Imperial Miners

• Designer: Tim Armstrong
• Publisher: Portal Games
• Players: 1-5
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30-60 minutes
• Played with copy provided by Portal Games

Imperial Miners is a light engine-building card game for 1 to 5 players from designer Tim Armstrong (Arcana Rising, Orbis), in which players excavate mines using a clever card activation system. This stand-alone game is set in the popular Imperial Settlers universe and offers beautiful illustrations, easy-to-grasp rules, and satisfying gameplay full of chain reactions and engine-building synergies.

In Imperial Miners, players create their own mines by playing cards into their personal tableau. They start from the surface and develop downward. Each time a card is added to their mine, it activates itself and all the cards above it, rewarding a player with satisfying chain reactions and combos. The cards belong to six different factions and offer various strategies. Players mix different factions in their mines to achieve the best results.

While developing their mines, players also advance on progress boards. During set-up, three out of the six available progress boards are randomly chosen for the game. These boards each offer a different strategic focus. Throughout the game, players advance to gain additional bonuses that help them develop their tableaus, activate the synergies between cards, gain victory points, and achieve even more satisfying combos. The combination of progress boards influences strategies and makes the game different each time you play.

To start, each player chooses a color and takes the surface board matching the color in front of them.  The four decks of mine cards are shuffled, and each player gets a starting hand of 8 Mine cards, examines them, and chooses to keep four.  The three Progress boards are laid out on the table, randomly choosing which side is face up.  Finally, the event deck is shuffled and ten cards are drawn for this game.

The game will be played over ten rounds, each with an Event Phase followed by a Mine phase.

In the event phase, the top Event card is drawn, and everyone must resolve the card.  The card might be an immediate effect or it may change the rules for how this particular round plays out. Other cards will not be resolved until the end of the round, thus giving players a whole round to figure out how to deal with it.

In the mine phase, all players play simultaneously to add a card to their mine.  If players have a card in their hand they can play, they reveal one of those, pay the cost shown on the left side and then add it to the mine.  Cards are always played in the correct level, with level 1 being just below the surface board, Level 2 being next down, and so on.  Cards on lower levels are played offset by half a card to form a honeycomb like structure with each card having six possible adjacencies.  A card must be physically adjacent (touching) to a card above it or the surface board – it is acceptable for this to be only half of a card.  If you do not have a playable card in your hand, you must draw the top card of the Level 1 deck and you are obligated to play it  – it will always be playable as there is no cost for a Level 1 card.

Then, each player activates the card they just placed. Most cards have 2 options, and if so, you’ll have to choose one of them to resolve. Then, you move upwards and select any one card above it to activate.  Continue this process, activating one card per level, until you reach the Surface board.  You choose one of the three effects on the surface board and then the phase ends.  Though it rarely comes into play, the rules do say that care effects are not mandatory, so I suppose you can choose to not resolve a card that you choose.

Some of the effects will allow you to advance on the progress tracks. On the first time, choose one  board to place your marker on and then advance the number of spaces instructed. Each space has a benefit to the right of the space, and you resolve the effect corresponding to the space where your movement ends.  If you reach the top space of a track, you forfeit any further movement and you resolve the effect of that top space; and then you place your marker at the start of either of the other two tracks.

A card may cause a mine collapse where you place collapse tokens on specific cards.  Each time you activate this card, you remove the collapse token.  You will not get to use the action on the card until the collapse token is removed.  Other cards require machine parts to work; these gears can be placed by some cards and other cards may require them to function.

You might be instructed to draw cards.  You can draw from decks I, II and III – always keeping to a limit of 8 cards in your hand.  The only way to get IV cards is through Progress track advancement effects.  If the card draw action requires a specific faction, choose your deck and then draw cards until you get one with the correct faction, discarding the unchosen cards.

The round ends, and the next round begins by looking at the next Event card… The game continues through the tenth round and then the game is scored.  You have been taking VPs through the course of the game due to your actions.  You get one VP at the end of the game for each complete mine cart you have between your cards (each card in your mine has possibly half a cart on the edge).  The player with the most points wins, ties broken in favor of the player with most coins left over.

You can also play the game solo – which uses the exact same rules – and your goal is to score as much as possible.

My thoughts on the game

I got a full play of this in my meeting with Portal at SPIEL 2023, and I loved it from that first game.  Sure, it’s essentially simultaneous solitaire, but I love the chaining of abilities and figuring out how to make the most out of your mine.  It is set in the world of Imperial Settlers, but you really need no knowledge of this to play and enjoy this game.  If you have played Imperial Settlers, the art and the background lore will feel familiar to you.

The cards in the game offer you a multitude of directions to grow your mine; Maybe you stick to the higher levels, paying fewer coins to play cards and hoping for synergies there.  Maybe you try to get your mine down to Level 4 which always gives you a fixed payout of 2VP, but then you’ll get four cascading action activations as you move your way back up the mine.  Of course, to get this far, you’ll need to invest in progress on the boards as this is the only way to draw a Level IV card.  

The Progress tracks also offer a nice chance to get some extra “actions” each turn as you often get little bumps from multiple cards.  Each track has its own theme, so you’ll have to choose one at the start of the game, and then switch to another when you finish it – hopefully getting the things you want at the time you want.

You get a hand of up to 8 cards, and I like to have as many as I can to keep my options open.  Also, given the varied nature of the Event cards, I like to have the chance to take advantage of the benefits of the card.  Sure, it’s always a crapshoot – but everyone has the chance to take advantage of it, so like a good Boy Scout, I try to be prepared.

While you don’t need to pay any attention to the half-carts on the cards as you play, I’d definitely keep the endgame bonus in mind; I’ve seen someone score 13 points from carts at the end, so it’s clearly a possible game winning addition to your total score.

I think the one thing I like most about the game is that it never feels frustrating.  Sure, there are times when you may not have quite enough money to build the card you want to build right now, or maybe your hand size is lower than you like – but it is impossible to get stuck in this game.  At a minimum, the three basic action choices on the surface board give you the basic resources that you need. Additionally, the rules are set up so that you can always build a card on your turn.  What I like about Imperial Miners is that in most turns, you have multiple positive options, and your challenge is to figure out which one works best for you now (and possibly going forward).

Finally, time to address the one issue I heard most from my opponents – that the game is strictly simultaneous solitaire.  That’s 100% true.  There is no interaction between players and no way to influence or affect each other’s play.  That being said, as all the play is simultaneous here, there is no change to game length regardless of player count.  I’ve not been bothered by simultaneous solo games in the past (see some roll and writes, etc) – so this hasn’t been an issue at all for me.

For me, the game plays fast, sometimes as little as 20 minutes, and I love the puzzle of getting my mine to work as efficiently as possible.  The random event cards can sometimes throw a wrench in your plans, but they can also sometimes provide you with an unexpected benefit that really allows your to accelerate your plans.  They also help make sure that each game plays out a little bit differently.  I’m nearly at ten games played now, and I’m still looking forward to the next one!

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Mark Jackson (1 play): I think the multiplayer solitaire thing would bother me… but two things fix that… (a) it can be played solo (they’ve even published a solo scenario for Halloween online), and (b) it’s an extremely quick game.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!  Dale Y
• I like it. Mark Jackson, John P,Ryan P
• Neutral.
• Not for me…