Wargame Night 07-13

On July 13th, Tim, Bob, Ross and myself got together for our 7th Twilight Imperium game of the year.

This month we decided when randomly choosing alien races we would randomly pick two home-world hexes and place the one race we didn't want to play back into the pile. This way, we could have more options in choosing a new race or a race we wanted to play instead of playing the same alien race over and over again as has happened in the past.


The following races were thus randomly chosen:

Bruce - The Arborec
Ross - The Barony of Letnev
Bob - Embers of Muat
Tim - The Nekro Virus

We also decided to go with domain counters again as well as placing the ancient artifacts around and on Mecatol Rex just for the fun of it. One artifact was also placed on Malice in the Wormhole Nexus. We also received our "Preliminary Objective" cards which gives each player one victory point to achieve a semi-easy objective. Then once this is achieved, in theory, then the player may choose his "secret objective" card for two points. This gives the player a potential of 3 victory points if he is able to fulfill the stated objectives. Unfortunately for me, I misread my preliminary objective card! It said I needed to obtain 3 tech advances in the yellow color...I thought it read 3 yellow tech colored "planets"...of course, not sure why I placed planets in the objective when it wasn't even there but I did nevertheless. As a result, the entire game for me was lost even before it began! Nothing like shooting yourself in the foot.

In the meantime, the rest of the guys sallied forth uninhibited into the unknown. Bob as the Embers of Muat with his less than speedy War Sun ended up taking Mecatol Rex with ease. Naturally, Ross as my neighbor attacked me right outside my homeworld and destroyed my task force reconning the planets for Lazax survivors. I was momentarily crippled and hobbling about like a wounded animal when I decided to go ahead and annex the neighboring planet in another system without reconning the planet. Just so happens that the domain counter was indeed a Lazax survivor. So Ross deprived me of a victory point. Tells ya, it wasn't my night!

So I built up a number of fast attack cruisers and chased him out of my system. Of course, later on in the game as gamenight wound down he came back and attacked that same system again and took the planet from me thus costing me another victory point. So between fog-of-war and chaos monkey, I believe I shed about 5 victory points easy. Hmmm...gunna have to do something different next time. Must pay attention or take no-doz pills or something!

As for Bob on Mecatol Rex, I don't believe he gained anything for it but Tim did manage to attack it in full force and sadly came up empty handed. His fleet did destroy Bob's fleet but was unable to capitalize on this defeat with a ground invasion of the planet. Thus, Bob was able to hold on precariously in spite of his losses.

On the political front, I was able to secure from Bob a promissory note stating that if he attacked me then I could play the promissory note and belay the order to attack. This was important considering he starts the game with a War Sun but alas he never did attack me and the note was never cashed in for good use. Of course, I can't remember what law we were voting on that he felt he had to make such a concession to me but it apparently didn't matter in the end.

The game ended with Ross scoring his first ever "First Place" finish! Congratulations to Ross for a job well done! Tim came in Second Place and Bob came in third. Sadly, I came in Fourth Place. But I really have no one to blame but myself and a little monkey named Ross! I'll get you my pretty!!