Got my first game in yesterday. 6 Players, 4 of which had never played TI, and a 5th had only 1 game of TI3 under their belt.

Mammoth 9+ hour game (not counting set up and breakdown), but everyone walked away having had fun and many looking forward to another game at some point. Going into the 7th (and final) round it was 7-6-6-5-5-4 for scoring, and was fairly tight. The Scoring had the 7 pointer score second, and completed a Stage 2 Objective (3 Unit Upgrades) and his 3rd Secret Objective (holding a System with another players Spacedock in it). The Mentak's sent in 2 Dreadnaughts & 5 Cruisers in to take the system, with some Fighter support. Didn't take the planets, but just hovered in space.