Anyone who's lost a Sunday to Here I Stand or Virgin Queen has a new GMT epic to look forward to. Foxes and Lions: Renaissance City-States in the Age of Machiavelli is the latest game in the family that started with Ed Beach's Here I Stand, this time turning the focus inward to the warring city-states of Italy during the Italian Wars (1494-1527).
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Start organising for freeDesigned by Paul Wright and Liz Davidson, with Joe Dewhurst as developer, the game seats five players as the Republic of Florence, the Most Serene Republic of Venice, the Duchy of Milan, the Kingdom of Naples and the Papal States. You juggle florins to hire condottieri (the famously fickle mercenary captains of the era, drawn through blind bidding), patronise artists and humanists across three patronage tracks, and try not to lose Italy to outside powers like France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottomans.
Each turn covers four to five years, the campaign runs seven turns, and 26 different historical rulers can take the helm of a power. The game also borrows the collective-defeat idea from Here I Stand: pursue your own Virtù Points all you like, but if Italian Virtù as a whole craters, everybody loses to the foreign invaders.
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Set up your group for freeIf you've followed the series, the rulebook will feel familiar; if Here I Stand has always looked daunting, Foxes and Lions sits in the same complexity class but on a tighter, more focused map. It's currently sitting at around 450 P500 pre-orders on the GMT site at $88 (against a $135 retail), so if you want a copy at the discount, it's worth registering interest before the print run is locked in.
For UK players, this is the kind of game that needs five committed bodies and a long evening. Worth lining up a regular club or group before copies arrive.
Sources: GMT Games | The Players' Aid | Beyond Solitaire Podcast
