Rzza

Twilight Imperium – hmmmm, so much that can be said.
Before even looking at it you must know that you really should have some time and by “some time” I mean a lot of it.
Only setting the board may exhaust you and this is in case that everyone has played it.
Creating the game board, setting your race, preparing decks, separating tokens, arranging ships, technology deck …and the game has not even started yet.
In case there is some one that you need to explain the game to, well call him/them an hour or two earlier, so you can go through the basics and main mechanics of the game.

So after and hour of preparation the game has started and you are picking strategies ( one of the greatest mechanics in board games and one of the things that are making this game so awesome). So depending on what you are going to chose as a strategy card you are deciding what you and your opponents will be able to do in the next turn, what will be the order of play and what will be your orientation in the action phase of the game.

Action phase is when you: move, attack, build, vote, trade, conquer, research and nearly everything else that you can imagine or not 🙂 Because of all of the options a player turn may take some time so especially at the beginning of the game in my playing group we are playing almost simultaneously so we can save some time.

After the two main phases there is some redistribution and preparation for the next round and this continues until some one collects all of the victory points (which is the way to win) or there comes a different game condition that ends it ( GAME OVER)

I’m not getting in to details and went very briefly because i don’t think that it is possible to give even small idea of how big this game is and when you are setting it your are setting a real universe. There are so many rules, so many things that you have to keep in mind but this is what makes the game so majestic. Everything is so complex but in the same time it makes sense and even a player that is not so much in to this type of games finds the logic in it.

The only thing that I’ll put as an advice – play a few sessions with the base game before buying the expansions. Both of them are a must but if you don’t get the basic rules you won’t enjoy them so much. Get used to the 10 starting races, get used to the technologies, objectives, strategies and then go and buy both of the expansions 🙂 🙂 🙂

For final words, if you did not get the idea, prepare for a 6-8 hours games and at the end you’ll feel like after a Sci-Fi series marathon AND YOU’LL WANT MORE.

Enjoy!

I have played the game for some time and the more i play it the more i love it. It’s much deeper than it looks like at first. There are many different strategies that are available and my personal favorite – you can play session, after session, after session and you wont get bored. The combinations possible from 14 “races” and 20 “spells” are giving the possibility for each player to experiment as much as he want’s in every single game. the different maps for 2,3,4 and 5 players are requesting different strategies and approaches. And there are so many things that you have to keep in mind and that you can benefit from (even the tokens that you leave when you pick your combination can make the difference…)
The colorful art and the humor in the game are keeping the attention even of those who are not so much into boardgames (my girlfriend loves the game too and she started playing it simply because she liked the arts and illustrations)
I simply recommend it to all gamers, being new or much more experienced.