Wargame Night 12-10

On December 11th, Bob, Eric and myself got together to play Twilight Imperium 3rd edition. The following races were randomly chosen:

Bob - The L1Z1X Mindnet

Eric - The Federation of Sol

Bruce - The Naalu Collective

We decided to play a modified version of a 14 pt game at 12 points. Normally, you have a 10 pt game or a longer 14pt game. Since the last time we met in November, our 14 pt game lasted until about 3:30 in the morning...someone got into a little trouble with the misses as a result. Sooo, we agreed on a "medium" game of 12 points.

I was able to convince Bob that we should include "leaders" in this game and the always amusing but infamous domain counters as well. Bob tends to frown on both leaders and domain counters as they according to him "slow" the game down. After this game, however, I think the leaders will be growing on him in importance.

We created the map with the traditional 3 player configuration. However, Eric was being very nasty this night and decided to block Bob and myself from Mecatol Rex with a Supernova Sun and Nebula making it nearly impossible to arrive at Mecatol Rex in a straight line. I believe Bob put down an asteroid field for good measure just to make my life difficult.

As for the leaders in this game, each alien race chosen for this game had an "agent" as part of their leadership council. As you may not know, an agent can reverse any effect of an action card and have it removed to the discard pile. In effect, an agent acts like a "sabotage" action card reversing any effect from an action card though he himself is removed from the game. Thus, Eric, Bob and myself had agents in our lineup and had to be used just at the proper time for full effect.

The game progressed at its usual pace, slow and steady. Eric, not surprisingly, made it to Mecatol Rex first and established a base in due order. Much to my chagrin, Bob moved into my sphere of influence and thus a standoff ensued while Eric looked on in amusement.

Me and Bob knew the Federation of Sol under the able leadership of Eric was upto no good with their station at Mecatol Rex. However, Eric still was not taking his Secret Objective points like we thought he would and so we speculated that he needed to meet a critical but unknown requirement in order to fulfill his secret objective. Time was ticking and something had to be done!

In the meantime, several public objective points were easily being met by the Mindnet headed by Bob. Thus, he took an early lead over Eric and myself.

So, I cleverly placed a political card up for a vote that would activate an ancient artifact. Either the artifact would allow each player to gain two tech upgrades for free or it would destroy every ship and ground unit sitting on Mecatol Rex and any surrounding systems would suffer 3 damage points to anyone's ships. If I rolled a 1-5 then MR would blow up. If I rolled 6 and above then we all would be enriched. Sadly, I rolled a 5 and the Federation of Sol was completely nuked on Mecatol Rex. Sorry Eric...really.

To say the least Eric was none too pleased. All that was left on Mecatol was the flag of the Federation of Sol. Very sad really. But, the Naalu Collective got orders to immediately occupy Mecatol Rex at once! A fleet showed up with a single division of Naalu Space Marines and the planet reverted to Naalu government control. There was much rejoicing on Naalu Prime.

I slowly built up Mecatol Rex to meet my secret objective and eventually after building the prerequisite forces did meet it and gained my two points.

Another Law was brought up in the Galactic Council that needed to be voted on. It stipulated that the person who is elected by the council must now spend 2 strategic allocation markers to utilize the Imperial Strategy agenda. As you know, the Imperial Agenda gives you 2 victory points and is a essential agenda in this game for all players. Since I now occupied Mecatol Rex and had a significant number of voting rights, Eric and myself elected Bob to be the recipient of this timely and necessary law since he was in the lead. Sorry Bob...really.

Well, as we got closer to victory lane at 12 points, it ended up we all ended up tied at 11 points. However, Bob held momentum going forward that if he cashed in 6 trade goods then he would get 1 final victory point. Neither Eric nor I had any additional points coming to us. Desperation thus gripped the Naalu people.

I then played the Space Pirates action card that would cause them to steal all of Bob's trade goods and I would get the other half. Bob had at least twelve trade goods in his coffers so if I played this card then I could take his goods away preventing him from gaining his last victory point and instead I would get to cash in with his trade goods and get the winning point for the game.

So I played the card against Bob and so he played a sabotage card negating the effect of the action card. I then ordered my Agent to fall upon his sword and reverse the sabotage card Bob played. Bob then ordered his Agent to fall on his sword for the Mindnet and he cancelled the effect of my agent. As a result, the Space Pirates were unable to steal Bob's trade goods and he cashed in for the final victory point and won the game!
Eric and I tied for second. Another great game, I have to say. Good job everyone!