Twilight Imperium

I was going to write about A Serbian film but I am both short on time and sanity. Also I got to play Twilight Imperium yesterday and that was a god damn good time. We ended up starting at around 5 because Devon attracts cops. Jerk. We finnished just before midnight so we made some pretty decent time. We used Imperial 2, Distant Suns, Hero Characters, and some other things. We had the option of space mines and shock troops but no one ended up using them which is kinda sad. I was going to but space mines are a little expensive for what they do and the oppoenent I was most worried about had enough fighters so that it really didn't seem worth it. No matter.

Every other game in Twilight I've played I've made a decent start, I get up a pretty big fleet, and then I kinda end up languishing somewhere around the middle of the victory point track while people run all over the place winning. This time however, I was able to make some serious headway. James had coming in first pretty much on lock down. He had Imperial 2, he qualified for at least two victory conditions and he was at 6. I was at 8 and I could of gotten another two victory points if I could win two space battles. The player to my right and the player to my left both had medium sized fleets that I am pretty sure I could of taken. Especially since by that point in the game my fighters were hitting on 7's. I was close but the player to my right retreated his fleet, the player to my left used diplomacy and I didn't have the speaker token so James ended up winning even though I was RIGHT THERE. It made me sad. The game ended on turn 7 or 8 I can't remember.

Looking back, what I should of done was take Assembly, make myself the speaker, then take initiative, then take Imperial 2. I should of done that starting on turn 5. Then turn 6 I would of qualified for having ten planets and I would have three more turns to prepare myself for the final pile of victory points. This plan might or might not have worked. The player immediatly to my right had 6 victory points but he also installed himself on mecatol rex in such a way that it would be nearly impossible to get him off. He was the turtle race, he had at least one diplomat down there, more ground forces than you can shake a stick at, and a huge fleet above it. It was doable, especially since he didn't have a whole lot of technology, but it would of taken at least 4 turns to do so. So we started to make it so that no one could grab imperial 2. People were eying me nervously as well, James was on his way to victory, and Tyson was up and coming. I also made a mistake back at the start of the game. While exploring a planet I came upon some settlers from Travonta's race. The next turn I killed them. Now there was a victory condition that involved winning a ground combat against at least two people which I did. For some reason I decided to cash in my secret objective instead of that one. My secret objective involved me having 4 planets of the same research credit. My reasoning behind it was that I was afraid that someone would mug me and take some of my technology credit planets away. So I wanted it right then. Having that extra victory point would of made the end game much easier for me to win.

This was the by far the closest, most tense game of Twilight Imperium we've ever played. A few things contributed to this. One is having all the victory cards out on the table at the start. That really helped things along. Two is the victory cards themselves. We had 2 involving techonology, 2 involving having more influece than the people around you, 1 involving spending money, 2 focused around combat, one involved you having lots of planets, and one was taking over Mecatol Rex. This, plus the artifacts, gave people lots of different paths to victory. It was a fantastic game and it is great that we have enough people who are experienced enough with playing it to really get into some of the strategy and whatnot. I plan on grabbing the third expansion sometime soon as it gives the individual races even more personality than they have now and we all look fowards to the time where we will be able to play again. Hopefully with 8 people so we can get a truely epic game going.