Geekually Yoked

In space, no one can hear you schedule. As with many games of the size and time commitment of Twilight Imperium, the real challenge is organizing and coordinating calendars as I detailed here. Once you overcome that hurdle however what awaits you is a truly unique experience I will endeavor to describe here.

(I am only speaking about the base game of the 4th edition here. If time and finances allow, I’ll come back to discuss the expansions)

Twilight Imperium is a big game and as such it can be an intimidating one but as my friends discovered over the 6 hours we played, given the right atmosphere you gradually acclimatize to it and what seemed insurmountable in the first hour before proves to be a fun romp. Part of this transformation has to do with how the rules interconnect. It’s an ecosystem where you can trace the fungal networks and food webs to grasp what the game allows.

These were the two handouts I provided for my players. The first outlines the shape of the round so we could easily figure out what we needed to do in what order without flipping through rulebooks. The second is the This Game Sucks button so at any time players can nope out judgement free. When Rachel saw it she got a horrified look and said “your game needs a safe word?!” which first of all, rude, and secondly, fair. This tradition comes from my brothers who often would caveat any big complicated game by saying that anyone could invoke TGS to end things rather than feel obligated to slog through. This permission often gives folks more of a willingness to get past the initial barriers some games throw up and I’m happy to see this game wasn’t an exception.

Twilight Imperium is a space opera simulator with victory assured by warfare, colonizing, trading, researching, and diplomacy. The many many rules all provide the guide rails for pursuing those various paths to victory but the size of the game is such that many branching opportunities show up over the rounds and while one player might get an early lead there are no sure things and (usually temporary) alliances often form and dissolve to try to take down upstarts. It’s almost as much a social game as it a strategy game. Trying to barrel through the galaxy depending on your own strength more often earns you a total wipeout. Victors are often those who slowly accumulate power while not drawing attention to themselves.

Victory comes from Victory Points which are scored through randomly selected Public Objectives that everyone can work towards and Secret Objectives that are known to and score-able by individual players. At the start of the game there are only a few Objectives to pursue but by the end there can be as many as 13 to provide you with a veritable buffet of victory conditions. Finally there is a central planet called Mecatol Rex on the map and gaining and maintaining control of it can earn points in a King of the Hill style scrimmage.

The first step of the game is picking one of 17 factions that will determine the shape and flavor of your game. Many of the races highlight (or exploit) one of the core mechanics and are often suggested for beginners. There are lions who excel at trade, turtles who do diplomacy better than anyone else, a university that masters research, and humans who… breed. After these base factions things start to get a little wild. As the 4th iteration of a game with many offshoots, expansions, and novels, there is a deep well of lore and species that the designers felt beholden to include. This means that you wind up with jaunty pirates, furry nomads, creepy cultists, sentient viruses, and a giant plant who just wants to spread its love and spores throughout the galaxy.

Factions come with their own special abilities and/or limitations as well starting planets, space and ground forces, and technology. They also have Command Tokens which are the most crucial element of the game. Command Tokens get distributed on your player board between your Tactics, Fleet, and Strategy pools. Command Tokens from Tactics are spent to move ships, invade planets, and build more forces. The number of tokens in your Fleet determines how big your individual armadas can be. Finally, tokens from your Strategy pool get spent to unlock abilities from the Strategy Cards.

At the start of every round players will choose 1 or 2 Strategy Cards which determines round order as well as granting access to special abilities like gaining more Command Tokens, researching new Technology, gaining Trade Goods, and more. Whoever picked the card at the start of the round can use the powerful primary ability but other players have an option to spend a Command Token from their Strategy Pool to use a Secondary Ability which often is a smaller version of the Primary one. This mechanic keeps everyone engaged even when it’s not their turn and provides opportunities. Most of these secondary abilities are smaller versions of the primary one but others are not. Take the Warfare Strategy Card. It allows the player who drew it to pick up a Command Token from the board and use it again which provides some strategic flexibility or speed but it lets everyone else produce units in their home systems as a sort of arms race trigger. Thematically it all ties together very nicely. The Strategy Cards are also all numbered and determine the turn order which is often vital to how a round shapes up. Mastering order of operations is key to conquering the galaxy.

After Strategy Cards are acquired and turn order established, players go around in that order either playing those Strategy Cards, using actions from their Action Cards, faction abilities, and tech, or using the Command Tokens to move ships, invade planets, and build units. Command Tokens sit on the board and they limit how often you can activate a planet or the forces present there. Say you want to invade a neighboring system, you would place a Command Token on it and then move any ships in range into that system. If there are any enemy ships, this triggers a space combat and then if you have ground forces and there’s a planet to drop them off on you can do that but once again, if there are any enemies present, you are required to have a ground combat. There is no sharing or peaceful coexistence in Twilight Imperium. Go play Cosmic Encounters for that sort of hippy business. On subsequent turns, that Command Token now present in the system means you cannot activate it again or move any ships there out of that system. It locks everything in place. This is why Warfare is so powerful as it lets you move ships twice which can cause all sorts of anxiety for the rest of the galaxy.

To pay for all the cool things you want to do you need a way to pay for them and there are two main sources – Planets and Trade Goods. Every Planet has two scores, one that represents material Resources and another that represents cultural Influence. Resources are spent to build ships and troops as well as Research. Influence can earn you additional Command Tokens when someone plays the Leadership Strategy Card and is also necessary to bully the guardians of Mecatol Rex into crowning you uhhh liberator. Influence also gets used for voting during the Agenda Phase. To represent using a planet’s Resources or Influence you flip it over. Recently conquered planets start off flipped over so cannot be used until refreshed. Trade Goods are most often acquired through the Trade action although you are able to trade with any neighboring players on either of your turns. They count as wild resources and can be used for either Resources or Influence.

Researching new and exciting technologies is an important part of the game and falling behind as your neighbors get bigger and shinier toys can lead to some lopsided gameplay. When you research, you gain new technology cards which either improve your units or give you additional actions or powers such as faster ships, stronger weapons, more efficient workers, etc. Basic technology can just be researched freely but more advanced ones will come with prerequisites, usually in the form of earlier technologies. Some planets will have a technology symbol on them and can be flipped over to fulfill those prerequisites.

Control of the central planet Mecatol Rex can provide victory points provided you snag the Imperial Strategy Card and indeed a player choosing that at the start of the round is a giant red flag to the rest of the players to unite against their overweening ambitions. To gain control of the galactic capitol you need to have ground forces physically on the planet and to have spent the necessary Influence. This only needs to be spent once and provides a permanent victory point to whoever uncorks the planet. When it subsequently gets conquered and reconquered, no Influence is needed. On the round that it is claimed, the Agenda Phase is added to the game round. This is where players can vote on different laws and resolutions and elections to make their galaxy a more lively place.

While Diplomacy is a physical Strategy Card you can play, its lower case cousin is a vital concept with deep importance for the entire game. Who you attack or trade with is a vital decision that not only impacts you but the whole table. Often times the folks trying to push a combat are not the primary belligerents but their neighbors who hope to profit off the carnage. Every faction is given Promissory Notes that they can offer to try to sweeten deals or discourage aggression. Many of them act as nothing less than hostages being exchanged for good behavior. A twisted quirk of the game is that you can take a Note given by one player and trade it to another which means that if you promise not to attack the lions to focus on the vampires you can very quickly run into those same vampires screwing you over with that same treaty.

After all Strategy Cards have been played and players have no more actions they wish to take, the board refreshes with exhausted planets flipped back over, Command Tokens taken off, new Action cards drawn, and Objectives scored. If the Agenda Phase has been unlocked, players go around voting and horse trading. After all that, if no-one has outright won, a new round begins with more Public Objectives unlocked and the carousel continues.

I will not argue with you that Twilight Imperium is excessively big and unwieldy and remember that this has only been focused on the base game. The expansions add leaders, mechs, exploration opportunities, artifacts, and more more more. It is wildly unbalanced with some factions being much harder to navigate and bring to victory than others. Turns are long and there are so many details to track and frankly you will forget thar you researched an ability that you could have just used or lost track of just who holds your trade agreement Promissory Note. That being said, it is a truly unique and delightful experience given the right company which so far I’ve been lucky to enjoy. It’s an aspirational game that requires logistical foresight and spousal negotiations to bring to the table but when pulled off, is deeply rewarding.

This election day everything came up Kessler in all of our local races and even in some major headline-grabbing national races so as a celebratory present to myself, I popped open one of my perpetually simmering browser tabs and added to cart a board game I had been musing over and a few weeks later Kinfire Council arrived. Kinfire Council is part of Incredible Dream’s Kinfire Chronicles world where an evil Darkness has swept across the land and only one major city, Din’Lux stands as a bulwark thanks to its magic lighthouse. The original Kinfire Chronicles is a cooperative story game in a similar vein to Gloomhaven. Kinfire Council by contrast is a competitive worker placement game which has many similarities to Lords of Waterdeep but with many key differences.

The goal of Kinfire Council is to have the most points at the end of five rounds or, if playing with three or more players, to help the insidious Cultists have the most points and to have accrued the most influence with them. Points are earned numerous ways in a point-salad of municipal improvement. Most of the action of the game involves assigning workers to various locales in and around the city of Din’Lux or carrying out errands to try to help the city and other communities withstand the dire forces around them.

At the start of the game, you randomize a pairing of Councilors and Worker Sheets. Councilors represent the big movers and shakers in the city and have different starting resources or powers. Workers all include one Seeker who starts with one of the 6 specialized Worker Skills plus has the ability to be placed outside of the city. This is cleverly denoted by having round Worker pieces that slot into round city spaces and a hexagonal base for the Seeker piece that can fit either in the city spaces or in the hexagonal outer spaces. Players take turns selecting which Councilor/Worker combo they want and then collect their starting money and Influence. Influence is a special resource that isn’t discarded when used but is limited so there’s only so much of it that can be assigned each round.

As part of set up, three Threat cards which represent the various machinations of the Cults as well as other (un)natural calamities are drawn and secretly set aside. Over the course of the game, more cards can be added to this secret pile. These will add points to the Cultists’ final score at the end of the game so you never know just how well they are doing until the end.

At the beginning of every round, two Decrees are drawn which players can assign Influence to as votes to determine which one will pass. Some of these offer one time effects or can permanently improve a player. Others are crises which don’t help but ignoring them can cause all sorts of problems. Votes are generally assigned by various spaces on the board where workers can be placed. While there can be some negotiations, that isn’t the main thrust of the game. Whoever holds the first player Speaker’s Medallion token breaks ties.

After Decrees are chosen, the Cultists start to creep around the city. Every round players draw three hidden Cultist tokens from the black cloth bag provided and add them to any tokens from previous rounds. Most tokens will have a number on them which represents a space on the city that they will be clogging up this round unless arrested. The numbers also correspond to three areas outside the city where the Seekers can go try to deal with different threats. Each space can hold one Threat card and as Cultists are activated, you either draw a card into the space or add Trouble tokens to the card. Once enough Trouble tokens are added, it triggers whatever dire effect is on the Threat card. Two of the tokens that can be drawn from the bag are Cult Leaders and they supercharge all the Threat Cards as well trigger a jailbreak which frees any arrested or discarded Cultist tokens and puts them back in the bag for future draws.

Once Cultists have done their nasty business, it’s time for the players to go around taking their turn. Players must assign a Worker or Seeker to a space on the board. The city is divided up into three sections which is helpfully shown by stacking the parts of the board on the plastic organizing trays so you wind up with a neat three level board. The lower part of the city can be moved around freely but there are taxes to use the higher ones. This money is paid into a bowl called the Coffer which can be used by various game effects later on and is emptied out between rounds. All the spaces will either provide resources, votes, research cards, Sentries, extra Errands, opportunities to trade or cash in arrested Cultists or vanquished Thread cards, or provide other impacts. Spaces can be paid to be upgraded claimed by players so that when other players go there, the owner gets a little treat.

In games with three or more players, there are spaces which can help the Cultists and curry favor with them. This can matter if at the end of the game the Cult has more victory points than any of the players. In two player games, this betrayal mechanic is ignored.

Certain spaces let players draw Research cards which can provide nifty bonuses or boosts at any time. Others can give players Sentry tokens which provide bonus points for carrying out specific actions or Errands. Some can also increase the amount of Influence you have. Finally there are spaces and cards that can upgrade Workers and provide them with specialized skills that can allow them to ignore taxes, move to occupied spaces, use space abilities and arrest in the same action, gain extra Research cards and so on. These skills can be very useful and provide a lot of flexibility in planning and moving around.

Instead of using the ability of a city space, players can instead direct their Worker to arrest an adjacent Cultist. This opens up spaces on the board and also prevents the cultists from adding more Trouble tokens to the Threat cards. Arrested Cultists become a resource that can be traded or cashed in at various spaces but if the the Leaders trigger a jailbreak, they can escape from the players before earning a bounty.

Outside the city there are the Threat spaces where Seekers can go trade in resources to vanquish various Threats for points and to avoid the headaches these Threats can bring. There are also available spaces at a nearby community trying to build its own lighthouse to keep the Darkness at bay. These communities last only for one round and have unique offerings for Seekers who travel there as well as particular resources they require to build up their lighthouse.

After taking their Worker action, players can perform one of two Errands. Certain abilities and spaces can increase the number of Errands or what sorts of actions can be performed as Errands. The first Errand is to address the city’s Needs. At the start of the game, the city needs three Supplies to keep the citizens happy and deaf to the licentious missionary appeals of the Cultists. Over the course of the game new Needs can be added by Decrees or other cards. By performing the Errand and discarding the required resource, players can place an Influence token next to it to show that the need is fulfilled. At the end of the round, players earn points for every Need they supplied and any Needs left unfulfilled add another Cultist to the board.

The other Errand is to help build the lighthouse for the neighboring community. Every community has different resources they want and building one, two, or three levels comes with increased costs but also higher point rewards. As the lighthouse gets built, a lighthouse tracker shows how high it goes. At the end of the round, players earn points based on how much they helped build and how high they collectively built the lighthouse. Cultists can damage the lighthouse which causes the tracker to go down at the end of the round before scoring takes place and the lower the tracker, the more points the Cultists earn.

Players take turns assigning their Workers and carrying out errands until all the workers are assigned at which point the end of round phase commences. First city Needs are inspected and points/Cultists are doled out. Next the Docket of Decrees is checked to see which of the various Decrees received the most votes and determining what their impacts are. After that any remaining Cultists on the board add Trouble or Threat Cards and damage to the community lighthouse knocks the tracker down and the Cult scores. Finally the lighthouse provides points to the players who built it up this round and the community is discarded and a new one drawn. The Speaker’s Medallion is passed to the left, Workers come home, and the round ends.

After all five communities have been helped and the fifth round ends, the game is over. Those Hidden Threat cards are revealed and additional points are added to the Cult’s final score. The player with the highest score wins and if the Cult has the higher score then whichever player has the most Influence with the Cult wins. In two-player games, this is ignored and if the Cult has more points then everyone loses.

As a longtime fan of Lords of Waterdeep, it was easy to get into the core mechanic of the game of moving workers around a city and accrues money and resources to meet card’s requirements and earn points. Where the game diverges is in just how many sources of points there are and the very different strategies you can employ the suck them up. It feels much more civically minded as you round up cultists, feed your citizens, revitalize your neighborhoods, go vanquishing looming threats, or help build up your neighbors. The betrayal mechanic feels like a quirky bit of gamesmanship where if everyone is doing their part and keeping the peril at bay everyone benefits but as soon as someone starts siding with the cultists, it can create a real race to the bottom. The art and the setting are very specific and the fact that your workers all have names and small hints of personality and history make them feel much more alive than just nameless tokens your plopping around the board. Having a furry hat seller that was trained to be a merchant sliding into the dock right after I had vanquished the kraken that was blockading our port felt a lot more interesting and engaging.

That being said, there are a lot of fiddly rules to navigate with exceptions and abilities that can be easy to lose track of. The board is very busy and there was a lot of checking and double-checking our player aids to make sure we knew exactly what we were doing. I spent much of a game feeling like I was flailing and assuming I would lose only to take out one big threat that put me just that much ahead of my opponent who had more diligently created an engine throughout the game.

The Threats and Needs at first reminded me of Archipelago and the way that semi-cooperative/mostly competitive game beat you over the stick if you ignored them. In Kinfire Council, it feels like there’s a lot more carrot and not as much stick although it would be curious to see if less paranoid players triggered a great deal more trouble or if having a traitor actively sabotaging things makes all those cultists and threats feel more dire.

Managing Influence is a particularly interesting and/or frustrating puzzle as it provides a lot of opportunity for points but you also need them to weigh in on the votes, gain control of locations for future benefits, or if you’re doubling down on evil, getting caught up in the bidding war to control the Cults. The tight economy of them definitely impacts the choices you can make.

It’s a neat and engaging game and I’m interested in playing more and seeing how all the systems interact together.

There’s never a wrong time to kill Hitler. The trouble is finding the motivation and a trustworthy crew. Luckily for us and countless alternate realities, we have Black Orchestra to solve these issues. Black Orchestra is a cooperative game of moving pieces around Europe, collecting and sharing resources to plan and carry out the elimination of the Hitler. Players win if they pull off what no-one but Hitler was able to and lose if they get caught or if the game ends as it did historically.

At the start, players pick a character who will either be from the Military, the Abwehr (Germany’s Military Intelligence), or Civilian life. This makes Black Orchestra one of the few games where you can play as Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Each character has a Commitment score that indicates how useful they are, what abilities they have, and which assassination plots they can carry out. They also has a suspicion score which determines how hard it is for them to carry out plots without getting detected. Every character also has a unique ability that gets unlocked when they are sufficiently motivated. Characters can hold a certain number of items and dossier cards based on how many players there are.

On a player’s turn, they can take at least three actions. Similar to Pandemic, they can move around the map, draw cards, give or take cards or items from players on their space, inspect and/or pick up items. They can also Conspire which lets them roll the custom dice. Any numbers they roll give them that many extra actions this turn. Any Eagles rolled increase the player’s Suspicion. Any Bullseyes get added to a Dissent track which, when it gets three Bullseyes, either lowers Hitler’s Military Support score or raises a player’s commitment. The final and most critical action a player can take is to carry out a Plot.

Moving around the board is largely about searching for items which start off hidden from players. Items are often necessary to carry off Plots but they can also be discarded on certain spaces to lower your Suspicion score. Moving also lets the player move away from Hitler and his goons who cause problems if a player starts their turn on the same spot as them. Drawing Dossier cards is how you find Plots as well as getting actions that help you. Some Dossier cards are illegal and getting caught with them can cause dire consequences.

After a player finishes their turn they draw from the Events deck that corresponds with the seven phases of the game. These cards and phases reflect the historical progress of the war and frequently move Hitler and his goons around the board often plopping them right on top of players. As the players enter new phases, different spaces on the board open up and/or lock down. Buried in the Events deck are SS Raids which can wind up confiscating illegal Dossier cards or arresting players under extreme Suspicion.

Players that have been arrested forego their normal turn and instead have to withstand interrogation which often forces them to choose from between unpalatable choices. Unlike the rest of the game, this process is hidden from the other players. If a player has been arrested, other players can use their turn to try to release them although they risk getting arrested themselves. If everyone is arrested, the players lose the game.

Plots are how you kill Hitler. You have to have a Plot as one of your dossier cards in order to carry it out. They often have a required element such as being in the same space as Hitler or having certain items. Optional elements give you bonus dice. Once you’ve determined your dice pool, you roll as your action and check the results. First you check your suspicion level and the number of Eagles rolled. If you rolled the amount or over the amount on your suspicion level then you are found out and the plan fails. If you rolled under your suspicion amount then you’re undetected. Next check the number of Bullseyes. If they are under the amount shown in Hitler’s Military Support then it fails and the game continues. If you roll the amount or over what is shown then the Plot is successful and you win!

Black Orchestra is a chilling game which brilliantly creates a claustrophobic feeling of dodging and hiding while trying to gather together everything you need to take on this monstrous regime. At the start of the game you are limited in what you can do until you build up enough motivation and events or unfortunate conversations with the Fuhrer can lower that motivation which creates a natural ebb and flow. The game offers different difficulty levels depending on just how much you want to sweat it out but ultimately it’s a fantastic if frequently depressing journey. Highly recommended.

In juxtaposition with my last post about Star Wars Talisman, I want to talk about Outer Rim which falls squarely in the talisman genre even if it is not part of the Talisman brand. Both games see players move around a board, collecting gear, money, and followers while getting into fights and rolling dice to overcome challenges. They both give opportunities for players to get better and more powerful as they bounce around until eventually one is able to claim victory. Whereas Talisman is a kind of Purgatory where you just go round and round accepting the vicissitudes of capricious chance, Outer Rim and its Unfinished Business expansion offers a more engaging and robust experience.

In Outer Rim, players pick characters taken from the more scoundrelly side of the setting (Han Solo, Boba Fett, Doctor Aphra, Hondo Ohnaka, etc) and then choose a starter ship either going for speed or toughness. Depending on their character, they’ll draw a random starting mission which will either be cargo delivery, bounty hunting, or a job which will calm for a series of skill rolls to achieve. These three types of missions are the main ways players will earn money and Fame. Earning a set amount of Fame is how players win the base game.

Every turn, players will either move around the board, recover damage from previous misadventures, or collect a small amount of money. Then depending on where they are, they can deliver cargo, buy cards, or carry out any free actions they’ve accrued. Finally they’ll have an Encounter which will either mean drawing a card based on their location, choosing a Contact token which will either be hidden or revealed and gives them a character to interact with, fight another player or patrol ship in their space, or use a card with an Encounter action on it. These Encounters are the real dynamic part of the game and can give the players new gear or quests or go into combat.

The fiddliest action is the Market action where players try to buy cards from the various market decks. During set up, the decks are laid out with the top card visible so players have an idea what’s available. First they have an option to discard up to two of these visible cards either because it’s not what they want or to deny it to other players. Then they can choose to buy gear, cargo, new ships, or take bounties or jobs. If they buy, they take the top card and reveal the next card in the deck which might have certain symbols on it that immediately trigger some effect. Some let the player flip over hidden Contacts where others move the various patrols on the board closer to the player. These patrols can limit movement or force a combat. They patrols correspond to 4 different factions that players will have some sort of reputation with – Empire, Rebellion, Hutts, and Syndicate.

Missions are the best way to earn money and Fame and come in three main forms – cargo runs, bounties, and jobs. Cargo is available to buy on different planets and has a destination. If the player can get it there they earn the reward. Some cargo is illegal and requires a dice roll to either acquire or deliver and can get a player in trouble if they encounter patrols. Bounty hunting consists of running around flipping over the Contact tokens hoping to find your quarry and then winning a combat against them. Sometimes these bounties will be serving as crew for other players which makes chasing them down all the more interesting. Finally there are jobs which usually have a destination planet and then take the player through a flow chart of skill tests and combats. If the player survives and gets enough successes they get the reward, otherwise they have to keep trying until they do.

All players and ships (apart from starting ships) have personally goals that both give you fame and unlock new abilities. This is a more long term way to earn fame and can help give you direction for the early and mid game.

Skill checks are fairly simple although the game uses custom dice with particular symbols that you have to learn. Whenever you make a skill check, you roll two dice. If you don’t have the skill you need to roll a critical success. If you or a crew member has the skill, you need a regular or critical success. Certain gear and ships and player abilities can tweak these checks and make them easier.

The Unfinished Business expansion is a nice buffet of options you can take or leave. New characters are introduced with corresponding challenging bounties. It also lets players travel into the more Empire dominated core worlds which lets players have a short cut from one end of the board to the other. Its biggest addition is an overarching player career goal which changes how you win the game by giving you a series of challenges and achievements you have to overcome. This can be anything from getting obscene wealth to carrying out ever more dramatic acts of resistance to becoming a pirate queen.

Like all talismanic games, Outer Rim is big and ridiculous and if you want a more brainless, less fiddly experience you can just stick with Star Wars Talisman. However, if you want a big epic story of a game where Boba Fett teams up with Chopper and Lobot to take the fight to the Empire while trying to figure out how to offload baby rancors, then this is the game for you.