I've played a single game of Legends and it did my favorite thing any asymmetric faction-based game can do: After finishing my game as the Olmecs, I did not feel "Oh I need to try all the other factions!" but rather "I need to play the Olmecs again because I now am better at playing with them". I'll eventually move on to a different faction, sure, but the fact that I had this drive to replay the one I just did really speaks to there being something here other than just the freshness of a new civilization.
Thanks for review. Legends has 3 fictional civilisations (Atlantis, Arthurians and Utopians) other 5 are historical; Qin Dynasty, Olmecs, Mauryans, Minoans and Egyptians.
Imperium is one of the best games I have played in 2021 (definitely the best solo game of 2021). I love how each nation plays so differently and your strategy needs to change based on which nations you are playing against. Great game.
This was something I looked at for solo only. There is so much to think about as Tom mentioned here. Definitely lengthier than most Deck-builders but my gosh the asymmetry alone is fantastic. Favorites being Arthurians, Olmecs and Atlantnteans. All of them are very different which is amazing in itself. Solo game of the year for me.
Yeah we echo the same thoughts from my review. I really enjoy the game from a a mechanical point and the theming is great, but it does have a high barrier of entry, iffy components and I’ll only play it solo. But a great game once you get past that first hurdle.
Mike is correct... the solo mode IS quite good! I was very hesitant to buy this after reading the rules and watching how-to-plays, but I finally caved from curiosity. I thought the complexity and theme would be too much for my wife to enjoy. About halfway through our first game, she was flying through turns and it was clear she was loving it. We've played several times since - which is rare! This review was absolutely spot-on... although I'd personally give it an Excellence adding the solo mode into the mix!
Thanks Tom for this well balanced review. I have already heard the rules aren’t great but that it’s an interesting game once you get into it. Looking forward to seeing how this plays solo.
Small correction at 5:38- cards you acquire (in fact most, but not all, cards you gain at any point) actually go straight into your hand. So you can play lots of nice combos, and you need to think so carefully about what you're going to do on your turn, and in which order (as Tom implied, you have 3 actions on your turn, so you DON'T just play your whole hand of cards each turn like a lot of deck builders). I've played a LOT of this solo, and really enjoyed it, would definitely recommend for solo- curious to hear Mike's thoughts.
This, acquired cards going directly into your hand, drastically transformed the play experience for me. I made this mistake and, in addition, I didn't pull my exhaust marker from my nation deck (the one that gets you a new card shuffled into your deck and you have to cycle through to become an empire) at the correct time (you do it before you draw up to five cards at the end of your turn, meaning you can definitely cycle through your deck once every turn if you do it correctly), which meant that I did not cycle through my cards fast enough and this really contributed to the game feeling like it dragged on too long! It's still a long game, but these two mistakes really mired by first game and after getting rid of them, I had a great time. On the rulebook: it is not great at introducing you to the game and that is unforgivable, but as a reference work, it is actually really good and concise! But, there being an errata already (nothing major, except for what to do with unrest cards in solo; you return them to the unrest supply pile) also means that it should've been better. This is all fair criticism! Now, I couldn't wait to play this and I might get Legends, too, but what I am really excited for, after all these plays I am going to wring out of them, and all the fun I am going to have, is a second edition that will streamline a lot of things, including the game's fiddliness, introduce new nations, etc. etc. And that's the hightest praise I can offer: I love this, but I am also excited to see where it goes next. Someday, at least. Not that anything is planned.
I love this game and solo is my preferred way to play. It does have a high barrier to entry like you mentioned, but it's definitely worth pushing through. With both Classics and Legends there's a huge amount of replayability but I do hope that in the future more will be released because there's a lot of potential with this system.
Completely agree, it's a good game, I like it solo. But I don't foresee a brand new player winning over more experienced players. Not that it makes it a bad game, just may be difficult for new players to overcome. Especially that rulebook. It could have been way better. It's definitely a learning game that takes a couple plays to understand it more.
I played this recently. I can see the potential but I did not know what I needed to do to win. I could garrison but most of the time the cards came back to me. Played 3 players. Downtime, though significant, was not an issue for me since I had to think on my next move a lot. I felt it should have ended about a half hour earlier. But, I still want to play it again.
I love Anachrony, easily in my top 5 games. I'm very heavily on the fence about this one. A lot of reviewers have been seriously knocking it for being unnecessarily complicated and long. Sometimes games seem too big to fail and people feel uneasy about criticizing it. This might be one of those games.
What I wonder is…is it realistic that these factions have been play tested enough to ensure they all provide fun experiences? Somehow I have my doubts. Can I pick any one faction and play it 20 times without being bored?
One thing I am keen to know…if we are playing sophisticated card game like this one…why would we not want to play TCG instead? Something like magic the gathering and flesh and blood could offer similar and better experience? Would anyone who has played all these and share some comments?
it's because they're different games. They're using cards but with completely different systems. Think of sports. we cannot ask baseball players "why are you playing baseball? why would you not want to play soccer(football) instead?"
What I mean is. TCG should be an advanced level of card games as new cards keep coming out and new ways to play and build decks. If for someone who are frequent tcg players, would you still go with this game with fixed contents…? That’s the question… Of course they are different games. It’s like fab also different to mtg but I am talking about the nature
@@kennychan6645 First of all, I believe not all people go after keywords such as advanced, new cards, new meta, and etc. There are people who just love digging the same game over and over because they like the game. Second, I wanna clarify that the term 'deck building' here(and in this video) means a system that lets you build a deck as you take/purchase cards during the play. Because you don't have full access to all the cards in the game, you must adjust your strategy as you go. The deck building mechanism from TCG such as MTG is totally different. You come to a table with a pre-built deck and play with it (or build it right before playing the game). Coming to a table with a pre-built deck and building a deck with accessible cards during the play give us completely different game experience. This is why i used baseball & soccer as an example. The core is the same -- beating shit out of your opponent :) -- but how you play it is different... and that's why we can't say "This is better than that". At least that's what I think.
Ok! I take this as an answer to the question! MTG and FaB itself are two different games itself so it also fit your analogy of soccer and baseball so I was looking for more generic answer to if you are already someone frequently looking at an expandable card games, what is the pull factor for you to go into a game with a fixed deck list…. There are already tonnes of TCG. Yugioh, FaB, MTG, WS, BS, etc just to name a few so difference here is just the way is the way it’s just the way it plays and that some people just like fixed decks. That’s ok!
Although I think the gameplay here feels quite similar to MTG you need to pay for “mana costs” to support costs of the card and aim is still to get life points down to 0. Hence the question! But all good! I will give this game a try when I can rent it, thx!
The problem with this game is that it really demands multiple plays before it "clicks", and I think it's almost impossible to enjoy the very first game. And yes, the technical rulebook doesn't really help things. Still a great game IMO, if a little long. And scoring is a bit of a beast
I understood the game by the end of my first session. Blew through several games since and it all makes sense. Yep, I’m one of the people who is here to say “it’s not that complex”. The game will reward repeated play and it has me hooked. This is not the type of game that you play only once or casually every 3 months.
"This is not the type of game that you play only once or casually every 3 months." That's the textbook definition of a game being complex... if it weren't that complex, you COULD play it infrequently without any problems.
definitely more complex then most deck builders, but far far away from even most medium euros. Essentially grasping what the factions are doing, or wanting to know everything going on is similar to wanting to memorize and learn cthulu wars with some expansions before you play. Best to start by learning just what you're doing and then expand. my top solo of the year, top 5 civ games, and in the top ten for sure this year.
@@thedicetower in the grand scheme paladins of the west kindom is right now my benchmark for the edge of medium weight, even if it might be quite heavy for a mass market gamer. You kind of have to box out the heavy end with games from Lacerda/splotter and even crazier chit based war games around, which does leave a lot of meat in the medium tier. We use medium across a lot of discords to mean not so light there aren't any interesting decisions like a parks, not so heavy that we know it's going to take over 3 hours and be a pain for a hobbyist to learn. It's very far away from being heavy as there are no nested bonus actions like say on mars, I can still teach this to a mass market gamer imperium.
@@82ndmi Yeah, we're just going to disagree there. Paladin is a HEAVY game. In the context of 18XX it's not, but that like 0.005% of all games. It's heavier than most games in existence, thus heavy.
@@thedicetower yup. don't think there's a wrong answer either way. I don't think it's wrong for the new york times, a mass market publication, to review a popular book in the context of a few hundred great books, just like I don't think it's wrong to view games like the west kingdoms series outside of the context that 3000 "chutes and battleships" and "kraft singles the solo card game" are released every year. similarly you can contextualize against every game on the shelf if you feel like it's a better mass market approach. (with all due reverence to the fact you're the new york times of board games)
I have played three times and I find it slow to set up, slow to tear down, slow to teach, slow to play and whilst it does have some technical merit is not good enough to warrant all the effort. Its a poor ‘return on time investment’ that doesn’t give enough of a ‘kick’ to push through.
Its not that complex of a game. Maybe a 3 weight. The first game will be a learning experience but I still had fun and won the first solo game on the easiest difficulty. The more complicated nations are a great plus but no one should play those right away. You would need to understand how the game works first. Very cool game if you like deck builders and Civ building. The only downside is the rulebook could be better but you can actually ignore about half of it. A lot of the rulebook is specific rules for when adding specific nations down the line. The important rules to know (and they should be separated out to an intro section of the rulebook) are exile (remove a market card without a progress token and then refresh the market card), breakthrough (add market card to hand without unrest), acquire (add market card to hand with also gaining unrest card), garrison (thin deck by adding card to in play land, there are ways to get this card back in the future), and to a lesser extent history (permanently thin deck by putting card under main nation card. That's what you will be doing most of the time. The rulebook lists every term and doesn't highlight which are the important ones and which are not. That is the downside of the rulebook. I think it is an easy game to teach.
I kinda wish there had been a classic game called Imperium so there would be a video called 'Imperium: Classics review' and a different confusingly named 'Imperium: Classic review'
whoa..in the first five minutes of this overview you said the word 'CARDS' 60 times!! Averaging once every 5 seconds...for 5 minutes straight! I stopped at 6:30 mark...I grew weary. But it is my hope someone else will take up the mantle of card counter and have a final tally for further generations.
Seems to me that this game is similar to Everdell. A deck building game that uses forest creatures as factions. It has a heavy redwall feeling to it. Really good game.
Usually tom's overviews are concise and helpful but sometimes they are just rambly and don't give a helpful breakdown of the game at all. This is one of the rambly confusing overviews.
Finally I waited for your review I also wanted to like this but sorry it's too much of a job and not a game, hate it You really seems to want to scream about it 🤣
Hated it also. The rulebook is poorly sequenced, the theme is lost because cards only matter insomuch as they synergize with your strategy and have very little to do with the constructs they're meant to represent. Point salad at the end makes it near impossible to know how good you are doing (even in solo), too much fiddlyness with the bot, and most importantly it outstays its welcome later on as you know pretty much what you will do on your turn and the bot cant really affect you much, but also because of the esoteric points youre just waiting for the end to come to see if you won or not. I like the mechanics and asymmetry, but its not enough fun to outmatch the blandness of most of the play
This game is the product of someone playing civilization, making a card game with a ton of house rules. It’s dog shit and requires to much out a advertised casual game.
I've played a single game of Legends and it did my favorite thing any asymmetric faction-based game can do: After finishing my game as the Olmecs, I did not feel "Oh I need to try all the other factions!" but rather "I need to play the Olmecs again because I now am better at playing with them". I'll eventually move on to a different faction, sure, but the fact that I had this drive to replay the one I just did really speaks to there being something here other than just the freshness of a new civilization.
Thanks for review. Legends has 3 fictional civilisations (Atlantis, Arthurians and Utopians) other 5 are historical; Qin Dynasty, Olmecs, Mauryans, Minoans and Egyptians.
Imperium is one of the best games I have played in 2021 (definitely the best solo game of 2021). I love how each nation plays so differently and your strategy needs to change based on which nations you are playing against. Great game.
This was something I looked at for solo only. There is so much to think about as Tom mentioned here. Definitely lengthier than most Deck-builders but my gosh the asymmetry alone is fantastic. Favorites being Arthurians, Olmecs and Atlantnteans. All of them are very different which is amazing in itself. Solo game of the year for me.
Yeah we echo the same thoughts from my review. I really enjoy the game from a a mechanical point and the theming is great, but it does have a high barrier of entry, iffy components and I’ll only play it solo. But a great game once you get past that first hurdle.
Rule note. When you acquire or breakthrough to gain a card, they go into your hand, not your discard.
Mike is correct... the solo mode IS quite good!
I was very hesitant to buy this after reading the rules and watching how-to-plays, but I finally caved from curiosity. I thought the complexity and theme would be too much for my wife to enjoy. About halfway through our first game, she was flying through turns and it was clear she was loving it. We've played several times since - which is rare! This review was absolutely spot-on... although I'd personally give it an Excellence adding the solo mode into the mix!
Thanks Tom for this well balanced review. I have already heard the rules aren’t great but that it’s an interesting game once you get into it. Looking forward to seeing how this plays solo.
Small correction at 5:38- cards you acquire (in fact most, but not all, cards you gain at any point) actually go straight into your hand. So you can play lots of nice combos, and you need to think so carefully about what you're going to do on your turn, and in which order (as Tom implied, you have 3 actions on your turn, so you DON'T just play your whole hand of cards each turn like a lot of deck builders).
I've played a LOT of this solo, and really enjoyed it, would definitely recommend for solo- curious to hear Mike's thoughts.
This, acquired cards going directly into your hand, drastically transformed the play experience for me. I made this mistake and, in addition, I didn't pull my exhaust marker from my nation deck (the one that gets you a new card shuffled into your deck and you have to cycle through to become an empire) at the correct time (you do it before you draw up to five cards at the end of your turn, meaning you can definitely cycle through your deck once every turn if you do it correctly), which meant that I did not cycle through my cards fast enough and this really contributed to the game feeling like it dragged on too long! It's still a long game, but these two mistakes really mired by first game and after getting rid of them, I had a great time.
On the rulebook: it is not great at introducing you to the game and that is unforgivable, but as a reference work, it is actually really good and concise! But, there being an errata already (nothing major, except for what to do with unrest cards in solo; you return them to the unrest supply pile) also means that it should've been better. This is all fair criticism!
Now, I couldn't wait to play this and I might get Legends, too, but what I am really excited for, after all these plays I am going to wring out of them, and all the fun I am going to have, is a second edition that will streamline a lot of things, including the game's fiddliness, introduce new nations, etc. etc. And that's the hightest praise I can offer: I love this, but I am also excited to see where it goes next. Someday, at least. Not that anything is planned.
I’ll be coming with my solo review in the near future.
@@michaeldilisio557 cliffhanger!
I will need to take a college course for this game. But, I love to read of history and civ building and deck building games. What to do! What to do!
Tom, you should definitely try solo, it's one of the best competitive solo games I've played. The way each faction had their own AI is amazing.
I love this game and solo is my preferred way to play. It does have a high barrier to entry like you mentioned, but it's definitely worth pushing through. With both Classics and Legends there's a huge amount of replayability but I do hope that in the future more will be released because there's a lot of potential with this system.
am I the only one who loves games that shove keywords everywhere instead of an exhaustive wall of text?
Completely agree, it's a good game, I like it solo. But I don't foresee a brand new player winning over more experienced players. Not that it makes it a bad game, just may be difficult for new players to overcome. Especially that rulebook. It could have been way better. It's definitely a learning game that takes a couple plays to understand it more.
I played this recently. I can see the potential but I did not know what I needed to do to win. I could garrison but most of the time the cards came back to me. Played 3 players. Downtime, though significant, was not an issue for me since I had to think on my next move a lot. I felt it should have ended about a half hour earlier. But, I still want to play it again.
I love Anachrony, easily in my top 5 games. I'm very heavily on the fence about this one. A lot of reviewers have been seriously knocking it for being unnecessarily complicated and long. Sometimes games seem too big to fail and people feel uneasy about criticizing it. This might be one of those games.
very fair review Tom, I agree with all your points
Tom and the DT crew! Do you guys mind separating out the components review section into its own chapter/section?
I think this is effectively the best way to review this game. Excellent game, complex, interesting factions, terrible rule book.
You look great here Tom 👊🏼💥
What I wonder is…is it realistic that these factions have been play tested enough to ensure they all provide fun experiences? Somehow I have my doubts. Can I pick any one faction and play it 20 times without being bored?
Like Food Chain Magnate, this is a game where any more experienced player will happily mow you down at every turn.
Very much agree with the review here, I love it but it’s not for everyone
One thing I am keen to know…if we are playing sophisticated card game like this one…why would we not want to play TCG instead? Something like magic the gathering and flesh and blood could offer similar and better experience?
Would anyone who has played all these and share some comments?
it's because they're different games. They're using cards but with completely different systems. Think of sports. we cannot ask baseball players "why are you playing baseball? why would you not want to play soccer(football) instead?"
What I mean is. TCG should be an advanced level of card games as new cards keep coming out and new ways to play and build decks.
If for someone who are frequent tcg players, would you still go with this game with fixed contents…? That’s the question…
Of course they are different games. It’s like fab also different to mtg but I am talking about the nature
@@kennychan6645 First of all, I believe not all people go after keywords such as advanced, new cards, new meta, and etc. There are people who just love digging the same game over and over because they like the game.
Second, I wanna clarify that the term 'deck building' here(and in this video) means a system that lets you build a deck as you take/purchase cards during the play. Because you don't have full access to all the cards in the game, you must adjust your strategy as you go.
The deck building mechanism from TCG such as MTG is totally different. You come to a table with a pre-built deck and play with it (or build it right before playing the game).
Coming to a table with a pre-built deck and building a deck with accessible cards during the play give us completely different game experience.
This is why i used baseball & soccer as an example. The core is the same -- beating shit out of your opponent :) -- but how you play it is different... and that's why we can't say "This is better than that". At least that's what I think.
Ok! I take this as an answer to the question! MTG and FaB itself are two different games itself so it also fit your analogy of soccer and baseball so I was looking for more generic answer to if you are already someone frequently looking at an expandable card games, what is the pull factor for you to go into a game with a fixed deck list….
There are already tonnes of TCG. Yugioh, FaB, MTG, WS, BS, etc just to name a few so difference here is just the way is the way it’s just the way it plays and that some people just like fixed decks. That’s ok!
Although I think the gameplay here feels quite similar to MTG you need to pay for “mana costs” to support costs of the card and aim is still to get life points down to 0. Hence the question! But all good!
I will give this game a try when I can rent it, thx!
Definitely do not buy before trying. Got it.
Love the outro music. I hear Tom plays all the instruments.
I do really enjoy the game, but that rule book was such a slog, i'm glad i watched walkthrough videos.
Wow. I thought Tom will bash this game. This show how little I know about Tom's taste in BG
Easily one of the best deck builders. Not for everyone but excellent for some 😉
The problem with this game is that it really demands multiple plays before it "clicks", and I think it's almost impossible to enjoy the very first game. And yes, the technical rulebook doesn't really help things.
Still a great game IMO, if a little long. And scoring is a bit of a beast
I understood the game by the end of my first session. Blew through several games since and it all makes sense. Yep, I’m one of the people who is here to say “it’s not that complex”. The game will reward repeated play and it has me hooked. This is not the type of game that you play only once or casually every 3 months.
"This is not the type of game that you play only once or casually every 3 months."
That's the textbook definition of a game being complex... if it weren't that complex, you COULD play it infrequently without any problems.
@@MythicosQc74
Exectly I'm with you
definitely more complex then most deck builders, but far far away from even most medium euros. Essentially grasping what the factions are doing, or wanting to know everything going on is similar to wanting to memorize and learn cthulu wars with some expansions before you play. Best to start by learning just what you're doing and then expand.
my top solo of the year, top 5 civ games, and in the top ten for sure this year.
Cool, but if you think this is simpler than most medium euros, then I really think you are stretching the definition of "medium". :)
@@thedicetower in the grand scheme paladins of the west kindom is right now my benchmark for the edge of medium weight, even if it might be quite heavy for a mass market gamer.
You kind of have to box out the heavy end with games from Lacerda/splotter and even crazier chit based war games around, which does leave a lot of meat in the medium tier.
We use medium across a lot of discords to mean not so light there aren't any interesting decisions like a parks, not so heavy that we know it's going to take over 3 hours and be a pain for a hobbyist to learn.
It's very far away from being heavy as there are no nested bonus actions like say on mars, I can still teach this to a mass market gamer imperium.
@@82ndmi Yeah, we're just going to disagree there. Paladin is a HEAVY game. In the context of 18XX it's not, but that like 0.005% of all games. It's heavier than most games in existence, thus heavy.
@@thedicetower yup. don't think there's a wrong answer either way.
I don't think it's wrong for the new york times, a mass market publication, to review a popular book in the context of a few hundred great books, just like I don't think it's wrong to view games like the west kingdoms series outside of the context that 3000 "chutes and battleships" and "kraft singles the solo card game" are released every year.
similarly you can contextualize against every game on the shelf if you feel like it's a better mass market approach. (with all due reverence to the fact you're the new york times of board games)
Is the rulebook as bad as the Gi Joe Deck Builder (Renegade) rulebook? I heard that games rulebook is the worst.
Tom: Pls don't use this to learn to play the game
Me: No
I have played three times and I find it slow to set up, slow to tear down, slow to teach, slow to play and whilst it does have some technical merit is not good enough to warrant all the effort. Its a poor ‘return on time investment’ that doesn’t give enough of a ‘kick’ to push through.
APROOOOOOOOOVED!!
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(for some)
Great game!
Its not that complex of a game. Maybe a 3 weight. The first game will be a learning experience but I still had fun and won the first solo game on the easiest difficulty. The more complicated nations are a great plus but no one should play those right away. You would need to understand how the game works first. Very cool game if you like deck builders and Civ building. The only downside is the rulebook could be better but you can actually ignore about half of it. A lot of the rulebook is specific rules for when adding specific nations down the line. The important rules to know (and they should be separated out to an intro section of the rulebook) are exile (remove a market card without a progress token and then refresh the market card), breakthrough (add market card to hand without unrest), acquire (add market card to hand with also gaining unrest card), garrison (thin deck by adding card to in play land, there are ways to get this card back in the future), and to a lesser extent history (permanently thin deck by putting card under main nation card. That's what you will be doing most of the time. The rulebook lists every term and doesn't highlight which are the important ones and which are not. That is the downside of the rulebook. I think it is an easy game to teach.
Too bad. I was looking forward to this one.
What's with people dissing on the rulebook... That book is fine as it is. Maybe not the best, but clearly not a bad one.
I’ll be that person. It’s really not that complex, and I HATE overly complex games. Really not that bad. It’s not Splotter.
I kinda wish there had been a classic game called Imperium so there would be a video called 'Imperium: Classics review' and a different confusingly named 'Imperium: Classic review'
whoa..in the first five minutes of this overview you said the word 'CARDS' 60 times!! Averaging once every 5 seconds...for 5 minutes straight! I stopped at 6:30 mark...I grew weary. But it is my hope someone else will take up the mantle of card counter and have a final tally for further generations.
I guess that's the word I usually use to describe them. I'll try to think of a synonym.
Seems to me that this game is similar to Everdell. A deck building game that uses forest creatures as factions. It has a heavy redwall feeling to it. Really good game.
Usually tom's overviews are concise and helpful but sometimes they are just rambly and don't give a helpful breakdown of the game at all. This is one of the rambly confusing overviews.
Finally I waited for your review
I also wanted to like this but sorry it's too much of a job and not a game, hate it
You really seems to want to scream about it 🤣
Hated it also. The rulebook is poorly sequenced, the theme is lost because cards only matter insomuch as they synergize with your strategy and have very little to do with the constructs they're meant to represent. Point salad at the end makes it near impossible to know how good you are doing (even in solo), too much fiddlyness with the bot, and most importantly it outstays its welcome later on as you know pretty much what you will do on your turn and the bot cant really affect you much, but also because of the esoteric points youre just waiting for the end to come to see if you won or not.
I like the mechanics and asymmetry, but its not enough fun to outmatch the blandness of most of the play
This game is the product of someone playing civilization, making a card game with a ton of house rules. It’s dog shit and requires to much out a advertised casual game.