Notoriously long, infamously complex and adored by those who dare to play it, Twilight Imperium has defined epic gaming for the last two decades. As the sprawling space opera returns with a fourth edition, its creator and the designers who inherited its legacy look back on a universe like no other

DEEP SPACE

Words by Matt Jarvis

Twilight Imperium. Even the name sounds imposing, the lingual equivalent of the Star Destroyer drifting into sight at the beginning of A New Hope. Next is the box, a cardboard block solid enough to survive re-entry to the atmosphere.

Inside, more than 1,000 miniatures, cards, tokens and player boards, crammed with the details on 17 completely different races, from the peaceful lion-like Hacan to the tech-infused L1z1x, all of which have individual backstories and play styles. Don’t worry – you’ll have plenty of time to learn their ins and outs during a game that lasts anywhere from four to 12 (or more) hours and involves the careful juggling of politics, military conflict, exploration, resource production, economics and diplomacy. It’s little wonder that Fantasy Flight’s strategy space opera has earned a reputation as one of – if not the – tabletop’s most daunting and grandest experiences.

Like any epic accomplishment, Twilight Imperium had modest beginnings. It started as the dream project of Christian T. Petersen, a Danish gamer turned entrepreneur who during college had started up Fantasy Flight Publishing as a comic book distributor bringing European oddities to the US. The company quickly floundered, losing all the money it had within two years, prompting the need for a change in direction. Petersen had previous experience importing games into Denmark and running conventions, and had self-taught himself game design and production on the side. He approached the board of directors and investors with an ambitious proposal to turn the company around.

“I always wanted to do this big space game, but there wasn’t a game like that”, he recalls today. “So I said, ‘Let me make a game here, I want to call it Twilight Imperium and I want to create this epic space game with conquest, technologies, politics, backstabbing and grandiose hyperbole and alien races. that whole thing. Mixing all this wealth of influences across the ages of science-fiction – whether Asimov, Dune, Star Wars, Star Trek, etc.’”

With its multi-layered gameplay inspired by classics such as Junta, Axis & Allies and Civilization – and pinching its pre-Catan hexagonal tiles from Magic Realm – Twilight Imperium was through-and-through the product of Petersen’s imagination, at the time the sole employee of Fantasy Flight, who almost died after inhaling paper dust from cutting out the game’s components by hand.

“I more or less had to do everything myself because we had no money”, he says. In the summer of 1997, the first edition of Twilight Imperium made its debut. A cinematic saga in a box, Petersen’s vision was unlike anything else at the time and heralded the arrival of a new age with a fresh perspective on what board games could offer in terms of scale and complexity. Against all odds, its success saved Fantasy Flight, completing its transformation into a tabletop force to be reckoned with.