As they say, even the best laid plans don't survive contact with the enemy but thankfully this turned out to be a very enjoyable day. The 6 player game I had organised looked like it was going to be a 7 player game at one point before becoming 6 again and then finally, on game day, 5 players.

It was a tiny bit dissapointing finding out it was only going to be a 5 player and not 6 (I had gone around my friends house the night before to set up the game because he's got a much larger place than I) but we didn't let it bother us because it would still be the largest game we would have all played to date and all of the remaining players were either relatively experienced or had played at least once before! As such we decided to ditch the preset map and randomly create the galaxy!

Variants in play were:

Alternate Strategy Cards (with Bureaucracy) and Objectives

Territorial Distant Suns (we're a big fan of these, even if sometimes they can screw you up and can't really ever see not playing with them!)

Shock Troops

Facilities

Artifacts

Race Specific Tech (naturally!)

The Races were drawn at Random with the following being selected:

Myself: The Mentak Coalition

Girlfriend: The L1Z1X Mindnet

Long time mate from school: The Winnu

Friend from work (only 1 game under his belt): The Fedaration of Sol

Sol's girfriend (again, only 1 game under her belt but she did win her first): Yssaril

The game would be played to 10VP with Imperium Rex omitted from the objective deck (time wasn't an issue- we started early and planned to overnight if the game finished late)

Map Layout

The map layout was quite interesting, I wish I had remembered my camera but to summarise I ended up in the 'squashed' position with the winnu on my left and L1Z1X on my right in the slightly less squashed positions. Unfortunately we all forgot to get our bonus trade goods for starting in those positions (which in my case could have really, really helped early on!). Never the less, I as the mentak managed to end up placed to quite a few planets in my vicinity but not quite as much as the yssaril which had well over half of the available planets it seemed in their sector. The winnu had a very mediocre turn out of planets to claim which would be alright although the L1Z1X would have tread on a few toes to establish an empire. The poor Federation of Sol however got truly screwed over and was truly out in the sticks, in the middle of nowhere (2 turns into the game the player claimed "hmmm, next time we make the map I think I'll put my planets closer to my home system instead of the other side of the board...") Anyway, that's part of the fun- you don't know how the galaxy will look so with that done, we started the game!

The Campaign is Launched

The early game proved to be quite eventful, largely in part to the distant suns counters. The Mentak found their initial expansion slowed by a run of bad luck; it seemed the inhabitants of the galaxy didn't quite like the fun loving pirate lifestyle I had to offer! The only run of good luck I particularly had in that regards was the system next to Mecatol Rex from my side of the galaxy which was an industrious populace (obviously sick of work) and gave me a free space dock. I was also lucky with the artifacts- 2 tokens were placed within my reach. The one I claimed proved to be an actual artifiact whereas the other one which was technically on the border with me and the L1Z1X I blockaded with cruisers to later use as a bargaining tool with the L1Z1X (which worked quite nicely). Despite my poor luck with distant suns, I was able to lay claim to the majority of planets within my reach and quickly established "gun lines pending negotiation" with the Winnu and L1Z1X.

During this early stage the Winnu managed to grab a few planets, the L1Z1X even less to the extent where they would "make no promises as to their next actions". This lead to the Yssaril offering a few of the planets near them in exchange for an alliance which the L1Z1X agreed to- not a good situation for the rest of us! The poor federation started their long journey to Yssaril space in order to gain some land whilst using their miserable one planet to produce units.

The trading situation proved very interesting early on. Despite the L1Z1X having bugger all to offer in terms of trade, they received the best deals and end up with a 3,2 trading agreement with the Winnu and Yssaril (I was not happy my 2 closest neighbours the L1Z1X and Winnu kept referring to me as the pirate threat. I guess it was my fault for being the mentak, choosing black and ending every sentence with "Arrrrrrr!"). The Winnu also chose to trade with Yssaril meaning that the federation and I could only trade with each other leaving one contract as useless! The Winnu then saw to further exploit the situation in the next turn by calling an assembly and forcing through a law banning the federation and the mentak from trading!

This obviously could not stand and it was only round 2/3 at this point so I declared war on the Winnu and within the turn seized control of all his planets on my side and ended up with a fleet in the hex adjacent to his homeworld. (Unfortunately my secret objective was technocrat and didnt involve any homesystems). The Winnu at this point realised their mistake and were at my mercy- as tempting as it would have been to punish him further I am a strong advocate of not eliminating players. The game is too long to for such silliness and he's a good friend and this is only a game! So, what I negotiated was that I would pull back from the planet next to his homesystem but that I would maintain control of it and reinforce with groundtroops. In addition he would have to help the federation in their expansion plans by funding sol's fleet (this would later include 2 dreadnoughts amongst other things!) as the Yssaril were expanding fast, chummy with the mindnet and werent really worried about the weak federation. This later proved to be very beneficial as the federation were able to gain a foothold in Yssaril space and slow down their big expansion and actually significantly weaken the Yssaril as war erupted between them towards the end game.

After that early spike of aggression between the Mentak and the Winnu, peace broke out between the races for many years and even though the L1Z1X were getting twitchy around my borders I conceded one of the planets in the dual planet system which we could both legitmately lay claim to. To seal the deal and gain an alliance with the mindnet I offered them the rights to settle the planet with the unexplored artifact counter on it which they agreed to and they in turn would give me half of their trade income each turn. Thankfully the artifact lead prove to be false but this was not detrimental to the alliance which lasted all the way until the final round (when naturally, all bets are off).

Before the galaxy once more erupted in war towards the final rounds, the L1Z1X managed to settle Mecatol Rex before I could! This proved to be unfortunate as they not only fulfilled the public objective for controlling but also fulfilled their secret objective. To be honest I should have seen this and it proved to be my undoing. However, the mindnet conceeded that in the interest of the alliance they would allow me to control Mecatol Rex from the next turn to grab the public objective. I duly did this and then immediately locked the system down to prevent any other mectaol based secret objectives being fulfilled!

It was unfortunate for me as the mentak that there was a large period of piece between the other players. My plan had been to get rich off the warring players by selling my services by playing my nasty action cards for whoever was the highest bidder and then picking off the weakened survivors but this didn't have very much due to everybody holding hands and hugging trees for the majority of the game! When the galactic war truly kicked off, the Winnu weren't in a position to do very much, so it was largely fought between the newly strengthend Federation and the Yssaril. The L1Z1X then broke their alliance with the Yssaril to capitalise on the rich pickings on offer and I in turn declared "Arrrrrrrr!" and did the same with the L1Z1X! Alas it wasn't enough and even though I faired well in all my engagements the custodians of the throne declared an end to the war and that they would declare a new emperor! The results were tallied...

The Federation of Sol and Yssaril: 4 VPs

The Winnu: 6 VPs

The Mentak: 9 VPs (so close!)

The L1Z1X Mindnet: 10VPs (technically 11)- the winner!

This was a great game and much fun was had by all. The only bad thing was the realisation it probably be another month until the next one!

I almost had this game in the bag, despite not being able to fulfil my original game plan. You definitely have to be quite ballsy with the mentak and I feel I did quite well with them but in the future, I would probably need to be a little more pirate like! It's unfortunate that 2 of their abilities (starting off with 4 fleet size) and raiding out people's trade goods become fairly redundant later on as people add to their fleet supply and wise up to your raids and spend their trade goods before any other resource! Having said that, the Mentak are a great race to play as in character and I'd happily play as them again.

In a game as long as Twilight Imperium it's inevitable that as it goes on, mistakes will be made as you start to flag. The mistake which cost me the game I believe was there was a turn when I simply did not have enough command counters to take some critical actions (normally not a problem for me, I tend to prioritize them over anything). However, despite having the ability to take Leadership, I was overly cautious as I was about to leave a system exposed and took diplomacy reasoning that someone always takes leadership and the secondary will give me enough command counters for what I need to do. Of course that was the only damned turn I've ever seen in which no one took leadership!

Anyway lesson learned, the game was a blast. I hope you enjoyed the report!

Cheers,

El

P.S. Just remembered, one thing which struct me as particularly odd with this game is that shock troops didn't see much use but the facilities did! We actually ran out of facilitiy cards and as there were few high resource planets on the board, they proved to be really quite handy!