Twilight Imperium

Twilight Imperium is incredible. We played for 10 hours (with a break for dinner), and the game only ended then because we had decided on a set number of rounds. I won on victory points because nobody could catch me (I had 10 going into the last round, and depending on if I got the Imperial strategy card I could have ended with 13). A normal victory condion is 10 points, so regardless I would have been the winner.

We managed to go almost the entire game without a single battle. I conquored enough influential planets to be able to control the voting on any issue, and Seb and I formed a very solid coalition. His race was highly technical, mine was very political, so we agreed that he wouldn't attack me if I voted with him on every issue that came up.

You randomy pick a race at the beginning of the game, and each one has some unique attributes. The one I got (I can't remember how to spell it) got two action cards whenever one was dealt, and could have as many in their hand as the wanted (as opposed to the limit of 7 for everyone else). That stack of cards saved me several times, most notably when Cid tried to play an emergency repairs card to return his dreadnoughts to full strength and I had a sabotage card waiting to prevent it. The look on his face was absolutely priceless.

I was the only person to achieve their secret objective, which gave me an extra 2 victory points. It was a fairly easy one, hold the planet at the centre of the universe, build a space dock on it, and then have a fleet of 8 ships there. The hardest part was getting enough command tokens to raise my fleet limit high enough to get the 8 ships to be able to occupy the system, and I didn't get attacked there until Cid made a move for it in the next-to-last round. I tried to block him with a card that didn't let him attack a planet of my choice, but the wording on the card said planet, not system, so he could still attack my fleet. That was the battle where I interrupted his attempt to repair his ships, and as a result of that I won it rather handily.

Because of my dependence on politics and action cards, I didn't really build up my technology or ships too much. I didn't really need them too much, but some of the public objectives for victory points were based on technology, so I developed them at the end. My ships were still rather lacking, and I think I only build 2 dreadnoughts in the entire game. They're the largest regular ships you can build, and the way we were playing they got to attack twice, but took up 2 spaces in your fleet. Besides the good damage, they're also able to take 2 hits, so destroying them isn't as easy as you might think.

I think the part of the game I liked best was the strategy card system. There are 8 cards, each representing a different strategy, ranging from Initiative (which makes you go first and pick the first card next round) to Trade (get a good deal of money for building things, set and break trade agreements, and decide if other players are allowed to make agreements of their own) to Imperial (instant 2 victory points). There are others that give you free technology or more command tokens or let you call votes on political issues, and each one changes the game just a bit.

When you play a strategy card, everybody else has the option to enact the secondary strategy, which gives them a lesser advantage. These vary quite a bit, so I won't describe them. I made good use of the Imperial secondary, because it allows you to build units without activating a system (a process that renders it essentially useless until the next round), and Seb freely abused the Technology secondary because one of his race's unique attributes was the ability to get both the primary and secondary of the Technology card when he activated the secondary. as such he got 2 technologies per round and became massively overpowered.

However, in the end politics and smart strategizing won the game, and I can't wait until we play it again. Maybe we'll get more battles then.