My First Game of Twilight Imperium (Conclusion)

The next two sessions spanned three rounds and concluded the game. At the beginning of the third last round, I controlled Mecatol Rex and so I chose the Imperial role. I knew that I couldn’t hold it for long, so I invoked the strategic action on my first turn to earn a victory point. At that point I also noticed that the Imperial role allowed me to qualify for multiple objective cards at the end of the round. This set my plan for the whole round. There were two objectives that I could qualify for as long as I saved my resources and trade goods till the end. I also had an action card that would allow me to steal half of the trade goods of another player (while the other half would be trashed). I wanted to use that card near the end of the round.

After the first set of turns, I had earned my victory point for controlling Mecatol Rex, but the deal was that I would surrender that planet to The Barony of Letnev, since that faction wanted to attack The Yassaril Tribes on two fronts. One the next set of turns, The Emirates of Hacan and Brotherhood of Yin built their forces, The Yassaril Tribes moved towards The Barony of Letnev who captured Mecatol Rex. I didn’t want to attack anyone and at the same time I didn’t want to buy time by building more ships, so I went through my action cards to find something that would buy me a turn. Luckily, I found the Civil Unrest card that allowed me to destroy 1 ground force of another player and I found the perfect target. I wanted to continue my alliance with me neighbours to the right and so I attacked their enemy, The Yassaril Tribes. That faction had control of a system close to my ally, containing a single ground force, a space dock, and two PDS’s. The Civil Unrest card combined with the law that required at 1 ground force on each planet turned out to be an amazing combo; not only did they lost a ground force they also lost the two PDS’s and the space dock. The rest of the round continued in a similar manner where I just tried to buy 1 more turn until the others started passing. If needed, I would have started spending my command counters from the Strategy pool to create more ground forces.

I finally used my special action card on my last turn and stole six trade counters from The Emirates of Hacan. This was not a targeted attack; I just went after the faction that had the most trade goods. When the round ended, we turned the next objective card and the requirement for that one turned out to be having all three space docks deployed (for which I qualified as well). That round was very prosperous for me, I earned 4 victory points; 1 each for controlling Mecatol Rex, for turning in 10 trade goods (objective), for turning in 4 trade goods, 3 influence, and 4 resources (objective), and lastly for having all 3 space docks deployed (objective). I took the lead and landed at 8 points, with the second position at 6 victory points (The Brotherhood of Yin).

The second last round wasn’t as eventful, despite the fact that everyone was against me. I think I played about two or three turns before passing. I spent most of the round growing my fleet for fear of attack. I didn’t qualify for any objectives victory points at the end.

The Brotherhood of Yin was still advocating for an attack against me by the final round, but it turned out that was a ruse. They pretty much had the game in their pocket when the round began. Within the first set of turns they can positioned themselves to be able to qualify for 3 victory points (2 by secret objective, and 1 by public objective). They had a pretty significant force (Green) spread throughout the systems and it was nearly impossible for the rest of us prevent the victory. We ended the last round early with The Brotherhood of Yin emerging victorious (and me in second place).

All in all, I enjoyed the game except that it was too long. Three out of the five of us were not familiar with the game, so I am sure if we were to play it again, it would be much shorter. However, it is a pretty long game. I did enjoy the theme of the game and the space battles were fun to imagine. I also liked how you had to balance between completing objectives and fighting other players. One of my worries throughout the game was that I would be attacked and would lose most of my forces. As you can see in the pictures, my fleet kept growing without much reason for it. I don’t know if my alliance with The Barony of Letnev was valid or not, there certainly weren’t any in game rules for it, but it did affect how I made my moves and that made the game more enjoyable.

On top of all of this, there game has a lot of pieces, which look amazing. Having to organize them would also be a fun evening.

My First Game of Twilight Imperium

Twilight Imperium is a game that I have heard mentioned several times in high regards, and so I have thought of buying it for myself. However, every time I have picked it up at some store I look at the price tag and put it back. The game usually goes for over $100 and that it beyond my price range.

Luckily one of my colleagues does own the game and we recently started playing it. Instead of playing the whole game in one sitting, we have been playing it in 90-minute sessions. There are 5 of us in this game, 2 of whom (including myself) have never played Twilight Imperium before. According to BoardGameGeek the playing time for Twilight Imperium is between 3 to 4 hours, but it is taking us much longer to play through.

In our first session we went through the rules and just got set up. Each player received 2 races to choose from and we set up the board. I forget which race was my second choice, but I ended up picking The Federation of Sol (Blue), because … humans … why not? At this point my strategy was to use my Civilization V strategy; build my armies but don’t initiate any battles. The other players chose the following races (in clockwise order starting from my left); The Emirates of Hacan (Purple), The Brotherhood of Yin (Green), The Yassaril Tribes (Black), and The Barony of Letnev (Red).

In the next three sessions we played three of four rounds and each player stayed around their own home system. Most players were lucky in their explorations, in that they did not meet much resistance while exploring the planets. I think I was the luckiest one. I turned over 1 red exploration token, and lost a Destroyer to PDS fire, while all other planets had green tokens and gave me free technology and trade goods. The Barony of Letnev was the unluckiest of us all. He met resistance at each planet and lost several units. By the end of the third session there had been a few battles between players but nothing too big.

By the end of the fourth session we had started building our armies. The Emirates of Hacan tried going left but was stopped by The Brotherhood of Yun, while The Yassaril Tribes blocked The Barony of Letnev from going to their right. Which meant that both, The Emirates of Hacan and The Barony of Letnev would come towards me. So far, there had been mutual peace between us, and I even had trade agreements with both of them. Additionally, we had a law passed that required that each captured planet to have at least one ground force, otherwise the planet goes back to being neutral.

The fifth session was very interesting. We all knew that we war was imminent, but each of was wanted to delay it for as long as possible. I though The Barony of Letnev had a bigger fleet, and so I took the Diplomacy role and prevented them from attacking me. Each of us tried to play our turns without doing moving into each other’s territories. I had a verbal agreement with The Barony of Letnev that I will not shoot my PDS against them as long as they don’t go attack me either. On my other side, The Emirates of Hacan had built another small fleet, including a War Sun, and started to come my way.

In the sixth session (the last one we played) I declared war (out of fear) against my neighbour to the left. The trade agreement between us no longer existed and the War Sun was right next to one of my systems. Before they could raise their forces even further and strike against me, I gathered my forces and struck first. I brought 2 Dreadnaughts, 1 Destroy, 2 Carries and 4 Fighters against the War Sun, 3 Fighters, 1 Destroyer, and 1 Cruiser. The battle took place on the Lisis & Volner system. I was victorious and lost only 3 of my fighters. My 2 Dreadnaughts took damage, but they recovered at the end of the round. Unfortunately I forgot to bring my ground forces to take over the planets.

By the end of this session The Emirates of Hacan had rebuilt a small fleet was not happy with me. On my other side, my alliance with The Barony of Letnev is not as strong as it once was. As you can see in the image they are locked in, and need to attack someone to get more space. Unfortunately for me, Mecatol Rex is fairly unprotected.

After looking at the two pictures above, I think I should have continued the attack against The Emirates of Hacan. I could have taken some of my forces to their home system to prevent the from raising another fleet, or at least slow them down.

We think that the game will end within the next 2 sessions. A thing to keep it mind is that, the objective is not to destroy the other players, but rather to complete objectives and gain victory points. We are all sitting around 4 or 5 victory points. I’ll see how it goes next week.