Build Your Deck and Lead Your Civilization to Victory in Imperium: Classics and Imperium: Legends

Imperium: Classics and Imperium: Legends are two fully-compatible, stand-alone, civilization deck-building games from the creative minds of Nigel Buckle and Dávid Turczi. Turczi enthusiastically hipped me to these games just ahead of their release in late May 2021.

Considering how much I love deck-builders, I was really excited when the publisher, Osprey Games, sent me a copy of Imperium: Legends. After receiving Imperium: Legends and preemptively assuming I’d get into it, I also bought myself a copy of Imperium: Classics so I could check them both out.

In Imperium: Classics and Imperium: Legends, 1-4 players compete as different, asymmetric nations using deck-building as a core mechanism to develop their civilizations. The game rules are the same for both games and the only difference is that both games include a different set of nations you can play. Since they are fully compatible with each other, you can mix and match nations from both games.

While various nations have varying difficulty levels, Legends has more complex nations than Classics, so Classics is usually the best place to start if you want to ease into this series. Since both games use the same core rules and just a different set of asymmetric nations, I am going to refer to Imperium: Classics going forward.

Player area setup for the Romans

Before you begin a game of Imperium: Classics, each player chooses a nation and sets up their player area. Your player area includes your starting deck, a state card (usually starting on the barbarian side), your development card deck, your nation deck, and your power card, which gives you a scoring condition and a special ability.

Players also start the game with a variety of tokens: 3 resource tokens, 2 population tokens, 1 progress token, 5 exhaust tokens, and 3 action tokens. The resource and population tokens are used primarily to gain cards, but also can be used to trigger card effects, and may help you score victory points at the end of the game. Progress tokens are worth one victory point each at the end of the game, but can also be spent to trigger card effects. They're also great because they're flexible since you can spend 1 progress token as 2 resources or 1 population as needed.

After players are set up, you set up the card market area which involves sorting a variety of cards to form multiple decks. Then you reveal cards in the market row below the market board.

Each nation's starting cards are completely different which allows each nation to play completely differently which is one of the coolest features of the game. Outside of the nation-specific cards, Imperium: Classics includes a variety of different types of cards you can add to your deck during the game:
---• Region cards, representing areas under your nation’s control
---• Uncivilized cards, representing ancient technological and cultural developments
---• Civilized cards, representing modern technological and cultural developments
---• Tributary cards, representing peoples under your nation’s control
---• Fame cards, representing memorable deeds of your nation
---• Unrest cards, representing internal strife and disorder in your nation

With the exception of region cards, you’ll need to tuck an unrest card under cards in the card market row, which you might end up taking along with a card you gain, depending on how you get it. More on that later.

The opening card market for one of my first games

Imperium: Classics is played over a series of rounds. Each round players take turns in clockwise order until either scoring or collapse is triggered, which ends the game. If the game ends with scoring being triggered, the player with the most victory points wins. Otherwise, if the game ends due to collapse triggering, the player with the fewest unrest cards wins.

When it’s your turn, there are three different types of turns you can take: activate, innovate, or revolt. Then after you take your turn, there’s a cleanup phase where you do some maintenance and then draw back to your hand size of five cards.

When you activate, which is the most common type of turn, you can take actions and use exhaust abilities in any order and in any combination. When you take an action, you remove one of your action tokens from your state card, play a card from your hand into your play area and resolve its effect. Then you place the played card into your discard pile, unless it indicates otherwise.

Imperium: Classics doesn’t feel like a traditional deck-building game. It feels fresh. There are lots of different card effects with a lot of keywords to get used to, but once you know the lingo, it's not complicated at all to play.

My hand of cards as the Egyptians

For example, there are two different ways you can gain new cards for your deck: acquiring or breaking through. When you acquire a card, you have to choose a card from the market which often comes with an unrest card. Alternatively, when you break through to get a card, you can take a face-up card from the card market without taking the unrest card beneath it, and you’re also not limited to the cards available in the market row -- you have the option of taking a card from one of the card market decks.

Breaking through is just about always the better option, but usually comes at higher cost as you’d expect. It’s also worth noting the cards you gain go directly into your hand, not your discard pile like most deck-builders. This can open up some cool options as you’re able to gain a new card and play it in the same turn.

Most region cards can be played into your tableau thematically representing you taking control of that land. In addition, many region cards give you the option to garrison a card which allows you to tuck another card from your hand underneath it. This is a great way to thin your deck, even though it can be temporary depending on other card effects you or your opponents may choose to play causing you to abandon a region.

Some card effects allow you to put cards into your history, which means it goes beneath your power card and is no longer part of your deck, but you do score those cards at the end of the game.

Speaking of scoring, different cards you gain score differently at the end of the game. Some will score a flat amount of points, while others are based on having a certain amount of resources, or different types of cards.

There are some cards that allow you to attack your opponents. This could be taking resources from your opponents, making them recall cards from their tableau back into their hand, abandon cards from their tableau to their discard pile, making them discard a card from their hand, or even passing them a card you don't want. There are definitely some nations that are heavier on the attack cards, so if that's not your thing, you could always choose not to play with them.

I played one 3-player game with the Vikings, Celts, and Carthaginians and there was a lot of attacking, but we all found it to be fun and it never felt bad or ruined anyone's day when the attacks happened. There are also ways to protect yourself from it.

There are card effects that give you extra actions, free actions, and even exhaust effects. If you can build up an engine with cards in your tableau that have exhaust effects, it can sometimes feel like you have extra actions since you're able to trigger up to five exhaust effects per activate turn, in addition to your allotted three actions.

The cards are very interesting and I really dig how the cards in each nation's deck fit historically, thus thematically. You could really play so many games with the same few nations and not get bored from the variety of cards available in the card market and depending on which ones you end up getting to help your nation gain the most victory points. The variety of card effects combined with asymmetric-playing nations lends itself to some interesting gameplay.

In the cases where it may not be efficient to take an activate turn, you can choose to take an innovate turn by discarding all of the cards in your hand to break through for a card of your choice. Innovate turns were rare in my games, but it's definitely a legit option if you draw a mediocre hand of cards that wouldn't allow you to take fruitful actions.

Watch out for these little devils!

Then there’s also the revolt turn, where you simply return any number of unrest cards from your hand to the unrest pile. That's your entire turn, but if majority of your cards in your hand are unrest cards, it's totally worth it.Unrest cards are each worth -2 points at the end of the game, so ditching them in bulk is a great play.

After you take your turn, you perform a some cleanup steps. First you add a progress token to one card in the card market, then you clear your action and exhaust tokens, discard any number of cards, and then draw back up to your hand size of five cards.

Eventually your draw deck will be empty when you're drawing back to your hand size, and you'll need to shuffle your discard pile to form a new draw deck. In Imperium: Classics, you don't simply shuffle your discard into a new draw pile, instead you first take a card from your nation deck, which you set up at the beginning of the game, and add it to your discard pile. Then you shuffle and form your new draw deck.

Every time you cycle through your deck, you get to add one of your nation cards into your deck. The nation cards are pretty cool and generally better than the cards in your starting deck, so it opens up some new options as your civilization evolves. What's even more exciting is that after you add all of the cards from your nation deck into your main draw deck, eventually you'll get to add in your accession card. Once that happens, your state card flips and your civilization changes from barbarian to empire.

When your nation becomes an empire, you can start playing juicier civilized cards and then when you cycle your deck in the future, you get to add development cards into your deck, assuming you pay the resource cost. Development cards are usually worth a decent amount of victory points and they have really beneficial card effects.

There's this very satisfying progression as you cycle through your deck when you're playing Imperium: Classics. Also, when a player develops their last card in their development area, it also triggers the end of the game, so it often feels like a race to do it before your opponents. However, this is just one of a couple ways the game can end, and it was not the most common way based on my half dozen plays. Regardless, I think it's really unique and interesting how your civilization evolves and improves as you cycle through your deck.

The King of Kings card

Collapse is triggered if there are ever no cards in left in the unrest pile. When collapse is triggered the game ends immediately and the player with the fewest unrest cards wins.

If society hasn't collapsed, scoring is triggered when the main deck runs out of cards, a player develops their last development card, or after the King of Kings card is resolved. There are also a few nations that have additional ways the game end can be triggered.

When scoring is triggered, you finish the current round and play one final round. Then you go through all your cards, scoring them, and the player with the most victory points wins the game.

I enjoyed Imperium: Classics and Imperium: Legends best solo and with 2 players. In my 3-player games with new players, there was a tad too much downtime, but I'd imagine playing 3 players with all experienced players would be totally fine. I haven't played with 4 players and I likely won't because I'd imagine the downtime would be rough.

The solo mode is really well done. To play solo, you pick a nation to compete against and set up their play area. You also use these number tokens under the market cards to simulate the bot’s hand of cards. You take a turn as per usual, then the bot takes a turn that's driven by a reference table.

Each nation has its own reference table(s) depending on its state (barbarian or empire). It's very straightforward and plays fast once you play a few turns and get the swing of how it works. There are also multiple difficulty levels for solo play and a campaign mode included which I did not get a chance to try.

Resolving the bot's first card

I would've preferred if the bot reference tables for each faction were on separate player aids instead of on pages in the solo rulebook. I found myself having to flip back and forth a lot when I was learning the solo mode. I'd recommend printing them out for yourself to make it easier if you plan to play solo.

Overall, I really dig Imperium: Classics and Imperium: Legends. I’m a big fan of deck-building games to start, but I also really love when games feel unique and do a little something different. The Imperium games bring a fresh approach to deck-building and it really resonated me. Plus, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how much I enjoyed the top-notch artwork from Mihajlo Dimitrievski (Paladins of the West Kingdom, Architects of the West Kingdom, Raiders of the North Sea).

These games will definitely feel slightly intimidating and a tad confusing when you’re learning the rules from scratch for the first time since it’s different from the usual deck-building fare, and also has a quite a few keywords to learn. The good news is, the rulebook is well-organized and I found it easy to find anything I was questioning as I was familiarizing myself with the cards and the gameplay.

The asymmetric nations and their corresponding card decks are very impressive. I haven't even played them all yet, but from what I've tried so far, they're interesting and different. Strategically, there's lots to explore with each individual nation, and then it gets even more interesting when you play games with different combinations of nations. I also really appreciated how each nation's cards make sense historically which makes it feel thematic when you play.

If you enjoy civilization building games and/or deck-building games, be sure to check outImperium: Classics and Imperium: Legends. Classics is definitely the easier of the two to get into, but they both include a variety of nations with a range of difficulty levels to play with, so you can't go wrong with either.