“This is by far the most relevant and realistic board game in existence in my humble opinion.”-Spencer A.
Serious wargamers often overlook Supremacy. It’s just a beer & pretzels game, right? RISK with Nukes.
It works well at that but under the hood is a very sophisticated political, economic and military model of simulation! There is a lot more going on in this game than meets the eye.
What causes conflict and tension on the international stage? How do nations manage or mismanage it? How to wars start? How do you contain them and resolve them? These are some of the key questions that Supremacy raises.
Some games claim to model the war in Ukraine but they are missing one key element: No Nukes. If a nuclear exchange is not possible in the game, then it’s not a good model. That would be like playing Poker with no money. It misses the point.
Here is some other recent feedback we’ve gotten:
“Minors and Fortuna are a lot of fun. We just played for the first time yesterday. The minors have a mind of their own. A bit like having a NPC/CPU conducting independent actions. As Russia, I’ve had to work with my adversaries (US) in order to eradicate a pandemic in Angola with an ‘expeditionary force’ and take turns across the globe!“
Some people don’t like big multiplayer board games. There’s too much down time. What do you do while all the other players are doing their turns? You sit around being bored.
This is a HUGE mistake! The trouble isn’t that the game is boring. You just don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing. They don’t tell you this in the rule book. You’re just supposed to know.
Here are 5 Tips: While you’re waiting to move.
We’re using Supremacy here as an example but these same principles apply to most big multiplayer board games.
What to Do While You’re Waiting to Move?
No Phones
First of all, silence or turn off your cell phone. Our standing House Rule for board game night is: No Cell Phones! This is a great rule to adopt. If you just want to sit by yourself and check your posts, messages, etc. then go do that. You’re here to play a game right? Then play!
We think we ‘multi-task’ but we really don’t. Scientific studies show that we can really only focus on 1 thing at a time.
Besides being rude, it also hurts your play! There are a ton of things you’re supposed to be doing. In a FPS video game, this is obvious. How well would you do in Call of Duty if you spent 30% of the time on your cell phone? Just because it’s not your turn, doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to do. The game is afoot!
If you don’t have a House Rule for no cell phones, watch for players on their phone. Target them. They will be easy prey. They will always be surprised and unprepared.
Watch
How do you defeat your enemies? You attack their weakness. Avoid their strength. Great but how do you know what that is? You watch! This is your Intell operation. While they are moving, you should be watching them like a hawk. Every move. What does that mean? How can you best exploit that? In most games, there are pros and cons to every action. This is especially true in Supremacy. Here are a few specific examples:
1 Let’s say Japan moves first. The Market prices are high. They sell off all their resources. Ok, what does that mean? It means they just made a TON of cash. You’re not going to be bankrupting them anytime soon. (their strength) Economic pressure won’t have any immediate effect, but without resources, they won’t be able to build! THAT’S their weakness. They won’t be able to move and fire in a conventional fight. Now is your time to strike!! Invade. Seize their key factories. It will be several turns before they can respond. By then, it may be too late. Start planning your attacks now, while waiting to make your trades. How many resources will you need to launch these attacks? Will your production be short? How many extra will you need to buy? NOW is your time to think and plan all of this!
2 China builds. Fine but what do they build? A bunch of Navies! That is unusual for a land power. What does that mean? It means that they must have worked out some sort of diplomatic agreement with Russia and the Commonwealth. China trusts them. It means that they are about to project their power out across the sea, but to where? Watch their eyes. When they look at the map, what part of the map do that look at the most? All these clues telegraph their next intentions. Prepare now. Note also that if they built lots of Navies, that means they will be weaker as a ground force on land. That is a vulnerability. How can you take advantage of that?
Plan
If you get a chance, try to spend some time thinking about and planning your next move. This will speed up the game. It also minimizes the intell other players can pick up on YOU! While you’re moving, you won’t need to be looking at the area of the map you are going to be invading next. You already did that while they were distracted making their move. You won’t have to think.
What resources are you going to buy? Which ones to sell? How many? If you work out what you will do ahead of time, you will execute it quick. In a flash your turn will be over. Out of sight, out of mind. The less time they will all have to carefully watch you during YOUR turn.
Strategy management planning process flow chart showing key business terms analyze, develop, plan, execute and monitor
Diplomacy
As with planning, you can also conduct diplomatic efforts while other players are moving. This can help to speed up the game. It gives you something to do while you ‘wait’ for your turn. It can also be a huge advantage.
Coalition and Alliance building is key in Supremacy. This is also true with most multiplayer games. While certain players are distracted moving, now is a great time to launch sneaky diplomatic efforts. Build new allies! Point out to neutral players the ‘aggressive’ actions of the player that is moving. While distracted, they likely won’t hear or be able to defend themselves.
This is also a good time to chip away at their alliances. Sew doubt in the minds of their partners. “Are you sure you can trust them? Do you see what they just did? I hope they don’t double cross you! That looks exactly like something a player would do before they attack you!”, etc.
Interference
Can you influence and alter a player’s move? You bet! What are they doing? Is that what YOU want them to do? What exactly do you want them to do? You know what your plan is now right? Ok, so what would be the best thing for them to do for YOUR plan? What would make your job easier? Yep, add this to your planning mission. After you have your own plan, you need to have a good plan for all the other players too! Friends and foes.
You’re getting ready to launch an attack on the EU this turn, right? Well that attack would go a lot easier for you if they were short on minerals and couldn’t supply a committed defense right? Can you encourage them to sell more when they trade?
“Oh no. They are very stubborn. They would never do anything I suggest.” Good, then push them to do the opposite. Suggest that they buy lots of extra resources! “You never know when you might need them for a rainy day! You better not sell so much.”
–“Oh yeah? What are you trying to do? Make sure I miss out on lots of great windfall profits like everybody else? I’ll show you!”
Yep, they sure did, didn’t they?
See? Now you have so much to do during other player’s turns, that you’ll be hoping they take even longer! Soon you’ll wonder how you were ever bored while everybody else was moving.
The all new edition of Supremacy is now available for Pre Order! Should be a short wait. We are hoping to begin shipping in about a month!
What’s New in this edition?
First off, all new minis!!!!
We love these things! We had planned to do these with our original Kickstarter but it was just too expensive then. Looking back, I’m glad we waited. These ended up much higher quality than we could have done back then anyways.
Let’s see, what’s next? Ah, new tracks along the bottom of the map! No more tedious change counting for constant transactions. It’s kind of cool for your first game to have a fist full of $100 billion and $1 trillion dollars bills but that gets old quick when you have to count change. This cuts a lot of work out of the game. More time to focus on the fun parts.
Now this 1 track along the bottom tracks everything in 1 convenient place. No more Strategic Reserve cards getting jostled around. This frees up a lot of table space. I really like how you can now see at a glance what everybody has. Everybody’s resources and missiles are now all on the same big track:
All new rules. Combat has been streamlined and simplified. Lots of little changes that bring this back to basics. There are several new optional rules that you can add in now. My favorite is the Alliance rule!
You’re my Ally? Ok, good because now it really counts. Guess what? You can’t suddenly backstab and attack an Ally. It is against the rules!!! You must formally withdraw from the Alliance first. That gives me a turn to get ready.
Next, we have real terrain. It adds a lot of realism with very little complexity. This gives the Defenders an advantage while defending in mountains, jungles, etc. As it should be.
What are all those blue lines? That is a monsoon weather zone. Bad weather can greatly hamper conventional operations in different zones depending on the time of year:
Playing with these rules gives you a lot more realism and accuracy for a ground war. This is very fun to play as just a conventional world war game without any of the nukes.
These new rules aren’t very complicated. They are also optional, so you can still play a clean and quick, classic game format for new players.
We expect high volume on this. We will ship them in the order we receive them. We’ll be buried here for awhile but will do our best to get them out in time for Christmas.
Yes, we are revamping all the expansions as well. First out will be new Minors. We are going to combine this with Fortuna. New Terrorists minis for Rising Crescent. Also a new Boomers & Bombers with minis to fill our the nuclear triad. Those are all in the works. I’d expect to see those coming out by spring. We have to work through this new release first. We’ll get there! =)
Mercenaries and Legionaries. Do you have any plans to put this back out?
Howdy:
Boy, am I glad to see this game back on the market!!!
Thank you, guys!
Say, I used to have an expansion deck-box called: Mercenaries and Legionares. Do you have any plans to put this back out?
Thanks!
Sincerely,
JM
Thank you! Glad you found us.
We have gone through all the old expansion material, things covered by mercenaries, warlords, pirates, merchant marine, etc. and completely revamped them. We’ve taken the best parts and reorganized them into a new line of expansions. What we have now works incredibly well.
I highly recommend the Minors with the new Fortuna. The Minors gives all the neutral areas forces. Fortuna brings them to life with their own actions. The result is absolutely amazing!! Minors will build and get aggressive on their own. They will seize companies in their country and even invade their neighbors to seize their companies. This makes the game feel like the real world.
Rising Crescent adds a Terrorist player that can build terror forces anywhere on the globe. They can launch suicide, pirate attacks and even steal nuclear weapons.
The expansion with Subs accounts for the merchant marines and allows players to target resource transportation at sea.
We have 1 more expansion planned that will allow players to influence, control and manipulate minors. Also covering unconventional forces. Things like Coups, Civil Wars, assassinations, etc.
This is just a graphics test. We’d like to get some feedback before we continue down this road.
What do you guys think? Too busy? Too cluttered? Look good? Love, like, hate?
Let us know in comments below.
We have rules for weather zones as well. I’m afraid if we super impose weather over the top of this, it would really get confusing. Any ideas?
By the way, we made some major breakthroughs finally on the Cyber Deck / Unconventional War expansion yesterday. The rough draft rules should be finished today. I expect this Expansion will be done and released soon!
As it turns out, this was also the last piece we needed to make the 80’s Cold War edition work right. I’m expecting this to be done and released soon as well. Right now, we are seeing this as an expansion map and scenario. We think the same deck and pieces will work, so you won’t have to buy a whole new game to get a whole new game. That’s always nice. =)
Sure, I’ll be your Ally…. Why not? What is there to lose? What is there to gain? I can still attack you anytime I want. Players always talk about being Allies but it doesn’t really mean anything.
This is a problem that plagues most multiplayer games. Players can say anything. What will they do? If they can betray you and attack you at anytime, what good is an Alliance?
What if it did mean something? What if they really couldn’t attack you? It was in the rules! What if you also really got something out of it? You could combine forces and coordinate together for attacks. That would make an Alliance truly powerful.
We have developed some new optional rules that you can add to Supremacy. They do exactly that. They put real meat into an Alliance. They can’t just betray you. It is against the rules. Are they still willing declare an Alliance? This completely changes the game.
Where can you get these new Optional Rules? They are now included in our Diplomatic Kit.
IF
You were a Supremacy Backer
OR
Previously purchased the Diplomatic Kit,
Send us an email and we will send you a copy of these new Optional Alliance Rules for FREE!!
I really like the new Fortuna expansion. It doesn’t look like much but boy does it make a difference. Check out the recent AAR we got. It almost sounds like the real world. The new Fortuna rules really brings things to life. It is my favorite expansion!
Supremacy 2020 – game imitating global geopolitics
Epic global diplomacy/war/economic trading as the European Union acted to save Africa and the Middle East from an outbreak and later invaded Poland, Syria and the Sudan, Japan lost its company in Venezuela as Chavez armed the nation with a black market nuclear weapon seized and nationalized their economy, whilst the Russian Federation angered by China’s arming the Koreans rolled their tanks into China, the Commonwealth were the only ones to develop nuclear weapons and launched into Beijing nuking the areas there and destroying the Russian army group and did a naval invasion of St Petersburg.
Meanwhile the Russians invaded Turkey from the Caucuses to take over the company there for resources. Since the early discovery of valuable oil in Iran, which was in precious short supply, had the Commonwealth arm the Shah of Iran in exchange for oil supply contracts to protect their interests there.
The USA, crossed the Rio Grande and took out Mexico’s forces with fighter air power and won the game through the highest net worth and wily diplomacy and economic development of companies around the world.
Games where you do everything at once (trade, move, attack, build) and then the next player goes are considered old school. The downside here is that you have to wait a long time before you get to do anything. Especially if you are playing a game like Supremacy with lots of players.
The new way is to break this up into smaller phases where everybody plays together. So, each player trades. Then each player moves. Then attack, etc. This helps keep players involved and participating in the game more frequently. The new Supremacy 2020 follows this format but this method isn’t always good. There are down sides to it.
In many ways, Supremacy works better with the old school method. This is how you can easily Retro Fit your Supremacy game with old game tech:
Combined Turn Sequence
Salaries
All players simultaneously pay salaries and collect new resources, etc. as usual.
Player Turns
Randomly determine the next player to go by pulling chits as usual. During your turn, you Trade, Combat, Redeploy and Build all in sequence. Once you have finished all Steps, draw a new chit to determine the next player to go.
Note that launching Counterattacks, can still draw you in and give you something to do during another player’s turn.
Advantages to Using this Variant
Better Strategic Planning
A downside to playing together in broken down, incremental Steps is that it is hard to create and implement a coherent strategic plan. Everything is always changing. Often times your plan is ruined by time you get to move. It is almost better not to make any plans until it is time for you to do something. This variant allows players the time they need to think and operate more strategically. This is a much better fit for Supremacy.
Social / Diplomacy
In many ways the best part of Supremacy is the diplomacy: alliances and negotiation. With the new rapid fire format, there is almost no time to conduct this effectively. Instead of sitting around bored, waiting for your turn, this time gives players the perfect time needed to conduct diplomacy. This also gives you more time to socialize. Bringing people closer together to bond and connect is what games are about. Go with it and enjoy!
Teaching / Policing
Are people cheating? It is harder to track this and enforce the rules if everybody is moving at once or in rapid sequence. If you are the only person moving and everybody else is watching, you have to be on your best behavior. If you are a new player, this is a great time to learn and get coaching advice from other players. Players are usually too distracted to help in the current system.
Faster?
This may be counter intuitive but I suspect that the game will actually play faster this way. At the very least you are saving time by only pulling chits once per Turn, not every Step. I think players will also spend less time ‘thinking’ during their turn time. They have plenty of time to think while other people are moving. When they get pulled, they know exactly what they are going to do. They just jump right in and crank out their whole turn at once.
Try this out and let us know what you think. Do you like it better?
