Well guys, I don’t know if it’s just me or if anyone else has interest in this? Ever since I’ve been playing games, I’ve always wished for more team play. Idk why? Why can’t all shooters have co-op campaigns? Why can’t I get an RTS that lets me play the campaign with my buddy? Aaaand, what if I could play a six player game of TI and it was really 2v2v2???

That’s where I’m at. I wanna play team Twilight and take over the universe with a pal! So, I threw together these rules and I’m interested in comments. First off I made simple rules which basically doesn’t change anything except you combine two player’s scores to win, which would obviously shift strategy in the game. The second set actually changes more in the game, but definitely makes it more like playing with an ally.

Team rules?
Simple- No rule changes. Combine VP’s of two players to reach whatever set score.
• Players decide locations of teams either side by side or alternate locations with other teams. If allies are side by side, strategy cards are picked as follows… Speaker picks first (P1), then skip one player to the left (P2), the next player (P3) picks. Order… (Speaker) P1, P3, P5, P2, P4, P6.

Complex- Combined VP’s of two players to reach set score, plus the following…
• Players decide locations of teams either side by side or alternate locations with other teams. If allies are side by side, strategy cards are picked as follows… Speaker picks first (P1), then skip one player to the left (P2), the next player (P3) picks. Order… (Speaker) P1, P3, P5, P2, P4, P6. Map placement works the same way.
• During game board setup Allies can discuss placement but not show systems or say what they have.
• Player turn order is still decided by the initiative number on the strategy cards.
• Players may never control ally’s home planets.
• Allies do not share resources, influence, researched technology, or technology bonuses on planets.
• Players still qualify for public objectives individually.
• Allies share secret objective cards. Each team has 3 secret objective cards. They can qualify for one as a team by combining techs, planets, influence, or whatever they need for the objective. The other 2 can be achieved by either player, but each player can only qualify for 1 alone.
• Fleet Rule 1: Allied fleets may move… (a) through allied systems if ships are present. (b) into allied systems, if ships are not present. © into allied system if ships are present, but the defender must volunteer to leave the system into a controlled system of choice. The “volunteer” must place a command counter from his reinforcements in the system with those ships. Allied ships cannot occupy the same system.
• Fleet Rule 2: Allied fleets can occupy the same system. Player fleets must move separately. Combined fleets cannot exceed the lowest fleet supply of the two allies in a system. Combined fleets cannot have ships exceeding normal reinforcement limitations. Example: Normally a player can have no more than 2 war suns, so a combined fleet cannot have more than 2. This applies to all ship types. Combined fleets do not share fighter/ground troop capacity.
• When initiating invasion of ally’s planet the defender can forfeit his troops, which surrenders the planet to the invading ally. Return defending troops to reinforcements. Planets acquired are exhausted.
• Players may look at ally’s action/political cards during the strategy phase only, and can give or trade up to one AC. Action cards cannot be played to aid ally during game play outside normal game rules.
• Group to decide number of combined VP’s required to win.
• Allies can attack each other normally, but cannot qualify for objectives by doing so.
• Follow basic rules if changes have not been described here.

…You would just pick one of the fleet rules to play by.

What do you think?

Respect to the well thought out rules. My friends and I have played around with the idea of team TI with much simpler twists on rules.

Teams are set up in 2s or 3s depending on number of players and seating is alternated by team. i.e. Team 1 A, Team 2 A, T1B, T2B, etc.

Players qualify for objectives as normal and the game ends when a player "crosses the finish line" like normal with the exception that once someone acquires the amount of VPs needed for victory, add up the total VPs earned by all teams then declare the victorious team (the team with the highest combined VP value). ex: a player from team one reaches 10 VPs so the game is now over. Combined with his teammates, team 1's total score is now 18 but they lost because all 3 of team 2's players were close to finishing and were at 8 VPs each, totaling team 2's score at 24.

Players definitely may move through teammates' fleets, but may or may not stop in the same space as an allied fleet (it's all houserules anyways right?)

- If they may then each player's fleet supply is limited to the average fleet supply being shared (rounded down). ex: player 1's fleet supply is 6 and player 2's fleet supply is 3. So if player 1 wanted to stop in a space containing player 2's fleet, they both now have a fleet supply in that space of 4. If attacked, then each player rolls for his/her own fleet and the defenders determine where the damage is allocated to their own respective fleets. Unfortunately very similar to Axis and Allies rules.

- If they may not stop then fleets essentially have Light wave deflectors when moving through allied fleets

Allies are never considered "opposing" when a card or objective refers to opposing players. Similar to what you have on your rules list so that a player may not score on an objective that says something along the lines of "I am blockading an opponent's space dock" by parking a fleet on his allies' space dock.

During the status phase, teams may relinquish control of a planet to a teammate but it is received exhausted.

Secret Objectives and Preliminary Objectives may be revealed to teammates but still may only be claimed by the player holding the objective.

Allied Fighters may land on a teammate's Carrier or War Sun or even Space Dock but MUST move with the unit carrying them if that unit were to move.

I think that's everything we had for team TI. It's been a long time since we've discussed it or even played a game and we never wrote down all the ideas so there might be more.

Thanks for the response. I can’t believe that you are the only one interested at all in this! I guess no one else likes being part of a team as much as I do.

Question: My reason for putting limits on two allies having ships in the same system is that I thought it would be too hard to attack. Since, two players can defend, but only one player can attack. Did you have any issues with that?

Was it fun playing with teams? How was the experience, like… did the game slow too much, did people enjoy it, did it change the game too much, etc?

I think I’ll never get to try… I’ve played maybe 4 games in the last three months and out of 7 guys I play with, I always end up with 5. I’ve actually never played a 6 player game and would like to do that at least once before playing 6 player teams.