Designers: Ananda Gupta & Jason Mathews

The first impression Imperial Struggle makes when you open up the box and get a look at the map is that it’s a mystery wrapped up in an enigma. This busy map is intimidating, to say the least, with countless unique spaces, connections, iconography, and dazzling colors. It’s hard to imagine all of this could be explained in a less than 20 pages long rulebook! I doubt lesser men could do it, but Ananda Gupta and Jason Mathews are masters of their craft if they are anything.

These two designers are quite famous and renowned in the historical board game community for what is undoubtedly one of the biggest crossover hits coming out of the historical war game genre in years, the one and only Twilight Struggle. Mr. Mathews in particular however has a number of sleeper hits that, while certainly not quite as famous as good old TS, are amazing designs in their own right in my opinion. Games like 1960: The Making of the President and especially Founding Fathers illustrate his ability to take interesting and diverse pieces of history and turn them into wonderful and dare I say approachable historical games for the uninitiated masses.

Twilight Struggle while based on the cold war is certainly the game most people will associate with Imperial Struggle due to its connection to the designers. This is a game that has almost defined its own genre at this point and is a breakout game that crossed the border into the Euro Game scene producing quite a few clones and re-imaginings today that all try to capture Twilight Struggles very elegant and addictive gameplay. It must have been quite intimidating for these two designers to release a follow-up game referred to as Twilight Struggles spiritual successor, a game that won so many awards and accolades. I can only imagine the pressure to live up to such a reputation and fan expectations must have been enormous.

I honestly purchased Imperial Struggle simply based on the fact that these two designers are responsible for what I consider to be one of the finest historical board games in existence and I just had to see what their next game could do. I would however be lying if I didn’t say that I had quite a few reservations about the game, not only because it’s based on subject matter I’m not familiar with, but also because this game just looked complicated, a sentiment confirmed to some degree by many online voices. it’s been described by a lot of reviewers and gamers as being marginally like Twilight Struggle mechanically and with far more complex rules and many exception-based mechanics.

Do Ananda Gupta & Jason Mathews live up to their reputation, can lightning strike twice? does Imperial Struggle hold up?

Overview

Final Score: (4.4 out 5) Great Game!

Imperial Struggle is a historical boardgame covering the nearly century-long global competition between 18th century France and England. It covers the economic, diplomatic, and military aspects of the events of this extended period, including several wars, various aspects of colonization, diplomacy, and countless micro-events that shaped the 18th century.

If you are not familiar with this period of history, don’t worry, you’re probably not alone in that. That should however not sway you from giving Imperial Struggle (or any other historical game) a try. After all, part of the fun of playing historical board games is the opportunity to learn about different periods in history, and in the case of Imperial Struggle, the abstractions are fairly high level. It really isn’t a big requirement to know anything about the history of the game in advance to enjoy it. You won’t be at a disadvantage if you don’t know what the Spanish Succession War was or whyJohn Law was important to history. Most of the history of Imperial Struggle is here for flavor, theme and to give the mechanics purpose. While great effort was made to ensure the many game mechanics that were added gave this game a strong period feel and sense of place, the game can be learned and played without much attention paid to its adherence to history, much in the way Twilight Struggle was.

Imperial Struggle and Twilight Struggle are going to naturally be compared to each other given they share designers and many-core concepts (Not to mention the self-imposed title of Twilight Struggles spiritual successor), but I would argue that these are two very different games, not only mechanically and thematically, but conceptually.

For one, Imperial Struggle is not a card game, it’s an action selection game (3 action selection game to be exact) and while there are event cards and ministry cards that can enhance your resulting actions, the mechanical implications here are wildly different than those in Twilight Struggle. Imperial Struggle has its own identity, it’s a variation or at least a derivative if you will on how the area control and resource management systems worked in Twilight Struggle. It is however different enough that having played Twilight Struggle will not help you here at all, the similarities between the two games are superficial at best.

One of the biggest conceptual differences between Imperial Struggle and Twilight Struggle is that in Imperial Struggle the vast majority of information about the status of the game is in the open and calculable. While players may hold event cards that will have a few minor surprises for their opponent and cards are certainly part of building clever strategies, really this is a strategy game of outthinking your opponent based on the information you both have, much like a chess match. Again this is very different from Twilight Struggle where you really only had your knowledge of the cards in the deck to guide you about what events might occur. In Twilight Struggle there was considerably less information available to you about potential outcomes, in fact you didn’t even know for certain what the point-scoring conditions might be in any given round. This uncertainty about the true state of the game was not only because there were hidden cards, but also because parts of the game involved rolling dice, leaving a lot of the results of actions to chance.

The other aspect of Imperial Struggle that I observed and seems to be a common sentiment among gamers is that it’s complex or at least comparatively more complex than Twilight Struggle. I would argue that this is only partially true. In fact, I would go even further and say that while Imperial Struggle is more difficult to learn to play as the rules are indeed more complex than Twilight Struggle, there is a more logical approach to victory conditions and the strategies required to win games.

One of the truly difficult things about learning to play Twilight Struggle is that to become a competent player you had to have a good grasp of all the cards in the deck and a good understanding of the many subtle, much less obvious, approaches to winning strategies and uses of those cards. This skill took quite a bit of time and a considerable amount of plays to pick up.

In Imperial Struggle, by the time you do your first scoring round, the lights will come on and while it may take a play or two to fully understand the intricacies of every rule of the game, you will have that “aha” moment of understanding regarding what you do in this game to win very quickly. It actually ends up being a much smaller hurdle to learn the rules than the quite extreme education required to fully grasp how to become a competent player in Twilight Struggle. It’s really a bit of a trade-off but I think it’s one Imperial Struggle wins. The rules are more complex for certain, but rules are just a matter of absorbing and remembering what they are. There is no shortcut however to learn to play TS even minimally competitively, you will have to play dozens of games before you do anything but lose horribly.

Simply put, the game’s real drawback is that it looks and certainly is a bit complicated from a rules perspective and that will be the impression of most people who see it spread out on the table for the first time, but in truth, this is actually a much more straightforward strategy game once you get past this learning curve. In fact, I would again go even further and say it’s actually closer to the mid-range end of the spectrum of historical board games once you understand the basics of the iconography of the map and the victory scoring conditions of the game. Unfortunately unlike Twilight Struggle, I don’t think it will actually cross over into the Euro Game scene for the same reason most historical and historical war games don’t.

Imperial Struggle suffers from “rules exceptions” and this complaint about Imperial Struggle I have heard and share (and is a quite common complaint about historical war games in general). There are just a few too many “it works like this BUT…” rules. For historical wargamers, this won’t be a problem. After a few turns, you will naturally compensate for this if you play historical war games with any regularity, it really is a pretty standard learning curve for the genre. Euro Gamers and likely much of the crowd that adopted Twilight Struggle outside of the typical historical wargaming communities despite its historical war game roots are likely going to be considerably less tolerant of such a thing. In fact in Euro game design, as a rule, exception-based rules are generally considered “bad design” and players generally see rules as facilitation for good gameplay while in historical games exception-based rules get a pass if it makes the game more historically accurate. It’s a philosophy difference, but a hump many and perhaps even most mainstream board gamers may not be willing to hop over.

At the end of the day, Imperial Struggle in many ways is rightfully compared to Twilight Struggle, but I don’t think it quite lives up to the self-endorsed title of a spiritual successor. It does perhaps illustrate how games evolve from each other and certainly, Imperial Struggle is an evolution of the unique genre Twilight Struggle had created, but there are other games that are far closer to Twilight Struggle that may deserve the spiritual successor title. More importantly, Imperial Struggle is not going to cross over into the more general gaming communities like Twilight Struggle did as the exception-based rules of the game and some of the complexity involved with the event cards are going to put this one just out of reach. Worth pointing out however for me and my gaming buddies it in fact did cross-over, so I may be wrong about that. I really hope that I am.

It may be more appropriate to say that Imperial Struggle is heavily influenced by the designs of Twilight Struggle, but players should be prepared for an entirely different experience in a like-minded genre and understand that this is in fact, a historical game made for historical board game fans, not at all like the cross-over hit Twilight Struggle but I think fans of heavy Euro games should make an exception for this historical game as they did for Twilight Struggle because I think this one is worth the effort.

Components

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Pros: Above and beyond the call of duty on every front, GMT nails it.

Cons: Some minor complaints regarding font usage on cards, the rulebook could have been a bit more organized.

Reviewing GMT games components is always a pleasure, simply put, they never disappoint and continue to outpace their competition in the components department by a wide margin. Not only are Imperial Struggles components impressive both from a quality and aesthetic standpoint, but you get this amazing and superior quality for half the price of other publishers. It’s amazing what they squeeze into a 60 dollar game.

For starters, the mounted board is absolutely gorgeous made of heavy grade, scratch-resistant material that you will never tire of looking at or cease to be impressed with. Player boards are made from equally impressive hard-board stock as is the general administrative sideboard where investment tiles and event cards are managed.

When index material is used like the war boards or player aids, GMT went with full color, glossy, and very heavy index paper material that doesn’t warp or bend and will withstand considerable handling.

The cards in the game are also a hard stock, glossy finish with color illustrations that are a pleasure to hold and shuffle. I will complain about the use of too many fonts, in particular, Italics which are not easy on the eyes and it’s not always clear why something is Italic or bold on the card. This causes you to have to strain and re-read the cards to get an understanding of what is flavor and what is relevant to the game and while I understand the reason for doing this was to add more period flavor into the game, I’m a firm believer that cards in a game should always favor clarity over anything else. They should have a very clear separation between flavor and mechanics. These cards often do not.

The Rulebook is a high-grade stock, glossy and full color and explains the rules sufficiently, however, I think much of the complaining about the game “complexity” stems from some poorly chosen organization and lack of focus on some of the more complex rules elements. This isn’t a bad rulebook, but it isn’t great.

The rules themselves are explained in less than 20 pages and the game comes with an additional 20-page playbook to give you extra clarity. Despite that, I still found it a bit difficult to understand many concepts in the game that would later turn out to be quite simple. There was just an odd mixture of overwording really simple things that made them sound complicated, while in other places more complex elements were not elaborated on sufficiently and would not “click” until you read over examples. It’s clear that part of the cause of this was the fact that the rulebook never repeats itself, so if a rule is explained in one place and used in several other places, they simply reference back to the original text or assume you have read the previous section and remember that it applies to the whole game. This saves on page count but isn’t terribly helpful when it comes to learning the game and given this game’s higher complexity, extra clarity should have been favored over page count.

The token quality here is excellent and well sized for handling to such a degree that clipping won’t be necessary (these are not chits, they are tokens). There is a metric ton of them and not always for particularly good reason. For example, there is a set of Bonus War Tokens for each nation, for each of the four wars and while the art is different in each of the sets for thematic reasons, functionally the sets are all identical. This seems to have been largely done for flavor to create a historical connection to the tokens but it creates an unnecessary amount of token shuffling in a game that is already a bit fiddly.

The inclusion of a GMT token tray is much appreciated and certainly helps with the organization, a really nice touch that shows that GMT is really thinking about how to make your life easier when you play their games.

While I had some minor complaints, as they always have, GMT nails it on component quality and once again establishes a standard for the industry that hopefully will pressure others to follow (I’m looking at you Compass Games!)

Theme

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Pros:  Visually captivating, captures the tension of the competition between these two 18th century superpowers with some great historical tidbits that really sell the theme.

Cons: The theme is forced in some places creating unwanted complexity and fiddliness and ultimately not that critical to the enjoyment of the game.

Imperial Struggle’s attempt to breathe theme into the game is done in a number of ways but comes across for the most part in aesthetics and artwork. It takes a few plays and a bit of exploration in particular if you are not familiar with the historical period to understand the significance of many of the mechanics and cards and how they all connect to the relevant history. This of course is part of the joy of playing historical fans, but I have to admit that these things are not immediately apparent and really illustrate how much depth this game really has. You don’t just play Imperial Struggle, you explore it and study it.

The illustrations on the map, in particular, the use of colors have a kind of 18th century naval map feel to it and immediately imprints on you this colonial period feel. This is important because the true historical flavor of this game isn’t going to jump out and grab you, so initially, you are leaning on the aesthetics to sell the game and the map does a great job of that.

The event and ministry cards are where most of the real historical flavor is put on display, where important people and events are illustrated and their game effects aligned with their historical significance. For those of us less familiar with the 18th-century conflict between France and England, the playbook provides more detailed information about these events and people in an effort to educate you and get you into the spirit of the theme of the game which is greatly appreciated and highly recommended. This was done with Twilight Struggle as well and while I think some players might skip it, I found the information fascinating and it helped to enhance the experience. More than that, these event cards are going to help form your strategy, which in turn will bring the game closer to the history it’s based on. It’s not scripted, but you are definitely going to be leveraging the historical advantage of France and England in this period and your strategies will at times very much reflect the historical approach the nations took. Again, I can’t stress enough how this generally comes later, after a few plays, it’s not something you will get right away.

A good example of this is the Jacobite rebellions and uprising. This is one of Frances’s key political and military advantages and will be a true and proper thorn in England’s side throughout the game. This is represented with Jacobite Rebellion conflicts in the various wars which when won by France will earn them opportunities for a lot of extra victory points using the Jacobite Uprisings ministry card and because this card appears in all Era’s of play, its not something that England can ignore. France can literally win the game through clever use of this card, good strategies for the Jacobite Rebellions (conflicts in the wars) and good positioning in Scotland and Ireland. Now if you don’t know the significance of the history here, don’t feel bad, probably most people don’t and that is ok. It does not change the fact that Imperial Struggle creates a very strong connection to the themes of these historical elements and really infused the game with a significant amount of real history. If you’re like me, it will have you googling like crazy after playing Imperial Struggle and I would venture to guess that is exactly what the designers are hoping to inspire.

I have to say however that Imperial Struggle is a very abstract game and while you do get a sense of this sort of global competition for resources and territory and a tremendous amount of history is infused into the mechanics of the game that lead to historical strategies playing out in the game, I really didn’t get the sense of this being a hard simulation of the period.

It was rather clear to me that in many places “more theme” was being rather forcefully injected to compensate, like the use of War Bonus Tilesets that were mechanicaly all the same, but have alternate sets for each war just so different images and words could be printed on the tokens to give relevance to their historical significance. I found this a rather pointless endeavor, as the game is so abstracted in so many places, the thematic significance of having different sets like this is completely lost in the shuffle. You’re not going to care who or what the token represents in a historical context as much as you are going to care that it’s a +2 bonus.

Ultimately the biggest effort with impact to the theme of the game is the map and the implications of locations (positions on it). You will be analyzing this map constantly and will be making new discoveries on it all the time from a strategic angle, but it’s doubtful that you will find any real connection to the theme here beyond some familiar locations you might assign some historical significance to. It really falls into the background during play and you are going to be spending far more time counting territories and calculating military strength in a bid to score victory points, then you are going to be emotionally drawn into the 18th-century conflict between France and England.

For example concepts like Wars are abstracted to the absolute highest extremes, you are not actually moving troops, or preparing for battles, you are far more likely going to be looking for the most optimal plays to make to score victory points and get tokens on the board. This by and large is a victory point salad game and has far more in common with heavy abstracted euro games than it does with historical games or historical war games. That isn’t to say there is no theme or history infused here, because there is actually quite a bit, I’m just not sure you are going to get invested in the 18th-century conflict between France and England playing Imperial Struggle. The abstractions are quite heavy and in a way, the mechanics and gameplay are so involved that it draws your attention from the historical theme on which the game is based.

In comparison to Twilight Struggle which is a very thematic game, Imperial Struggle falls quite a bit short in the theme department by comparison. I think it’s mainly because in Twilight Struggle every action a player took always triggered a historical event (as you would always play an event card) and so the result was a game OF events wherein Imperial Struggle you are most of the time trying to leverage the most you can out of your action selection tokens which are kind of nameless, themeless actions really not representing anything. Even when event cards are triggered, because of the flow of the game to that point and its focus on action selection, the significance of the themes and history on these event cards kind of take a back seat and just become ways to enhance your actions.

I would argue that the cards are unnecessarily complicated for the purpose they serve in the game as well, it would have been much better to keep these cards straightforward, clean, and simple. The designer was very clearly trying to infuse more themes into the game by creating a strong link between the event cards and their place in history which is to be applauded but as such these cards developed a much more complex structure in an effort to make them come off more thematic. I don’t think the effort was successful here as the complexity of these cards gets under the feet of a game that is otherwise brilliant in the gameplay department, hurting, rather than helping to enhance the gaming experience.

All and all, I think how much you theme you get out of Imperial Struggle is really going to depend on your extracurricular activities between plays and how much you understand about the history involved. There is a lot of history infused into the mechanics here and once you get to know the game many nuanced strategies, knowingly or not you are likely to make many historically accurate decisions. Imperial Struggle, however, is a very abstracted game as already mentioned several times and this 18th-century theme isn’t going to force itself on you.

More importantly, I really felt that even though this is clearly a historical game, meant to be about a very specific and rather interesting point in human history, the theme here is really not that important to the quality of the game. Imperial Struggles success as a game does not hinge on its ability to draw you into its theme, this is very much a game about good gameplay and deep, contemplative strategies. Its greatest moments are going to be when you pull these off.

When you deconstruct this game, It’s a very good competitive point salad and a very challenging one at that and while I think different people will have different levels of emotional attachments to the theme, if you are looking for a deep, thematic game about the conflict between England and France in the 18th century, I’m not sure Imperial Struggle is going to give historical war game fans that in a sufficient dose. This game you buy for the excellent gameplay and strategic board game it is.

Gameplay

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Pros:  This game is a tight, cerebral competition that absolutely nails the action selection and area control gameplay.

Cons: Some aspects of the game are overdone creating unwanted rules complexity and rules exceptions.

Imperial Struggle is a truly triumphant evolution of the unique area control genre that Twilight Struggle exemplified and arguably perfected. The alternate design path Imperial Struggle takes is a considerable departure from its predecessor (Twilight Struggle). Where this game differs from Twilight Struggle is also where it shines and looking at these two games side by side from a gameplay perspective, I think I would lean towards Imperial Struggle as the better game of the two despite being significantly different enough that they can happily live on my shelf side by side.

Imperial Struggle is a tense game in which every action, every move, every nuance becomes part of a larger picture that is a very complex and deep strategy. This is a game you don’t just learn to play, you study it like chess or poker, where it is not only a matter of calculation, although this is a big part of it, but also your ability to predict and assess your opponent’s strategy. Thanks to its open nature, you have information to base your prediction on staring you in the face on the map and in the investment tiles that are all on display. As such the game has a more contemplative and direct approach to strategy, rather than how it is often done in its predecessor Twilight Struggle where you “gamble” on a move hoping it pays off.

The wonderful thing and perhaps the reason why I prefer Imperial Struggle over Twilight Struggle is that there are so many different strategies, nuanced by a wildly asymmetrical game space on which they are executed. Every advantage on the board you can leverage, every push you successfully make, each position you claim, they all collegiate into this absolutely amazing gameplay experience that rewards you for your success and does not hinge on the luck of the draw of cards or toss of the dice. When you win at Imperial Struggle it’s because you have outplayed your opponent, victory in this game is earned through intelligence and deeply meaningful execution of strategy. It is in my mind, exactly the evolution of Twilight Struggle I wanted to see.

The game is hindered, albeit ever so slightly by a relatively steep initial learning curve, though I would argue when you come out at the other end, this game is ultimately much simpler to grasp. You’re not going to need more than one game before the haze of the rules starts to clear up and you can see the game for what it is, while at the same time I think this game is tailor-made for repeated plays as you will constantly find new avenues to explore.

The core of the activity of the game revolves around the action selection of Investment Tiles. Each tile has a major and minor action, of which there are three types (Diplomatic, Military and Economic). Each tile offers a certain amount of Action Points for the specified action and the entire game boils down to trying to achieve the most with those very limited actions & action points. You enhance your actions with an occasional well-timed play of event cards and enhance your general strategy for any given round with the use of ministry cards that offer more global bonuses and benefits. Furthermore, you can gain additional benefits by controlling certain board spaces.

Now I won’t pretend like the actions you take are “simple” as there is moderate complexity in what you can do with your action points and Imperial Struggle does struggle, pun intended, with a considerable amount of exception-based rules. These exception rules are really the biggest part of the initial learning curve as they aren’t always intuitive and can create questions you might not find easily answered in the rulebook. I found myself on a number of occasions stumped and searching online forums for an answer. This may explain why the general consensus is that Imperial Struggle is a more complex game than Twilight Struggle is. The focus and organization of the rulebook can sometimes make finding rules a bit of a frustrating process, as it too, is not always intuitive and well thought out.

Still, I feel very strongly that the effort made to learn to play this game is well worth the rewards. Find yourself an opponent willing to make a similar effort and what you have is one extraordinary game that will have you obsessing about finding new ways to win after every play.

One aspect of the game that I think comes across really well is the pressure that players can put on each other, causing both players to constantly have to re-assess and often adjust their strategy. For example, you might decide that you are going to try to win Europe, but your opponent undermines you just enough to make it a shallow victory, while he works on expanding his power in North America. Suddenly what you thought was going to be a gallant victory in Europe becomes a minor one, while you take a pasting elsewhere. This is a very simple and general example, in reality, these pressure points are often a lot more localized thanks to the way the various wars that take place between rounds can focus your attention. During each war, there are 3-4 conflicts taking place and those conflicts dictate what aspects on the map will be important, driving player decisions. The global market demand has a similar effect and also changes each round, which means that from round to round, elements on the board become less or more important and not always in predictable ways. This forces you to consider everything on the board at every turn, there is nothing that can be ignored and every game is going to be wildly different.

The back and forth play of actions is as much about timing as it is about what you do and because the investment tile selection available is randomized at the start of each round and different every round, you can’t really always count on being able to execute your plans exactly like you want to long term. Compromises will have to be made, strategic adjustments will have to be made and sometimes, plans will need to be abandoned altogether because of the actions of your opponent or circumstances on the board. There are almost two simultaneous things that happen in the game, one is the long-term strategy your building towards whenever you can which is often disrupted by clear emergencies on the board. Again, this creates this wonderful tension and pressure at every turn and is really what makes Imperial Struggle this really exciting strategy game.

The game really swings back and forth and earns the title “struggle” because that is exactly what it feels like.

Now I mentioned that this is a very abstract game and as much as I would like this gameplay to be contextualized more in the theme, as the gameplay is so strong here, the abstractions are just too heavy to maintain a thematic connection during play. Simply put, there is so much going on here, you aren’t going to be overly focused on the significance of the theme, gameplay will always be first and foremost on your mind.

That does not however mean that you won’t have an emotional attachment to the game as it unfolds, quite to the contrary, you most certainly will. Imperial Struggle might not get the 18th-century theme to the forefront of the experience, but make no mistake, Imperial Struggle is a good and proper battle of wits between players and it will bring the competitive player out of you. Perhaps some with a greater imagination then I might create a better correlation between the historical events and this tension the game produces. You are going to become deeply invested in the outcomes of the game and obsess about your mistakes either way.

The first time I played Imperial Struggle, I immediately needed to play it again, it was just that good.

There are a few blemishes and unfortunately, they stem from some of the failed attempts in this game to force more theme into it. The event cards have to be my biggest complaint here, as already mentioned, they are just a bit overcooked and just add unnecessary complexity to an otherwise very elegant game mechanic increasing the learning curve as a result, unnecessarily in my opinion.

There are also exception-based rules which are sometimes a bit much and can frustrate new players. The human brain can only juggle so many rules and I think I had played the game 4 times before I was certain that we had completed a game without making any rules mistakes, a problem I pin squarely on these exception-based rules that aren’t always referenced anywhere except the rulebook, not even in the quick reference sheet.

These two elements combined, exception-based rules and complex event cards, are the root cause of this game going from a mild-mannered middle-weight Euro and straying into the complex historical game genre. It’s really unfortunate because this game is just a notch too complicated to pull out with the general gamers and is ultimately going to fall into the historical wargamer clubs.

That doesn’t make it any lesser of a game, Imperial Struggle is an absolutely fantastic experience, but be wary of who you introduce it to. While Twilight Struggle broke the barrier and reached across the aisle to pull in Euro Gamers you might expect Imperial Struggle to do the same. I think Imperial Struggle goes just a bit too far into the historical war game side of things to make the transition easy.

Replayability and Longevity

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Pros: This is a game without a shelf life, it’s fantastic now and it will be fantastic 100 plays from now.

Cons: A bit of an unsteady playtime with no real catch-up mechanics.

Imperial Struggle may just be one of the most replayable games I have laid out on my table in years. It’s addictive and I think the big contributing factor here is that there are just so many interesting things on the map. There are countless nuanced elements with extremely viable strategic potential and while generally speaking you have to navigate every aspect of the game (Diplomatic, Economic and Military) to achieve victory, there are quite a few different approaches to this that open the game to repeated plays.

I think Imperial Struggle, like Twilight Struggle is going to be one of those games people will talk about years after its release with the same energy and passion on their first play as their 100th play. This game has incredible potential for longevity and while I think we can expect quite a few rules adjustments and fixes for the game, as there are certainly plenty of ways it could be improved with just a few carefully chosen changes, I think Imperial Struggle is great just the way it is.

The game takes about 2-4 hours to play. The reason for the range is that just like Twilight Struggle, while some games will go the distance, a great many will end at some point in the middle. It is very possible for a player to achieve victory as early as turn 3 or 4. This means the game falls somewhere between a nice afternoon and a game for the evening. I would say it’s better to plan for a 4-hour game than assume you can finish in 2 or 3. Expertise in the game will not change this playtime, quite to the contrary, the more expertise two players have the less likely the game is to end early.

I would argue however that the game does not have much of a catch-up mechanic, if you fall behind enough, you are likely to lose in the end. This might be seen as a drawback, but there is a kind of breaking point in games where, if a player gets sufficiently ahead it becomes evident the opposing player has no chance and I find many games end with a surrender by your opponent who rightfully identifies that he can no longer win. This isn’t a bad thing, quite to the contrary, once you reach this breaking point, it’s a far better option to give up and start a new game, than spend a couple of hours just going through the motions of finishing. One thing I can say is that, unlike Twilight Struggle if you fall behind, it won’t be because of a bad card draw and poor luck with the dice. This is a pure strategy game and if you lose early, it’s definitely on you which is why I think once two players gain experience with the game, it will very likely always go the distance.

I give this game high marks for replayability and longevity, this is one that will not only remain on your shelf but isn’t likely to collect dust.

Conclusion

I’m not sure Imperial Struggle will be the spiritual successor to Twilight Struggle everyone hoped for, it is a game that is wildly different and targets a more traditional historical wargaming community. Though one might argue that Twilight Struggle was a game designed with the same intention and was simply adopted by the general public regardless and perhaps Imperial Struggle with benefit from a similar fate.

In either case, Imperial Struggle has a considerable initial learning curve with many exception-based rules which means it’s a fairly typical approach to historical war games. It also means it strays considerably from Twilight Struggles’ more streamlined approach to playability which I believe to be at least partially why so many Euro gamers were able to adopt TS. I don’t believe the same can be said about Imperial Struggle.

To me however none of this matters, I consider myself a historical wargamer and if we are being quite frank, I didn’t find the game particularly complicated to learn at all personally. I can see how Euro gamers might look at this game and proclaim it “heavy”, but to veteran wargamers, this game will definitely fall into the mid-range, perhaps even low end of the complexity spectrum depending on what you are already accustomed to. This is a game that relies quite heavily on rules structure and concepts historical wargamers should be quite used to and it should give them little trouble if any. After a couple of rounds of playing Imperial Struggle, it all clicked for me and I immediately began to understand and see the game’s immense potential. Sure, due the exception-based rules, it took a few games before we ran it 100% right but that in on itself is also kind of a common thing with historical war games.

This is an extraordinary game that offers a fantastic mental challenge and creates great tension and strategy that will take years to fully explore. The mechanics are both logical and clever, the strategies deep and meaningful and the gameplay exceptionally rewarding. I fell in love with this game after a single play, but unlike so many historical war games on my shelf, my adoration of this game had very little to do with its thematic presence and connection to the history of the game and everything to do with its truly brilliant mechanics. The machinery here is what really makes this game the fascinating experience it is.

It’s a bit strange because while I don’t believe Euro gamers will adopt this game as they did Twilight Struggle, I actually believe they should. Any Euro gamers willing to struggle through the learning curve will find that this actually is an extraordinarily brilliant competitive point salad game at its roots, something right up their alley. In fact, were it not for the exception-based rules and the unnecessarily overindulgent event cards, I could see how this game would have made an even better cross-over game than even Twilight Struggle was. It very oddly has mechanics far more in common in heavy Euro games than it does with historical war games, it ticks many of those Euro boxes.

What I can say about Imperial Struggle is that it’s a gem with a few rough edges that, for historical wargamers aren’t going to be an issue at all, but maybe a bit of a problem for everyone else. I can also say that this is just another example of why Ananda Gupta & Jason Mathews are celebrities in historical wargaming circles, there are fun games and then there are games like Imperial Struggle, literal examples of amazing game design no serious historical wargamer can afford to miss despite its oddly Eurocentric mechanics. That is not to say Imperial Struggle isn’t fun, but it’s a very cerebral kind of fun, in line with what you kind of expect from historical war games.

I love it, but I recommend it only to historical wargamers and Euro gamers who are looking for something really challenging that might be just a few notches outside their normal comfort zone. If you are a Twilight Struggle fan, I’m not sure this game shares enough similarities with TS that you will find it anything but mildly familiar. It is a great game and it’s likely that you picked TS because it too is great, not because of anything specific about a preference regarding mechanics. Sometimes a great game is a great game, how or why doesn’t really matter, and Imperial Struggle while not exactly a spiritual successor to Twilight Struggle is indeed a great game inside the broad confines of the genre.