I bought this specifically after a friend described it as a lighter Twilight Imperium with a card and dice combat mechanic bolted on, and while that undersells it a little, the comparison mostly holds and mostly in a good way. The hidden order tokens are the part I keep coming back to, you’re committing to actions before you know exactly what your opponents chose, and reading the board well enough to guess right is most of the actual skill in this game. Combat is more tactical than nearly anything else in this weight class, and there’s no dice-chucker randomness deciding fights for you, which was the single biggest selling point for me after one too many games where a bad roll undid an hour of planning.
What I didn’t expect going in is how unpunishing combat actually is here, losing a fight rarely feels like the game slamming a door on you the way it does in some area control designs, there’s usually a path forward even after a loss. The production is exactly what you’d expect from the studio, insane detail on the miniatures, real thematic weight in every box, and the deck-building layer on top of hidden movement gives it more going on mechanically than its runtime really telegraphs.
Length is the honest caveat, this wants a careful group and a real evening, not a filler slot, and I’d think twice about it at four players until you know everyone’s pace. Four stars, a genuine tactical gem that I somehow don’t reach for often enough given how much I like it every time it’s actually on the table.