Oil Rock with Dueling Lorenzos

In 2016, Italian publisher Cranio Creations released Lorenzo il Magnifico, a well-received game from designers Flaminia Brasini, Virginio Gigli, and Simone Luciani that has received one large expansion and eight small ones over the years.

Cranio Creations is marking the game's ten-year anniversary by promoting Lorenzo il Magnifico: Prima Lux, a collected edition of the base game and all expansions with new art that will be available exclusively via crowdfunding.

But that Gamefound campaign also features Lorenzo il Magnifico: Maiestas, a design from Brasini, Gigli, and Luciani that essentially replaces Lorenzo il Magnifico as unlike Prima Lux, it will be available at retail outlets in the future.

Here's an overview of the setting and gameplay:

Each player leads a noble family competing for prestige and fame, earning points from the deeds your family accomplishes, not from titles alone. To this end, you'll send family members into the city to secure resources, recruit powerful characters, construct buildings, and answer the demands of the Church. Each area of town offers different opportunities, and every choice shapes the fortune of your family, with planning and timing being key to your success.

How does Lorenzo il Magnifico: Maiestas differ from the earlier game? Cranio Creations says that it:

...incorporates all the mechanics of the original game, draws on the experience gained from 10 years of feedback, selects the most popular expansions, and develops them into a new game with a modern feel.

Numerous small changes — such as new costs for visiting an occupied tower or the revamped production and work areas — reduce the feeling of limitation present in the original game. The increased number of development cards transforms a predictable flow into an ever-changing tactical exploration. The additional leaders and the different abilities of the houses add the finishing touch to this variety.

Regarding the development cards, Lorenzo il Magnifico used 96 cards, with eight cards of each type — territory, building, character, venture — for each of the three ages. Maiestas instead includes twelve cards of each type for each age, with some cards being from base Lorenzo, some from expansions, some rebalanced, and some new. During set-up, you randomly take eight cards from each pile of twelve, thereby randomizing which development cards are available each game.

Cranio Creations expects to ship the various Lorenzos, including a boxed pair and a "Deluxe Items Box" in late 2027 and early 2028.

Much earlier than that, Cranio Creations will release Oil Rock, the debut design of Marco Piola Caselli, at SPIEL Essen 26. Here's an overview of this 2-4 player game:

Take control of an expanding oil company and set out to dominate the market, optimize every phase of the refining chain, and build your reputation. To do this, you must position yourself strategically on the action wheel to activate the most effective moves at the right time and expand your influence on the map, thereby positioning yourself in key areas to gain exclusive advantages and new development opportunities.

Along the way, you'll build new drilling rigs, develop increasingly efficient turbines, and enhance your refineries to increase production efficiency. Every action you take contributes to your company's growth, transforming your choices into concrete advantages turn after turn.

Your reputation in the game is tracked via a character notebook, which works like a flipbook. Each player starts with one of six characters at level I, and as you advance on the progress track, you'll flip your notebook to a new page at various points, boosting the income you receive at the start of each round.

Each player manages their own drills and refineries, while competing for office space on a shared game board of twelve regions. Players have a number of assistants and managers, and they take turns placing them on the action wheel. Assistants can go only directly on an action, while a manager can occupy the circle between two actions, carrying out both of them and giving progress to opponents in adjacent spaces.

As an aside, I'll note that I was confused by the phrase "Oil Rock" as it was unfamiliar. Online searches didn't result in a meaning, but they did turn up Neft Daşları, a town in the middle of the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan. (The town name can be translated as "oil rocks".) From Wikipedia:

The first large-scale geological study of the area was conducted in 1945–1948. The settlement of Neft Daşları was built after oil was discovered there on 7 November 1949 at 1,100 meters (3,600 ft) beneath the Caspian Sea. It became the world's first offshore oil platform.

My brain has been expanded...