Stellaris: Infinite Legacy is a 4x board game that plays in two hours

What people love about a good PC strategy game is that you can play one for tens (if not hundreds) of hours. But the kind of complexity and variety that makes games like Crusader Kings 3 and Civilization 5 so attractive it can seem endless in a table setting. Classics like Dune or Twilight Imperium you can easily hold players at the table for six or more hours at a time.

Designer Gunter Eickert thinks he may have solved this problem by combining the latest innovation in board games with a niche genre of strategy PC games. Your next project for the publisher Academy Games is called Stellaris: Infinite Legacy, and is one of the most ambitious new table games announced this year. Polygon got the first exclusive details on how the game will work.

Stellaris is a strategy game for PC launched by Paradox Interactive in 2016. It is part of a niche genre of strategy games known as 4x games, which means to explore, expand, explore and exterminate. Players take on the role of an alien civilization and embark on a journey to colonize the stars. Along the way, players gather resources, build their armies and infrastructure, and finally come into contact with other civilizations. It is the type of game that takes 20 or more hours to discover. After controlling yourself, it is possible to play a single campaign for years on end.

Image: Academy Games

There are similar types of 4x board games, but they all take an extraordinary amount of time to play. Add the fact that you need four to six experienced players to really have fun, and you can understand how rare it is to get a decent game with your friends. I’m lucky if I can play a board game 4x once a year.

But, interestingly, Eickert says that 4x board games are simply not too long. They are also very short.

“I spent all this time, I had a lot of fun developing this incredible empire, and then it just ends,” Eickert told Polygon in an interview on Friday. “I want to see what happens. I want to continue playing in this incredible empire that I have built. “

The solution, said Eickert, is to apply the latest evolution in table games: the legacy system. Created by designer Rob Daviau with Risk: Legacy in 2011, legacy games change over time. From game to game, players’ characters or factions develop new skills or are permanently damaged. New game components are revealed from inside sealed packages, while others are destroyed, never to be used again. Over 10-15 games, an individual copy of an old game is completely transformed into something unique, preferably something that can be played and enjoyed for many years. Some people even hang their game boards on the wall as a testament to the dramatic narratives that have emerged over dozens of hours of play.

Eickert’s new board game wants to do the same thing, but for an entire galaxy.

Image: Academy Games

At the Stellaris: Infinite Legacy, each player at the table will receive a customizable player screen and a box of cards. Inside this box is everything they need to build their own unique civilization, including special skills, styles of government, favorite planetary biomes and even a set of moral and ethical principles. Everything – cards for technological and infrastructure improvements, weapon systems for exotic starships, everything that could be created or destroyed in the game – is inside this box.

When the two-hour session ends, players just close it. Everything unique to this civilization is still in the box, right where it should be, ready for the next two-hour game. The next time you sit down at the table, you can destroy the same civilization you played before, move your box to the right and mix things up, or even start from scratch with something new.

Eickert says the game will be balanced over time – even when a new, inexperienced player sits down with some old hands to play for the first time – thanks to the random objective cards that are drawn at the start of each game. The older and more advanced your civilization, the more of these goals you will need to achieve in order to win.

But Stellaris: Infinite Legacy it also has a complex system of tactical war games. Players will not conflict each round, but when they do, he says it will be as epic and consistent as in the video game. The secret, he says, is the exclusive modular board. Each civilization will maintain its native worlds from game to game, but the shape of the galaxy itself will always be different. This will force players to adapt to new tactical situations every time they sit down to play.

It is an ambitious project, full of unproven concepts. Making things more complicated is that Stellaris: Infinite Legacy is a crowdfunding campaign hosted on Kickstarter and, later, on Backerkit. Table strategy fans will not know if Eickert succeeded until the game is released next year. For now, they’ll just have to take his word for it … and shell out at least $ 100 for the privilege.

But anyone who has played Eickert games before, or any of the Academy Games titles, knows that they have the ability to do them. The boutique table publisher is known for its historic games. They include squadron-level World War II simulations in the Conflict of Heroes series; the popular war game Rebellion of 1775: The American Revolution; and Freedom the Underground Railroad. All of these titles are well regarded for their complexity, ease of play and balance.

Academy Games recently entered the world of licensed intellectual property. I did a demo of the editor Chaos agents: Babylonian pride with Eickert at Gen Con a few years ago and was impressed with how he used cards to expand and transform a game of simple tactical miniatures into something much more lasting and satisfying. I have high hopes that he will make bold design choices here as well.

Don’t expect to find the game on store shelves next year. Like Vampire: The Mask – Chapters and other direct consumer offers, there are no plans for a retail product. The Academy expects to sell the game online for about $ 150 if the campaign goes well. The crowdfunding campaign starts on March 11.