Overview: (from BGG)
With Napoleon's abdication in 1815, the major powers of Europe convene the Congress of Vienna in Austria.
Explore an alternate history with each player taking the reins of a great European nation of the period. It is now up to each of you to decide how the borders of Europe will be redrawn.
Establish a dominating presence of power and wealth through clever diplomacy and strategic warfare.
Features include:
- Simultaneous & secret plotting of movement orders on a dry-erase planning map
- Free-form diplomacy, negotiations, and backstabbing
- Dice-based combat system with tactical stance choices
- Battle with cannons, cavalry, and infantry columns on land
- Battle with frigates and ships of the line in ports or at sea
- Purchase new forces with gold taxes collected from territories
- Earn prestige points by winning battles, earning elite forces, and controlling territories
- Earn and then clip shiny medals to your lapel that indicate your sublime grandeur (and offer in-game bonuses)
Rules & Setup:
As with the previous MASSIVE game from Larry Harris, namely War Room, the set up is not a short experience as there are a lot of things to set up and put out on the board / table.
The rules look daunting but once you get playing it really does all start to make sense, and for me is slightly easier in that respect to that of War Room, from which the designer has obviously learned, as well as to feedback from War Room players I would assume.
Theme:
The game is set in the period around the land and naval battles just after the abdication of Napoleon in 1815, and you take the role of one of the warring nations at the time, i.e. Britain, France, Prussia, Austria, Spain & Russia.
You explore an alternate history, making decisions on when to increase your forces and when to attack or defend against your enemies and sometimes even those you’ve previously made a pact with.
Gameplay:
The game can last up to 9 rounds, with orders being plotted onto a dry wipe version of the main game board / map which consists of you writing down the number of units in a specific area and then if any wish to move you simply draw a line from that region to the new region and put a number of dots in the new region, with each dot being a unit. You don’t need to say which units are moving, so you could have 5 units in an area for example and wish to move 3 of them to another area. The five units could be made up of 2 x cavalry, 1 x artillery, 1 x full infantry and 1 x half infantry. Only when it is your turn to move units do you need to decide which of these will be moving, and this can be after you see what the other players have done if they have gone before you in turn order.
If opposing units are in the same region then a battle normally occurs, although there may be more than 2 lots of different forces in an area and they may choose not to fight each other or they may have made a pact to join up and both attack the defending forces.
Medals and other rewards are given out at the end of each round depending on how well (or not) you have done in any battles during the round, and these medals give certain bonuses from ore money to spend on new units to extra dice or improved dice results in the next rounds combats if you are involved in any.
The first couple of rounds tend to go quite quickly as very little happens in the way of battles, but once they do start, it soon escalates all over the map and really does make for an excellent experience.
Artwork and Components:
The artwork and components are of a decent quality, with the ships for me being the best of all the models, and although they are fine as they are in their player colours, they would look even better if painted up in the respective country colours, but I’m not sure how well the plastic would take undercoat as the land troop material didn’t feel of the highest quality (especially for the game cost).
The cardboard tokens were of a decent thickness and the rulebook and country boards were also very well produced. The large 2 part neoprene mat was absolutely magnificent, the print quality was superb.
The Good:
Imperial Borders for me is a new favourite based on theme and rules / gameplay, with it being much slicker and faster than many smaller games of the same genre.
The Other:
As mentioned, for me the plastic could be slightly better on some of the playing pieces, but the biggest disappointment for us as a group where the truly awful dice shakers which were two rather cheap looking bowls with no bottom that you put over the dice and shook them on the tabletop to produce the die results. For a game costing around £200 there should have been 2 snap together dice trays at an absolute minimum with the game rather than these cups.
Final Thoughts:
Imperial Borders is an outstanding game, well thought out and one that kept us all involved every turn, no-one felt as though they were sitting around doing nothing for ages despite the size of the game, and we were all thoroughly engaged for the 5hrs we were playing, which went by far too quickly.
If I was comparing it to War Room I’d say it is a much more streamlined game, and I’d teach people this before moving on to War Room, even though War Room came out a few years back.
Given the choice I’d play this over War Room, but wouldn’t turn down joining in either as they really are that good.
The new dry wipe boards for plotting movement and the simplified purchase of units make for a far quicker and easier game in my opinion.
If you’re looking for that BIG game experience and don’t want to be bogged down with the game lengths of games such as Twilight Imperium, then Imperial Borders might just be the best entry point for you to take.
Imperial Borders, a game where your only Bone(aparte) of contention will be those awful dice shakers.
