Well that escalated quickly

I'm not one to post many tales of Chippenham board gaming adventure but Saturday saw 6 gamers descend to my (Chris) place in search of Twilight Imperium 4 escapades. Although TI4 is a fairly engaging endeavour I did manage to take a number of photos to record the day.

Unfortunately I do not possess the literary ease at which a Sam or Andrew can kick out a report so this will kinda be more like a photo diary.... Apologies if its a little dull..

Kick off time was 2pm. I figured that should give us enough time to finish, something I hadn't achieved yet. Ken turned up at 1.30 as I was setting up to get a run through. He was the only person not to have played it before. Predictably he was to spend a lot of the game bamboozled, but he took the basics on board very well.

At 2pm a rush of knocks at the door brought us up to our full compliment of 6 (Lee, Aiden, Stuart, Paul, Ken and myself). After the briefest of introductions to those that hadn't met before it was down to choosing races and playing piece colour. (Naturally I demanded yellow - nobody cared). I'd decided to divide the races into groups of three and one of two. In each group there was a 4 and 3 commodity race to make it fair. The group of 2 was made up of strong races.

They were resolved as such...

Stuart was Xxcha Kingdom - Good at expansion - Green Player

Ken the Sardak Norr - Good combat race with plus 1 to rolls - Red Player (Red Ken lolz)

Chris the Federation of Sol - Basically humans who have a fascination with ground troops - Yellow player

Lee was the Barony of Letnev - Good at creating menacing fleets - Black player

Aiden was the Yin Brotherhood - Really good blowing everything up including themselves - Purple player

Paul was the Ghosts of Cruess who get their own tile off the board and the ability to place worm holes everywhere - Not sure Paul got to grips with it. - Blue player

So at the earlyish time of 2.30pm we were up and running on turn one.

The first two public agenda's looked tricky to achieve as they required real estate (2 hexes next to the centre with ships in and 6 non home systems with ships in). Out of my two secret objectives I opted for the one which required me to have three systems with ships next to an anomaly and since I had a supernova between myself and Stuart I thought this would be achievable. The rest of the table inched speculatively out, all showing interest in parts of the board but feigning any real intent. In terms of strategy I hadn't much to cling to further than "Lets see how it goes". Worryingly Aiden and Lee seemed to have plans and were questioning our moves in excellent displays of table talk...

At this point nobody was close enough to make any deals or transactions and nobody was playing the trader race Hakan, so the round ended without incident. Round 2 continued to see the inevitable land grab of available planets. The next public objective was spend 5 trade goods. Not too tricky. One by one races started to make deals swapping promissory notes and commodities. I had Ken and Stuart either side of me and each made a different kind offer. One was a ceasefire, meaning I would have to spend a precious tactical command token to break it, the other Support for the throne, which gave you a VP as long as you didn't attack the owner of it. I realised later that this probably wasn't a sound tactic to gain non aggression pacts with both my neighbours as it somewhat funnelled me in.

By round 3, with spend 8 resources as the next public agenda revealed several fleets were circling the centre hex Mecatol Rex without anyone wanting to help themselves to the bonus point an potential to score points.

Paul had made a slow start due to not realising a fundamental rule concerning his faction. He was in fact able to move off his world without wasting a turn. 

Finally I decided to break the deadlock and moved into Mecatol Rex collecting the bonus point for spending 6 influence, much to the groups collective raising of eyebrows since I only moved a single carrier and infantry. I hadn't been raising my forces as others had done and felt it wasn't going to be possible to defend it and sure enough in a few turns Lee's Barony arrived and the galaxies shortest reign was over. With the imperial strategy card in his hand it was a foregone conclusion. It was a position he managed to keep for the rest of the game remaining strangely unchallenged...

It was at this point I realised I hadn't been playing one of my factions benefits of an extra command token each round. It coincided with me being a few beers to the good and chose not to worry about it! At this stage I was in an improbable lead with 5 points. It wasn't to last as I wasn't planning for the future but rather relying on any cheap point grabs I could.

Now that Mecatol Rex had been taken the first of the two laws were voted on. I forget what the first one was but it never got as far as the vote because it was ruled out by an action card. The second law, which was passed, was to limit all fleet pools to a maximum of 4. The other side was to each lose a fleet pool token. A couple of people had riders on this not passing so Aiden decided that he wasn't having any of it and voted it out of existence with his copious influence.

Round 4 - Public objective - Control three planets that have technology specialities. 

In this round Aiden suddenly appeared out of a wormhole to offer me an exchange of promissory notes. I wavered and then the chance was gone along with his ships as I sent a little fleet to demand he returned back to his side of the board. He never returned. Things were also starting to hot up in the combat stakes with Aiden (Purple) and Ken (Red) having a battle and Paul and I moving into Lee's territories with single ships, promising that they were just sight seeing. Lee was not convinced and since being left out of a free trade was starting to feel a little unloved...

Midway through round 4 we broke for cremated Pizzas courtesy of my cooking and to watch the inevitable capitulation of the England rugby team. 

The mid game score looked like this, with me on 6, Lee on 4, Aiden and Stuart on 3, Paul on 2 and Ken on 1

After all the edible food was consumed we were back in to it 

At the end of this round Lee managed to score two objectives to draw level - I was starting to stagnate as Lee was picking up speed.

In the agenda phase the first law was hotly contested between Stuart and myself. We were to collectively elect a player to gain a privilege of extra trade goods. Several rider cards appeared with players betting on the outcome. I thought I'd secured it by spending nearly all my influence and adding an action card which gave me 5 extra only to see Stuart sabotage it with a card of his own.

Round 5 - Public Objective - Spend 10 trade goods.

The game was starting to loosen up now with factions coming out of their protective portions of the galaxy to try and eke out some vital victory points but nobody was really paying proper attention to Lee, each of us allowing him to take the Imperial Strategy card again with him sitting in Mecatol Rex. The card allows you to score 1 point for being in the centre but also you can score a public objective right away which he was able to. Suddenly he was 2 points away from the win and nobody was even close. Even a concerted effort to attack him probably would have been futile. Sure enough at the end of the round he was able to score one more objective to bring himself within one point of victory. 

I tried and failed miserably to score another point as I needed to bombard someone's infantry off a planet and failed my roll of 5 (50/50 chance). Then I noticed my I didn't have ships in a hex that I needed when I went to score another. Ken and Aiden continued their very destructive battles and Stuart had decided he'd had enough of being Mr nice guy and was gearing up to attack my poorly defended flank. Luckily for me we ran out of time because....

The next round Lee quickly scored another secret objective and it was all over in a little under 5 hours plus tea break.

The final scores were;
Lee 10
Chris 6
Aiden and Paul 5
Stuart 4
Ken 3

Final board state

I was pleased to finally get to play a 6 player game and also to finish it but we were all amazed at how quickly the end came about. I think our inexperience at considering the game state and Lee's position of strength prevented us from trying to put the breaks on his charge. Especially when it came to scoring the Imperial strategy card - Which I took once to gain an additional secret objective but no one else did.

Anyway my next session is next month but I don't think I'll do another one of these...It takes me forever!!!

To round the evening off we had a game of Concordia, (Ken left) and then Take it Easy, and finished off with Decrypto. What a great day!!