Imperial Settlers - Solo Play & Second Impressions

Well, I mentioned in my initial impressions post for Imperial Settlers that I would be having a second crack at the game over the weekend, and I did! Not only did I managed to get my second game in, I also managed to get in 2 solo plays on a very dull Sunday night. I'll start with the very short 2nd impressions and then on to the solo impressions.

For my second play, I headed the Roman Empire instead and seeing it was a 3 player game, I purposely left out the Japanese faction. To get the scores out of the way, the end points were 57/55/47. I came in second to the barbarian faction (2 wins out of 2). The Egyptians were dead last again (2 last out of 2). Am I implying anything? No. Just info for those who would like to know. 

Anyway, I much rather enjoyed my second play of the game. Not because I was actually competitive this time round, but this time I got to see some synergies in the game as I actually managed to get some decent production buildings from the get go. This really helped to provide resources that allowed me to manage a somewhat decent engine and to let me actually plan what I wanted to do instead of just doing what I could do with what I had (or didn't have - which is what my first game felt like). 

Initial Impressions - Imperial Settlers

Over the past weekend, I managed to get 2 Gen Con releases played - Imperial Settlers & Run, Fight, or Die. Both were rather hot releases I would say. Well, at least the hype for them were relatively high throughout the Con. I only managed to get 1 play in for each as we had other games we wanted to play as well. So this is really just a very brief look at the first of the two and me telling you my early thoughts from my playthrough.

The one I was more excited to get to the table was Imperial Settlers. It's the newest game by Ignacy Trzewiczek and Portal Games.
Imperial Settlers is a civilization and engine building game. There are 4 factions out of the box and each faction has its own unique deck of cards and play style. The game plays over 5 rounds, after which, the player with the most victory points is the winner of the game.
Each round is played as such,
1) Lookout Phase - Acquire 3 new cards
2) Production Phase - Produce your faction's fixed resources + resources from your buildings
3) Action Phase - Play cards / Activate Cards / Execute Actions
4) Cleanup Phase - Discard all unused resources