Planet King in search of followers
El Rey Planeta is a 1-2 player card-driven game in which you play as King Philip IV of Spain. Your goal is to ensure the military, economic and diplomatic growth of your empire while also tending to matters of your personal family life. The game is available on pre-order from Phalanx Games' website and will get published if at least 300 people place an order.
There are two types of cards in the game: Events and Characters. The Characters deck consists of Nobles (politicians and military leaders), Ladies (queens, court ladies and concubines), and Geniuses (artists). Each round is divided in three phases: Organization, Events, and Administration. In the Organization phase, you simply prepare the decks for the current round. In the Events phase, you resolve the Event cards, and in the Administration phase, you execute a series of 'end of round' actions, such as tracking prestige, happiness, and victory points.
In the Events phase, you draw Event cards from the deck you prepared for the round, and resolve them one by one. When an Event card requires a 'fortune check', you draw another card from the deck and use the fortune icon on that card to determine if the result is green-positive, yellow-neutral, or red-negative. This phase ends either when the deck runs out, or when you have played 5 action and war cards as Events.
Some Event cards will involve military actions and wars against Holland, England, France, the Ottoman Empire, Portugal and the Barbary Islands. Wars are resolved by comparing the strength of the armies of each side, and then performing as many fortune checks as the strategic factors of the enemy leader.
Other cards will give you the chance to take political or personal life actions such as choosing a new mistress and having a child. Over the course of the game, you will be gaining points that will contribute to your final score. After the Administration phase of the last round, you calculate your victory points, and check your level of victory against the ranking provided by the rulebook.