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 could just refuse to play the way he's "supposed" to. Why not build up his forces without provoking any reaction that would drive the neutral states over to the Kingdoms player? If you watch the how-to-play video or read the rules yourself, you'll soon see the loophole:

The Necromancer player can recruit and build up forces during their turn while avoiding the specific actions that would allow their opponent, the Kingdoms, to activate their forces. Here is a breakdown of how the Necromancer's internal build-up relates to Kingdom activation:

Necromancer Force Build-up (Recruitment Phase)

The Necromancer Player Turn begins with the Recruitment Phase (Section 7). During this phase, the Necromancer performs actions that increase their military strength without necessarily involving hostile movement into enemy territory:

1. Vampire Recruitment: The Necromancer conducts a Vampire Recruitment Segment during which they recruit both Undead units and Vampire units, including Lesser Vampires and Greater Vampires, provided the number of living vampire units is less than the maximum allowable size. These units are recruited from a recruitment pool.

2. Siege Trains: The Necromancer player can also recruit a Siege Train during this phase.

These recruitment steps are internal logistical actions that do not inherently require invading or moving through territory belonging to inactive Kingdoms.

Kingdom Activation

Kingdoms, which begin the game at war with the Necromancer, gain control of units or leaders when they are "activated". Activation occurs during the Kingdom Player Turn (4.2.2).

Crucially, activation of inactive Kingdoms is triggered by specific actions taken by the Necromancer player during their preceding turn. If the Necromancer avoids these triggering actions, the inactive Kingdoms remain unactivated:

• Invasion/Movement: A Kingdom is activated if any unit of either player enters or moves through any land hex of an inactive Kingdom.
• Mercenary Recruitment: Recruiting a mercenary in a hex owned by an inactive Kingdom (unless otherwise noted) activates that Kingdom.
• Diplomacy/Magic: Diplomacy efforts with inactive Kingdoms (Section 11) or the movement of Leaders and magical devices through inactive Kingdoms activate those Kingdoms.
• Betrayal: Announcing the betrayal of a Kingdom currently under Necromancer control immediately activates that Kingdom.

Since the Necromancer's Recruitment Phase precedes the Movement Phase and the recruitment rules primarily involve managing unit pools or building new units without movement into hostile territory, the Necromancer can effectively build their forces up internally while remaining passive geographically to prevent Kingdom activation.

This made for an intensely boring game because the Kingdoms player just had to watch as, turn after turn, I strengthened my forces while avoiding doing anything that would provide him with troops. And once we'd played the game like that, there was no point in ever playing it again. The rules allowed an exploit that guaranteed a win for the evil guy, even though using that exploit was obviously against the intentions of the game's designer.

I was reminded of all this while reading Will Lloyd's account of a cocktail party in Washington D.C. in early 2025. Once somebody exploits the loophole in the rules, that flaw the designers didn't spot, there's no going back. From that point on it's dark emperors all the way.