Imperial Miners Review

Imperial Miners is a one to five player hand management and engine building game from designer Tim Armstrong and published by Portal Games.

In Imperial Miners, you will be creating their own personal mine, starting from the surface and “digging” down by placing various mine cards into your tableau. Each time a card is placed, it is activated as well as the cards above.

The game is played over the course of 10 rounds. At the start of each round an event is revealed and resolved. During the “Mine Phase” which is the main part of the game, you will reveal a mine card from your hand and pay the cost. The cost of each card is related to the level that the card is to be placed. The revealed card is then placed in the mine, following a few simple placement rules:
-Each card must be placed in the respective row related to the card. (i.e. A level one mine card is placed directly below the surface and a level two below the level one card.)
-Each card must have at least one adjacent card above it.
-Each card in subsequent levels must be placed offset by half a card to the one above it.

After placing a card it is then activated/resolved. Any one card directly above this card is then activated, resolving the effects and continuing upwards until you reach the surface where any of the three effects on the surface board are activated.

Various effects on cards may gain you machine tokens, place carts tokens, draw cards, gain crystals and many more. Each of the mine cards also belong to one of six factions and various effects may gain you larger rewards for having more of a certain faction in your tableau. There is also an action called Advance, which allows you to move your progress marker up the progress board to gain a reward.

Rinse and repeat for 10 rounds and the player with the most points is the winner.

Final Thoughts

Imperial Miners is set in the same “universe” as Imperial Settlers, but is a very different game. It is a lighter game, with combos, chain reactions and is quick playing. But how does it play, let's find out?

I will start by saying this is a very light game. There are some interesting choices to be made and some strategy, but the engine building aspect and combos you create are simple and straightforward. You will effectively be creating several small engines to gain points/bonuses rather than one big engine. This may be your thing or it may not, but it is worth highlighting. For me I quite enjoyed this aspect. It felt a bit different and although straightforward it has its place in my collection.

Imperial Miners is all about optimisation and making the most of what you have drawn. It is a puzzle and cracking the puzzle will be slightly different each time. The placement rules and the way you chain from your last played card upwards is interesting and you can create some effective mini-engines as you progress. Add to this a few different ways to score points and advancement on a the progress track and you have a gateway game (or maybe gateway plus) that offers some interesting choices whilst keeping the gameplay short and simple.

There is an event deck, which can affect players in different ways. At times it can be swingy with an event being better or worse for you than other players. You do not know what the event will be until it is drawn. This is a slight negative of the game, but it is a light, quick playing game and, for me personally, I don’t see it as a major issue.

The effects/cards are not hugely diverse. There is enough to keep you engaged and interested for the ten rounds, but there is a possibility that you may see duplicate cards in the same game.

One of the main ways of keeping the game length short is that all players can play and action their mines simultaneously. This results in a game that has little player interaction making it ideal for solo play. As a solo game, it is a neat and tidy puzzle that plays quickly, making it ideal for a mid week session. To date I have played this more solo than multiplayer and think this is where I feel it sits best. Multiplayer does have its merits however.