Twilight Imperium: Third Edition, or
TI3 for short, defines the term "epic" when referencing a board game. It is a game that is infamous for being expensive, large to store (it comes in a gigantic 'coffin' box - by far the largest on my shelves), complex to learn, and takes an age to play. The rough estimate for a game is around the 8-hour mark, and this is actually pretty accurate for larger (6-8 people) games and for new players learning the system. So, the question that people always want to know is "is it all worth it?"
YES. Yes it is.
TI3 is an experience like no other, while it should seem like an absolute slog, you will be fully engaged and enthralled by this game from start to finish and the feel of actually playing it makes the time go very quickly indeed. This is not some sort of abstract board game, or a mechanical streamlined eurogame, this is a deep thick "ameritrash" experience, dripping in theme and richly rewarding - in short, it accurately recreates taking a space faring alien race and expanding your civilization out into the galaxy with the goal of reclaiming the lost throne at the centre of a vast intergalactic empire.
The aim of the game is to be the first to reach 10 victory points, which you do through fulfilling objectives both public and secret, and this represents your alien race becoming powerful enough to claim the right to Metacol Rex (the seat of power). Some of these objectives revolve around military conquest, often of Metacol Rex itself, some concentrate on establishing trading routes, some on gaining more influence in the galactic council, etc. The objectives are varied enough to keep other players guessing and open the game up tactically so that you're not funneled down one path to victory. You achieve all this by carefully managing your civilization's resources, allocating strategic counters to different systems, or expanding your fleet size, or jumping in on different group actions as they become available. This is the genius part of
TI3 for me, the fact that you almost have
zero downtime between your own turns; you are constantly keeping an eye on what other players are doing and spending resources in their turns to take actions, trade, vote on laws, etc. It really is extremely engaging all the time and ensures that you're never bored or feel like you're waiting for other people.
Like
Cosmic Encounter, this is another Fantasy Flight Games production, meaning that the components are gorgeous! This third edition is also heavily overproduced, by which I mean there are oversized hexes that make up the galaxy (taking up a massive amount of table space), an absolute ton of plastic space ship miniatures for each player, and lots and lots of cards and tokens. It may be quite expensive but you get a
lot for your money. There's far too much to talk about regarding this game, and I'm not aiming to give a thorough in depth account of all the mechanics of these games, just hyperbole and gushing about how much I love them. One thing worth mentioning though is that the base game of
TI3 is allegedly flawed in one key area and needs the
Shattered Empires expansion to fix. Now, I've never played just the base game because I purchased the expansion at the same time as
TI3 and mixed it all up straight away - so this review is really for the base game plus expansion - inflating the price even more. However, the expansion completes the game in my opinion, for instance I don't think I would ever play without pre-set maps and you need the expansion for that. If the idea of a huge space empire building game appeals to you, then ignore the naysayers and their complaints of size and length, this game is the most
epic board game you will ever play and an experience really unmatched by anything else.
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