. I was tired, particularly as I ended up looking up most of the rules questions, but it was the good kind of tired: the kind where you remember who betrayed you and precisely how. Virgin Queen is large, demanding, and vicious enough to keep the final card in conversation long after the table has been cleared.