This is not a weeknight game, let’s get that out of the way, we’ve had sessions run five, six hours, and one memorable draw that took five hours and satisfied nobody, so you need a group willing to commit an actual day. What you get for that commitment, at its best, is the closest thing on my shelf to a genuine tabletop political drama, alliances that hold for three rounds and then quietly dissolve the moment someone’s fleet gets too big, secret objectives whispered across the table, actual betrayal that means something because everyone invested six hours getting there.
The insert deserves its own paragraph because this box is famous for its size and the third party foamcore and acrylic upgrade market that’s grown around it, I eventually bought a proper insert and it changed setup time from a genuine chore to something manageable, so budget for that if you’re getting in. The rulebook itself is dense but better organized than its reputation suggests, most of the real learning curve is in remembering which of your faction’s asymmetric abilities to actually use, not parsing the core rules, which after the first game click into place fine.
Where this earns the top rating despite the time cost is that the fourth edition genuinely streamlined the third, faster turns, cleaner combat, without losing what made the scale worth the investment. The strategy card selection each round is where the real engine lives, timing your turn order against what everyone else needs is its own quiet game inside the game. Teachability is rough for a first-timer dropped in cold, plan on a full round of hand holding, but once the table’s up to speed this is the best “extravaganza” game I own, bar none.