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Imperium is an asymmetrical deck building card game for up to four players, with a solo play option. It comes in two variants – Classics, with eight factions that are perhaps easier to play and Legends, with factions that can have very different rules.
Each of the sets contains eight different civilisations, mainly historical but with some fictional. The asymmetrical element of the game means that each faction plays differently – in some case the differences are fairly minor, but others play very differently. I’ve played as the Arthurians, who replace the normal system with one built around Arthurian quests and knights. The Olmecs get a lot of Stone Head cards, the Atlanteans have to deal with their terrain sinking, the Celts cause chaos and disruption all around them…
At first glance the setup looks rather complex, but after a couple of games things soon become clearer. Most civilisations have three main sets of cards – Nation Cards that are for use in the early game, when most civilisations are barbarian, Development Cards for the late game, when most civilisations will have become Empires and normal cards which are used to form your draw deck and initial hand of five cards. Each civilisation gets a two sided Power Card, which includes important information including any special rules that apply, and one way of scoring. Each player also starts with three currencies – population, goods and development. All three can be spent to activate some cards, while development tokens count towards your score.
For most civilisations the aim of the game is to work through your draw deck as quickly as possible. When there are not enough cards in the draw deck to obey a rule you can bring one Nation Card into your hand. Once you have used up all of the Nation Cards you become an Empire. Once you’ve done that you can start bringing Development Cards into your hand.
Some cards are permanent cards, so when you play them they go into your ‘Play Area’. Many of these are territory cards, so they form your empire. Others are powers or technologies. Some of these cards give you extra options each turn, others give you victory points.
Each turn you have several options, but the main one is to play up to three cards from your current hand and use up to five ‘exhaust’ powers, most of which come from the cards in your Play Area or from your Power Card. When you play a card you carry out the instructions written on it, and then depending on the card either put in into your Play Area or your discard pile. At the end of each turn you can discard as many cards from your hand as you want, then draw enough cards from your Draw Deck to bring your hand up to five cards. This is the main way to work through the Nation Cards and Development Cards – if you don’t have enough cards left in your Draw Deck then once per turn you can bring either a Nation or Development card into play.
There are also several types of cards that form a market. Most of these are more examples of the sort of cards that the nations already have – territory cards, cards with passives, exhaust abilities etc. There are also a small number of powerful Fame cards, which take some effort to get into play but are worth it.
Minoan Example
Each civilisation has different cards, with different powers, ways of scoring and special rules. Here I’ll work through the Minoans, to give an example of one civilisation (the game does involve quite a lot of keywords, but I’ll try and keep this as rule ‘light’ as possible). The ‘easy’ side of their Power Card gives them an easy way to score at the end game (one point per development token to a maximum of 10), while the ‘hard’ side lets then discard one hand from their hand to gain one development token at the end of each round.
The Minoans have four Nation Cards and seven Development Cards, so should turn to an Empire fairly quickly. One of these is an unrest card, which clogs up your hand and loses you victory points. One lets you abandon three territories to pick one of the powerful Glory cards. Two are permanent cards that go into your play area when you use them – Writing Systems, which gives you an exhaust option (discard one card from your hand and draw one from your draw deck) and the city of Knossos, which lets you gain resources or draw a card at the end of each full game turn.
Their normal hand include three territories, which give resources that are used by some other cards, one unrest card, four cards that can only be used while you are barbarians, and a prosperity card, which gives you resources depending on which cards are in your Play Area.
The seven Development Cards all give you victory points –most give two or three points, the last gives you one per development token (but can’t be played, so may get stuck in your hand). Three of these give you end of turn powers, one is a attack card that forces everyone else to give up a territory, one is a cooperative card that gives you extra resources but also allows everyone else to benefit and one that gives you a passive power.
The advice for the Minoans is to focus on development tokens, as you’ll need them to open up your better powers, and for the final score.
Summary
I’ve found this game rather easier to play than to explain! Your first game will probably take some time, but it will also accelerate as you play – after a round of two the players in my first game had all worked out the basics, and were able to plan most of their next turn while the other players were in action (although your plans can be badly disrupted by your rival’s actions). It does need quite a bit of space to play, even in solo mode – each player will need room for several different stacks of cards, arranged in two rows, plus their play area and space for tokens, and the central ‘market’ needs more space.
The two sets can be used together to produce hundreds of different combinations of factions, which will make the game different each time you play. The faction you pick really does make a difference to how the game plays – what sort of cards you need to keep in play, if you are aiming at a large empire of territories or a rapid turnover of cards, how you can sabotage your opponents and how you score. It’s also nice to play an entirely self contained card game – you get everything you need to play the game in each box so you can use the Legends box without the Classics.
I found this to be an entertaining game with interesting game play and a clear difference between the sixteen factions which give it a great deal of replay value.