Hello all. Those of you who read the Hogs of War forum know that we've had a large Twilight Imperium match scheduled for a few weeks now. The goal was to fill up 8 slots and have the largest game that we had ever put together. We filled all 8 slots with people to spare. I think everyone who played would agree that this made it an absolute blast.
The participants for this game were Wildeyedjester, Cpt_Tiberius, Dannato, Big D, Sweet E, Monkey, Phantom Phoenix, and bdix in that order around the table. The picture above shows the large amount of space laid out for deployment. As everyone who has played TI wound know, games can be won in deployment, and this game was no exception.
Here's a look after deployment. You can't see it from this far back, but the way the planets fell created a space ghetto (thanks to Phantom Phoenix for coining this term). As in any space ghetto, there was immediate unrest. Fortunately, it was on the far side of the table from me. Wildeyedjester, Cpt_Tiberius, and Dannato were all particularly aggressive early on and as the Dude says, " This aggression will not stand man."
As those in the space ghetto wrecked havoc on one another, the War Sun/Technology race occurred on the other side of the board. Phantom Phoenix, Monkey, and myself all wound up with 2 War Suns. The thing about War Sun's is once you have them, you have to try them. This led to conflict on our side of the board, shown below.
Bdix managed to stay out of too much trouble in the space ghetto, but eventually Jester reigned supreme in the area. Dannato got knocked out as he fought Cpt_Tiberius and was betrayed by Big D, at least in his eyes.
As the game came to a close, the Domination objective card got flipped saying that if you controlled two home systems outside your own, the game was over. At that point Jester raced around the board trying to end the game, while Big D and I overextended trying to get our secret objectives to stand a shot at victory. I overextended with no payoff, while Bid D grabbed just enough objectives and the initiative card to pull out a victory as Jester took control of bdix's home system to finish off the game.
It was a wild ride of a game. Having eight players really made it a lot of fun. Though the deployment and turns took quite a bit longer, there was plenty to socialize/strategize about while you were waiting. With an expansion just announced, I'm sure we'll be planning another one of these for its release date.
