Explorers & Exploiters©

A New World is waiting to be settled. The lands are wide and the resources are abundant. Your people look towards you to lead them on their journey, to explore and exploit the resources, and to build glorious towns and cities. But you are not alone. You are only one but many leaders competing over the people’s faith. Yet, you must lay aside your internal strife and cooperate against the wild barbarians that threaten you all. Or must you? Perhaps you can use the barbarians for your own purpose and rid yourself of both your internal and external threats? After all, if you don’t, others will do.

There are many 4X games out there so what does Explorers & Exploiters offer that other games don't? The answer is a game where all the units on the boards are common to all the players, whether it be settlers or barbarians. The unique challenge of Explorers & Exploiters will be to make use of common resources to rise above the commons (as measured by the number of cities built), not unlike the challenges to a real life leader.

Explorers & Exploiters is a simple and yet tactically deep game where the players take turns to move explorers and barbarians across a game board made up of tiles. Explorers turn tiles face up and enable expansions - the building of bigger settlements - as new resources get connected to them. The barbarians on the other hand turn tiles face down and enable expulsions - the replacement of bigger settlements with smaller - as resources get disconnected from them. All players share the same explorers and barbarians but they have their own sets of settlements. The player who first places his or her settlements win!

Explorers & Exploiters was a semi-finalist in the Sprue Challenge 2015, reached the major round in Hippodice Game Designer Competition 2016, and was a semi-finalist in the World Original Design Contest of Board Game 2021 .

My name is Nicholas Hjelmberg and I am a hobby gamer since childhood. Starting with classic games like chess and RISK, I moved on to explore "American" games like Diplomacy and Civilization and then "Euro games" like Settlers and Tigris & Euphrates. Combining my game experience with my history interest and IT and quality profession, I have entered the exciting world of board game design and production.

Nicholas Hjelmberg, Stockholm, Sweden

Order at The Game Crafter

Play online at Vassal

Presentation (Video)

Summary

Category:	Civilization, Exploration
Mechanic:	Area Control, Memory
Players:	2-6
Time:	45 minutes
Age:	12+

Components:
64 tiles, 18 units, 12 winks, 38 settlements, 24 settlers