Imperium (board game)

Imperium is a science fiction board wargame that was published in 1977 by the Conflict Game Company and GDW. It was designed by Marc W. Miller and developed by Frank Chadwick and John Harshman. The game came in a cardboard box illustrated with a space battle on the exterior. It included a cardboard-mounted, folding map of a local region of the Milky Way galaxy, a set of rules and charts, and the 352 counters representing the various spacecraft, ground units, and markers, and a six-sided die.

A new edition of this game, Imperium, 3rd Millennium, was published in 2001 by Avalanche Press. This new release had improved graphics and updated rules. In 2002, I3M was nominated for four Origins Awards. Avalanche Press has since abandoned the game, having decided not to renew the license to produce it.

Marc Miller states that the playing of Phil Pritchard's game Lensman "well into many late nights inspired the Game Designers' Workshop staff to come up with a similarly star-spanning strategic interstellar wargame titled Imperium; that Imperium was never published, but was ultimately transformed into a simpler game with the same name: Imperium, Empires in Conflict/Worlds in the Balance."

Imperium is a two-player game simulating a series of conflicts between the emerging Terran (human) Confederation and an immense and ancient alien empire, the Imperium. The Sun and nearby stars lie at the extreme edge of this alien space-faring civilization, and the Terrans struggle to survive and expand against this powerful state. While the Terran player is in control of the entire Confederation military, the Imperial player represents a low-ranking provincial governor on the frontier, who is forced to petition the central government for reinforcements and is occasionally subject to its meddling.

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