4000 AD is a science fiction game set 2000 years into the future. Players maneuver fleets of ships in an attempt to conquer the known galaxy.
Each player starts on their home world with a small fleet of ships. Fleets move using "warps". The warp is represented by a grey disk holding the ships in the fleet. The warps do not move on the board but instead move along the tracks on the edges of the board. A marker on the warp shows what "sector" the fleet started in. Each turn the fleet is in the warp it moves one sector and when it leaves the warp it can appear in any sector that is the proper distance from its starting point.
If the fleet arrives at an unoccupied planet the player gains control of that planet. A player controls a planet as long as they have at least one ship there.
If the fleet arrives at an occupied planet the arriving fleet engages the fleet already there. The larger fleet destroys the smaller fleet with no damage to itself.
Planets provide "resources" which are used to build additional ships. There are two types of resources, coded as a plus sign and a circle. For every pair of resource producing planets a player controls they can produce one ship on their home world on every other turn.
Play continues until all but one player has been eliminated. That player is the winner.
4000 AD is a very abstracted science fiction wargame. The most interesting thing about it is that there is no chance involved at all in the game which brings it into the realm of a pure strategy game. The space warp is a good idea in that it allows the players to keep their plans secret while having everything in plain sight. (You can see that a fleet is moving but not where it is going.) There is some attempt to make the game three dimensional in that planets are coded as to what "level" they are on. The only downside to the game is that the spaceships are very small and the colors chosen for them are close enough together that it is difficult to distinguish them. This is still a very good strategy game with a science fiction flavor.
