If however you’re interested in Twilight Imperium, this little 2:19 movie that shows an entire game of it might be of interest for you (music probably not everybody’s favourite, I love this track though). I did play all three races, and consequently made many mistakes, bear with me

The whole thing took about 250 photographs (and three camera battery reloads) to make, they’re shown at a rate of roughly one picture every half second.

Game Report

So what happens, actually? (Keep in mind that if you haven’t heard of the Twilight Imperium rules before, this might not clear up that much…)

There’s three parties; the Embers of Muaat (a lava dwelling species that starts out quite strong with a War Sun in play already) in red, the Winnu (kinda tech-diplomats, they like to scheme) with purple, and the Emirates of Hacan (focused mostly on trade) with yellow ships.

Note that due to the setup, the Winnu were kinda cut off from the center, while Hacan and Muaat were split by quite some empty space, and obstacles prevented access to Mecatol Rex (the planet in the middle) from two sides, left and right in the video, and kinda split the entire map apart. There’s also just one wormhole, which ends up being the only way to the Wormhole Nexus with its planet Mallice.

In the beginning, all three attempted to grab as many planets as possible, fighting hostile locals and greeting friendly ones -- nothing unexpected until around 0:30 the Muaat went for Mecatol Rex in turn 3 (they had tried successfully to boost their War Sun to a movement of 2 for that, in fact). The tension between the Muaat on Mecatol Rex and the Hacan base next to it (the locals had given them a free base there) kept rising afterwards.

Everybody kept building up until, shortly after 1:00, the Hacan made their move for Mecatol Rex -- their private objective required them to control it. The Muaat proved to be fierce defenders though and only one Ground Force and a single Carrier survived (and they were lucky to get Mecatol Rex, too), so the Winnu, who also needed Mecatol Rex for their private objective, decided to make a dash through the empty space and get some foothold amidst the two other parties.

Another arms race ensued, until at 1:25 the Muaat went for Mecatol Rex again -- they didn’t actually need it, but wanted to keep everybody focused on the central planet. Their private objective was to have 6 planets with tech specializations -- the Muaat had 3 in their own territory, the Winnu had 2 border planets with that and the Hacan had one, all of them with little or no defense. The distraction proved successful (I actually forgot about those border planets later on, with the Hacan in particular)…

1:35 brought a big twist for the trade-centered Hacan, one that the movie doesn’t properly show: Class Struggle came into play, despite them doing everything in their might against it; a law that spreads the wealth from trade evenly, basically destroying one of their biggest advantages.

Around 1:40 another Winnu fleet makes its way slowly towards the center. The Winnu were, at that point, focusing on tech: They wanted Advanced Fighters, to make those little cheap ships into real pests; some action cards helped them (they used Alien Technology, Corporate Sponsorship and Focused Research, all in one round) and they got there -- but not without sacrificing many valuable resources and precious time.

The Hacan had already passed for that round, when the Muaat made their dash for the private objective, between 1:45 and 1:50: The Winnu’s border world fell first, and thanks to the Warfare II High Alert token the Hacan world was easy prey as well. Despite the Winnu voiding the Muaat’s control over Hope’s End with its Artifact through Local Unrest (and thus denying them one victory point), the Muaat still were leading on the victory point track.

The next round then brought the decision -- the Muaat went for the Bureaucracy strategy, hoping for a quick stolen win through Imperium Rex (at a chance of 40%, not bad odds -- but admittedly, I knew it was coming, not sure if that influenced my Muaat’s will to go and see if it was there).

The Hacan allied with the Winnu, seeing Muaat too powerful, and made another go for Mecatol Rex -- successfully at that, a huge step closer to fulfilling their private objective. The Winnu tried to force the Muaat back, too (but left them one planet); they couldn’t wait and build up any longer because otherwise, the Muaat would have run into their backyard with their fast War Sun.

At 2:05, it’s all over, when the Muaat uncover the Imperium Rex public objective and win the game, at 6 victory points.

Twilight Imperium 3rd Ed.

This game is one I’ve been looking forward to actually playing for quite some time now. I bought Twilight Imperium 3rd Ed. (or TI3 in short, official site) and its expansion, Shattered Empire, quite some time ago, but alas, finding a time when everybody has time to actually sit together and play a game that lasts a whole day is not easy.

So with Doodle we went and started planning, and after much ado I finally had a group for today, and everybody was actually here on time too (although I’m really sorry for those who came a bit early because I hadn’t told them properly when we’d start…).

I’ll follow a similar vein here as with the TF2 review from a few weeks back: I’ll try and make categories that apply to as many games as possible, so I won’t have to change the review structure later.

So here we go, with a review that can still be called “first impressions”, strictly speaking – after all, I only have 3 2-player and one 4-player game under my belt meanwhile.

Update 08-09-15 12:43: Thanks to Sternenfahrer-MUC for pointing this out – I’m talking of the base Twilight Imperium box plus the Shattered Empire expansion in this review. Many balance inconsistencies (like Fighters being overpowered, or the strategy cards having balance problems) were fixed through some alterations to the tech trees and rules variants, and quite some optional rules were introduced that look really fun too (although I haven’t been able to try them out yet). I’d go as far as saying, TI3 without SE isn’t quite complete.

Components:

Twilight Imperium Components

Gee, awesome! If you’re looking for a game that has over 400 plastic spaceships, nearly 100 cardboard hex tiles for creating a new board every time you play, over 600 little cards with tech and actions and resources and politics, and several hundred cardboard counters, this is the one.

They’re well-crafted, look great, and if anything should be broken anyway, Fantasy Flight Games is well-known for great customer support: If something’s missing, they’ll send it after you free of charge (this didn’t happen to me with TI3, but I did have a broken miniature in my Starcraft box and it was replaced no questions asked).

Oh, you will need more dice than they provide though. 4 just don’t cut it when you have to roll for 30 ships.

Game Box:

TI3 Box Sectioning

Having so many such great components also means that it needs proper stashing, and a box that can hold it. Now, the game box isn’t quite up to that task (being just a box and all, without any sectioning whatsoever). The only really good thing about it (apart from the box art) is that it is fittingly huge.

TI3 Box Interior

Eventually, I ended up sorting the game components into those plastic boxes you can buy for tools and screws and whatnot in DIY markets (I know I used the picture to the left before, but there’s not much point in creating another one). This works very well and makes transporting the game easier too, and I also made custom boxes for the sorted card stacks (to avoid having just one mess), that helps a lot for stashing too.

Overall though, storage is a concern when buying this game, and the provided solutions don’t cut it to the extent that they don’t exist at all.

Rules:

TI3 Rules Documents

For a first timer, the very volume of the rules makes them very hard to get a grasp on. There’s the turn sequence, there’s the various actions you can do in the action phase (where every player gets just short actions before the play moves on), there’s all the strategy cards that involve politics, trade, research, then there’s the tech tree and all the different unit types and system types on the board … it’s huge.

Which is exactly the good thing once the volume of the rules is understood: There are plenty of options for things you can do, and they all make sense and have rather intuitive and consistent rules gouverning them.

The rulebooks (available online) are very clearly laid out and explain things rather well and with examples, there’s a FAQ (same place) that clarifies many problems, and if anything remains there’s still the FFG forums where plenty of resourceful and knowledgable individuals gather.

Still, some things could be better. The reference for quick lookups during the game is severely lacking, I and printed out quite some player aids for the various stages, and a tech tree that my players (including me) actively used. Not all too many additional things were needed though, overall.

Another weak point is politics, and with it the worth of planets with high influence values – politics are somewhat trivialized, and although it’s possible to win a game without a single fight (our winner today did just that) it’s not really necessary to do that with many won votes and introduced laws. In fact, it’s pretty possible to ignore politics cards for the most part.

That last thing doesn’t mean that it’s even remotely possible to ignore actual politics between the people playing – trade agreements are made and bargained for (and strategically broken at times), attack routes are influenced and bought, goodwill and other goods are exchanged for strategy cards and play sequences. It’s just that the actual things called “Political Cards” are less central than they maybe could be.

Replay Value:

I do believe I’d give the game 5 stars here already even without the community. Every time you set up a galaxy, you create different routes and strong and weak space regions in the galaxy, new hotspots and sneaky paths, and the somewhat random victory conditions together with the vastly different racial play styles (with the trade-centric Hacan, the spying Yissaril, the warrior Embers of Muaat, the ground force centric Sol empire – 14 distinct races included) and deep tech trees and politics guarantee that the game doesn’t get boring quickly.

But the community exists, and creates new rules all the time – from variant strategy cards over new races to new ship types. As a matter of fact, many of the Shattered Empire rule expansions were inspired by community authors and similar things were found on forums (mainly the BoardGameGeek one and the FFG one) first.

An interesting discussion about the board’s influence for the final SE rules was sparked by my asking whether this last paragraph was true by the way, read it here on the FFG forums.

Fun:

TI3 Players

I actually asked my wife here if I should give 4 or 5 stars – it turned out to be a clear vote for 5. The four players today had great fun, she actually tried to sleep this afternoon and couldn’t because we were laughing all the time.

I guess my brother and me having our little infights with him pushing me back to a mere four three systems over time (and my revenge with fighters later), while the other two had a cold war type of thing going on between them did it’s own – but that’s just the kind of scenarios the game enables.

It’s of course important that the group fits together, that everybody has enough time and no stress, as with any complex game. We started 11am today and played until 7pm (including a brunch, that is, and closing with a dinner).

So with the right group, the game is as fun as a 4X space soap board game gets. I’m really looking forward to introducing leaders (racial heroes) and distant suns counters (random encounters on planets) the next time we play, and maybe adding the “create the board” phase before the actual game too – all of which we didn’t use this time, to keep things simple(r).

Overall:

Yes, this is my favourite game right now. It’s also the only one that I gave 10 points on BoardGameGeek so far. It’s certainly more fun for our group than the still somewhat fun, but comparably static and more convulted Starcraft (which is from Fantasy Flight Games too), and the common tech trees and unit types for all races make getting into it for starters a bit easier too.

Definitely a must-have for any friend of non-trivial board games.

TI3 Final Status

I’ll make a proper review later, just a little note here that my first proper game of Twilight Imperium 3 (proper as in “not me playing against myself”) was awesome

TI3 Closeup

I learned some lessons regarding what makes sense when teaching the game, found out that the things I linked in my last post on TI3 are really the only ones needed for reference during the game, and realized how complicated the whole rules at once are for a first timer. And that understanding the tech trees and what the units do go a long way towards victory.

Maybe the most important thing I realized yet again though is what an awesome wife Arzo is, as she played through the whole thing despite not being remotely near as much of a game geek as I am

Oh, and as you can see here, the plastic units do look good enough to be photographed in a close up. Too bad I just didn’t get the two War Suns, I just got the tech and had the resources and then it was over.

TI3 Box Stack

TI3 Box Interior

Addendum: I added pictures that show how my TI3 looks when stashed away. Those tool boxes (bought separately) are really handy, you can take out the individual compartments too. I’m also using the sleeved tuck boxes that DarkWolfNine created, they fit into the box nicely and have plenty of space for the cards, making them easier to access too. And I also made the frame from Typse2Fsat, with extra parts.

That’s it for now, more with the real review

Intro

Tech by Unit

So I bought Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition last week nearly two weeks ago (gee…), and got to play some … well, solitaire test games with 1v1 players that pretended not to know each other’s hands. The game shines more with every added player I’m told, but one is a bit few either way.

With a little game coming up somewhat soon with a couple of friends (you know who you are), I was going through the available resources to help them get into the not that easy rules, and have already collected tons of links, some of which are more or less the essentials:

• A nice graphical Order of Play Overview, very nice for at-a-glance knowledge of “what comes next now?”
• A wonderful Tech Tree, with some more rules (that we won’t need for the first game) on the 2nd page
• A Rules Cheatsheet, although I found this less useful for actual in-game reference

Tech by Unit Player Aid

What I didn’t find however was a way to find out which units have what techs available. So I went ahead and created a little piece of reference paper of my own:

The Tech by Unit Player Aid, currently version 1.3

Also see the FFG discussion thread, and it’s available on BoardGameGeek, too. So what it includes is:

• A short description with strategic and tactical pointers for each unit, to help complete newbies understand the purpose of the units
• Coordinates for Nephilim’s Tech Tree (the same as above), as without the actual tree it’s not that easy finding out what tech you have to research for obtaining which unit-specific upgrades
• The number of prerequisite tech researches for the shortest path (starting from nothing) to each tech, to make it easier to see which ones are obtainable earlier and which later

I hope this helps some people, old and new players alike

Version History

• 08-08-25 v1.0 Initial Release
• 08-08-25 v1.1 Some typos fixed, unit descriptions expanded
• 08-08-27 v1.2 Further typos fixed, added some cost efficiency ratings, added one tech to GF
• 08-09-07 v1.3 Added limits per unit, and copyright notice