They say that no expansion is painless, and that’s certainly a sentiment that echoes to your proverbial ivory tower all the way from the borders of your empire. Are you an empire yet, though? It’s always easier looking back to see how things really are – hindsight, 20/20, all that. The truth of the matter is, a retrospective foregoes all the issues you are dealing with; how to expand your empire, who and what to conquer, and where to go. Momentous decisions, mere blinks on the timeline in the span of ages, are what matters; they determine not only how, but also if your empire will even be talked about in the annals of history.
Name: Imperium: Classics (2021)
Designer: Nigel Buckle, David Turczi
Publisher: Osprey Games
Play type: deckbuilding, variable player powers, move-through-deck
What the game is about
Can you lead your civilization from a barbaric state to an empire as you rewrite history? In Imperium: Classics, you will be telling the story of one of eight civilizations through conquest and growth, both translated into deck-building mechanisms.
How the game works
Imperium: Classics is one of two deckbuilding civilization games by Osprey Games, the other one being Imperium: Legends. I specifically chose Classics because the average difficulty level of the eight civilizations in the box is lower than that of Legends.
Each of the eight civilizations in each box has its own starter deck, cards it acquires as it grows as a barbarian state, and finally specific cards it can develop once it sheds its barbarian rags and becomes a civilization. On top of that, there is a market of cards you can acquire or breakthrough for. Those cards go straight into your hand, becoming part of your active cards. As you play the game, you gain both predetermined cards as well as cards from the market. Because of this, you can follow in the historic footsteps of your civilization only so far as the way cards come out allows, not to mention the cards you pick up along the way.
Every time you go through your deck (i.e. you need to draw and your draw pile is empty), you randomly take one of your civilization’s set-aside nation cards and shuffle it with your discard pile to form a new draw deck. Once you have gone through the entire nation deck, you gain your accession card and become an empire. From then on, instead of getting a random nation card for free when your draw deck is empty, you can get a specific development card if you can meet its building requirement. This is usually paid using two of the game’s prime resources, namely population and/or materials (the third resource being progress points, which are worth 1 VP each at the end of the game).
Playing this game solo requires you to run an automa that acts as a human player in the sense that it acquires cards just like you, and does things differently based on which civilization you’re playing against. During their turn, they resolve four or five cards (based off of a die roll and your chosen difficulty setting), where you just look at the symbols on each card they reveal and see their table in the rulebook to see the associated action they perform.
The game can end in multiple ways: when the common draw deck is empty, when the last fame card has been claimed, or when the pile of unrest cards is empty. In the latter case, the player with the least unrest cards wins. In all other cases, your goal is to score the most victory points. Most cards have a reward in the right-hand bottom corner, either fixed or variable. You count the points on all your cards to see if you have beaten the AI.
Theme, setting & narrative
Deckbuilders and theme have always had a fickle relationship. How do you evoke theme through a game mechanism that is inherently about randomness in both card draws as well as card acquisition? I should caveat this and say that I think deckbuilders are often thematic for me because the way I acquire cards and what I do with them comes with an inherent sense of emerging narrative for me. Either way, I think Imperium does a great job at using what a civilization is typically known for – for guidance – but never forcing you into it. I like how you can see the general progression of certain civilizations, like Rome turning into a great city, or Alexander of the Macedonians becoming Alexander the Great. There is a surprising amount of theme here, and I’m all for it. What’s perhaps even the best part is that nothing in this game is immediately apparent; the designers made sure to sprinkle little discoveries throughout the game, there to discover (or not) for you as a player. From a thematic perspective, that’s great. Gameplay-wise, however – we’ll get into that later.
How does it play?
I’ve put off getting Imperium: Classics on multiple occasions, starting with canceling my preorder. I was all ‘take my money’ when I heard of the peanut butter-jelly combination ‘deckbuilding civ-game’, but decided to skip the game when I read the preliminary rulebook and it looked like I’d be biting off more (of said peanut butter-jelly sandwich) than I could chew. (More on the rulebook later.) I finally caved and got the game, having watched multiple playthroughs in the meantime to ensure I would like this game or at least be able to play it.
What baffled me the most during my first play wasn’t the rules (with some player aids, that was surprisingly manageable), but the way the game throws you in the tactical deep end. You can read a snippet in the rulebook that tells you what your civilization is supposed to be doing, but when you sit down for your first play, it’s still baffling. I think this was a deliberate choice, one that forces you to really explore each civilization. Don’t expect any handholding; you’re on your own, emperor!
Where most deckbuilders have one or two resources (‘currency’) that dictate what you can and cannot buy, Imperium adds an additional layer in that you cannot do anything unless a card tells you you can do it. Want to acquire a card? Play a card that says you can acquire? Want to breakthrough, abandon, garrison, draw, whatever? Same thing; play the card, do the action. There are two actions; you can either breakthrough for a card or remove all unrest cards in your hand if you forego the rest of your turn. But generally, actions are tied to cards, and I think this places more emphasis on them; not only is the market offer (somewhat) limited by your resources, there is another layer where you need to have the right card to do any kind of action. There is still plenty to do so as to not limit your options, but it does add another consideration to every card you gain or remove – will I not pigeonhole myself into a place I don’t want to be?
While this leads to the game having lots of keyworded card mechanisms, I do not think this is I do like how they all work and interact with one another. I like the fact that I can both permanently cull cards (into history); they still score at the end of the game, but they won’t clog up my deck. I also like garrisoning cards; this temporary removal from your deck’s rotation allows you to store cards that don’t match your civ’s status. This prevents the market from clogging up with empire cards at the beginning of the game, and it gives you a way to ditch barbarian cards when you are an empire and can’t add them to your history. The whole barbarian/empire dichotomy is worth a separate mention; because not only it is innovative, it could’ve easily backfired into a game where you have way too many dead draws. Sure, you can always discard unwanted cards before drawing a new hand, but each dead card in hand is one less option during your turn in a game that limits you to three actions per turn.
‘Classic’ deckbuilders often fall into this pitfall when you draw a money hand when you need fighting power (usually the game’s prime currencies in one form or another) or vice versa. Finally, I like how Imperium plays with unrest cards. These cards are the ones you want to get rid of the fastest, but putting them into your history will still net you a not-insignificant minus two points at the end of the game. Imperium: Classics does some wonderful things to, for, and with the deckbuilding genre. Yet at the onset, you’d think what it does can hardly be called innovative – every ‘innovation’ looking like a minor variation – right until the moment you start playing.
Have you ever played a game where the theme dissipates as soon as cards start representing points and conversation ratios? Not in this game! Because virtually every card scores you points, it’s nigh impossible to keep track of everything, so the emerging narrative can take center stage. This bevy of point-scoring opportunities also prevents min-maxing in favor of making more thematic decisions.
Your civilization has its own way in how it wants to achieve victory; victory points are a means, not an end. Your starting civilization card and starting deck are the basic tools you’ll be working with. While some cards are the same for every deck (with unique art, no less, to help set the mood), it’s the civilization-specific cards and how they interact with the more generic cards, that determine the in-game DNA of your civ. This cocktail nudges you towards what your civ wants to be doing, but never in a restrictive way. The fact that Imperium successfully manages to facilitate deckbuilding from multiple decks means that while your DNA never changes, the way your molecules are intertwined can still vary. Plus, especially in the early turns of being a barbaric state, the fact that you don’t know in what order your nation cards come out means that your growth is never a predetermined path. When you are in the calmer waters of being an empire, you can pick how you want to expand your deck with development cards, but you never know in what state your civ will be when you ascend to being an empire.
Given all of the above, I guess you could say Imperium is a game where nothing is apparent at the onset – for good or worse. It’s a balancing act, with making sure you understand the game (which isn’t always the case) on one hand; on the other hand, giving the player enough moments of discovery (of which there are a lot) sprinkled throughout each game.
Is there nothing bad to say about this game, then? Well yes, there is. While I think every negative can be mitigated (more than I thought it would), it bears mentioning. Yes, the rulebook isn’t great, but it’s a lot better than I thought it would be. Yes, there are no player aids, something the game would greatly benefit from, but as eluded to before, we have BGG for those. Yes, the card stock is mediocre at best, but this is a deck builder, so I’ll sleeve it anyway. And finally, yes, the game can play out too long – and then you still have to do that expansive scoring of pretty much every card you acquired. But for that, we have an official solo variant and a helper app. A lot of this paragraph consists of deterring factors in getting this game, but in hindsight, not only were they less bad than expected, I wish I’d gotten over them a lot sooner.
What you might like
- the game doesn’t force you into anything when you start playing; it encourages discovering things on your own (just like Rodney, with the solo rules), both from your civilization, your opponent’s, and the game in general
- while the game feels pretty open-ended, the actions are not; you can only do something if a card tells you you can
- a refreshing take on deckbuilding, with exciting ways to gain cards and to (temporarily) cull them
- because a lot of cards score you points, it’s hard to min-max, which is when the emerging narrative takes center stage
- Imperium combines predetermined ‘this is how you win’ knowledge with the fluid nature of the deckbuilding genre; you know where the dot on the horizon is, but not exactly how the road leading there will look
What you might not like
- the game has a lot of small nitpicks that could tick you off (but only if you want to let that stand in the way of discovering a great game): mediocre rulebook, lack of player aids, mediocre cardstock, long playtime, and expansive scoring
Conclusion
If you review Imperium as a deckbuilding game, you’re gonna miss some of the key features of the genre. If you’ll review it as purely a civ game, you might notice its lack of a map of sorts, or physically building your empire. But if you look at it beyond those preconceptions, you’ll see something else entirely; a wonderful hybrid of multiple genres that provides insights for both. To deckbuilders – how to further innovate the genre. To civ games – how to maintain the spirit but lose the board. I think Imperium: Classics is a wonderful work of art that puts you in the position to tell a wonderful story each time; one that is ultimately <enter civ here>, but with your personal flourishes and achievements sprinkled throughout.
This truly is a game you need to experience for yourself: the learning barrier is lower than most people say it is, and the reward beyond that provides enough depth to last the entirety of your gaming career. With full conviction, I rate Imperium: Classics five stars out of five; not because it is a game without flaws, but because those flaws don’t hold a candle to all the great things this game does. Deckbuilding is dead, long live deckbuilding!
Rating: ★★★★★
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Stidjen Plays Solo 