Shattered Empire
Encyclopedia
Board game
A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...
Twilight Imperium
Twilight Imperium
Twilight Imperium is a strategy board game produced by Fantasy Flight Games. It was designed by Christian T. Petersen and was first released in 1998. The game is currently in its third edition, released in 2005...
, both of which were designed and published by gaming company Fantasy Flight Games
Fantasy Flight Games
Fantasy Flight Games is a Roseville, Minnesota-based game company that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games. Fantasy Flight Publishing was founded in 1995 by its CEO, Christian T. Petersen. Since the release of its first game product in 1997, the company has been doing...
. It was released in December 2006.
Additions to the Game
Shattered Empire adds 28 new system tiles, 4 new races, 2 extra sets of coloured plastic pieces, 40 new Action Cards, 32 newPolitical Cards, 20 new Public Objective cards and 3 new Secret Objective Cards. It also includes rules for 7-player and 8-player games, in contrast to Twilight Imperium
Twilight Imperium
Twilight Imperium is a strategy board game produced by Fantasy Flight Games. It was designed by Christian T. Petersen and was first released in 1998. The game is currently in its third edition, released in 2005...
's maximum of 6 players.
Shattered Empire also adds many brand new options to be used in addition to the base game, all of which are modular; they can all be added and removed independently of each other, and none are necessary to play the game. These options are:
- Race-Specific Technologies
- Artifacts
- Shock Troops (originally seen in previous editions of the game, but omitted from Twilight ImperiumTwilight ImperiumTwilight Imperium is a strategy board game produced by Fantasy Flight Games. It was designed by Christian T. Petersen and was first released in 1998. The game is currently in its third edition, released in 2005...
3rd edition). - Space Mines
- The Wormhole Nexus
- Facilities
Changes to the Game
One of the largest changes in the game when Shattered Empire was introduced was the introduction of 8 brand-new strategy cards, which form an integral part of gameplay. The most noteworthy change among these was the removal of the Imperial strategy card, which was the subject of much criticism due to its giving of "free" victory points (which are required to win the game).Other changes include new objective cards to make the game slightly more combat-based, and new technologies to reduce the potency of large groups of fighters, which dominated the base game.
In addition, the concept of temporary victory points was introduced, in the form of artifacts, special objectives and certain political agendas. These added to the dynamic by keeping the scoring much more fluid than in the base game.