Ben Pinchback
United States
Romeo
Michigan
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Any time a friend offers you a shrink-wrapped copy of TI for 45 bucks, you have to jump on it even if you're not sure you will ever be able to get 5 other friends together for 6-10 hours. Well the stars aligned and I was able to finally get in a 5 player game the other night. So, what you want to know is: Should this massive and usually expensive game make it into your collection? Short answer: Yes
Components
Beautiful and aplenty. You get like a billion cool little plastic ships, and about another billion cardboard chits. The board is made up of equally cool massive hexes, and there's also a ton of cards. Talk about a meta-game. I almost wrote a review on just my process of punching out all of these pieces. I'll keep it short and just say that by sheet 6 I had shaved 50% off of my time to punch out a sheet of the plastic ships. I totally optimized this process. That felt like a win right there. Oh, and the theme. Usually I don't care much about the theme, but this theme is so fantastic and so well developed that you legitimately feel part of a real alien race vying for galactic supremacy. The theme of each race coordinates perfectly with their bonuses and start values, and it really shapes your game experience which race you get.
Play
There's 8 roles you pick from like Puerto Rico, and then there's extra things you can do like move, take over planets, and fight. The roles are things like trading, voting on new laws, diplomacy, or even basic resource gathering. The game has too many great layers to properly address, but it's safe to say that there's more than one path to victory here. That's the best part. You build your civilization how you want to and try to get more VP than everyone else along the way. Taking over planets is key, as those become both your cash for building military units and your influence in the votes, as well as a great way to gather more resources, (command counters). Like typical Americans, we each built massive armies at the expense of efficiently gaining VP, but that's probably just part of the learning curve. I mean, you can't give me all these spaceships and expect me not to get them all on the board. One friend put it the best. "This time we had fun playing with the game, next time we'll do better actually playing the game."
Verdict
Here's the deal. The game is an absolute beast. You need more than one rules junkie in the group to steer a group of 5 or 6 through this one. You need probably 6-10 hours, hardcore gamer friends, and you need a huge pot of coffee. If you can power through all of this, and get in a legit game, then I think you'll find that this might be the best game in your collection. I finally found the civilization game I was looking for, it just so happened it was in outer space.
Twilight Imperium (Third Edition) - Should I Bother? - YES unless you just don't have the friends available to commit to the time needed. Even then, still get this game and make new friends. It's now the crown jewel of my collection.
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Sebastian Grawan
Germany
Edemissen/Peine
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Great review!
TI3 is my best loved game, too - but as it takes so long to play we very, very, very seldom play it at all. It's a shame.
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Jason Weed
United States
Memphis
Tennessee
how sweet the sound...
Fear The Hat !!!
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Get the Shattered Empires Expansion, it completes the game and we wouldn't play without most elements of the expansion anymore (defense forces on Mecatrol Rex and the different roles).
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Ben Pinchback
United States
Romeo
Michigan
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Ya, the more I read about the expansion, I think first I'm gonna try the Age of empires option (lay out public objectives for all to see at the start) coupled with the nerfed 8 role card. (1 VP instead of 2) I could see those options really enhancing the game for my group.
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David Dawson
United States
Champaign
Illinois
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I haven't played mine yet, but it seems like there are some things you can do with just the vanilla version to enhance the game. Things like printing out the new objective cards, the Warrior Knights political variant, adding defense forces to MR, etc. Sometimes that seems like the better option than shelling out $40 on a game you can only get to that table once a year anyway. Also great if you love to customize, like me :)
There are also a few two-player variants, which will help get some more plays of this awesome game (at least for me)
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Tom Grant
United States
Washington
DC
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bno70_1 wrote: You need probably 6-10 hours, hardcore gamer friends, and you need a huge pot of coffee. If you can power through all of this, and get in a legit game, then I think you'll find that this might be the best game in your collection.
The 6-10 hour play time depends on which configuration of the game you use. Here's a summary of what you can do to shorten a session, and also to make it easier for new players:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/308894/some-advice-for-n...
As I said in that post, FFG does itself no favors by implicitly encouraging new players to use the "standard configuration," which does take longer, and can be more frustrating (especially if you have no idea what a good or bad map tile placement looks like, or what the victory conditions might be).
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Martin DeOlden
United States
Reno
Nevada
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It is a long game but my only games I ever rated 10 are Advanced Civilization and Twilight Imperium. I love epic games and this is one of my all time favorites. I win about 20% of the time and still love playing the game. I enjoy the player interaction of the game and a few variants allow for better politics as well. I think if you are going to play a game for 6-8 hours then you play more for the fun value rather than the win value.
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Jeff S
United States
New York
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My group has played 8 games with 4-6 players and we have yet to finish one in under 10 hours, though granted we do have a food break and a couple shorter breaks in there.
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Ben Pinchback
United States
Romeo
Michigan
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The other night we finished a standard rules 6 player game in just under 6 hours. I actually could have kept going with no complaints, but that dumb Imperium Rex Objective card flipped up and ended the game. Everyone agreed though, it's a fantastic game. Everyone go buy this! (and no I'm not on commission
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Andrew
Canada
Ottawa
Ontario
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This game is always almost my favourite game in its class, but its unwieldy and never really comes together. Ive never finished a game, we just score when we run out of time.
Its a massive epic game, and cant really be compared to many other games. One problem is that there is an incentive for players to 'turtle', and focus on building and not challenging other empires. There arent enough mechanics to drive conflict even with battle driven VP requirements. My preference for a hardcore, long game is Advanced Civilization, which has some game dynamics which force conflict and player interaction. Trade is insignificant / weak, and the politics always could have been better then it was.
Id be interested to hear what variant rules people play with to make this unwieldy game more playable or fun.
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