I spent about 3 and a half hours last night playing the massive board game/labor of love Three Kingdoms Redux. This game is unique in that it plays exactly three players. Not 2, not 4, but 3. It is a worker placement game, only your workers are named figures from the period of Chinese history, called generals as a catch all for historical figures in the game. Each general is unique with a unique special power. When you place a general, you are bidding to use the action, as generals have different attributes.
The game initially seems very stingy with resources. However, by taking advantage of generals’ powers and special upgrades you can build, eventually resources become more plentiful. That is when the challenge in the game becomes turning resources into VP. A great source of VP is occupying border regions, but you will lose a general for the rest of the game and have to pay upkeep. So, occupy to quickly, you will be penalized. Move to slowly, and you will end the game with a ton of rice and gold good only to break a tie you are nowhere near.
So, that is a sense of the mechanism, but the theme also comes through, at least somewhat. This is not a war game, but a struggle for various advantages. You can’t be the best at everything, but come in first and second in enough, and you can maybe be the best of the 3 Kingdoms.
Another aspect of this game is the deliberate imbalance at the start of the game. The Wei player begins with 5 generals compared to 4 for Wu and 3 for Shu. A various points in the game more generals will be given to all players, so at the end everyone will have the same number. However, it still gives Wei a big advantage early, even as he starts with less resources elsewhere. Both times I’ve played this, Wei has won in the end, often by a not small margin (but not overwhelming either). I won’t call it imbalanced after two plays, but let us say Wei does seem more new player friendly.
Still, I do like this game. The resource and bidding for action spaces is very tight and very tactical. I don’t know a lot about the 3 Kingdoms period, but clearly the designers (a husband and wife who I think live in Singapore) did.