Imperial - The Stock of War
Overview: Imperial is a novel game featuring several familiar elements. The game revolves around financiers (ie, the players) backing the major European powers circa World War I. It blends elements of Diplomacy, Supremacy and its predecessor Antike (by virtue of its Action Rondel) creating a thematic feel of a Wargame. However, the crux of the action lies in Power Speculation - the game engine is actually a Stock Exchange, where players invest in the different powers to control their actions and increase the value of their shares.
The Facts: Imperial is Designed by <PERSON> (Antike) and published by Rio Grande Games / Eggert-Spiele. The box lists the playing time at 120 minutes and the game scales from 2-6 players.
From my experience the two extremes are probably not going to offer the best gameplay -- I think 4-5 is probably the best range for Imperial. 120 minutes may be ambitious for the first game (I'd guesstimate expecting 2.5-3 hours) but once you gain familiarity with the rules and cadence, this could definitely be knocked out in 2 hours.
Components: Imperial comes in a nice hefty box (comparable to Antike, Santiago or Australia) made of solid cardboard - you shouldn't get compression wear n' tear on this game even with a few titles stacked on top of it.
The large foldout board is full color and double-sided. One side features the original German language layout, and the other side is in English. The gameboard art is attractive and clearly defines important features - ports, factory sites, territory boundaries and the like. Other than the map, three important regions of the board faciliate gameplay - the Rondel (where actions are selected), the Taxation Chart (where you determine the value of a nation when taxing during a specific action) and the Power Chart (the nation's current running total, used to determine endgame values). The board also features one "Warchest" area per nation - a holding place for that nation's money during the game, which also serves as a visual reminder of the turn order (each turn proceeds with Austria-Hungary, then clockwise around the board from there). 993
These regions are all clearly detailed, easy to read, and attractively assigned to the board.
Each of the six nations features a bevy of components - wooden ships and cannons for military units, round discs to represent areas they are taxing, large hex pieces to show their space on the Rondel, Tax Chart and Power Chart, a colorful national flag tile and eight sturdy, double sided Bond tiles. These Bonds are German-language on one side and English (or regional) on the other. These tiles cleanly display important information about that Bond - the Bond's total value, sequence in that nation's series of bonds, and how much interest it pays out.
The items listed above are all excellent and well integrated. The paper money, though, is very poor. While the money is in 4 visually distinct colors, the paper is clumsy to manage, and the art is very poor. I would have far preferred (physically) smaller bills of a higher finish for better manipulation and management. The money management is pretty clunky -- in many cases, you may be better off using poker chips or money from another game (however, individual player cash can remain secret, so that option depends on your group's preferences).
Gameplay: Without rehashing all the rules, which are detailed elsewhere, I'll provide a very simple overview of the gameplay. Each round, each nation gets to act by moving their marker clockwise around the Rondel, which lists available actions in pie-wedges around the circle. There are quite a few actions available, but a nation can only advance 1-3 spaces for free, else the controller must pay cash out of hand to move further. There are enough spaces on the Rondel to ensure it will take several turns to complete a circuit - as some actions are only available once on the wheel, players have to balance advancing quickly around the wheel to certain actions with passing up the opportunity to more fully develop a nation.
There are a variety of different actions available -- nations can develop factories to increase production, manufacture army/naval units, move troops around the board, hire mercenary units (allowing production above/beyond their normal factory limitations), generate income by having the nations pay out interest on their bonds or tax the region to increase a nation's warchest and end game bonus value.
The interesting wrinkle is that the player with the greatest financial investment in a particular nation (ie, has purchased the greatest number/amount of bonds) takes the flag for that nation and gets to "act" in that nation's interests. So several people may have shares in a nation, but only one person actively decides what the nation will do when that nation is activated. 349