The other night my friends were arguing about a game tactic concerning this game. One of their gaming group is apparently a bloodthirsty "jerk" who runs amok at the first chance he gets, especially delighting in pouncing on new players. His line is, "well if they leave their system ungaurded I am gonna all out attack them and they will learn not to do that by having to sit on the couch doing nothing for the rest of the game". However, in so doing this he apparently leaves himself horribly ungauarded and the other players eventually pounce on him. At some point, either at the point of all hopelessness of winning or being basically eliminated he does something with a card called Beurocracy and assembly to search for Rex and ends the game. It seems at this point it may or may not be simply out of spite to the ones who crushed him but he has done this before simply to end the game for everybody and actually hand victory to the guy who most crushed him. The debate is this, is there an easy way to prevent him from doing this since it is apparently a totally legal move but there is a feeling of poor sportsmanship amongst the group that is detracting from the enjoyment of the game.

I personally don't play, but it was a point of serious "out of game" contention between my friends while playing another game and I would like to help them if possible.

thanks for all the responses ahead of time....

napoleon;)

What a punk. You could just not let him (the jerk) play for a game or the rest of the players could gang up on him and give him a taste of his own medicine. I can't think of anything other than these obvious options, other than to make up a few house rules made specifically to stop what he is doing. Rats. Good luck with that, mate.

No more games for him if he is pissing off other players. Find better friends.

napoleonWilson said:

If you are playing with Bureaucracy and Imperium Rex and you let a player take Bureaucracy over and over again, then sure he can just look at the top two and choose Imperium Rex if he sees it. There's nothing to stop him from doing that, except every other player in the game. If this happens more than once, either don't play with Imperium Rex, or don't play with that particular person. My group never plays with Imperium Rex because we don't like the game to end abruptly.

What a jerk, especially in regard to pulling that crap with a newer player. That sort of behavior drives new players from the game. I regularly run a newbie game and pull my punches. I explain why certain moves are bad ideas and generally don't engage in cutthroat behavior. Letting the newbies win encourages them to come back for more. I make them fight for the win but I don't generally engage in high level jerk moves, for instance in the last one I held the Public Execution card and I pitched it for a resource, in my normal group I would have held onto that for the perfect moment. I ended that game in second place, had I hung onto it and played it in the last round I probably could have won the game.

If you want a super cutthroat game fine, but do it with a group that is experienced and is not going to make newbie blunders. In my normal group our games often degenerate into who is the "designated <explicative deleted>-taker," with one guy making it his mission to make sure another does not win. It gets extra funny when the whole table gets to the point where everyone has picked a different whipping boy and a chain of jerkiness is set off because X prevented Y from winning which put Z in the winning position forcing W to jerk him around. It makes our early game full of careful diplomacy because no one wants to be a the first "designated !@#taker."

As for the Bureaucracy tactic, I use it all the time to either force my victory if I have lead or to play kingmaker if I don't and have no chance of winning. If his shenanigans are annoying the group enough play with the Age of Empire variant that has all the objectives revealed at the beginning of the game and Imperium Rex is the last card in the chain so everyone knows when it is coming.

As those above have mentioned, either gang up on him and make him sit out most of a 4-5 hour game or just quit inviting him to play if he continues to be a problem.

One option would be to not play with Imperium Rex.

Play a game with Age of Empires and Buro and more objectives out there than usual.

Add artifacts, go to 9VPs, and you have a shorter game with clear objectives to play for.

Bill

Personally, my response would be to stop inviting that person to play TI.

Playing without the Imperium Rex card is a good option if his ending the game early is the only real complaint. Removing this card won't stop him from pouncing on new players, of course.

"Giving him a taste of his own medicine" probably won't work as well as you might like. First of all it sounds like other people ARE attacking him back already, and it only causes him to focus on Bureaucracy to try and end the game. Even if you make an effort to strike him before he picks a weak target, he'll just do the same thing. And if everyone attacks him exclusively it could lead to an ugly outcome that goes beyond the game. Just desserts? Perhaps, but I doubt anyone at the table will feel very good about it.

Revenge sounds good in theory, but it rarely ends well and may result in the game components getting damaged (depending on how well our Jerk friend handles himself under pressure - I'm guessing not well.) My best advice would be to stop inviting him to play the game. Find more mature friends who suit your play style better.

Steve-O said:

Probably the best solution. If his idea of "fun" is to squelch other players just to "teach them a lesson", then get irrational and angry when people attack HIS undefended planets, then he's not a player I'd want in my group under any circumstances.

Well, at least he's not turtling!

But if he's not playing to win, just to "go berzerk" on the table and always lose, well, he won't contribute much to the game either. If he gets a lot of VP's for what he's doing though, I'd think it legal. I would probably help the new players build a solid defense to hold him off.

...And who plays with Imperium Rex anyway *roll*

PsiComa said:

Most players I know do.

I'm sure it varies from group to group, but i've found the current set of TI rules a breeding ground for arguing between friends. I love the rules, I think the game is genius but when combined with our group, it breeds a lot of animosity.

I think it primarily has to do with the victory structure and how long the game takes. To win the game, knocking someone out early is very advantageous, but it makes for a bad experience for everyone. This feels like a design flaw in the game. Sure, we could blame the players, but given the level of sophistication in the game, I think a solution could be found.

sigmazero13 said:

Most players I know don't. But that's not the point of my post, Sigmazero.

He has some source or an element of irritation in his game that is apparently abused, so why not remove it? That's the point.

(Also, I guess that people removing a card has a reason to, while I guess most people keeping it haven't thought that much about it. )

PsiComa said:

I'm sure his actions are legal as far as the rules are concerned, but that doesn't mean he's playing fair.

I meant legal as "morally legal".

If he's not caring for his own game, just choosing a target to drag down with him, then he's just ruining your game. Throw him out and don't play with him.

But, however, if he does well and gains a fair deal of VP's on what he is doing, then he's just playing Twilight as it should. Kudos, actually, for going to war instead of turtling.

sigmazero13 said:

We never do but to each his own.

As for the topic it seems like the answer is remove the jerk and/or remove the card Imperium Rex. I would suggest both.

OK, this question is totally off-topic, but how do people play when not using the imperial rex objective? Do you all use Age of Empires variant or some other house ruling I didnt hear of?

The easy answer has been given that you could not invite him.

If you play with Imperium Rex you have to expect that the game could end on turn 5 (25% chance that this is an option) if you or your friends can't handle this, for god's sake don't play with it in the game because there's nothing worse than playing with rules or aspects the group doesn't like. When we don't play with Imperium Rex we play with four stage II objectives instead of three and end the game when a player reaches nine points.

The hard solution is to play with him but to find a way to styme his techniques. To that end I'll say this: soft power is the best check on jerks. You want to help noobs to avoid becoming targets with defensive coaching. And defensive coaching isn't bad coaching since often times the the winner in TI is the last person to take the lead. Further you should keep him in check with negotiations and threats. But most importantly recognize this: he's partly in the right.

If you don't defend systems or build fleet this generally means you as a player are instead scoring points or gaining techs that will wrest control of the game in the long term. Attacking a player while they're undefended if they're undefended for one of these reasons is the right thing to do. Further attacking players is, in general, the right thing to do. This is a game about fighting and not the on your feet Queensbury rules kind either, the down and dirty sand in your eye kind of fighting.

I'd like to finish by seconding the sentiment: "at least he's not turtling."

The Fist of Ferrum said:

Although I'm not a house-rule person, when I play with Imperium Rex, I usually game the system by making sure that Imperium Rex isn't one of the first two Stage II cards, just to keep an early end, but still allowing for the flexibility of not knowing EXACTLY when it will happen.

I like Imperium Rex because it adds uncertainty to the end of the game - you have to make sure you are ready at any given moment to take the lead.

sigmazero13 said:

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of Imperium Rex. It's a big part what forces people to take initiative instead of dark horsing their victory. I'm not sure how I feel about stacking the deck, that makes it much harder for people to keep track of how close Imperium Rex could be.

If you really wanted to delay Imperium Rex you should pad the deck with stage I cards so that Imperium Rex is still mixed evenly through the stage II's.

The Fist of Ferrum said:

Either solution would work, though the latter idea introduces the idea of a much longer game. Stacking the deck doesn't make it that much harder to keep track of it; if you know it's not one of the first two, it just means you don't have to worry about it until then. Keeping track of it hasn't been any harder