Gameplay is simple “move and roll dice to shoot” stuff. Each player, one Nazi Undead and the other GIs, has four characters – all with special abilities. They enter a map simultaneously and try to complete missions like: activate map objectives, capture the flag or domination of areas. The simple gameplay and generic missions make it feel like a first person shooter video game.

The main gameplay innovation is an elegant colouring system to handle line of sight. Your characters can shoot to spaces coloured the same as the one they are standing on.

The components are top notch. The prepainted miniatures are particularly good.

Next time, we might play with a Hellboy character that you can download from this lavish blog about Doc Savage.

It is not the sort of game I would obsess over, but it was relaxing fun. 7/10

Chris Farrell says “Another rather disappointing space-empire-building game that takes too long to play, and at any rate simply devolves into Diplomacy plus a lot of work.”

Actually, Twilight Imperium was traumatic. We started the rules explanation at 10:30 and began the game at 11:00. By 3:30 I was fighting for my life, with no hope of a win. Not wanting to go screw the game balance up, I hung on grimly and we finished at 8pm. That’s 9 hours of play of which 4.5 were no fun.

I made several mistakes, but I was screwed early on as my neighbour had a secret objective to occupy an opponent’s home planet. As a first time player, I had no idea he was out for my blood until it was too late.

My nemesis did not seem to realise that by entering into a blood feud for two measly VP he was screwing himself of any chance of a win. In the end, I came last with 3VP, but he only had 4VP and never took my home planet.

Risk has similar secret player elimination objectives, but that is just about permissible in a three hour game. In a game of this length it is preposterous.

Multiplayer war games are hard to get right. Apart from anything else, once the fun is over, you can’t leave without ruining the game’s balance. One guy had to leave and that left his neighbours in pole position, as they could take his planets and not have to watch their backs. Naturally, one of those two won. Games of this length really should have a method for balancing a situation where a player leaves early. No solution would be perfect, but still.

In future, I’m not playing multiplayer wargames that last over four hours (in real-time, not box-back time) and I will never play Twilight Imperium again.

3/10 – because it has some nice mechanics, lovely components and a strong theme.

I managed to win by building from 10 to 17 power plants in one go. The others could not build enough power plants, as the Third Phase Card had not been drawn and there were not enough middle value cities left on the map. I only thought of doing this because Steve pointed it out to me during my move – that man is too nice.

Power Grid has gone up in my ratings now. My previous games had always been about the turn order going into the last round, so it was good to see another path to victory. 8/10

We stuck with the Basic rules, but only used one optional rule – Novice Union. Next time we’ll play with the WBC scenario.

It was good to play with the map fixed by the stickers that arrived quickly from Phalanx Games. It’s great that they are still supporting this game, several years after publication and even to someone who bought the game second hand.