Each player is given an assortments of cards in their color, representing characters such as nobles, bodyguards, and assassins. All the players' cards are shuffled together (along with a handful of event cards) and then redistributed by means of a card draft: each player is dealt a hand of 5 cards, keeping one and passing the rest to the next player until all the cards have been drafted. The strategy here is to balance taking cards you know you want with keeping powerful cards out of the hands of your opponents.
The thing that makes drafting a little different in this game is that you're not just drafting cards from your own faction. You're also looking at which of your opponents' cards you would prefer to have some control over; for example, if you want to make good use of your Noble, you may want to also draft your opponent's Assassin in order to keep it from interfering with your plans (more on how the cards interact in a moment).
Once players have drafted their cards for the round, they take turns playing them to various different location cards at the center of the board. Two cards can go to each location face down, but once that limit is reached, remaining cards are played face up, so you have to choose carefully which cards you want to keep a secret and which ones you don't mind your opponents knowing about. After everyone has deployed their cards, the cards that have been played to each location are revealed and resolved in a pre-determined order (not necessarily the order they were played in).
As cards are resolved, Assassins kill Nobles, Royal Guards protect Nobles from getting killed, Ambassadors and Nobles (if they survived the Assassin) score victory points, and Commanders place control points on locations, which in turn score points at the end of the game. Each character has a rating in strength and favor, which are used to determine who wins if, for example, two different players have their Noble at the same location.
What makes this really interesting is that you aren't always playing your own characters, so you might play an opponent's Ambassador to a planet that isn't worth many points, in order to keep him out of your way, or you may even be able to play one opponent's Assassin against another opponent's Noble, paving the way for you to sneak the location's victory points out from under them.
The game play describes a lot of dramatic intrigue. It might be a little bit more interesting if the game took place in a world that we knew more about, such as the aforementioned Dune or even Star Wars, but the evocative artwork paints a detailed picture of an interstellar setting that seems a lot deeper than it is.
Rating: 4 (out of 5): Imperius has some unusual concepts that can be a struggle to explain to new players, but once everyone understands the basic strategy it's a compelling mid-weight game with simple mechanics but a lot of depth.