David Shayne - 05:17pm Aug 24, 2001 PST (#3027 of 3034)

The new Imperium does have it's own board here where A few of us have
posted our first thoughts on the game.

Visually the game is quite nice. The counters are top notch graphically
and are quite easy to look at and read. The mapboards are quite
colorfull.

The strategic board is essentially the same as the old GDW board with
the addition of a few extra planets arround some stars (For instance
Mars.) I'm not sure what effect this will have on the game as a whole.
In places the map can be a little hard to figure out but that was true
of the original as well.

Next we come to the two tactical boards. One for space combat and the
other for planetary. The space board is a 3D affair with three levels of
squares in a 5x5 grid. The main problem with this board is that several
of the squares are misnumbered. Not a big problem but you'd think that
they could have gotten this right.

The planetary battle map is IMHO about three times larger than it needs
to be. It has displays for every single planet in the game. But the only
functional diference in the maps is the number of hexes given over to
each planet. And there are only 7 different sizes. Lots of wasted space
here.

As I mentioned earlier they went with unmounted boards (in part I supose
just to get the thing out the door finally) which I find somewhat
annoying though I understand to others this is a feature rather than a
bug.

I haven't gotten into a full war with this game yet but I have gamed
some of the smaller scenarios.

Space battle is a bit of a hybrid between the GWAS turn structure and
Columbia Games block series combat. First the fastest ships all move a
square, (fighters move two squares) then beam combat is resolved, then
torpedo combat. A ship rolls as many dice in a round of combat as it's
factor for that type of weapon. The chances of hitting are dependent on
range (Beams in the same square hit on 4+, beams one square away hit on
a 6, Torpedoes in the same or adjacent squares hit on a 5+, Torpedoes 2
or 3 squares distant hit on a 6)

To damage a ship you need to score as many hits in a step as the ships
defence factor (1 for wimpy ships through Three for the BBs) Some ships
have a full strength and damaged side others are destroyed with one hit.
Hits that don't cause damage are not caried over to the next step so if
a cruiser (defense of 2) takes one hit in beams and one hit in the
torpedoes phase it is still undamaged. There is also a counter measures
score which is the number of dice that can be rolled to destroy incoming
torps. (each 6 takes out 1 torpedoe hit.)

Players determine initiative. Then move, then fire, then fire 3 times.
Then repeat this proces twice more.

Planetary combat is a little more straight forward but seems to lack
bloodiness. Each unit hits on a roll of 6. Since most land units have a
defense of two and a damaged side it seems like it would be hard to win
in a reasonable amount of time without overwhelming odds (like seven or
eight to one and it will take at least two turns even then.)

Caveat: I haven't gotten a chance to play a full war yet.

The new turn structure is a big departure from the original. In every
turn there are 4 action segments. In each segment both players roll one
die. The highest roller has initiative and may activate units in one of
his/her planetary boxes (as opposed to star systems since some stars
have multiple planets) these forces may move about etc. and then resolve
any combats they get into. They may not be reactivated during that
action sequence. The opponent then may activate units as above. Each
player may activate in as many different planetary boxes as the nuber
he/she rolled for initiative.

If the initiative roll is tied or if both players pass twice when they
could activate a unit or the players both run out of activations play
proceeds to the next action segment.

The peace sequence appears to be mostly similar to the original with the
exception that players still move their forces about as in war (but not
moving into or through opponent systems) which looks like a lot of extra
player work for no gain to me but I haven't played it out yet so no
judgement will be maid yet.

Most everything else appears to be mostly as the original. Hard to say
how much of the original game was lost and how much it may have gained
yet. A word of warning many of the rules are open to a certain ammount
of interpretation so getting the rules straight with a new opponent is
probably a must.

I'm enjoying the purchase thus far and recomend this game as a
worthwhile purchase.

David Shayne