Time to get on the Imperial Settlers train I think, before it picks up too much steam and, erm, reaches a station outside my travel card zone? Hmm. What I’m trying to say is that Portal Games have announced a new faction pack for the game, which has already had one expansion since hitting the shelves last year.
People have been gushing over the cuteness that is Imperial Settlers in the past few months, helping it shoot its way up the Boardgamegeek.com ranking to dance around with the likes of Memoir ’44, Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective and The Resistance. Not a cut and dried guarantee everyone will like it, but it’s certainly in good company.
The base game sees between one and four players each taking control of a single faction – Romans, Barbarians, Egyptians or Japanese – in a pretty, straightforward-looking card-based worker placement game. Everyone’s grabbing resources to construct better buildings, get even more resources and build armies to nip off and raze their opponent’s farms and such. The Atlanteans throws in the option for a fifth player, and apparently forces a new way of playing as all their buildings get destroyed at the end of the game. Cripes! Normally your score gets bumped up for buildings left at the end, so these guys are going to have to sweat the points out early if they want to stand a chance of winning.
The excellent Shut Up and Sit Down have just done a timely review of the original game over at their website, and were pretty clear about how much they enjoyed it. Sounds like they didn’t explore too far past the two-player game though, so lord knows whether it’ll be any good with five or just a jumbly nightmare.
I tapped up Imperial Settlers designer Ignacy Trzewiczek, who reminded me they’ve committed to release one new faction each year.
Atlanteans will be out in August – so plenty of time to get stuck into the base game if you get cracking. Go go go!
