Stellaris: Infinite Legacy is a 4x board game that takes two hours to play

What people love about a good PC strategy game is that you can play it 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 can seem endless in a table setting. Classics like Dune or Twilight Imperium can easily trap players at the table for six hours or more at a time.

Designer Gunter Eickert believes he could have solved this problem by combining the latest innovation in board games with a niche genre of PC strategy games. His next project for publisher Academy Games is called Stellaris: Infinite Legacy, and it’s one of the more ambitious new table games announced this year. Polygon has obtained the first exclusive details of how the game works.

Stellaris is a PC Strategy game released by Paradox Interactive in 2016. It is part of a niche genre of strategy games known as 4x games, which means explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. Players take on the role of an alien civilization and embark on a journey to colonize the stars. Along the way, players harvest resources, build their armies and infrastructure, and eventually come into contact with other civilizations. It’s the kind of game that just takes 20 hours or more to figure out. Once you are under your feet, it is possible to play a single campaign for years at a time.

Image: Academy Games

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

But, oddly enough, Eickert says 4x board games just aren’t too long. They are also too short.

“I’ve spent all this time, had all this fun building this awesome empire, and then it ends,” Eickert told Polygon in an interview Friday. “I want to see what’s going on. I want to continue playing this great empire that I have built. “

The solution, Eickert said, is to apply the latest evolution of tabletop gaming: the legacy system. Pioneer by designer Rob Daviau with Risk: inheritance in 2011, the old games evolve over time. From game to game, player characters or factions develop new abilities or are permanently damaged. New game components are revealed inside sealed packages, while others are destroyed, never to be used again. Over the course of 10 to 15 games, an individual copy of a legacy game is completely transformed into something unique, ideally something that can be played and enjoyed for years to come. Some people will even hang their game boards on the wall to witness the dramatic tales that have emerged over dozens of hours of play.

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

Image: Academy Games

In Stellaris: Infinite Legacy, each player at the table will receive a customizable player screen and a box of cards. Inside that box is everything they need to build their own unique civilization, including special abilities, styles of government, favorite planetary biomes, and even a set of morals and ethics. Everything – from cards for tech and infrastructure upgrades, weapon systems to exotic ships, anything that could potentially be created or destroyed in the game – is inside that box.

When the two-hour session is over, players simply close it. Everything unique about this civilization is still inside the box, where it should be, ready for the next two hour game. The next time you sit down at the table, you can take out the same civilization you played before, switch your box to the right and mix things up, or even start over with something new.

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

But Stellaris: Infinite Legacy also has a complex tactical wargaming system. Players won’t come to the shots every round, but when they do, he says it’ll be just as epic and consistent as it is in the video game. The secret, he says, is the unique modular game board. Each civilization will retain its original 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’s an ambitious project, brimming with untested concepts. To make things more complicated is that Stellaris: Infinite Legacy is a crowdfunding campaign hosted on Kickstarter and, later, Backerkit. Fans of tabletop strategy won’t really know if Eickert was successful 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’s ever played Eickert’s games, or any of the Academy Games titles, knows they have the skills to be successful. The boutique table publisher is known for its historic games. They include the WWII team-level simulations in the Conflict of Heroes series; the popular wargame Rebellion of 1775: the American Revolution; and Liberty Underground Railroad. All of these titles are renowned for their complexity, ease of play and balance.

Recently, Academy Games entered the world of licensed intellectual property. I made a demonstration of the editor Agents of Mayhem: Pride of Babylon with Eickert at Gen Con a few years ago and was impressed with how he used cards to develop and evolve a simple tactical miniatures game into something much more enduring and satisfying. I hope he will make some bold design choices as well.

Also, don’t expect to find the game on store shelves next year. Like Vampire: The Masquerade – Chapters and other direct-to-consumer offers, there are no plans for a retail product. Academy hopes to be able to sell the game online for around $ 150 if the campaign goes well. The crowdfunding campaign starts on March 11.