Viktory II

I have a copy.  The inf, arty, cav, and ships are extremely well-done  (sculpting and casting).  The two sizes of houses (for towns and cities) are very clean, too, but quite “plain.”

Read the game design notes at the site and follow the link to the pics of the pieces and you can see good close-ups.

You build a world of hexes, different size worlds for different number of players, and start with a town, which gives an infantry unit.  Move and start new towns, and upgrade towns to cities, which give an inf plus one other unit (inf, art, cav, ship…depends on type of land hex the town/city is on).  Number if towns and cities owned is always directly related to number of units you have.  Once all possible town/city spaces are occupied (cannot be adjacent) the fighting starts in earnest.

Okay combat system.  The most interesting thing to me is the shift in power when a town/city changes owner, because there is a loss of units to one side and a gain to the other.  If you lose units in combat, but don’t lose your town/city, they get replaced because that direct relationship between cities/towns and units is always maintained (kind of a reset every turn).

NOTE:  I have only played this solitaire!

There are LOTS of pieces…in his game notes on the site, he states that he studied how many of anything anybody could (reasonably/mathematically/statistically) ever need, and he supplied that many in every color!  I think it’s available for four or six players, with more pieces and more hexes (for a bigger world) in the big set.

If you want Napoleonic looking pieces, it’s worth it just for those.