My Space Fleet is Invincible! — Let's Play Twilight Imperium Third Edition

I'll take Diplomacy II.

Googleshng is up.

I guess I'll go with Leadership.


severian is up.

The Brotherhood takes Assembly.

Egarwaen is up.

The Embers of Muaat will undertake Production

Stiv is up. Remaining cards are Warfare II and Bureaucracy.

A note on Warfare vs. Warfare II: Since both have the same initiative number, the player who chooses either Warfare card first will go first. So this time around, shivam will go sixth, whichever card Stiv picks.

EDIT: Also, after Stiv chooses his card the Action Phase begins. Googleshng is first up.

Warfare II I guess.

EDIT: Probably should've read the manual first. Oh well.

All right, Action Phase begins now. Play order for this round is as follows:

1. Googleshng — Leadership
2. Sarc — Diplomacy II
3. severian (SPEAKER) — Assembly
4. Egarwaen — Production
5. `Hrist — Trade II
6 Epithet — Warfare
7. L1Z1X Mindnet — Warfare II
8. Lucas — Technology II

The Bureaucracy Strategy Card receives one Bonus Counter, worth 1 Trade Good to whomever chooses the card. Also, as the card was not chosen, there will be no Public Objectives revealed in the first round.

Googleshng is up.

OK! Since I my strategy card is [1] Leadership, I'm leading off the passes we're taking around the board here. We're going to go through at least a couple of these before this whole first round is finished and we pick new cards, until we've all used our strategy cards and moved our dudes around and depleted our resources with this and that. On each of these little mini-turns, we can either use our strategy card ability, which immediately gives everyone a chance to use its secondary ability, OR fiddle around with ships and junk.

My strategy card's whole deal is to give me extra command counters, which I can dump into my Command Pool (what you move ships around with), Strategy Allocation (what you spend to use the secondary effects off other cards), or Fleet Supply (which is just a max count on how many ships of mine can hang out in the same system). Basically, it's the "let me do more stuff!" card, and the secondary, when I get around to it, lets everyone else buy these things too by spending influence. I'm not going to use it right now though, because I might as well use up the points I already have first, and again, it's one or the other just now.

Instead, I'm leading off with a Tactical Action, AKA Moving My Ships Around.

I have two systems I'd like to head to, but I can only drop 1 counter in a turn here, so start off by moving 1 command counter from my command pool onto the system I want to do stuff in. Kinda feels backwards, but I'm not putting these in my home system to tell ships to go off and do things. I'm putting them in the destination, planting party over here flags that I can then freely tell any ships in range to come check out. They'll be stuck there until the end of the round though, and I can't build anything in those places. Which is not a big deal. Specifically, I am sending ships out to Capha. I'm planning to colonize these, which means I need to have ground troops. Ground troops can't move without a carrier, so those are coming along too of course. My single fighter can't move independently either, but it'll catch the next one. Still, I might as well send some backup to Capha since it's a nice resource mine closer to the middle of the board and it's a good place to generally be. Actually, it's a better staging area for stuff in general, so I'm pretty much sending everyone out that way. Nobody is holding the planets I'm heading to, so I'll take them over no problem. I can't use their resources and influence right away though. In Magic terms, newly acquired planets come into play tapped. All told, I'm moving like this:

Activating Capha: Moving Carrier, Ground Forces, PDS (from Jol), Dreadnought from Na/Jol and capturing.

PLANETS (Resources/Influence)
Jol – 1/2
Nar – 2/3
Capha – 3/0

COMMAND COUNTERS
Command Pool: 2
Strategy Allocation: 2
Fleet Supply: 3
Activations: 1

UNITS
Jol/Nar - Space Dock x1, PDS x1, Ground Forces x1, Carrier x1, Fighter x1
Capha - Ground Forces x1, PDS x1, Carrier x1, Dreadnought x1

Sarc is up.

Here's a visual of what Googleshng just did on his turn:



And here's what I'm doing:

Activating Vega Major/Vega Minor: Moving 1 Carrier and 2 Ground Forces there, landing on both planets and taking control of them.



There's not much for players to do with Tactical Actions in the first round other than colonize nearby planets, which is what you want to do anyway so you have a resource and influence base for the second round, when players start getting within striking range of each other. And since you have to own a planet for the entirety of the current round to build a Space Dock on it, and Space Docks can't build units until the round after they're created, nabbing a planet or two closer to Mecatol Rex is key — even if you don't want to take over MR itself, you want to be in a position to harass or threaten whoever does.

COMMAND COUNTERS
Command Pool: 2
Strategy Allocation: 2
Fleet Supply: 3
Activations: 1

PLANETS (Resources/Influence)
Jord – 4/2
Vega Major – 2/1
Vega Minor – 1/2, Blue tech specialty

UNITS
Jord space: Destroyer x1, Carrier x1
Jord: Ground Forces x3, Space Dock x1
Vega space: Carrier x 1
Vega Major: Ground Force x1
Vega Minor: Ground Force x1

Red highlights denote exhausted planets; captured planets come into play exhausted. Red will also denote places units have moved to, changes in CC count, etc.

severian is up.

We clones are getting a little bored on our home planet, just sitting around unsuccessfully trying to clone us a female (we're not called the Brotherhood for nothing). We feel a Tactical Action is the best move. Maybe there's some females over on Arinam/Meer? Some that don't mind horribly disfigured skin diseases?

Activating Arinam/Meer. Placing command counter from Command Pool in space area, moving Carrier x1 and Ground Forces x2 into the area, and invading both planets.

COMMAND COUNTERS
Command Pool: 2
Strategy Allocation: 2
Fleet Supply: 3
Activations: 1
Total in play: 8/16


PLANETS (Resources/Influence)
Darren – 2/4
Arinam - 1/2, Blue Tech Specialty
Meer - 0/4

UNITS
Darren - Space Dock x1, Ground Forces x2
Darren Space - Fighter x4, Carrier x1, Destroyer x1
Arinam/Meer Space - Carrier x1
Arinam - Ground Force x1
Meer - Ground Force x1

Egarwaen is up!

With a horrible whirring noise, the Muaat War Sun #1 vanishes from their home system and appears in the skies over Lesab. The inhabitants of the planet have no goddamn chance, as dozens of landers filled with whatever the hell the Muaat are flood their skies.

Activating Lesab. Placing command counter from Command Pool in space area, moving War Sun x1, Fighters x2 and Ground Forces x4 into the area, and invading the planet with a ground force.

COMMAND COUNTERS
Command Pool: 2
Strategy Allocation: 2
Fleet Supply: 3
Activations: 1
Total in play: 8/16


PLANETS (Resources/Influence)
Muaat (4/1)
Lesab (2/1, Green Tech Spec)

UNITS
Muaat - Space Dock x1
Lesab - War Sun x1, Ground Forces x3 (shipboard), Fighters x2, Ground Forces x1 (planetside)

`Hrist is up!

severian's turn:



Egarwaen's turn:

The Barony of Space Vampires hopes they are doing this right

Activating Qucen'n/Rarron: Placing command counter from Command Pool in space area, moving Carrier and Ground Forces over to take both planets.

COMMAND COUNTERS
Command Pool: 2
Strategy Allocation: 2
Fleet Supply: 3 (+1)
Activations: 1
Total in play: 8/16

PLANETS (Resources/Influence)
Arc Prime – 4/0
Wren Terra – 2/1
Qucen'n -- 1/2
Rarron -- 0/3 (Green Tech Spec)

UNITS (Deployed/Total)
Arc Prime/Wren Terra -- Space Docksx1, Cruiserx1, Dreadnoughtx1, Destroyerx1
Qucen'n -- Ground Forcesx2,
Rarron -- Carriersx1, Ground Forcesx1

shivam is up

You're doing it right!

OK, let's see if i can do this.

First, i activate the triple system Abaddon/Loki/Ashtroth.
I move my carrier and three groundies to the system, and take the planets.

COMMAND COUNTERS
Command Pool: 2
Strategy Allocation: 2
Fleet Supply: 3
Activations: 1

PLANETS (Resources/Influence)
Quinarra – 3/1
Tren’lak – 1/0
Ashtroth 2/0
Abbadon 1/0 (and something i can't quite read)
Loki 1/2


UNITS (Deployed/Total)
Home space - Cruiser, 2 ground
A/L/A space- Carrier
Abbadon - 1 gf
Loki- 1 gf
Ashtroth - 1 gf
Stiv is up

Just so I'm sure everyone's clear on this point, because it has come up a couple times: On each of your turns during the Action Phase you may take one and only one action, as described here.

I have images for shivam and `Hrist's turns ready, but Imgur is being a butt undergoing maintenance right now so I'll post them ASAP.

`Hrist's pale aristocrats add to their holdings:



shivam's space bugs swarm over three worlds:

Now that we're a few turns in, is this format working for you players and readers? Are individual move images like those above useful? I'm making turn procedure up as I go, more or less, and I'm happy to sand down any rough edges.

I like it, it lets me visualize what happened last turn without needing a whole lot of space.

my problem's more with the 'what the fuck do i do now???" part than the presentation. i don't really understand this game at all, yet.

Oh, and sarc, i meant a higher res version of the map than the big one you have. like, even bigger if possible.

I'll see what I can do, shivam, but the map that's linked to is about the same size as the one I'm working off. I can try saving it at higher resolution, but the native resolution of the map isn't all that much higher than what you see (I used VASSAL components), and if I make the image too big my computer might choke on it.

As far as what to do, the game has a similar pattern to any 4X game I've played: Take over new places to get more resources, use those resources to buy stuff so you expand further and get even more resources, and then use your huge pile of resources to pursue victory points. That last part is kinda vague right now as no one took Bureaucracy, so we don't HAVE any objectives outside of everyone's Secret Objective, and won't until next round.

i'm gonna go watch that tutorial again and take notes this time.

Doesn't surprise me, though.

Well, yeah. Not a ton of benefit to the taker unless they can qualify for an objective right away, which isn't that likely in the first round. That's why I went with nine cards, so no one would be stuck with Bureaucracy off the bat.

I guess what I'm saying is, Stiv, you're welcome.

Speaking of Stiv, he's on vacation away from computers for a few days, so I think we may have to hold here until he gets back. He said yesterday that he hoped he would be able to post a move this morning, but I've heard nothing since.

Saved from limbo!

Surprise! I'm not away from the computer until tomorrow morning, officially, and dear friends, I did not forget about you (or your desire to play Twilight Imperium). I can't just leave you hanging for a long weekend.

ANYWAY.

Unfortunately, it appears that the L1Z1X have had their collection of VHS tapes stolen from the hivemind library on the homeworld which has a name I can't read due to the size of the map. There is only one solution to this problem: To put the home system on high alert and immediately begin a quest to fuck up whoever stole them. This whole 'ruling the universe' thing is bollocks, we just want to sit on the couch and watch Castle Freak.

So: Strategic action, with the "high alert" token placed in the only system L1Z1X currently controls. My understanding is that for all other players, you can move any two ships to an adjacent system which you control for the cost of a command counter, but the system the ships move to is notactivated.

(PS: is there any way you can share the VASSAL map you made with us? It would be an easy way to track the current map)

My home system is the only one I control, so I guess I won't be moving anything.

Stiv! Glad you could make it! I didn't want to pester you on Twitter anymore.

Also, the name of your homeworld is [0.0.0.]. Because you are a computers.

Here's the overall map as of the start of the round, for reference. It was linked on the last page, but that was a while back. I'll post updated versions after every full turn-order cycle of a round to provide an overview of the situation.

And as Stiv says, you all have the opportunity to execute the secondary ability of this card by spending a Command Counter from Strategy Allocation:



Starting with shivam and moving clockwise from there, you may either do so, or pass. Post and I'll make the moves on the board.

Actually, turn order doesn't make much difference in this case, not this early, so post as you please for now.

I'll pass.

pass.

Lucas, I think you can post your move any time given the very limited move options the Warfare II secondary provides everyone at the moment.

Once we get further into the game the turn order will really matter, but for now I think it's best to keep things moving along.