Earlier this year in February, a colleague from another office came for a week long work visit and during the week, we discussed many things but mostly gaming as we both work for a gaming company. One of the discussions was on TI and we thought that it would be fun to get together in the not so near distant future for a game. Lo and behold, a week later, I received a call from my colleague who proposed an inter-office rivalry weekend and I thought it sounded like great fun. A very brief discussion with my office co-workers brought them into them enthusiastically into the fray and much discussion was to be had.

We had some difficulty picking a date in April and May so we pushed the weekend back.......and the Showdown begins tomorrow between our Charlottesville, VA office and our Wilmington, DE office.

Our office in C'ville began playing TI regulary with a passion. We normally game at my home on Friday nights and set down to play TI exclusively since March with 2-4 sessions per month. After a few games that had gone late into the wee hours of the morning, we put a time cap in place to encourage speedy play and an official time that the game ends. Our group of 6 arrives around 6:30 pm, begins the glorious chore of set-up, commences gaming, and ends the game at 2:00am. We don't always finish the game, but always get 2-3 cards in the Public Objectives II deck.

At this point, a big thanks and appreciation must go out to my wife for allowing us to host this weekend and putting up with our late night gaming. She doesn't have a problem with game nights but I feel it is important to thank her.

After a few games, I proposed the following rules to our Wilmington office. The team with the most cumulative objective points at the end of three games is declared the winners. Each player may score as many points as they are able to. Each game ends at eight hours of play, or if any player reach 10VP. For scoring VPs, opponents are considered to be the opposite team, so team members can't score VP, for example, moving their ships into their ally's homesystems, blocking ally space docks, etc. (We tried allowing allies to move through and share systems, but it led to serious combat and rules problems). Map set-up will see each player with an opponent on either side of him. It is most likely that we'll build the galaxy, then choose home system locations (We've done this with our last few games and have had some of the best games yet). Each player will still have their own secret objective card.

We will blindly draw races the first game, the second game will be a team draw of 5 races and discard one, the third will be a team draw of 6 races and discard 2. Teams will alternate draws until drawing is complete, then decision time.

We will be using Guardians of Mecatol Rex, Distant Suns, Final Frontiers, Mercenaries, SE Strategy cards with the new SotT Trade III and Assembly II, Shock Troops, Flagships, Mechanized Units, Leaders, Promissary Notes (Support of Throne card may only be given to an opposing team member), Wormhole Nexus, Tactical Retreats, and Race Specific Technologies.

Today is a travel day for the Delaware team. We'll start at 7-8am tomorrow and end the first game at 3-4pm, take an hour for dinner, start the second and game for another 8 hours. Catch a few hours of sleep and start again at 7am, play the game, congratulate and reminisce, and then disperse back from whence we came.

It is sure to be a grand old time and one for the memory books.

I've collected a few dollars from everyone to purchase food, drinks, and snacks and prepare ahead of time so we can concentrate on gaming and grab some food whenever.

Action reports to come........