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‘Twilight Imperium’, the Unrivaled King of 4X Strategy Games, Now 20% Off

3 Minute Read
Oct 26 2024
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Twilight Imperium set the gold standard in eXploring, eXpanding, eXploiting, and eXterminating, and now it can be yours for half off!

Twilight Imperium is a massive beast of a board game in the best possible way. If you’re a fan of deeply strategic and thematic space opera games, you really can’t do any better than Twilight Imperium.

How to Play Twilight Imperium?

It’s a complex game. So how do you play it?

via GIPHY

Like any 4X game, players will be eXploring, eXpanding, eXploiting, & eXterminating. It’s a term that was coined back in the 90s to describe games where players spend their turns venturing into unknown wildernesses, taking control of those lands, taking the resources from them, and killing anyone who gets in the way.

In Twilight Imperium, it takes this idea and slaps it on top of a grand space opera. Players battle and fight over planetary systems, which will grant them resources and influence. They will spend resources to build more ships and space stations, and influence to do more actions which will often (but not always) be used for killing.

Unlike games like Risk, players don’t win through domination, but through victory points. Strictly speaking, Twilight Imperium is not exactly a territory control game. Each player will have public and private victory condition cards which grant victory points. So a small, but mighty empire has just as much chance at victory as a massive galactic federation.

Is It Really That Complicated?

Truth be told, no. Twilight Imperium is not a complicated game, but it is complex. The rules are easy to understand. However, the complexity arises because there are a ton of moving parts in every game. Every turn will have dozens of viable options which will completely alter your strategic course for the rest of the game.

On top of that, every game is very different. The board is made of modular hex tokens, which are randomly distributed in each game. Plus, things like the factions each player is using, as well as their victory conditions, will alter how the game plays out. This means that even more for the most veteran players, games will take a while. But, that said, it is a fantastic game. You wouldn’t have made it to its fourth edition if it weren’t.

Plus, there are several expansions like Prophesy of Kings which adds seven new factions and 74 leaders, and new mech units. New promissory notes, relics, exploration cards, action cards, agenda cards, objective cards, and much more. It’s not the only expansion to Twilight Imperium, but it’s arguably the best one to get.

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If you’re looking for one of the best grand strategy board games out there, you will love Twilight Imperium.

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Author: Matt Sall
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