Dominate Ancient Greece, Control Battlefields in Feudal Japan, and Relive Famous U.S. Trials

"Passion governs, and she never governs wisely," — Benjamin Franklin, one of America's Founding Fathers.

Ninety years later, the very government that Franklin helped create disregarded his wisdom and trampled the constitutional rights of its own citizens in order to feed what seemed an insatiable hunger for vengeance. Now you, as the prosecution or defense, must convince a nine-panel jury that Mary Surratt, one of eight people put on trial for conspiring to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln and other members of his cabinet, is guilty...or innocent.


Unforgiven: The Lincoln Assassination Trial is a two-player game that takes place during the May 9 - June 28, 1865 trial of the first woman, Mary Surratt, ever to be executed for treason by the United States. The game begins amidst the chaos of Lincoln's assassination as the country struggles to heal over the wreckage of the American Civil War. Each player must persuading the jury to convict or acquit the accused and thereby win the game. To do so, players draft and play cards that help them strengthen their case with the jurors and recruit them to their side, while also finding overwhelming evidence for or against the accused.

In one of the most high-profile trials in U.S. history, will Mary Surratt again face the hangman's noose of American justice — or can you stop the trap door from falling?

Many events in American history have been labeled "trials of the century", but for a young nation, it would have been impossible to top United States v. Aaron Burr. Unlike Washington, Jefferson, Madison or Hamilton, Aaron Burr came from American royalty — a founding father descended from the original puritanical stock that arrived in Plymouth. His father was the second president of Princeton. His grandfather was Jonathan Edwards, the philosopher-theologian who wrote "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," perhaps the most important American literary work of its time.

So in 1776, if you were going to identify any of the Founders who would later stand trial for treason to his country, Aaron Burr would be the least likely — yet Burr's journey as an enormous talent born under a dark star is now well known. Less well understood is that when he shot Alexander Hamilton in the early morning hours of July 11, 1804, it would set in motion a chain of events much more bizarre than anything depicted on Broadway.

Aaron Burr never stood trial for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel. His trial was for treason, three years later, at the insistence of the Thomas Jefferson, the man Burr had narrowly lost to in the contested election of 1800. An embittered and politically ruined Burr seemed to have developed a scheme to separate the new Louisiana Purchase territories from the United States and declare himself king over the new entity. When Jefferson learned of the plot, he ordered Burr's arrest and publicly declared him guilty of treason.


United States v. Aaron Burr: The Treason Trial of America's Third Vice President, a card-driven game for two players, recreates the treason trial of Aaron Burr in Richmond in 1807. But by accident of recent judicial reforms, Thomas Jefferson's detested cousin, Chief Justice John Marshall, would be riding circuit and would preside over the case. The resulting legal contest would read like a list of who's who of America's Founding Fathers.

United States vs. Aaron Burr is a fast-playing card-driven game in which players seek to use events, evidence, and witnesses of Burr's activities to convince a jury to return a guilty verdict — or if playing for the defense, persuade at least one juror to find Aaron Burr not guilty. Each round, players have the opportunity to question witnesses, persuade jurors, and make points of law to the Chief Justice which will aid them in their cause. The game highlights all the events and participants surrounding one of the most important trials in American Constitutional Law — setting the precedent that the President of the United States is NOT immune from legal court orders, a precedent very much cited by the Supreme Court today.

So try your hand as a great litigator in a great trial. Perhaps you will even find yourself smiling more and talking less!

The Commands & Colors: Samurai Battles game rules allow players to portray important engagements of Japanese history. The battles included in the scenario booklet focus on the historical deployment of forces and important terrain features in scale with the game system. The scale of the game is flexible and varies from battle to battle. For some scenarios, an infantry unit may represent an entire clan of soldiers, while in other scenarios a unit may represent just a few brave warriors.


The Command cards drive movement, creating a "fog of war" and presenting players with many interesting challenges and opportunities, while the battle dice resolve combat quickly and efficiently. The Honor & Fortune game mechanism tasks players with maintaining a balance between these two important game elements. The Dragon Cards add an element of suspense and surprise that can bend the rules and instantly change the course of a battle. The battlefield tactics you will need to execute to gain victory, however, conform remarkably well to the strengths and limitations of the various Japanese unit types, their weapons, battle terrain, and written history.

Compared to Samurai Battles, GMT's C&C: Samurai Battles game has more scenarios, more units to deploy, additional types of Japanese units, and a jam-packed battlefield with more units and more terrain. In more detail, this game includes more units and more unit types than the earlier game. The battlefield comes on a one-piece mounted map board, and the terrain tiles include new types of terrain, fences, ramparts, castle walls, and more. Expansion materials are already waiting in the wings.

Polis is a two-player civ-lite game set in the beginning of the conflict between the two major poleis of the 5th century BCE: Athens and the Delian League against Sparta and the Peloponnesian League. The winner will be the Empire with more population and prestige at the end of the game.

Both players must secure their supplies and the routes to five markets to trade with them. Every turn you get goods from a territory where you have population supporting your Empire, but you should feed them.


You can fight to control the territories and siege other polis, or you might use your diplomacy to convince a polis to join your league — but polis are proud of their independence, so you will have to create some projects to gain prestige needed for your military maneuvers.

This new edition of Polis has updated revised rules and new art that will enhance your game experience.