Checkmate in two
Originally published at Lunar Shards. You can comment here or there.
So a few weeks ago I had a chance to play one of the most epic board games I’ve had the privilege to ever try out. Twilight Imperium is game about colonization, development, politics and conquest in space among various races. In all aspects, the game plays a lot like Civilization for the PC and Mac.
The game I played started around 10am over at a friend’s place with a long break for dinner and went on till almost 11:30pm that night. Planets are distributed by the players forcing strategic screwing very early on which occurred between 3 players right at the start with one of them being trapped between a gravity well, an asteroid field, and a nebula. Races played are also randomly selected so we don’t know who will play what till we draw from the deck.
I ended up playing a race of ancient space turtles which funny enough are the political faction in the game. There are many ways to win the game including winning using politics or achieving enough goals or domination. I ended up driving down the militaristic road trying to take control of the central planet which is key for many political victories.
Sadly that was shut out early on due to a sudden build up of forces by the host who was playing. It turned into a stalemate between several of us while two other players continued to fight over a single planet called Parameter. That in itself was a rather epic battle of attrition with one side looking like it would win but end up getting beaten by action cards which can influence the course of the battle.
Eventually I came up with a strategy to try to take the central planet however the key card I needed wasn’t available just yet and I tried to negotiate it from one of my friends who was busy fighting over parameter. All the while I had to defend against another player looking to take control of my nebula stronghold.
With a turn a way I thought I might be able to take control of the central planet and begin with political path to victory using the central planet however a sudden move by the player trapped inside the hazards set on him early on took victory in two moves. Utilizing the Gravity Well which initially hampered him, he was able to get the right technology to turn it to his advantage allowing him to slip through gaps in the enemy lines and take the two home-worlds of the players on either side of him clenching the victory from out of no where.
All I could do was stare in disbelief for one, this is the first time we ever finished this game to an actual victory ending and also two for the sheer crazy stunt he had just pulled. He had the least number of ships and planets under his control and thanks to the right action card, he was able to drive two small invasion groups into the home-worlds without a challenge except from orbital defenses.
The game itself is a lot of fun to play and I recommend it for those wanting a space-themed boardgame with a lot of intricacies. We were playing with the expansion which added rules but we didn’t implement them all which actually makes the game longer!