Hi guys,

My friends and I have just finished playing our latest game of TI, the 4th one actually so still fairly new to the rules etc and we came across a slight discussion and a few minor problems that I hope can be answered here!

They are as follows:

1) PDS - We had a couple of instances where a player invaded a planet with ground forces and then placed his PDS once he won the planet. Should he declare everything that is in the invasion including the PDS before landing or is this allowed? I was under the impression that you MUST declare everything and if you lose your ground forces, your PDS is destroyed???

2) RETREATING - Now this is something that we all find annoying, I understand what the rules say about only being able to retreat into an activated system however this seems like it misses the point of "RETREATING". Surely you should be able to retreat into a friendly system regardless of activating it previously? It wouldn't really be a retreat if you had to forward plan it a few steps before? That to me would be more like a "tactical-retreat". Please let me know what you think on this?

3) EXTRA COUNTERS - Just a clarification and explaination on rules for extra ground and fighter supplement counters. A few times my friend ran out of "actual" fighter counters. The rules state that you must have at least 1 physical model available to add additional counters. I presume this is to stop people from making huge fleets with no limit?

Cheers for all the help folks - any would be appreciated!

Burekeii said:

You are correct. Planetary Landings and Invasion Combat are two separate steps in the Tactical Action sequence. Everything that's going down must be declared up front. If you friend wants to leave the PDS on the carrier, he'll need to re-activate the system (which will first require de-activating it, natch) and then land the PDS in a subsequent Tactical Action.

Burekeii said:

The primary reason for requiring an activated system is to ensure the ships in question can't move again later in the same turn. This is how the game enforces the idea that a ship can only move once per Round, by delcaring that ships in activated systems cannot move. Likewise, abilities that are intended to allow a second move will typically provide such by removing a CC from the board (like Unexpected Action or the Warfare I primary)

It also adds an extra layer of strategy to combat - if you're worried that you might not be able to take the enemy position, you spend some time and resources scouting the nearby sectors for a safe fallback point, which is reflected by spending a CC to activate a forward system, even if you don't do anything there.

There is an optional rule in the Shattered Empire expansion called Tactical Retreats, which basically says you may retreat to any friendly or empty adjacent system, and then immediately place a CC from reserves in that system. You may prefer that method. Do note, however, that retreating to an unactivated friendly system will then effectively activate it, denying anything else in that system the opportunity to act this round, unless you can later remove it, of course.

The lesson to be learned here is that retreating is expensive. You shouldn't generally go into a fight unless you're prepared to pay the cost.

Burekeii said:

Generally it is to ensure people know whose giant stack of fighter tokens that is. As with the retreating rules above, the game is designed to not require a memory of past events in most situations. If you want to know whether or not your ship can move, all you need to do is check if there's a CC in the system, doesn't matter what may or may not have happened to that ship previously. If you want to know whose giant stack of fighter tokens that is, check the colour of the real FT on top of them. I suppose it does also limit you to at most 12 giant stacks of fighters, but honestly, if you need more than 12 giant stacks of fighters, you need to stop turtling and play the game.

No offense indended, it's just that that's a ludicrous amount of fighters. Even the races who are especially good with fighters have never built that many in the course of a game I've played. I would imagine tha tby the time they're done building all those fighters (remembering production limits on your SDs), someone else will likley have won by VPs.

Thanks for that - appreciated. I understand the pro's and cons for the retreating element. The rest makes sense. Cheers for clearing that up. I think the tactical retreat rule might be more our groups taste.

I just wanted to clarify tactical retreats. The actual text of the rule is:

With this option, add the following rule regarding retreats: When announcing a retreat, the defender may use a Command Counter from his Strategy Allocation area to activate an adjacent, unactivated system that he controls (or that is empty). At the end of the combat round, he must retreat to this system. Players may also still attempt normal retreats.

Additionally, errata exists for this rule which states:

broken said:

Good catch about the CC. I guess we didn't read that rule closely enough before implementing it, since we've been playing from reinforcements ever since we started using it. It definitely does make a difference, I agree.