Wealth of Nations (Boardgame)

Last modified: 2008-11-08 by marc pasquin
Keywords: boardgame | game | wealth of nations |
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• Introduction
• The Flags
  • the cross
  • the sun disc
  • the triangle
  • the star
  • the stripes
  • the bars

• Fictional flags in games
• Fictional flags

Wealth of Nations is a boardgame published in 2008 by Tablestar Games. It is about economic negotiation, territory building, and industry / manufacturing, working through tile placement, trading commodity, speculation, and area control. (More info here.)
António Martins-Tuválkin, 26 June 2008

In _Wealth of Nations_ each of the 4, 5, or 6 players is identified on the board by flag shaped tokens. Instead of the usual solid color approach, (six) distinctive designs were devised; these are distributed as wavy-deformed rectangles, intended to be fitted to a small stick: see here. (But some players seem to prefer them as tents: see here and here.

The chosen designs are remarkably flag-like, and even vexillographically interesting (unlike other such designs); I'm almost sure that the game art designer attempted to come up with something flaggish and match of a real-world flag is coincidental.

There are 6×6×3=108 flag tokens in each game box. I do not own this game and never played it, so I'm not sure, but seems to me that these designs are purely semaphoric, and no pre-composed set of special abilities of rules apply to any of them. Therefore, I can only refer to them by summary description:
António Martins-Tuválkin, 26 June 2008

by António Martins-Tuválkin, 26 June 2008

White flag with equal green cross throughout. (This reminds us of a South African navy or Portuguese naval rank flag, but almost surely not in the mind of the designer; I'd bet this comes from picking England and changing the cross color around.)
António Martins-Tuválkin, 26 June 2008

by António Martins-Tuválkin, 26 June 2008

Green flag with centered yellow disc. (Japan, Bangladesh and Palau may have popped up from a world flags chart when this design was picked.)
António Martins-Tuválkin, 26 June 2008

by António Martins-Tuválkin, 26 June 2008

White flag with purple (?) hoist triangle throughout. (Possibly thought as an absolute original, as it is a rare pattern for national flags.)
António Martins-Tuválkin, 26 June 2008

by António Martins-Tuválkin, 26 June 2008

Red flag with black five-pointed star on the upper hoist. (Surely inspired in Soviet / Communist and Anarchist flag motifs.)
António Martins-Tuválkin, 26 June 2008

by António Martins-Tuválkin, 26 June 2008

Horizontal tricolor of red, white, and orange (or golden yellow). (So many national flags are horizontal tricolors that this design could not be missing; I detect no further obvious influence, though — it matching a number of less known flags notwithstanding.)
António Martins-Tuválkin, 26 June 2008

by António Martins-Tuválkin, 26 June 2008

Vertical tricolor of blue, white, and purple. (So many national flags are vertical tricolors that this design could not be missing; perhaps the seminal role of France influenced the blue hoist panel; purple, on the other hand, is one of those colors that supposedly nobody uses in “real flags”.)
António Martins-Tuválkin, 26 June 2008