TI is my favorite board game, hands down. But every now and then, something happens that just completely kills the mood, if only for a few rounds. Often, it's the kind of hting that can make the best of friends get into shouting matches because one is screwing the other over so badly.

1. One of my favorite races is the muatt. I'm not a warmonger so I don't threaten people overly unless they deserve it. One of my friends however, is the kind of person who goes "OMG they start with war suns that's overpowered!" and does everything they can to drag me down when I'm playing them. I'm not just talking about paying others to try and take out my war sun. I mean that when they drew that action card that lets you search the deck for a political card to play, they wasted that awesome card to find the law that makes everyone get warsuns, but they get one shotted on a roll of 0. Not only does it neuter one of muatt's racials, but it gives everyone else BETTER war suns than they do. Anyone ever run into players like this?

2. Couples at the table. Ever tried facing down a boyfriend/girlfriend "team" that acts as one massive force you have to deal with?

3. The suicider. The one who once they realize they can't use a certain strategy, they sink their entire game just to fulfill a vendetta on another player

Now that we're done with the pessimism...ever have those moments where you just love the game, things that make every single person around the table crack up?

1. Someone activating the ancient device when EVERYONE has a fleet in the systems surrounding mecatol rex, and the thing blows up

2. A single ground force holding up vs. an invasion of 2 mech units backed up by a war sun

3. 2 opposing fighters dogfighting out a space battle for 10 rounds before scoring a double KO

What are your best/worst moments?

Bowoodstock said:

Do you like the Muaat because of their starting War Sun, or do you like them for the other racials they get? If it's the latter, you could try a house rule that swaps their starting WS for something like 3 cruisers or something. Maybe that would make your friend back off. You could even make a point of not buying the Muaat racial tech as a show of good faith.

Of course, if the reason you like the Muaat is because of the war sun, there's not much that can be done about that. War Suns provide a great sense of security, but they also threaten other players by their very existence. This is a double-edged sword that's difficult to get away from for any race, especially the Muaat for having one on the board from day one.

I just like them as a whole, especially the fluff behind them. The war sun thing is nice purely because it deters early game agression vs. while the gimped movement prevents early aggression. I rarely do buy the racial tech so maybe that is something to consider. I do also like the buying of fighters and destroyers for command counters. What really bugged me about that scenario was that we also had an L1Z1X player at the table who just the round before had proven just how vulnerable war suns are when he took one out with just a carrier, 4 fighters and a dreadnought (he did it to fulfill an objective). 9 resources of units to take out 14 units (my sun had 4 fighters on it as well). So not only was my primary form of transportation dead, but someone was jumping up and down on my head at the same time.

Bowoodstock said:

Based on what you've been saying, and based on my own observations as well, it seems to me that the War Sun ENCOURAGES early game aggression vs. This has long been acknowledged as a weakness of the Muaat race. In fact, the only game I've seen Muaat played in that didn't involve at least a little posturing by his neighbours early on was a PBEM game we played on ti3wiki.org using fog of war (so the other players didn't even know Muaat was there until they ran into him.)

A fog of War game with lurking hostile Warsuns......gulp.....exploring can be Dangerous!

Having 3 players working as a solid team to eliminate the other players is unfortunately the biggest weakness of twilight 3.

They always vote together and leave no ships or ground troops to defend their planets from each other.

The only way to stop that is to:

1. Ban all Politics from the game.

2. Require all planets have at least 2 ground troops and 1 ship as garrison troops.

I had 3 games where these trusted allies would not even put a destroyer on their borders or any ground troops on their homeworld.

The game would end when 1 player just sailed 1 crusier and 1 ground troop to take an ally's homeworld.

That was a pathetic ending for games that took months to play online.

Things that are a buzzkill:

-Flipping up bad distant suns domain counters one after the other. Or, god help you, a Supernova empty space token.

-Having Automated defenses shoot down or hold off your fleet for turn after turn

-Having the entire galaxy turned against you by a canny diplomancer

Things that rock:

-When someone scoffs at your piddly fighter-based fleet and jumps you with a couple of D-naughts only to watch as you soak up shot after shot before returning fire with a couple cruisers and a well placed Direct Hit!

-Turning the entire galaxy against your expansionistic opponent while secretly gathering the power and influence needed to conquer your neighbors

Things that suck:

Being forced to vote the same way as another player you disagree with as you sit on the golden throne of Mecatol Rex chilling.

THE ALASTOR.

IMPERIALISM.

Things that rock:

High Alert-tokening into Mecatol Rex as the L1Z1X Mindnet with a fatty fleet of DNaughts, cruisers, and the 0.0.1 backing it all up.

Buzzkill:

• Trying to find people with time to play it.
• Playing with new players that I want to encourage and have a good experience, but an objective causes me to take their home system or do other nasty things to them. Makes me feel bad.
• People that forget about their tech or action cards till after a battle, and realize that they should have won.

Rock:

• Other than buzkills... what doesn't rock??? Great game! Epic! It's an experience that I think about for days after, and I anticipate for days before.
• Opening the box. You guys remember tearing into that thing the first time? Oh yeah baby!!!

Relampagos said:

+1

Couldn't agree more. What an amazing game! And there are few things that I enjoy more than cracking open a brand new game with a bunch of empty storage trays and empty baggies on my coffee table (organizing the pieces of a new game is an art form). And with this one, having played it for the first time at GenCon this last year, I knew what I was in for and savored the experience for hours (most of which was spent cutting ships off of plastic sprues, but whatever).

Buzzkill: having to end a game prematurely because we ran out of time. Definitely difficult to find people with the time to commit, but those I've taught have all greatly enjoyed it!

Pulling out Imperium Rex to win the game (with the Bureaucracy SC from Shattered Empires) varies between "buzzkill" and "can't believe you just pulled that off" depending on the circumstances. Some games it feels positively anticlimactic, other games it's greeted with applause after a brilliant gambit to take the player into the lead.