Does Risk not have enough strategizing for you? Is Monopoly too short? Is Settlers of Catan not inciting enough arguments between you and your loved ones? Then have I got a game for you.

Meet Twilight Imperium, the most complicated board game I’ve ever played. Including eight separate games within the game, it’s a day-long time commitment. In Twilight Imperium, you vie to become supreme ruler of the galaxy using force, politics, trade, technological advances, and more—a whole universe of near-infinite game mechanics.

Before my friends and I played Twilight Imperium, we actually had homework—to read the whopping 40-page rulebook in advance. With an assignment like that, John and I knew that in order to show our gratitude as hosts, we needed to sweeten the deal. Literally.

Here’s our Twilight Imperium party spread, complete with cheesy space-themed titles. The “Dark Matter” is homemade blackberry lemonade. The “Nebula Cakes” have star-shaped sprinkles on top.

We started setting up the game at 11:30 AM, and it took a good thirty minutes to randomly choose our alien races and build the world out of Catan-like hexagonal tiles. We prepared ourselves with the rulebook and two iPads loaded with the rules at the ready. It feels like somebody (John pictured below) was checking the rules every few minutes.

We began playing at noon, and didn’t finish until eight hours later. Believe it or not, our game was considered short for Twilight Imperium! Here’s what the board looked like at the end. Can you believe how many cards we all have out?

I never thought I’d ever meet a board game that I’d want to play for over eight hours on a beautiful early autumn day, but then, that’s why Twilight Imperium is so highly recommended on Board Game Geek. And while you’d think our friends wouldn’t want to touch this again with a ten foot pole, everyone kept saying they’d be ready to play again as early as November. The fact that each alien race has different abilities, and the fact that each of the eight strategies comes with myriad possibilities make for strong replay value.

This time I played as the Emirates of Hacan, a race of cat-people that are like the mob in terms of market control. I liked that my strategy was nonaggressive, but I unwittingly funded a war between my neighbors the red and blue players, as you can clearly see in the map above. Here’s me and my best friend Andrew getting into it:

Have you ever played Twilight Imperium or a similarly intense game? Would you?