Osprey Games Imperium - Classics

This game has so much theme. There's 2 pages in the rulebook about how each Nation will approach the game. This version has easier nations than the "legends" version.I'd recommend watching YouTube videos to learn it. Once you get the hang it plays quite quickly but there's lots of keywords like "breakthrough" to learn.I do like the solo mode. It has tables in the solo rulebook to follow to decide how it plays. This depends on which card has been played by the solo bot.As far as value for money, this game must be one of the best. It's relatively cheap and can be played with so much variation. I've mainly played with the Romans but today have tried the Carthaginians

Longer and more complex than your average deck building card game, which was actually a good thing for me. I love ancient history, so really loved the artwork and faithfulness to history in using real place names. The variety in artwork is fantastic. You get 8 nations to play with. Also you can play against the bot which really works. There is also 4 levels of difficulty so you can choose, and even a campaign mode to keep things interesting

I was not sure about this after reading it was hard to learn and the rulebook was badly written. However this turns out to be true but once I got into it I could not stop playing it. Loads of replayability with so many different empires to play and determine how to best use the cards. Art is great too. Solo play works very well too.

This is one of the best and most varied deck builder games I've played.However, it does have a major flaw, the manual; the rule book isn't really clear enough, and it takes a while to work through it.Though once you get past that, it is an excellent game.It also has a rather excellent solo mode, it could have done with flip cards for the opponents effects rather than having to refer to the manual.Artwork is cool and evocative.Component quality is ok, the cards seem pretty durable though I've got some warping.Counters are a bit lack lustre but they do their job.

A different deck builder game, with lots of replay ability. 8 different civilisations with variable player powers will lead to a different game each time you pick this one up. Recommended for solo and 3-player count, despite each turn might last few minutes the first times you’ll play.

I've played this a few times now, solo, against the Persians and Macedonians. Both played differently and were quite insightful of the premise presented behind each nation. It's really interesting looking back through their history to see how the game reflects this. There's definitely a learning curve for the game but work through that and it's worth it, so far anyway.It can be a bit bewildering at first what your strategy should be so it's worth reading the provided nation description for some pointers. Definitely recommend this. I've not played the other version, Legends, but think Classics is the version to start with as the Legend characters are graded a bit harder to play.

This game has so many nations to try out, I've only tried a few but they all feel very different so far. The core system is versatile enough to handle the assymetry really well and exploring the different civs is great fun!