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Imperial Struggle

52.00€

In stock

Board Game Geek Reviews


  1. 9 out of 10

    Imperial Struggle is quite the event game. The theme comes alive through the wonderful artwork, cards, flags, and wars with different resolution effects. Most importantly though, it comes alive through the players actions. One player taking key forts, deploying squadrons to a theater, controlling markets, taking a key political space you were eyeing.. once again bringing the attention to the Scottish or what have you.. these sort of little things will bring the feeling of controlling a vast empire alive, through all the different eras. This is a very long game. With practice, it can be condensed to about 3h. But it's worth it and you're engaged every single minute of the experience. There's a very steep learning curve to this game if you're learning the game on your own. This is a game where a good teacher can make a crucial difference, because in essence, the game isn't very complex. But the rulebook is a pain to go through and there's a lot of fiddly exceptions and corner cases to the rules, which often times cause the game to pause when you need the rulebook to answer your question. The biggest downside I see is calculating the strength of different forces for wars. One player is tallying and naming board spaces, and another player counting out loud to make sure every point is accounted for. I'm torn, because on one hand, it's good that you don't know exactly at a glance how you're doing in a particular war (plus the war tiles add some uncertainty), but on the other hand it makes the counting tedious, and for those who want to make the best decisions, you'd like to be able to tell quickly where X theater outcome is currently at. Some player aids exist for that, but add a little bit more maintenance to an already procedural game. This is another of my quirks: the game is very procedural and has a lot of steps that you must follow to make sure you have everything right. Granted that this a given for more complex GMT titles, but still. Other games can achieve greatness with less procedural game development. The benefits of this approach are how faithful to the theme you can be. The fact that all wars have different outcomes and different thresholds for winning. The way that the event cards interconnect with your governments and provide yet another angle for strategy. How you're trying to pick the best government cards that will suit your long and, sometimes, short term strategy. The way forts work and how conquest points are so important. How squadrons feel and are deployed across the world. This game is truly engaging and enjoyable to play. At the core of it all, it boils down to action selection of one tile per turn. And that in itself already makes it strategically enjoyable and creates different narratives. One round diplomatic actions might be sparse, which shifts action away from Europe. Next round, it's all about that damn Baltic Trade or some other alliance that grants an advantage token. And those are also great! The fact that with so little you can represent the natives support, or diplomatic strength (wars in Europe are so expensive!). Every inch of the board is tackled with detail, and it shows. Did I also say each side is asymmetric and has different tools at their disposal to craft a long term strategy? Overall, as I say, this is a fantastic game to play. It's almost like a bonding experience with a like minded friend. What you win on one side you'll lose in another, as you cannot do everything every time. Peace is simply undercover war, and war is powerful and with far reaching consequences. This is a game I'd like to play and delve into, discover profoundly, and enjoy its stories. Sadly, the fact that it's so long, fiddly, and that I cannot give it the time it properly deserves it will make it a game that I will try to play whenever possible, but that rarely will hit the table.

  2. 10 out of 10

    What an amazing game, and quite the advancement on Twilight Struggle. My brain is often tired after playing but also still intrigued into what is possible. It has also been a treat to play a game where there is still exploration on what is the stronger strategies.

  3. 9 out of 10

    didn’t play a complete game but wow. very different from [i]Twilight Struggle[/i] which i didn’t expect. i would say it’s not as quite as accessible owing to it being a bit more complex but it does help that deck knowledge isn’t as essential to performing well in this game. looking forward to a full game after which i will revise this. :) can actually see this going up to a 10 possibly.

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Note: Before posting questions on rules, components, or clarifications or any other questions; please refer to the Imperial Struggle Corrections and Clarifications document. This file was created by, and is maintained by, the designers. As of July 2020 a set of Living Rules have been released.

In 1697 the Sun King, Louis XIV, emerged from a decade of war with his Continental ambitions still unsatisfied. Meanwhile, King William III of England sat easier on his new throne than he ever had before. With the Spanish succession crisis unresolved and looming, there were no illusions that the new century would be a quiet one. But neither France nor England could have anticipated the tumult of the years to come: a Second Hundred Years’ War, during which these two tenacious adversaries would compete fiercely and proudly along every axis of human achievement. On battlefields from India to Canada to the Caribbean Sea their armies and fleets would clash; in the salons of Paris and the coffee-houses of London the modern world’s politics and economics would be born; and finally a revolution would rock the foundations of society – a revolution that could have ended not in blood and terror but in a triumph of democracy and liberty that might have transformed the world beyond imagining.

Imperial Struggle is a two-player game depicting the 18th-century rivalry between France and Britain. It begins in 1697, as the two realms wait warily for the King of Spain to name an heir, and ends in 1789, when a new order brought down the Bastille. The game is not merely about war: both France and Britain must build the foundations of colonial wealth, deal with the other nations of Europe, and compete for glory across the span of human endeavor.

Imperial Struggle covers almost 100 years of history and four major wars. Yet it remains a low-complexity game, playable in a short evening. It aims to honor its spiritual ancestor, Twilight Struggle, by pushing further in the direction of simple rules and playable systems, while maintaining global scope and historical sweep in the scope of a single evening. In peace turns, players build their economic interests and alliances, and take advantage of historical events represented by Event cards. They must choose their investments wisely, but also with an eye to denying these opportunities to their opponent. In war turns, each theater can bring great rewards of conquest and prestige, but territorial gains can disappear at the treaty table. At the end of the century, will the British rule an empire on which the sun never sets? Or will France light the way for the world, as the superpower of the Sun King’s dreams or the republic of Lafayette’s?

—description from the publisher

Ages

12+
Players

2 Players
Play Time

120m – 240m
Designer

Ananda Gupta, Jason Matthews
Mechanics

Area Majority / Influence, Events, Campaign / Battle Card Driven, Card Drafting, Point to Point Movement, Secret Unit Deployment, Simulation
Theme

Age of Reason, Wargame
Publisher

Devir, DiceTree Games, GMT Games, Udo Grebe Gamedesign, PHALANX
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