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| The major civilizations struggle for control of the galaxy! |
The original Twilight Imperium board game was desgined by Christian T. Petersen and produced by Fantasy Flight Games in 1998. The first edition of the game was Fantasy Flight's first publication and was a resounding success. The second edition of the game was released in late 2000 and the third in 2005. The third edition has two expansions, Shattered Empire (2006) and Shards of the Throne (2011), which provide players with several modular variants.
The game involves three to six players struggling for control of the galaxy after the fall of the Lazax Empire. The game is won by being the first player to score enough victory points; and the most interesting way to score victory points is by completing objectives. These objectives have players spending resources, capturing planets, and researching technologies. They reward players for excelling at one aspect of the game while being able to keep everyone else off their back. You can win the game playing as a skillful diplomat and trader or as a psychopath warmonger who refuses to talk to anyone.
We played our first game of Twilight Imperium 3 over an entire Saturday and two weekday evenings. This game consumed our spare time, even when we weren't playing it! The planning, backstabbing, and intrigue which manifested in the game continued during the days between play sessions. The total playing time for our first game approached ten hours. However, I expect a second game using similar variants would be close to seven or eight hours.
I played as the steadfast Xxcha (we settled on "zah-cha") Kingdom, a civilization of noble and wise turtles. The Xxcha are skillful diplomats and negotiators. However, all my negotiations couldn't prevent me (black) from being overwhelmed by the insect swarm (green) and being backstabbed by my long-term ally, the space goblins (purple). I drew too much attention to myself by climbing the scoreboard while everyone else fought amongst themselves. In the end, I was reduced to a handful of systems, a mere shadow of the Xxcha Kingdom in its prime, and came in second place behind the scientist-fish (red), who were never attacked the entire game.
Twilight Imperium is a game of galactic conquest, politics, and trade. The game will absorb your entire weekend and will leave you enthralled by the story that you and your friends will create as you play the game. Twilight Imperium is not appropriate for anyone who doesn't want to commit to a long and complicated game. However, if you're looking a highly thematic game that is truly epic in size, then Twilight Imperium might be the game for you!
