Time to make you an offer you cannot refuse. Don Vito Corleone requires an heir, and only the best can impress him. Can your thugs do the trick?
In The Godfather, you are playing as one of five organized crime families vying for control of the criminal network in New York City.
Eric Lang is known for his “dudes on a map” games. He jokingly described this game as a “thugs on a map” game. The Godfather has a worker placement element to it or rather a thug placement mechanism. You place your thugs to shake down the fronts of local businesses to gain resources. You place your Don, or heirs to shake down the backs of local businesses because they can’t be involved publicly to gain different benefits.
The Godfather: Corleone’s Empire, is a 2-5 player game designed by Eric Lang and published by CMON. The game plays for 60-90 minutes.
The Godfather: Corleone’s Empire $79.99
Running an up and coming criminal organization is no easy task. You have to surround yourself with people you can trust, complete jobs to bring in money, and spend it wisely on bribing city officials. It doesn’t help that you’re competing with other aspiring crime families, each looking to grab a piece of the pie in 1940s New York City. In The Godfather: Corleone’s Empire, you’re trying to earn enough money so that your organization is in a position to take over control of the city if Don Corleone were ever to meet with an unfortunate accident. Plan your actions carefully, fight for control of your turf, and above all, trust no one, not even family. If you’re able to be the richest mobster at the end of the fourth act, you’ll become the new Don. Enjoy it while you can. It’s never long before a new young mobster will come gunning for you and you might end up facedown in the Hudson.
Each round, you take turns placing your family members into either businesses or districts in order to gain area control which gives you points and bonuses. You can also complete different jobs for money such as extortion, shakedowns, or even drive-bys. You can even gain allies such as a bookie, corrupt police, and even the Mayor can be on the take. There are also options that let you stash money into your suitcase which, at the end of the game, is all that matters, since the winner is determined by who has the most stashed money.
The game itself is very fun and enjoyable even if you have never seen The Godfather movies or read the books. I have had players when asked to join us say “ I don’t know anything about the source material” and then after the game is over saying they really enjoyed the game.
Now, I do always warn players, especially newer players, that this game is very “mean”, which is accurate to the theme. This is very evidenced when out of nowhere someone completes the car bomb job and a whole area is wiped out! There are definitely a lot of different ways to take out the competition in order to regain control of the area you are gunning for. When your characters are gunned down you actually place them face down in the Hudson River area on the board.
The components in The Godfather are simply amazing each player has very detailed miniatures to represent their family members and thugs. There is a Don Corleone miniature that dictates the flow of the different acts in the game. The game phases are marked with a police car miniature. Each player also gets a tin suitcase which opens up so they can stash money and completed jobs into. Oh, and the game has the most appropriate first player marker: a severed horse’s head.
Overall, The Godfather: Corleone’s Empire is an exciting and fun game which oozes with the theme. If your game night group likes worker placement, area control games and don’t mind a little cutthroat gameplay, then I could not recommend a better game.
It’s definitely one of my favorite games by Eric Lang and his track record for design is phenomenal.
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About the Author: Christopher Guyton
