Alliance of Powers (2015)

Through battle by land, sea, and air combined with diplomacy and ever-shifting alliances you attempt to become the most powerful leader in an imaginary world. The goal of this strategy board game is to achieve the highest score after five "game years." (Players are rarely eliminated from the game because winning does not require total conquest, but simply the highest score.) Battles are settled by various combinations of dice.

The initial set-up phase of the game randomly changes the map features every time you play, so it's always a different world and thus impossible to fall into predictable patterns of play. Each scenario will require vastly different strategies.

Characteristics of the game include being loud and raucous (rarely a quiet and contemplative atmosphere because there is too much diplomacy always in progress). The game is full of deal-making, back-stabbing, trash talk, etc.

Some fun features of the game include friendly fire, surrendering forces, escaping P.O.W.'s, non-conventional warheads (nuclear, biological, and chemical), war crimes that may or may not result in a final point penalty, killing civilians or using your own civilians as a human shield, etc. Every member of the game is a member of a council similar to the United Nations in which they will vote on various resolutions brought before the council during the course of the game, such as charging a given player with a war crime, permitting the establishment of International Defense Forces, etc.