Brazil: Imperial Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Brazil: Imperial, a 4x game published by Portal Games. In Brazil: Imperial, players are trying to take their fledgling empire through three different eras.

Picture it: Brazil, early 16th century. You are a Monarch looking to make your mark on the land. Your goal is to advance your struggling empire into future eras, complete goals, and build a prosperous country. Sounds easy right? Not so as your neighboring Monarchs want to claim the land for themselves.

Brazil: Imperial is a 4x style game that seeks to combine the explore, expand, exploit and exterminate experience with a more euro game feel. Published by Portal Games and designed by Zé Mendes, Brazil: Imperial takes about 120 minutes to play.

At the start of the game, the modular board is set up depending on which map scenario you choose. Each player also gets a unique monarch and matching player board. Monarchs have a unique power, and the player boards are slightly different.

On a player’s turn, they move their action marker on their player board to a new space and take the selected action. Different actions include:

Deploy: Pay resources to place a military unit on the boardFrame: Buy painting cards for special abilitiesBuild: Construct farms, mines, cities, and other structures to generate resources and earn victory pointsRenovate: Refill a production building with resources or convert it to a new type of buildingManufacture: Pay resources to improve one of your basic actions, making it stronger for the rest of the gameHarbor: Gain a small number of basic resourcesTrade: Sell resources for gold and special cards

Resources can either be paid from your player board (max 5), or directly from one of your production buildings. Most buildings hold 2