The annual trip to Kernow for the Collective’s Twilight Imperium game took place, with the latest expansion Thunders Edge. This expansion added some new features - a rift/fracture section of the galaxy, alliances and new factions. Allegedly the expansion should make the game quicker, so Snake-eyes had decided to play to 14 points … I was not so sure.
We did the usual trip to Strawberry Fields for breakfast and and picked factions, off a dice roll. I picked first - but then had the last pick of the alliance and slice of galaxy.
Morts - The Ral Nel Consortium (orange)
Steedo - The Firmament / The Obsidian (yellow)
Sylon - The Titans of Ul (black)
Snake-eyes - The Arborec (green)
DK - The Deepwrought Scholarate (red)
We then picked alliance factions - where if we conquered their home world we picked up the abilities of that faction hero or commander … can’t remember which.
Below the starting point (approximately noon). Everyone is ready to play … nicely. Surprisingly I managed to get the first breakthrough to find Thunders Edge ( this unlocked at faction specific trait that helped build up action cards in my case), unfortunately I wasted a few rounds not quite getting enough bits to actually win the planet - d’oh. I also revealed the fracture and its access points in my first action … didn’t go there until much later in the game.
Turn 2 - we have some controversy - I checked with another player that I could produce some infantry by activating one system, then pick them up with ship passing through. However on trying to carry this out, was this is not correct. There was then some discussion about if I could carry this out, as I had planned for this over a number of rounds - the decision was that for this game, there would be house rule which would allow this. I appreciated Sylon’s intervention here.
Sylon and DK were working well together - to be fair DK was refreshing commodities for everyone, although not truly altruistically (as he could get tech and in some cases co-existence. Steedo was trying to work out his complicated faction and Snake-eyes made a run on
Mecatol Rex!
Turn 3 - I was on Mecatol Rex - I was feeling a bit stretched. Snake-eyes had moved off after all of his infantry had been “weeded” off (the Arborec are a plant based race, which grow infantry) Mecatol.
However as the turn ended things were looking ok - I might take the 8 card again to see if I could score a few more points. Sylon’s Titans were a growing power - with DK leaching off co-existing off his advances.
In the Status part of the turn there was an agenda to be voted on which was FOR, (Against nothing happened)if the Speaker (Snake-eyes) rolled high (there was an issue here) everyone would get a tech upgrade or if he roll low everything in Mecatol Rex was wiped off the board, and every hex around Mecatol had to lose 3 ships.
Now I expected that any reasonable person would see that voting against was the RIGHT thing to do - however the rest of the collective are obviously not reasonable. This coupled with Snake-eyes inability to roll high when he should meant that I lost the ships, mechs, pds, and infantry in the insert. Basically I was shafted! To quote Hudson in Aliens “Game over man!”.
The start of turn 3 or 4 … doesn’t matter, what was the point of continuing to play … the others had fighters to sacrifice to the hideous and nefarious action they had chosen to enact … DK was on Mecatol. Snake-eyes was fungally growing dreadnoughts and Steedo was doing his usual … “don’t look at me, I’m not a threat”.
I was not a threat - just trying to rebuild.
Mid game scoring - DK opening up a bit of a lead. This was after 6 hours of play - 14 seems a long way off.
Losing track of turns - Sylon and Snake-eyes have clashed over Mecatol and are both weakened for a bit - DK has started building a monument - a victory point after three turns … but could become more, so was protecting than. Steedo’s faction had done its swappy thing and shockingly he was spreading across the board. I was working on recovering from the underhand backstabbing I had been in the receiving end of…
At this point Sylon and myself were out over the running for a win or top 3 placing - DK was 2 points away from victory, so Snake-eyes and Steedo went in full “stop the win” mode.
Steedo when for removing DK’s planets (the earlier house rule then worked against DK much to his annoyance), while Snake-eyes tried to remove DK’s legendary planet in the fracture which was worth a victory point. Sylon made a run on Mecatol and took it , while I took a planet (and victory point) in the fracture - which was nice.
DK was just having to bat off the attacks as he had a target on his back.
We had some more controversy, where DK didn’t hear when Steedo ask for the secondary action to get a secret agenda - DK couldn’t understand why he wasn’t allowed to pick one from the deck. The reasoning was that we had picked in order. If DK had picked first (which he should have) it would have changed the agendas for the rest of us (the one I had would have gone to Snake-eyes and it suited his faction).
Back to the game and Snake-eyes managed to roll high and managed to wrestle the planet off DK - who was 1 point short of victory (22:40 to 00:50 off the photo time stamps) … would we play another round?
Then in the status phase the monument received another commodity, which increased it to 2 victory points and DK won!
So after all of Steedo and Snake-eyes efforts DK’s victory had been inevitable from 2240 …
It was over after 13 hours (much to Sylon’s and my relief as we had been out of the running for about 3 or 4 hours).
End of game score board.
Congratulations to DK on a hard fought win!
A quality but long day - I definitely think that we need to stick with 10 points - a big thanks to Snake-eyes for hosting and a lovely curry and DK for driving Steedo, Sylon and Myself down to Kernow.
Morts
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