Abandoning the Barony of Letnev
So we played a six player game of TI 3rd edition. I had a chance to command my Barony of Letnev forces efficiently, but my expansion was limited by being surrounded by empty space not too far away from my home planet. This hindered my progress, but we still pushed through. Instead we opted to expand sideways, and even took a planet right from the Emirates of Hacan's feet. From my other flank, I was threatened by my next door neighbors, but we prevailed protecting our precious planets.
Unfortunately I, Barony of Letnev Supremene Commander, was summoned by the Reverend Mother Gaius Mohiam (better known as my wife) from Mother Earth, and was forced to abandon my forces in the midst of Galactic War after 5 hours (6-7 rounds? I lost track).What happened to the loyal soldiers who fought bravely to uphold our way of life? Who will go to our home planet to tell the families of so many that their fate is unknown? One can only hope that they survived the power struggle, and were at least able to hold on to the few planets we were able to conquer. If you ever meet them in the vast void of space, let them know that they are not forgotten.
posted by Rob @ 5:28 PM
11 comments
11 Comments:
The Barony survived your abdication, jealously guarding their wormhole and defending their purple planets.
I'm glad we had such a great turn-out today. Jon and Simon are great guys, and I hope everyone gets to play with them sometime soon.
I definitely am looking forward to hosting another game of TI:3 sometime in the future.
BTW, lunch and cookies was a very nice and unexpected touch.
Yes, thank you to Brian and Jacqui for being such nice hosts. You definitely went out of your way to welcome us into your home.
I had a great time playing TI:3 with all of you. It was great having a massive space battle with Ben while Jacqui some how won the game while we were busy killing each other.
Also, once again thanks to Brain and Jacqui for having us in their home and feeding us lunch.
You're welcome.
I wasn't terribly impressed with TI3 (although it's gobs better than 1st edition), a few rules changes would make the game much more interesting. I'll post those on my blog right now.
But as I don't expect I'll have 5+ hours free anytime soon, it's academic.
Personally, I really enjoy the game. In fact, I really enjoy the game a lot. I've always had a thing for big, meaty, monster wargames. This is a low complexity version of the genre with a fantastic theme. I can't wait to play again or for the expansion set to come out.
There are two official variants, which Fantasy Flight Games recommends using together that might satisfy certain types of gamers:
1. Reveal all public objective cards (both Stage I and II) at game start. Place a turn marker on the first one and advance it each turn. When it reaches the last card, the game is over if no one has reached 10 points yet. Each race can claim one objective per turn (plus their secret objective if eligible). Thus you're able to plan your strategy for the whole game in advance by seeing all the objectives up front.
2. Make the #8 Imperial Strategy card worth 1 point rather than 2.
Would this work any better? I'm not so sure it would be better or worse, but it would definitely be a different game.
I would like to play this again, and I would lean toward making the Imperial Strategy card only worth one point. If we play it again we need to play some variant to make that card worth less because I think it is way to popwerful as is.
Here's a good example of another official variant of TI:3's ISC:
http://www.geocities.com/ti3_pbem/
Its a PBEM game just about to get underway.
Agreed that it may be too powerful. Yes, on the flipside, you don't get any of the other cool primary abilities, but you can easily hold back from picking other roles for a good three rounds before you start to feel you REALLY need logistics, warfare, etc... that's 6 VP for 3 rounds.
Of course, I'm griping partly because I never had a chance to get it.
I can tell you that after picking the Imperial Strategy Card (ISC) two times early in the game, I was way behind in technology; hurting in command tokens; and had no trade agreements for most of the game. I was able to expand early due to having a race with strong initial powers, but mid-game Jon was able to catch up; retake some key worlds; and keep most of them.
If we would have played a few more turns rather than artificially ending the game, War Suns would have been popping up, which I was nowhere close to developing. So... I don't think the ISC is a game breaker, I do agree it might be more interesting to play one of the official variants making it on par with the others.
Sorry to take so long to get on (my network was being redone). The game was great and the hospitality immense. So another thanks again for Brian and Jacqui.
As for my thoughts on TI:3, I really liked it...Of course I usually like all games the first time I play them. It definetly needs some tweaking, mostly the Imperial role. On the way back home I thought of adding bonus tokens to stand for extra VP on your secret objective card to encourage the players into completing them, instead of a quick 2 VP (since I sort of viewed those as the 'point' to your race's expansion). However, I think the released Fantasy Flight fix is much better. -Definitely want to try this again though.
I'd like to meet the rest of you guys very much, but sadly this Wednesday I have a Business Calc final exam at 7pm (blech). So until then-
-Simon W.
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