Here’s a situation for you. It’s the last decade of the 1700s. Far across the sea, a rebellion has ousted the British from thirteen of their prize colonies, leading to the adoption of a new constitution. Revolutionary fervor is sweeping the continent, throwing France into turmoil and the old regimes into paranoia. Your union, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, has seen its star faded by entrenched nobility and foreign partition.

And now there’s an opportunity to draft a constitution of your own.

That document — historically the Constitution of 3 May 1791, although you might instead draft any number of parallel constitutions in its place — is the topic of Rex Regnat, Edward Damon’s sharp-as-a-tack title about uncomfortable politics and doomed alliances. Part trick-taker, part parliamentary simulation, and part rumination on a union whose constitution would only last 19 months before it was divided out of existence until the First World War, Rex Regnat is one of the finest political games I’ve played all year.

Read the rest of this entry →