Whats your favorite race?

Mines the Federation of Sol

Of the six games that I've played, I've played:

1. Mentak

2. Letnev

3. Yssarril

4. Hacan

5. Sol

6. Arborec

Of those, I think I liked Sol the best, but to be fair, I played the base game only with Mentak, and only Shattered Empire with Letnev. I know that I would have enjoyed both of them more with the full complement of expansions.

The Emirates of Hacan. Simply because TG's are so versatile.

Yeah, Hacan was a lot of fun, too. As was Yssarril. And so was Arborec this last Saturday. And I really want to try L1Z1X. And Muuat. And Saar. And I definitely want to try Saardak N'orr to see if the anti-hype is correct.

Hell, I just want to play.

Hacan all the way here! It's such an amazing race with their trade abilities. Their Trade Good income is so useful. You can compensate for an poor ressource system with them. You can also claim a lot of Objectives like ''I spend X influence/ressource. They are kinda close to War Sun tech. Everyone wanna trade with you since you're the only race with 3/3 Trade Agreement.

Jol-Nar University are also one of my favorite. They can do the ''Nano tech trick'' if everything goes smootly on first turn. They lack firepower early game but middle-late game, they steamroll pretty much anyone with their big techs. The only thing I dislike about them is the lack of starting GFs. But well those 4 basic techs compensate for it I'd say.

Fer chizz gotta love being the Hacan! All those lovely trade goods are soooo handy! But hands down I still love the Federation of Sol the most. I normally get the most fun out of being an war-mongering empire building 'human-superiority' type of player when I play Sol. Their Carriers with 8 capacity and Sustain Damage are zee best! And I always have a sick amount of GF, and the ability to place 2 free ground force on a planet they control can be so handy especially when that planet is waaaaaay away from your production centers. Starting with all those GF's and carries makes early expansion super easy. And...I just love feeling like I'm the champion of the human race by bringing humans to the foremost place in the galaxy!

On a side note, the N'orr do suck. their racial ability isn't that good until it gets compounded with a bunch of other techs and bonuses, and they have crappy starting units. Unless they get 'Production', or 'Imperial II' you'll probably only take one new planet on in the first game round, which puts them at a huge disadvantage. However with the new racial tech and flagship found in both expansions i have hope that this race will be alot better to play as.

Sol, for me, I do think their flaggie is one of the most underpowered though compared to some.

Mentak flag is dirty, And don't even get me started on the Nekrovirus one.

second favourit for me is the Winnu.

Ya the Sol flagship isn't the best. although one game i placed it in a fleet with 2 cruisers, 2 dreads, 2 carriers (with 8 fighters each) and had my flagship loaded with 3 MI's and 16 GF's! My plan was to conquer Mecatol Rex and Hope's End and a couple other good planets but alas it was not to be, due to 2 CONSECUTIVE 'Signal Jamming's played on my fleet in two game rounds my fleet was never used. But on the upside i won that game

Yssaril is probably my favorite because of the action cards. I enjoy finding different combinations to use them.

But they are so strong I never play them.

Bill

L1Z1x is a favorite race.

You can go down any tech branch you want and build any type of fleet you want. It has bonuses in all types of fleet mixes.

The very large homeworld makes sure that if you get handed only influence planets that you are still in the game. You can still buy tech and ships.

Barony is a favorite too because of the very large homesystem. Barony only need 3 or 4 techs to do well in the game.

I like to have at least 12 resources to play with in a game and L1Z1x and Barony gets me 1/2 way there.

If the galaxy ends up being very low in resources, these races can beat up other races pretty easy.

Other races are interesting but if you only have a 3 resource homeworld and get 4 resources of planets, you are stuck with a choice of either buying a tech or ships but not both. You end up turtling for most of the game because you cannot replace your losses. If your neighbors won't have a nonaggression treaty with you, the odds of you winning the game is zero. The chances of you getting eliminated, moderate to high especially if you score your Secret Objective too early.

Im a big fan of the Hacan, I love having three homeworlds, one of my often used strategies is to place all my space docks on my home system and have more production capacity than I need. Mixed with proper techs like XRD transporters and the mobility issues are easily overcome. Of course their is the unmatched trade potential of the race.

I like playing the Mentak as well, but more for their starting conditions than racial abilities, though I find their combat ability to be a good deterant in the early game which gives them room to grow. In my circles it currently holds the top spot for the most picked race and most winningest (is that a word?) race.

For a challenge and assuming Leaders are in play I like to run the Xxcha. I find them tricky and hard to win with, but the victory is so much sweeter when you pull it off with a weaker race like this and there is the fact that Im a huge fan of Gamera movies which my father used to take me to when I was a kid.

Races I hate the most is the Ysarril tribes. I don't like playing against them and I extend the curtiousy to my fellow players by never choosing them (we usually do draw two pick one). Anytime they find their way in the game they are automatically the enemy of everyone at the table and I suspect it is because most of my group understands how big of a threat they are, so its always a struggle to win with them despite the races overall strength. I don't like to start in a position of not even having the possibility of a diplomatic exchange with other players like that right from the get go.

I also find the Clan of Saar hard to play with, something about the change in dynamics has always been hard to overcome for me, though I know players who love them and play them to great success.

My favorite used to be the Saar. I thought their moving space docks were awesome and I loved that in their fluff they were basically the galaxy's underdogs. However, with the release of Shards, Creuss is easily my new favorite. With all the tricks with wormholes they can pull, they're even more mobile than the Saar. With their home system located on the other side of a wormhole, their home system is very hard to take over. If you keep a fleet parked on the outside of the wormhole, you can have two lines of defenses guarding your home world. I love the fluff on Creuss as well, with them being the most strange and foreign things in the galaxy.

I've been playing the two very differently though. With Saar I would always maintain lots of little fleets to keep my spacedocks well screened and far apart. But with Creuss I always have one big armada, because of the built-in wormhole on the Hil Colish.

every race is equally fun..... Except Muuat, **** Muuat

I have yet to play as the Saar or the Ghosts of Creuss

Now is it just me, or does no one like being the N'orr? When I played as them once I found they were pretty handicapped during the first couple of game rounds. Anyone else find this?

Ya among my circles its considered the worse race in the game by a considerable margin. Their racial ability is geared towards an element of the game that really has little to do with winning, their starting conditions are terrible in almost every aspect of the game and because they have the potential to be a real threat to players later in the game they often get taken advantage of early in the game When I made my homebrew expansion lovingly called Balance of Power fixing them was the first order of business. By the time I finished the expansion the sardek and xxcha where the only races I made changes to. I have come up with some strategies that work under certain circumstances but generally speaking its as weak of a race as they come.

BigKahuna said:

What changes did you make to those two races? Because I've been thinking of making my own to the N'orr and the first thing I thought of doing was giving them an extra carrier as well as Anti-Mass Deflectors at the beginning.

Well our changes to both races was very specific to our home brew expansion called balance of power which was kind of our attempt to take all the things we where not happy about in "our" games and adjust some rules to make them more attune with out play style. I quoted, highlight and underlined "our" because its really important to accept that my group dynamics are very different than most I have encountered on the forum and I have caught a lot of **** for it over the years.

With the Sardek N'orr what we wanted to do is maintain them as a military race, but simultanously give them a way to earn victory points through military actions. As a whole we actually like the race thematically, a violant race of insects, whats not to love! The problem for the N'orr is that war really doesn't help you earn victory points and because you need a strong military (building building building) you end up blowing all your resources and actions on developing that military which again does nothing to earn you points.

These are all in addition to not replace for the Sardek N'orr ability.

Sardek N'orr
Conquest : Successfully invade all planets of another players home system. You must control the system and all planets in the system until the status phase of that round. Earn 2 Victory Points. You may do this only once for each homeworld you invade, invading the same players homeworld does not earn additional points. This does not count as qualifying for objectives.

Improved Starting Conditions: In addition to the new ability the starting conditions for the Sardakk N’orr have been improved to ensure they aren’t as easy to eliminate from the game in early stages of the game. These starting conditions are in addition to everything the Sardakk N’orr already get.

1 Carrier
3 Fighters

With the Xxcha the idea was that with the balance of power expansion we created political card usage has been altered a great deal. These abilities are in addition to all existing abilities of the Xxcha. The goal here was to make them masters of politics as their theme suggests and in addition we gave them a skipping ability which we have found is amazing for them and has made them not only fun to play but one of the groups favorites.

Xxcha

Political Masters: As an action the Xxcha may pay 1 strategy allocation token to draw two political cards.

Improved Starting Conditions: In addition to the new ability the starting conditions for the Xxcha have been improved. These starting conditions are in addition to everything the Xxcha already get.

1 PDS

Now in order for the political masters ability to make sense you have to keep it in the context of our expansion changes to political cards which are as followed.

POLITICAL CARDS
Political Focus: Political cards cannot be exchanged for Trade Goods, instead they can be discarded for Influence. Political cards also have the following uses.

• Forced Agenda: A player can discard 4 political cards as an action and play a 5th political card from his hand. This maneuver requires 5 political cards in the players hand to complete. When the 5th card is played the agenda is immediately resolved without a vote, the player playing the political card gets to decide the result as if his votes are the only ones that count. The Xxcha ability to discard political cards works in this circumstance.

• Political Voting Power : Political cards count as one vote each for the purpose of resolving agendas. When counted as votes political cards are not discarded. A player may discard a political card to gain an additional vote for the discarded card (counting as two votes when discarded instead of one when kept).

• Master Of The Council: On their turn during the tactical phase (but not as an action) a player may discard 5 political cards to trigger a Voice Of The Council Vote. The five cards discarded do not counts as votes for this election.

Mentak for me. I've played the Norr, Hacan, Yssiril, Saar, Xxacha, etc. The Mentak just seem to fit with my playstyle the best, they are balanced...yet a force to be reckoned with if you let them warm up. I don't find the Norr to be THAT underpowered, but the game we played was a 4-player on a 6-player preset map, so maybe it was just the fact I was left alone for a while.

BigKahuna said:

I really like your way of beefing up the N'orr. I was thinking of giving a race ability called 'Kamikaze Pilots' where after the Destroyer Anti-Fighter Barrage they can designate any number of their fighter involved in the Space Battle as Kamikaze Pilots, roll one die for each designated fighter, all rolls of 6+ score an immediate hit that must be taken by a non-fighter ship. then destroy all the designated fighters.

As for the Xxcha I don't know what to think of your ammendments because I've never really played with or against them.

Your Political card system looks very interesting as well.

Thanx for posting them!

melkor977 said:

Well the problem with the Xxcha is the same as with the N'orr, they have abilities based on a theme that really isn't geared towards the games natural victory conditions. There are other races that suffer from this to some extent as well like the Mentak but the issue witht he Xxcha and N'orr is that they have poor starting conditions to boot so in addition to racial abilities that don't really help you earn victory points they have a crap start. You could say the same thing about the Mentak racial abilties for example, their really isn't anything their that is going to help you earn points, but they have good starting conditions from which you can manage yourself into a strong position early on. Its true about many of the races but most of them combine their racial abilities with good starting conditions to balance themselves out.

I think Xxcha and N'orr are universally accepted as the two weakest races for this reason which is kind of why I focused on them. We also made a minor adjustment to the Mentak to their trade good stealing ability to make it actually serve a purpose in the game.

I have only played a few games, of which I was

1) Jol-Nar (4p)

2) Arborec (8p)

3) Sardakk N'orr (8p)

4) Hacan (6p)

I enjoyed the Hacan much more than any of the other races, but given another chance I'd play the Jol-Nar again. The Sardakk N'orr start off too weak early game and I had a terrible set up of 2 empty systems and a gravity rift surrounding me. I would like to play the Nekro Virus, Muatt, Mentak, or the Ghosts. I feel I played the Jol-Nar and the Arborec poorly due to my newness to the game, and it was my experience compared to the other players that let me win as the Hacan (No one attacked me until the very last round).

The Nekro seem fun because they don't have to buy any technology, but they also need to start wars without spreading themselves too thin, in my last game the Nekro was eliminated quickly due to attacking both of the players on his sides, and the L1z1x crushing him swiftly after.

I love playing as the Barony, as a) no one else plays them, so I'm uncontested in choice if it comes up, and b) because I enjoy being "the villain" at the table. Along with the Sardak N'orr, there needs to be more Evil frontin' up in this galactic hizzay (maybe I've playing too much Galactic Civ 2?)

On the flip side, I also enjoy the Xxchaa, also because they seem to be underrated. The "no touchie" aspect is hilarious alone, but if played with tact and subtlety they can lead to victory. My favourite win was with the Xxchaa, and I didn't roll a single battle dice! Winning with the "Threatening" secret objective was the icing on the cake ("Although it disagrees with us having to resort to this, but we must oversee this new Era of Peace for the greater good! Lockdown is now in effect. In time you will thank us for this..")

Conversely, I hate the Hacan, because they are good, too good. Maybe it's sour grapes but I think they're bigger pirates then the bloody Space Pirates themselves, holding the galaxy to ransom!

It really depends on the map and the players.

If the planets are high resource value and the players are not hostle, nothing beats Jol nar and Hacan. Being a tech ***** or a trade good fiend is awesome!

Yssaril is unbelievably great if he gets good resource planets and decent AC's.

But if you are given crummy influence planets and a board full of hostle players, these races will not do well.

L1Z1x, Barony and Muaat are almost automatic choices. These races do well even with no high resource planets and a board full of hostle players.

Get a nonaggression pact on one border and you can conquer a good chunk of the board! Once that is done, you just grab Bureaucracy and try to get those Public objectives that rewards spending resources or owning lots of planets.

Saar is one of the most interesting to play and the most dangerous. One mistake, and you might lose your space docks.

But Saar's hidden potential in the game is amazing.

Since races are picked last after the map is set up, L1Z1x is the favorite because L1Z1x can do well in just about in any homesystem spot.

Nothing is worse then starting a game with a race that does not fit well with your homesystem spot, no matter how interesting the race is

How many times you get a homesystem spot that would be great for a certain race but you have a race that does not fit well there?

Shadow, I do believe you are supposed to pick races first, then you construct the map (unless you all agreed on a pre-constructed map of course, or the host created the map to save time). This morphs the map based on races because some people know what you're capable of and will give you planets affecting you, since I'm less likely to give Jol-Nar players tech discount planets, more likely to give Nekro high influence planets (If I can't give myself them of course), and etc.

I also believe that the Hacan shine in a low resource galaxy, and will contend you there, since they can easily make up to 10 trade goods per trade strategy card, and even more if you're using Trade I. You could even use your councilor to inflate the amount of trade goods in the economy. In my last game I offered everyone who had at least 2 trade goods to give me them, and I'd give them back after the voting +1, we all won since I had played Councilor Garrus.

I also disagree with Muaat doing well in a low resource system and highly aggreesive players. If no one wants to support him, no trade good income, add to that low resource planets, and he has a hard time keeping up since his advantage is war suns and free fighters. The Muaat can easily be torn apart if his neighbors are aggressive, and I see no reason they shouldn't with the fear of a 3 movement, 10 cost war sun in the near future.

Shadow said:

Huh?

According to the setup rules on page 6 of the base rulebook, Step 1 is race-assignment and galaxy creation isn't until step 9.