It is October 2018 and the Imperial Struggle continues! Thanks to the heroic efforts of Joel Toppen, we are on the verge of electronic playtesting via VASSAL, and I’ve been tweaking cards and cleaning up rules all summer. The game is playing very well on paper; now it’s time to find the problems that only a larger volume of games can reveal.

Last year, Jason gave a piece of crucial feedback: that the game felt too symmetric and that Britain and France didn’t feel different enough to play. This led to the creation of the Ministry deck. Each side gets a set of Ministry cards, appropriate to the current game era, that feature important individuals or policies. Players secretly select two Ministry cards at the start of each Era, and reveal them when they want to use the cards’ powers. Here’s one from the Revolution Era:

It’s a British card, of course, and reflects British tightening of trade policy; one of the causes of the American Revolution. But in Imperial Struggle, the British player can have several reasons to adopt this policy. Note that the text itself is work-in-progress; in fact, one thing I discovered during testing was that awarding VP from late-game Ministry cards led to overly static play in the endgame, when what the endgame actually needed was the opposite: more cards that allow the players to make big moves, but don’t directly reward VP. So the current incarnation of the Townshend Acts card instead allows the British player to more easily shift control of a particular type of market.

Note also that this Ministry card contains a keyword, “Mercantilism”. There are five keywords in Imperial Struggle: Governance, Mercantilism, Style, Scholarship, and Finance. These keywords can influence both war and peace, and they’re particularly important when it comes to Events.

I’ve mentioned before that the Event cards in Imperial Struggle are a sort of hybrid of the COIN-style events that contain different historical versions, and a new system that allows most events to have more powerful outputs for each side. I love the events in COIN games because they support actual history and alternate history on the same card – in Twilight Struggle, we didn’t have room in the deck for much explicit alternate history. In order to keep the deck manageable for players to acquire familiarity and mastery with, this means a smaller event deck overall, but each card has many more contexts for players to consider. Here’s an example:

This event is in the Succession Era (the first era in the game, representing 1697 to about 1722). If the French player plays this card, the bottom chunk takes effect (marked in blue and with the fleur-de-lis). If the British player does, then it’s the top chunk – that’s how all Event cards work, with both a pro-British and pro-French version. Moreover, if you have the bonus condition – in this case, a Ministry card with the Mercantilism keyword – you’ll get the bonus effect as well as the standard one.

The M-in-a-hex symbol at the top of the card means this Event can only be played with a matching Investment Tile. Most Events are playable as long as the Investment Tile the player selected for the current Action Round has an Event symbol, but some further require that the Major Action on the tile have a particular type (military, economic, or diplomatic). This can dramatically affect which Investment Tiles you choose to draft, and when in the turn you do so. (Incidentally, Terry Leeds has done fantastic work on all visual elements of the game, and has an improved design for that symbol.)

This update couldn’t possibly go live without further showcasing Terry’s wonderful work. Here’s a chunk of the Europe region of the map:

Here we can see a few gameplay elements. Diamond shaped spaces are Political spaces, meaning they must be shifted with Diplomatic action points (DP for short). The green bordered spaces are Prestige spaces; these are the spaces you’ll want to control in order to secure the Europe award each turn and build your Continental credibility. The Alliance spaces, conversely, help you in wars. Which ones you choose to go after is an important part of the decision-making in Imperial Struggle.

You can also see a Privilege: Baltic Trade. To take control of it, you’ll need to control both connected spaces (in this case, Denmark-Norway and the Prussia alliance space). While you do, you’ll have access to its card, which allows you to reduce your Debt level once per turn. There are several other Privileges to be had for careful players in European politics, and they all have their own function and value.

We are moving fast and I expect to get a lot of good feedback at the Weekend in the Warehouse, and thereafter from playtesters in both paper and VASSAL. Special thanks to the SoCal Wargamers, whose monthly meetups have allowed me to watch and take notes on the gameplay between first-time players. Please ask questions in the comment section, and I hope you are all as excited as I am for Imperial Struggle to get into your hands!

Author: Ananda Gupta