Designer's Comments

The wheeling and dealing at the greatest congress of the 19th Century.

This was game which grew out of the political side of Master of Europe. The briefings were pretty well written so the thought came to mind of just doing the political game following the abdication of Napoleon. There’s absolutely no operational side of the game at all. One of a very small number of megagames which requires only a single person to run it. I’m pleased to say that it inspired Dave Boundy’s brilliant Washington Conference megagame. A pity there’s so few multi- party political discussions on big subjects which fit this type of game; if there were I do more lots of this style of game. Summing up the often complex political problems and background isn’t easy but it is very enjoyable and well worth the effort.

As it was clear that the teams would need to get together and co-ordinate periodically, I introduced the concept of a fixed ‘team time’ where players couldn’t interact with other teams and had to focus on reviewing their progress.