Monday, August 24, 2009

Twilight Imperium Battle Report - LONG EDITION

About eleven hours.

That's how long the game took. Marathon does not cover it. One guy went home and was ill the next day while I myself hit a wall and crashed around 6:30 PM the day after.

Anyways, there was six of us, going around the table clockwise Me, Metin, Brian, Pete, Andrew M, and Andrew A. The game started much like it always did with some exploration, staking claims, and building of star spanning fleets.

The game early on, back when we had light. I'm yellow.

Then around round 3 all hell broke loose, with attacks all over the place. It broke into three major wars during the middle of the game, Andrew versus Andrew, me versus Metin, and Pete versus Brian.

Andrew A couldn't overcome the superior production of Andrew M in the fight and was forced to turtle while rebuilding but could never mount a good comeback. Metin had me dead to rights but opted to come to a cease fire which allowed me to rebuild and later make a play for victory. Brian and Pete fought a long war, but eventually Brian's extra unprotected systems next to Metin that the latter refused to attack gave former enough resources to grind pete's Warsun based fleets down.

The end game saw me make a run for victory by taking Beauracy twice in a row and claiming three out of four objectives, but Brian's head start in objectives from the mid-game powered him to victory despite my deep assault into his territory to take his Laxas survivors for a two point swing.

Well into night, some overhead lights were off to cut down on the heat. The yellow fleet in the middle-left was my last ditch attempt to eke out a victory.

Brian claimed victory with a couple of us on his tail.

Analysis:
The game was far far too slow. Some of it can be blamed on inexperience but a lot of it was just guys playing so cautiously and not wanting to make an error. Next time we're instituting a hard time limit on turns because its so unfair for people to have to sit there and be bored while someone else takes a long time.

Another factor in the slow game was the sheer amount of resources on the board available to empires. This led to massive fleet build ups faster than people could expend them. Perhaps the extra fourth ring of systems is ill advised.

Finally, I think Brian won because Metin was far too nice to him. For several round Brian had 4-5 systems next to him completely undefended. Had it been me or Andrew A in that position small raiding fleets would have attacked him and thus releived some pressure on Pete who was caught in his expansion between dead tiles and green and blue fleets. Ultimately for Metin it was an experience thing: anyone who knows how clever Brian can be in these games would not have let him have an easy go of it.

Overall it was fun if too long by 4 hours. Next time it will be faster and better.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:38 pm

    As a snail-like noob I give thanks for the patience shown by the more experienced players. It was a competitive and dynamic game which I very much enjoyed!

    Thanks especially to Cousin Bill for teachin' me the ropes, hosting, and reporting.

    I agree with your analysis - the extra outer ring made the game too resource rich, which added to the duration via more to buy and more battles to plan and fight. I also agree that it was an error to leave Brian's flank unfettered for so long, although each of us did have a peaceful, relatively undefended border - Peter and I, Bill and Andrew A, Metin and Brian.

    Also, your report gives the impression that the end game was between you and Brian, but I think there were four of us, you, Brian, Metin and I, all within 2 VPs of each other, no? Granted, your daring move on the Lazax Survivors did take Brian down a notch, making the race tight between the four of us/stopping Brian from running away with it.

    Until the next time!
    Andrew M

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  2. Anonymous10:38 am

    I get to play my first game in two weeks. Can't wait!

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  3. Holy crap, 11 hours.

    What did you guys sustain yourselves with? Chips and pop could not be enough :P

    It seems like a very fun game, maybe my friend could get it (he works at a board game shop and loves to play them).

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  4. You are correct. A 4 ring game with 6 give everyone ALOT of resources. If you think 3 rings ins;t enough, just add 2 systems per person next to each home system on the 4th ring.

    If you think 6 is bad, try an 8 player game.....

    What we have done is to use the Ancient Empires variant, and have all the objectives face up. It helps everyone plan to score VP's, and saves quite a bit of time in the end.

    Distant Suns also seems to add quite abit to the time required to play.

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