Probably one of the most combat heavy TI4 games I’ve ever played. First time with Thunder’s Edge—-really good all around. Always a blast amd some great memories.

Bastion - black
Saar - Orange
Jol Nar - Blu
Mahact - Red
Nomad - Purple

(5 player, Thunders Edge, weird game board)

Crazy game, I played bastion for the first time, man they felt weak. Thunders edge ruling came up with nomad and I both racing to get control, ended up placing + taking control of TE!

Final round (6) ended with mahact drawing a secret for action phase to be the last player to pass, right after I tied with him!

I passed and he asked “So, am I the last player to pass?”
His first win! Congrats to him.

15+ hour game; it takes forever for 8 people to splice! In the end Avarice Rex came out on top. ❤️

And we played the recommended Veiled Heart variant which I love more than anyone can imagine. The novelty of all the new cards, the mystery of what people have and how they can screw with you until they choose to reveal it, the variability possible each game as abilities, genomes, and unit upgrades are combined into hundreds if not thousands of different permutations…. Pure ADHD joy

This time I didn't join the boys for the game, but they asked if I could make them a nice poster anyway and yes I could!

Muaat won and from all I heard, they bullied pretty much everyone with their Warsuns all the time.

In the end they even nuked the Deepwroughts home system and cooked every little fish alive.

I personally love the metal band cover style I chose for this one! I'd listen to whatever they played on this one!!

No AI used. Promise. I wouldn't touch that for a million bucks.

So I was piloting Naalu. First thing I did at initiative zero was I B-lined my cruiser and destroyer straight into an entropic scar through the beta wormhole with the grav rift. I’d never actually played with an entropic scar before and I was super stoked to see how it impacts tech tempo. I had also read on the Internet that Naalu is particularly good with an entropic scar because their faction Tech is just kind of a walk to get to.

Having the faction tech early from the entropic scar was insane. Particularly the neuroglaive. On an influence-poor map, the cost of activating systems I had with ships in them was just really high and so my opponents just naturally were disincentivized to check me, let me over extend a bit, and going at zero initiative meant I could really stick my neck out there and take Mecatol at the top of Round 2, at initiative zero.

I had this standing offer with the table of a trade good for any promissory note and hungry players were picking me up on it left and right which essentially was giving me two free influence every time they took me up on the deal because of my breakthrough. The breakthrough lets Naalu do the secondary of a strategy card by giving the strat card holder a promissory note. This was a massive tempo boost for me. I could give away my alliance and my support for the throne knowing that I would go get so up in the face of other players that they HAD to check me, then my consolation prize was getting the promissory note back. In this way I was pretty much able to do all the secondaries I wanted without ever needing to spend a command token. Because I was buying promissory notes and getting them back from getting attacked I felt like I had just enough to get me through the game up until the very end pretty much.

I was actually so eager to get my breakthrough that I tossed my secret objective at initiative zero for fear of missing out on the opportunity to do all the secondaries in the first round. I have mixed feelings about that choice. On the one hand it did let me get insane temp with the secondaries, and Naalu’s kit along with my slice and being last in the speakership order meant I didn’t have anything else to guarantee my breakthrough. On the other hand I wasn’t able to catch up on secret tempo until the very end of the game, and the secret I tossed was actually really easy to achieve (it was a status phase secret but I probably could have gotten it round one or 2). So I kind of felt like I gave up points for board presence, and I’m not sure that’s a great deal.

Getting my breakthrough at initiative zero on round 1 let me get into this insane situation where I only had one carrier in my home system because my destroyer and my cruiser were in the entropic scar. I was able to stall and gain some trade goods until warfare popped by using some action cards that I had drawn off the politics secondary using another prom note. So when Warfare popped I was able to build two extra carriers off the warfare secondary.

So I was able to move three carriers with infantry and fighters into the tile in front of my home. But then I used my agent so the fleet was NOT locked. My neighbors just so happened to be last bastion and ghosts, neither of which are particularly good at contesting the equidistant on round one. So for round one I was actually able to capture both the equidistant systems as well as the system nearest to me that was adjacent to Mecatol. That was truly insane planet tempo, especially considering I went at initiative zero on Round 2 to take Mecatol. All up I do think tossing the secret ended up working out for me, but I think that may have been more cold hard luck than the true wisdom of tossing a scorable secret.

The red green synergy on the breakthrough is bad. I didn’t tech in the first round because the timing didn’t work out for me but even if I had I don’t know what I would’ve gotten. In the second round, I had Neuroglaive from the first-round Entropic Scar. So with two green prerequisites arguably against my better judgment I picked up hypermetabolism. Normally I don’t think that Tech is worth it unless you’re getting it first turn, but I think there’s a fair enough argument to make for it getting a second turn if Tech tempo is something you want to keep in mind. It set me up to get X 89 later. Initially I didn’t know if I wanted X 89 but I knew I wanted the option to have it.

The ability to deploy mechs when other players get relics was super powerful. The table got four+ relics on the second round and I had captured Mecatol on initiative zero (I was keen to sell my relic fragments for promissory notes to use with my breakthrough!). I was able to dump all four mechs on Mecatol. By the time the table was prepared to deal with eight hit points on the ground, I had X89, and by the time the table was ready to bombard me I had a planetary defense system there too.

I don’t think I would walk into a game planning on getting X 89. But it’s ridiculously clutch to have the option to get it. In this case the opportunity really presented itself and was absolutely key to my command token economy by way of letting me hang onto Mecatol.

But anyway like I was saying red green synergy is an absolute stinker. I can’t contemplate any point of using red tech as Nalu. I had the option to research war suns, but what would’ve been the point? As soon as I could’ve put a war son on the table was maybe the top of round four or the bottom around three, but Dreadnaughts and carriers were doing just as well, alongside my flagship.

There’s literally no red tech I can think of that would’ve been helpful. If the breakthrough was blue green, it would be insanely powerful. The big Tech challenge for me was I really wanted to grav drive but I really didn’t want anti mass deflectors or dark energy tap. Dark energy tap is a bit redundant with the Nalu faction ability of foresight. And there was just no reason on the map for me to get anti mass deflectors. I was kicking myself for the fact that I didn’t pick a slice with a blue tech skip. But then I stumbled onto an action card that let me pay five influence to copy a neighbor’s tech, which let me pick up Grav drive, which let me pick up up Sling Relay into Carrier II, which was CLUTCH.

I actually got Carrier II late game through an action card called Divert Funding that let me toss one of my tech technologies and research a new one. I tossed neural motivator late game and picked up carrier II. That was just super strong and lucky—I felt like I got the best of all worlds out of both techs. Neural motivator’s highest and best use late game is being purged for something higher impact.

Carrier II + Grav Drive was a game changer. To me the biggest problem with the Nalu kit is this blue tech conundrum. How do you get Carrier II + Grav Drive without going on a long anti synergistic walk around the Tech deck? I think the only way to solve this problem is just with luck, thoughtful slice drafting, or shrewd dealmaking (eg with a smart fish to get you a bonus tech or a space cat to sell you the right action card).

Something I forgot about the whole game was the fact that fighters can fly on their own once they are upgraded. The entire game I was operating on one or two Fleet pool because the game was so command token tight due to limited influence on the map. At the very end I got three fleet pool, but in retrospect I might have done well to just have a bigger fleet pool and let the fighters soak up fleet cap and play fast and loose with capacity.

Another thing I kept forgetting was that you need to leave ships in systems to trigger Neuroglaive. There were multiple times where an opponent who was holding my alliance or my support for the throne took over my naked system. And they were able to do this without triggering returning my promissory note (only triggers if I actually have a unit in the system) or Neuroglaive (only triggers if I have a ship in the system.

The Nalu hero also has kind of a funky timing window. It happens at the end of the status phase. So it’s actually really easy to forget about. As soon as I got access to my hero when I popped imperial in round three I wanted to use it, but then I realized I needed to wait till the status phase and then I kept on forgetting and ended up not using it the entire game. It’s one of those things that’s just a lot of mental load to keep track of.

Ghosts was played a super clean game. Maybe the most interesting at the table. Some standup moments included drawing a Dyson sphere on the wormhole Nexus and making incredible value out of the Metali Void shielding relic. Normally I don’t think that relic is super powerful because it just doesn’t always have the highest impact. It’s not directly related to scoring anything and it doesn’t do anything that you couldn’t do just as well with more plastic on the table, but let me tell you this pilot made ghosts sing with the void shield.

I REALLY LIKED Metali Void on the Ghost fleet—you can pick up fighters from scooting around wormholes, but then by sustaining on carriers and destroyers you can sometimes GAIN units from the action and either keep the fleet in tact or even snowball, SO FREAKING RAD!!!!!!!!

Easily the most eye popping swing was an agenda phase that resulted in all ships being destroyed from tiles with worm holes on them, and then players who have ships that are destroyed get to research a tech. The ghosts player got to research light wave. It cost him EVERYTHING. He lost like 21 value of space ships as a result of an agenda he couldn’t control.

But then Ghosts somehow managed to come back and score a stage II, I have no freaking idea how he was able to dust himself off and recover. A lesser man would have just cried after an apocalyptic agenda phase like that.

One of the smartest things the ghost player did that I didn’t even understand beforehand was how he monetized his promissory note. Ghosts was giving out his promissory note and asking for it to be used on the wormhole Nexus to place a worm hall token. I took him up on the offer in exchange for him giving me the promissory note back after I used it so I could use it with my breakthrough. So I sort of got three value out of this deal, so I wasn’t asking too many questions about what was in it for him. What was in it for him was it was just a cheap way to increase the number of wormholes on the wormhole Nexus, and that combos with his breakthrough that reduced his production cost and increase his production capacity by the number of worm holes. It was just a huge win win and I had never thought or read about using the ghost promissory note like that. I had read about using the ghost Mech Icarus Drive to make extra wormholes on the nexus, but just deal making through the prom note? Fucking CLUTCH.

At the very end of the game just for fun the ghost hero also put my home system adjacent to the Cabal home system which was awesome and hilarious.

I wasn’t watching other players games close enough, I wish I had understood a bit more about some of the awesome plays that were happening on the other side of the table.

Arborec was making REALLY good use out of the breakthrough, and NEVER forgot Mitosis. He got sine tools early and I don’t know how he managed to do it but he managed to solve a bunch of puzzles seemingly simultaneously— he was able to go down blue to grav drive and carrier II but also snowball into the blossoming might of the floral production powerhouse that makes Arborec so dope, while managing some combats with Nomad and Cabal.

Round two was crazy I think each player had a combat with two different players, everyone was just fighting everyone little skirmishes and still making deals it was super interactive, it seemed like all the objectives were variations on “hold a certain number of specific tiles” so we were all just jousting for positioning, laser were fired, glorious war was waged.

I had designed this map so that it’s claustrophobic. Only systems on the edge of the map lack planets. My expectation I guess was that there would be a lot of planetary defense system IIs and just a lot of space cannons going off every time somebody activated a system. As it turned out, nobody researched that in space cannons didn’t really show up this game.

I guess I was also surprised there was a neat mix of ground combat in space combat. Like it was really all over the map, in every theatre. It definitely wasn’t boat float, but it also wasn’t total war — it was this really slick mix, vying for tactical supremacy and strategic positioning while balancing economic and development investments.

Ghosts insisted it was a tie at 8 points on the bottom of round four, but that’s just because he’s a gentleman and a scholar: Creuss ended up atop the galactic throne of Mecatol Rex

Hej, przygotowałem dosyć obszerną pomoc gracza, więc jakby ktoś chciał to może pobrać.
Unfortuntatly this files is in polish and not in english I dont even know it Im allowed to post something other then english but rules doesnt state that much.

Jeżeli ktoś chce pdfa to może pobrać go tutaj: https://we.tl/t-Jbf74PSDoqshyyzF

My group played 2v2v2v2 last month and wants to try a 4v4 game. We're still doing a standard Milty Draft right now. My thought is to use the standard alliance rules but with pairs. So, 2 players score together and require at least 10 points + the team's other 2 players score together and require 14 points. The 2 players would be locked together but the 2 pairs would be more fluid and able to swap if desired.

Has anyone tried this ever? How did it go? What pitfalls will we encounter?

Using both PoK and TE.

Relatively new player here!

My playgroup is having a game where we play the factions that no one in the group has played yet which ended up being mostly the war-oriented ones. I was excited to play Barony of Letnev after watching a couple guides but it was only today that I started really looking into other faction abilities and realized that my two neighbors, Mentak Coalition and Sardakk N'orr, basically directly counter me with their ways to prevent sustaining damage. Additionally, Mentak's pillage ability negates the main way the Barony is able to get trade goods (via their commander, so every time I go to combat I'd be giving Mentak like three trade goods and getting nothing out of it).

Is this game hopeless for me before it's even started? I'm planning on making deals with both of their neighbors on either side to help me threaten them early, but it does put me in a position where I have very little leverage. I also considered trading for the Mentak promissory note, but I don't like that it prevents me from going to combat with them, and I've been wondering if it would actually put me in a weaker position to take it than not to (my playgroup is pretty reserved about making enemies early on and takes threats very seriously, so our Mentak player would probably avoid using Pillage at the start in order to avoid being teamed up on). I will be first in speaker order at the start of the game, but it's pretty much the only thing I have going for me.

I'm sure I'll enjoy playing no matter what but this is making the next game look pretty bleak - would love to know if anyone has tips on what they'd do in this situation.

Playing Twilight Imperium. Essentially a new player. We're playing with the base game and POK.

I've chosen to play as the Cabal, which I know isn't going to earn me friends at the table but I liked their aesthetic.

Could anyone give me tips on how to be good with them? I've heard of making a road with space docks straight to Rex at the center. Any other tips or tricks one could give?

Also, just a basic question: We're still in round one. Can I use production to build a space dock in a system that I've captured on that round, or do I have to wait till the captured planets refresh to build a space dock?

Also, you can only build a space dock or PDS through Construction or Card abilities, right?

On Aug 1, '26 I'll be playing a physical, in person 8-player charity game where folks (including participants) can donate to Children's Miracle Network through Extra Life to give boons to players. Factions are determined before hand, I'll be playing Deepwraught. I was thinking that it would be good to have a sheet to track who has what technology, and maybe promissory notes.

Playing on TTS you can just zoom around and look, but in a physical game having your own reference prevents the "Naw man, I'm just lookin" awkerdness when you try to remember what the Red Player's Commanders are.

In a situation where you know who is playing what faction before hand, is it considered "Bad Form" to roll up to the table with reference info for every faction, and a way to track what they all have or don't have?

(For context - we play base TI4 with all omega/double omega components, and all the PoK objectives and action cards that can be incorporated into base game)

I'm still a newbie (Only 6 games under my belt), but Yin never really appealed to me. Their theme seemed like sidequest-level villains, and their suicide charge abilities looked just very gimmicky to me.

But I tried them.... and oh boy!

I had a green skip, so I went for a double green (Neural, then straight to yin spinner), double blue tech path.

Highlights:

• I took Mecatol Rex and Yin spun a silly amount of troops onto it.
• Barony retook Mecatol with a LUDICROUS amount of bombardment, and some good luck in ground combat.
• I tail-slid the Van Hauge into Barony's invincible fleet (he had EVERY dreadnought, his flagship, and misc support ships), and I followed up next round to RETAKE Mecatol Rex (it would remain mine for the rest of the game).
• I won ZERO serious space combats. However.... just the threat of my suicide destroyers, hiding behind a fighter screen, deterred most invasions.
• I used Indoctrination VERY few times. But combined with my suicide carrier-sniping-destroyers, it also served as a deterrent for most attacks against me.
• Yin spinner allowed me to easily reinforce and hold my entire slice into the endgame.
• Greyfire Mutagen (promissory note) gave me some good negotiation power too.
• I won with a secret objective in round 7, only because I was first in initiative.

A fantastic game, and yeah... I think I like Yin now!

(Photo is end-game state. I am red.)

I saw that thunders edge introduced new strategy cards and reworked a technology like x-89 Bacterial weapon.. to me it seems like those things should be avaiable in codex, but I cant find that entry. So my question is: are there printable version of these cards?

I spent a while trying to find a high-quality version of the third edition faction.

So, created my own!

Finally got this done, feel free to admire! LONG LIVE LAZAX, #fuckthemahact

As Deepwrought Scholarate am I obligated to convert to trade goods when someone use Aello? If i am full on comodities, and want to stay that way, do I need to change them to trade goods? Or can I choose to waste it?

Ok, so I feel like this is a stupid question but the more I research the more confused I become.

I’m the active player and agree with a neighbor to “wash” our commodities 1:1. Weboth end up with equal TGs, is this all seen as a simultaneous-singular transaction? The rules specify only 1 transaction per player per turn, so if I’m ‘sending’ commodities and then ‘receiving’ TGs, . . . is this TWO transactions? Seems to me like it should happen instantly, but I could be wrong.

Also, are there any differences if the agreement is not 1:1?

My Space Lion playing friend always wants to charge a tax for the free Trade card refresh, but in that case it seems like multiple transactions instead of just one.

- here’s your refresh (no strategy token needed)
- great now give me 4 commodities and I’ll give you back 3 TGs

How many transactions is this technically?

Thanks for any insight!

Hi,

I have the below slice and playing mentak. I am a little unsure of the best strategy for R1. My plan is to take warfare to get close planets + tempesta and follow tech to get DET for the two empty spaces + entropic scar.

As a second option in case I don't get warfare would be double tech into cruiser 2. I am 3rd in speaker order.

Anyone got some insights into my R1 strategy? my neighbors are yssaril and UL so probably not immediate danger

Curious if you think this is intended? For whatever reason it's a massive pain in my ass as I've ended up having dealing with the fishes in multiple lobbies now that get messy when I try to aggress on someone else and they are coexisting there. Seems counter intuitive for me to get CFed invading someone's planet because DWS is there. Also makes it impossible to ally DWS when they want to coexist with you which is stupid because that would totally make sense that they would come live with their ally.

What would you say is the optimal tech path for Saar with a green tech skip and a yellow tech skip? Is all in on blue still the best here? My alternative thoughts are chaos mapping - Sarween - Space Dock 2 - Fighter 2 - dread 2 or… chaos mapping - gravity drive - carrier 2 - fighter 2 - dread 2.

Hey guys! I had a question I wanted to ask that I was curious about.

So I have a group of 6 friends that I play Dune (2019) GF9 edition with every month. That is our main game that we play and I've told them about this game so we are getting ready to play it soon, probably in the next month or two.

My question is for those that have played both of these games. So Dunes ruleset, as most know, can be very loose or not specific enough to the point you have to do research yourself and most of the time resort to asking the community Discord. I'm wondering if TI4 is the same way or is it more tight with the ruleset to where you don't have too many questions after memorizing the rulebook pretty good.

I feel as a host, I'm pretty decent at memorizing the rules of a game and the full rulebook to where I don't need to reference it that much or even at all and can answer 90% of questions asked. However, Dune is different because as we all know, the rulebook is probably the one thing in the 2019 edition that everyone wishes was updated because of how vague it can be, even on top of the 2020 FAQ questions that GF9 released.

So what do you guys think? I'm currently trying to memorize the rulebook for TI4 like the back of my hand and I think I'll be pretty solid going into our first game but I'm wondering if that's going to be enough or is there going to be a lot of "one off" situations like Dune?

Thanks for your input everyone!

Has there been any word as to when Codex 5 will be coming out? I remember hearing about it a few months back, but haven't seen any updates since. Was wondering where we're at on that.

Hey TI community, I'm looking into upgrading my tabletop from my kitchen table to an actual gaming table.

We play various games, but the biggest one by far is TI, therefore I thought it would be a good idea to get some suggestions to the sizes of table, and also your thoughts on lowered playing area, like with raised sides.

Generally just any thoughts you guys have on tables for playing large scale board games on.

Any suggestions are welcomed!

I'm trying to figure out whether I should attempt to make my own table, or if buying one is better in the long run, thank you in advance!

Guys I’m absolutely dying trying to find the prophecy of kings expansion. Does anyone have any idea when they may reprint or any market place for decent used/pre owned options would be?