When regular people think board games, they think of the classics. Monopoly. Chutes and Ladders. Scrabble. Trivial Pursuit.

Some may have ventured into the realm of more in-depth strategy games. Of course, when I say that, Risk is the most common response. The one thing everyone remembers about Risk is how gosh darn long it takes to complete a game.

Twilight Imperium laughs at Risk. Twilight Imperium turns over Risk, holds it up by its ankles, and shakes all those little plastic bits and spare change out of its pockets, punches it in the stomach, and stuffs it into a locker.

Twilight Imperium is hours upon hours of suffering that will make you beg for more.

Let’s start with what’s bad about Twilight Imperium. There isn’t much, but these are significant:

Long play-time. While an experienced group of players could potentially knock out a game in 5 hours, going well above that is far more common for a group with any amount of novice or first-time players. I recently played a six-player game with five being brand-new players, and that game took 14 hours. 14!!!

The seemingly endless web of rules. Twilight Imperium may be the most new-player-unfriendly game of any kind. The mental barrier to entry is significant. You have to want to discover this game if you’re going to put up with its relentless ruleset. The experienced group I play with will still miss some niche rules, or forget some altogether at times.

Because of the above things, understand that Twilight Imperium is not for everyone. As mentioned above, TI can feel like suffering at times; it’s long, it has many rules, and the sheer amount of decision points available to a player can be overwhelming. If there’s a “Twilight Imperium” face, it’s the strained, furrowed look of anxiety of someone trying to plan out their turn, in the face of adversity. Along with the fact that they have to remember all the rules, and they’re in hour six of a space epic.

Now, some quick counterpoints to the above faults:

The long play-time is also a feature. Every game of Twilight Imperium is its own story, it’s own experience. The sheer amount of variables introduced into the game guarantee that every single game will be wildly different than the last. It produces frankly unforgettable experiences that you’ll talk about with your friends six months after the fact. Not to diminish the efforts of those who served, but they feel like what war stories might feel like. Because the game is so long and intense, the memories of each engagement stay with you.

While the ruleset is gigantic and imposing, the recently-released fourth edition of the game has done an excellent job of simplifying many of them, and making everything reasonably intuitive. There are still a whole ton of rules, but most are rather easy to learn, and all of them are quite simple at this point. Very few situations are needlessly complex anymore. This makes the game far more accessible than it used to be (though it can still be rough for the impatient or uncaring). I’ve witnessed this firsthand, having had to learn and teach the third edition, and then the same with the fourth edition. Everyone takes to fourth edition easier.

While Twilight Imperium might not be for everyone, for those who can cope with the above issues, it becomes an intensely satisfying experience. Even though I reference “suffering” in regards to playing TI, it’s part of what makes it memorable and unique. Planning out a multi-stage strategy to win a game can be anxiety-ridden and agonizing, but nothing compares to the satisfaction when the strategy works out. Or the catharsis when that strategy blows up in your face and you have to pivot to something else.

So, what is Twilight Imperium? Simply put: it’s a grand strategy space opera where you compete with up to five other players for galactic supremacy using expansion, warfare, politics, trade, and (hopefully) superior wit and guile to attain victory.

OK, that didn’t sound so simple, but this game isn’t simple. I think we’ve covered that by now.

The hallmark of TI is in the variables at play, and how they make every game different. Each player chooses from a pool of 17 different alien races, each with their own special units, technology upgrades, flagships, political cards, and racial abilities. They all also start with differing amounts of spaceships, technologies, and resources.

Additionally, there’s a large pool of technological upgrades or abilities that you can research, and what technological path you take is dependent on your race, the opposition, the specific board situation, or if you just want to get the bacterial weapon this game because you haven’t used it before.

What about space ships? Well there’s six different kinds of space ships, all with different abilities, mobility, weapons effectiveness, carrying capacity, and even bombardment capability. There’s also three different planetary units able to increase your defenses or build capacity.

Oh, where is all this stuff traveling to? We don’t know, because the makeup of the galaxy is actually randomized every game (based on the rulebook’s galaxy placement procedure, or often-times some house-rule method). So that’s different every game too.

Oh, about politics? Well there’s a randomized deck of potential political voting options, which can range from a law that benefits everyone equally to others that hurt everyone equally, or ones where a specific player can be targeted. Everyone votes on these, and they absolutely have the capacity to crap on someone’s parade, or propel someone to a huge advantage.

There’s also action cards that allow players to gain temporary bonuses, or inflict temporary pain upon other players. These introduce even more variance, allowing people to move their ships farther than you planned, or destroy a planetary defense unit you were counting on to protect a position, or all sorts of other shenanigans.

And! There’s eight different strategy cards that each player chooses at the beginning of each round; this gives each player a special ability for that round that can help them develop their game in unique ways. Get “Construction” to build extra space docks or defense units. Get “Politics” to stack the political deck and gain some action cards. Get “Technology” to get a free tech advance. But, each strategy card use also allows other players to spend resources to get a minor related benefit as well. Additionally, the timing in which you use these abilities has crucial game consequences as well.

Finally, how do you win the game? Well, the generic goal is to gain 10 victory points, but how you gain those points is…wait for it…decided from randomized decks of objectives, both public and secret. Some games might demand you become a technological superpower, others might want you to hoard trade goods, still others might want you to just occupy a ton of planets. Or all three. Or just some of them.

The possibilities are near-endless. Even if you played a game with the same six players playing as the same six races, that’s not enough to make the games feel the same.

The main point: each game is its own story, it’s own adventure waiting to be played out by you and your friends being galactic jerks to each other.

I wanted to present this synopsis of Twilight Imperium from an obtuse perspective because I believe it’s ready to be exposed to more people. Every day there are more stories being reported of people “not even into board games” falling in love with one of the most complex and intimidating games ever made. It’s a truly special experience that I think everyone should at least make time for, even if only once. You might end up hating the length and complexity, but I think the risk is worth it. Nothing, and I repeat with bold and italics, nothing approaches Twilight Imperium’s ability to tell a new, unique story upon every play-through.

Stay tuned for more discussion about Twilight Imperium in the future, including game recaps as my playgroup plays them. I don’t think they’ll be too frequent though; it does take some planning to get a bunch of people with jobs and families into a room for 10 hours to suffer over some cardboard and plastic.

But it’s oh so worth it.