Dark emperors
Dark Emperor was an Avalon Hill boardgame of the mid-1980s that had a decent stab at rules evoking the story arc of a fantasy epic. One player was a necromancer, long thought defeated, who was returning in that way that undead villains do. The other player had to cobble together an alliance of mortal nations to oppose the necromancer's forces before they grew too powerful. To represent the idea that people found it hard to believe the necromancer had really come back from the dead (or from the fully dead to the undead), the mortal nations began as neutral states that had to be activated before they recognized the threat. Once activated, their forces came under the control of the Kingdoms player. You can see how it was supposed to play out. For the first few games that's what we did. The Necromancer started off weak, and as he gathered his forces he began to expand, activating one kingdom after another to oppose him. But then, reading the rules , it came to me. The Necromancer ...
