Twilight Imperium!

My first ever game of Twilight Imperium! I got a demo of this game on Arcon this year. My son thought it looked awesome, and I was pretty impressed too... so when a used copy appeared in the Cardboard Cræck group I snapped it up - after some bidding, even, which seemed appropriate.

We took the 6 suggested starting races and default galaxy, and everyone got dealt a random race. Going around the table, I got Empirates of Hacan, Leif got the Sardakk N'orr, Dag-Erling got the Universities of Jol-Nar, and Lars got Barony of Letnev.

The game started with me sprinting for Mecatol Rex and getting there first, also playing an Imperial. Looking nice! Everyone got worried. I did throw up a PDS at Mecatol, and a fairly big fleet.

There was a lot of fun with the agendas. My ambassador even got shot at an inopportune moment! Nothing really gummed up my plans, though.

It took some time before I got evicted by the Sardakk N'orr, who got duly stabbed in the face by Jol-Nar. Never trust a fish!

I had 7 points at that time. I turtled up as well as I could and scored the last 3 points right after. Jol-Nar thought they would win on the next turn... but there was no next turn!

The final score

Hacan 10
Jol-Nar 7
Letnev 4
Sardakk N'orr 3

We did a couple of rule mistakes (everyone was new to 4th edition). Everyone got 1 command instead of 2 each turn (yeah, that misprinted tech card tricked us). Also, we started with commodities. I discovered only after the game that you don't get them at the beginning.

This game is great fun! Epic, the rules are good, and the game flows well. Randomized objectives are great in games like this, continually forcing people to do stuff they rather maybe not do.

I especially like the excellent rules for trade and diplomacy. The trade good system forces players to interact all the time to get their extra resources, and all that silly crap and backstabbing going on at the Galactic Council is just hilarious.