Imperium: Horizons
366 questions players ask about Imperium: Horizons. Pick one for the answer. See also the full rulebook.
Updated 2026-11-06.
Setup and Components
- Where do I find the official Imperium: Horizons errata files?
- Does Horizons include updated cards for Classics and Legends, and do they fix first-printing errors?
- What do the set codes on common cards mean, and how do I find which card a replacement replaces?
- How many cards go in the main deck at setup?
- How many Unrest cards are used in a solo or 2-player game?
- Can I mix Classics, Legends and Horizons common cards in one game?
- Can civilisations from Classics, Legends and Horizons be played with any box's common cards?
- When I use tributaries from another set, do I still remove the chosen nations' own tributary cards?
Core Concepts and Resources
- Is there a difference between a card in play and a card in your play area?
- What does a slash (/) mean in card text, such as 1 VP per River / Ocean?
- Are progress tokens considered resources?
- Can I spend, move or score resources that sit on a card?
- What happens to resources on a card when it leaves play?
- How do I read the Jingu-Ji Shrine Temple choice of 'Add 2 here OR Spend 4 here to draw Glory'?
- If a card makes me pay a cost, or says 'do A and B', how much of it must I resolve?
- Do the production icons on a Merchant power card count toward scoring, given that the state card is not in play?
Turn Structure and Clean-Up
- Can you take your accession card and your first development in the same round?
- Can you innovate when your hand is empty?
- Do I have to discard down to my hand size?
- At clean-up, must I draw up to my hand size, or can I stop drawing early?
- When you return Unrest during a Revolt, which pile does it go to, and does Japanese Unrest go to the Unrest pile?
- Can you spend an action to activate a card already in your play area again?
- When a passive effect triggers off playing a card, such as Dog Sleds or Macedonians, does it resolve before or after the played card goes to discard?
- Can a card drawn back into your hand later in the same turn be played again after it was discarded?
Reshuffling and Developing
- Is a card added to your Nation deck during a reshuffle public information?
- Did the reshuffle rules change between Classics/Legends and Horizons when you run out of draw cards?
- If your draw deck runs out while you resolve a card that draws cards, is the card you are playing reshuffled with the discard?
- Is becoming an Empire mandatory when your draw deck runs out and the conditions to add a Nation or Accession card are met?
- Is the Atlantean development that takes an Unrest drawn correctly during clean-up when your draw deck runs out?
- Can a 'return Exhaust' effect remove an exhaustion token from my Nation deck or Development area?
- Can you reshuffle an empty discard pile into a new draw deck when Utopians' Power A triggers?
Solstice
- In a 2-player game, does the first-player token pass each round so that Solstice timing shifts?
- If a Solstice cost offers abandon or discard and your hand is empty, which option must you take?
- Can Hawaii's Solstice discard-two option be chosen if you do not have two cards in hand?
- Can a Solstice effect that has a cost be used more than once in the same Solstice?
- If a Cultists journey card flips at Solstice, do I also resolve the Solstice effect of its new side?
- Does Scrubland's Solstice placement still happen if my draw fails because the draw deck is empty?
- If a Solstice effect says choose between two options and you cannot pay for one, must you still resolve the other?
- Does a Solstice effect that is written as two sentences (recall a card, then a Choose) resolve both parts during Solstice?
Keywords: Costs, Resources and Find
- If a card says to abandon a card, can it abandon itself?
- Can Cornwall Tin Road's profit find a card in your History pile?
- If you abandon a Minoan Pottery card with progress points on it, do you gain them, and do leftover tokens score at game end?
- Can you find a card that is already in play, such as Tendai Buddhism with Prince Shotoku Taishi?
- What is the difference between Add, Move and Remove resources, such as adding materials to Glacier?
- Where can you take cards from, and what does take mean compared with find?
- Can resources on cards be stolen by an opponent's steal effect?
- When can you substitute resources such as Progress, and must a cost be paid in full?
Keywords: Card Text, Triggers and Timing
- Can Taino move resources from one of their cards to another, for example from Zemi to Canoes to pay for Canoes?
- Can you pay Progress or a Trade Good instead of 2 Materials to avoid an attack with Dhar Tichitt?
- How do you pay a Development cost that asks for both population and materials using Progress tokens?
- For a card like Prosperity that gains materials per y/z icon, do you count both the y and z icons or choose one?
- Can a cost or effect be satisfied with zero cards or zero resources?
- When a Find effect offers a choice, can you look at every matching card before picking one?
- How does a Choose effect with OR read, such as Choose: X to Y OR Z, or Choose: X OR Y to Z?
- When does a 'when' ability trigger after its card is played: during the card or after it resolves?
Game End and Scoring
- Do state cards, power cards, and setup cards count toward Exports & Imports-style scoring?
- When scoring a card that counts cards you own, do both the journey and ceremony cards count at once?
- Does an incomplete quest under King Arthur's Court count for scoring or for Sir Gawain?
- If Brave takes the last Unrest from the pile, can you still free play it before the next uncivilised card refills?
- Can the Martian game end by developing your last Development-area card without gaining the Nadir card?
- Does running out of the main deck trigger game end even if suit-specific mini-decks still have cards?
- When scoring is triggered, do I finish the round and play a final round?
- If Catamaran's Ocean-to-Production effect triggers a collapse, does it change scoring?
Trade Routes and Variants
- How do I add Trade Routes to Classics or Legends commons?
- Can Trade Routes be played with attack cards or with Horizons common set A?
- Do trade tokens sitting on a Trade Route card count toward scoring?
- Can you trade with a Trade Route card just to place a trade token, without resolving its effect?
- When a card lets you pay 1 Goods to trade, do you need a second Goods to take the trade route?
- Can I use goods and the Trade Routes replacement cards in a game without the Trade Routes module?
- What do the alien-face currency tokens do?
- Are the Trade Route Merchants cards playable in a solo game against the bot, given the 2+ player icon?
Common, Fame and Trade Route Cards
- How does the Merchants exile ability work, and can I use it without acquiring a Trade Route?
- Can an Ambassador resolve a copied card's Exhaust and Solstice, and be exhausted outside my turn?
- Does Stone Mask let you return any card from your hand to the top of your deck, or only a card you just drew?
- How does Frozen Waste's Solstice Choose work, and can it abandon itself?
- Does the Gardening card return one Unrest for a City and another for a Metropolis?
- How does the Notorious card score in Horizons?
- If a card requires paying materials to return an Unrest and you have no Unrest, can you pay and still gain the VP?
- When Welcoming's profit reveals only cards you cannot legally play, must you free play one anyway?
Nations: Martians, Cultists and Polynesians
- Can Glorious Uplifting put Reactor Explosion into history?
- Can I return the exhaust token I just used on Twisted Grove?
- What can you do with the five Population tokens placed on the Martian power card?
- Can Polynesians develop with Waka Hourua while cards remain in the Nation deck?
- Can Polynesians develop while isle-bound?
- On Tohunga's second option, must you gain 1 mana before you can return an Unrest or abandon Overpopulation, and can you skip that option if you cannot gain mana?
- If Smugglers gives a player a card they can never play, such as Overpopulation for Polynesians, what happens?
- Does the Martian Side A passive let you discard one card per Progress token when acquiring from the Market?
Nations: Japanese, Inuit and Taino
- How does Epic Poetry work with Miyabi or an ordinary acquire?
- What does Cultural Diversity actually let me ignore?
- Can I play Shinto without Tendai Buddhism in play?
- How do Taino Agriculture and Soil Rotation interact on grain icons?
- How do I count cards with both civilised and uncivilised icons for Inuit scoring cards?
- Can the Taino's Gift Exchange free play an Empire card even though the Taino never become Empire?
- Does each choice in Hopewell Exchange's 'choose up to 7 times' trigger Inuit's +1 material separately?
- Does Oral History count as your History for cards that must be in History to score?
Nations: Americas
Nations: Africa, Asia and Mediterranean
- Does Dhar Tichitt trigger when an attack would make me abandon or recall a Region?
- Does Triremes steal population once or per sea icon, and can it be played with no ocean icons?
- Does the Minoan Traders bricks bonus count only undeveloped cards still in the development deck?
- Can Seaport be used repeatedly in one turn to trade, by recalling its ocean card each time?
- When King Wu of Qin pays up to 3 progress to acquire cards, must all the progress be paid before acquiring?
- Can the two cards I discard for Confucianism be Unrest cards that I then return from my discard pile?
- How many Materials does the Carthaginian power card add at end of turn: 1 or 2?
- What does Shah's Find option do, finding a fame card for an action?
Nations: Europe and Steppe
- Does the Roman passive trigger when a card has me take the top Fame card?
- Can you keep Atar in play by paying 1 material when you have no Unrest garrisoned?
- How many materials does Macedonian Phalanx's passive give when you play a double-region card like Nunavut from your discard pile?
- Can you choose a Solstice option on Atar that you cannot complete, such as putting a Knight into history when you have none?
- Does the Revised Scythians Power B score 1 VP per 3 materials and regions combined, or per 3 materials plus per 3 regions?
- Does Celtica's 'return a card from your discard pile to the top of your deck' work the same as the Classics wording?
- When Determined garrisons a card, which card's play effect triggers, and can I garrison under a card that is already garrisoned?
Solo: Practice Mode and Campaign
- Can I switch between the Classics, Imperium and Horizons common card sets from game to game in a solo campaign?
- In Practice Mode, how many progress tokens do I add during clean-up?
- In Practice Mode, does the game end immediately when the 12th progress token is placed?
- In Supreme Ruler mode, do I still change my deck after a win?
- How do I handle opponent-targeting effects in Practice Mode?
- In a solo campaign, if I keep a tributary card and later face that nation, do I swap the tributary out?
- On Chieftain or Warlord difficulty, does the solo bot still place a resource when it rolls a 5 during clean-up?
- Can a card from your play area be included when you add a card to your starting deck after a Solo Campaign win?
Solo: Resolving Bot Cards
- When does a bot row count as resolved instead of falling through to the next row?
- If I ignore or defend against a bot's attack row, what still happens?
- What happens when the bot must resolve or discard the top card of an empty deck?
- When does the bot's State card flip after its Accession card is resolved?
- When Tyranny is played on the bot, does it take and discard the Unrest?
- Do I need Horizons to play Classics or Legends bots, and are there errata for the bot charts?
- Do recall or abandon effects affect the bot when it has no matching card?
- How do 'if unable' and semicolons work on bot cards?
Solo: Bot Market, Clean-Up and Scoring
- Does the bot score its Merchants or Merchant Empire power card?
- How does the bot break ties when choosing a card to acquire or break through for?
- Which Market card does the solo bot exile?
- Which bot effects count as attacks for Protection and similar abilities?
- Does a bot's Star card scoring use a cap, and how many points does the bot get per Star card?
- How does the bot's end-of-turn Trade effect work with progress and goods on the bot trade table?
- When the bot's commerce or profit has nothing to resolve, such as an empty trade route row, what happens?
- When the bot chooses a market card to acquire, does it count net victory points including tokens and unrest?
Solo: Bots with Special Setup
- When does the Polynesian State card flip, for a player and for the bot?
- When the bot interacts with Cultist Chaos cards, where do they go and does it pay?
- How does an AND condition on a bot card, like the Mayan bot, work?
- Does putting a Taino pinned card into history count as resolving its bot line?
- Does the Martian bot count as playing a gadget when it resolves one, so that Sharing Our Secrets triggers?
- Is the Martian bot Empire or Barbarian when a bot card asks about its state?
- Where do resources removed from the Cultist bot state card go, to the supply or to the bot's pool?
- On the Cultist bot's Ceremonial Gathering side, should the step after reshuffling place progress or population on the card?
Solo: Other Nation Bots
- Why does the Tang bot trigger Collapse so quickly?
- Magyar bot on the Empire side with an empty discard pile: how do consecutive Empire cards from the bot deck resolve?
- What does the Minoan bot's 'abandon a civilised' step on the Other trigger mean?
- What does 'if unable' mean on the Japanese bot's Empire state card?
- Can the Carthaginian bot draw a card on its Empire attack option when it has no region to abandon?
- When a Scythian bot's Glory card comes from the top of the dynasty deck while the bot is still Barbarian, which state rule applies?
- Does the Scythian bot's 'If unable' Breakthrough line trigger when it finds no valid card?
- If an Aksumite bot card says acquire then break through, and an if-unable clause, when does the card go into history?
Keywords: Acquiring, Garrison, Free Play and Exile
- Can I free play the same card more than once in a turn?
- When you break through for an exiled card, can you look through the Exile pile and pick the one you want?
- What happens when a Breakthrough finds no card, for example when the main deck is empty?
- When breaking through from a Small deck, is the card you take shown to the other players?
- When two cards in a chain are both 'Break through' with multiple suits, which suit and which card can you pick?
- Does a card that triggers when you acquire also trigger when you break through?
- When a knight like Bucellarii garrisons itself under a region, what gets resolved?
- When a knight garrisons itself to resolve a region's play effect, whose state restriction matters?