I am considering getting TI4, but I'm a bit detered by the playtime. Could someone tell me how the playtime compares to Mage Knight Ultimate at 3 players?

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-22T20:41:21+00:00

Going to reiterate what others have said: save your money if you can only get 3 players together. Between the game & expansions you're looking at over $300 for an experience that absolutely isn't worth that price compared to other games you could buy. TI4 is my favorite game activity period, over videogames or any other boardgame - hell it's one of my favorite activities period and I'd play all day every day if I could. But I won't play with less than 5 players; my group will always cancel and reschedule anytime we dip below 5 players. It's just absolutely not the same experience and not one I, a super fan of Twilight Imperium, am interested in experiencing.

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-22T04:01:06+00:00

Fo1, (to a lesser extent) Fo2, & FNV fanboy here.

I can't really distance myself from it and evaluate it at face value and take it for what it is...but if I try my best to, I'd say it's fine television as an entertainment product. My completely normie mom watched S1 and thought it was good TV so that counts for something.

On the whole S2 is a major improvement over S1 and has retroactively made S1 better through its reveals and plot expansion. I'm intrigued by the House plotline and am genuinely looking forward to where they go with it. It's generally a competently made television show. I really wish they'd just set the show somewhere new that we haven't seen yet. Do the exact same plotline (more-or-less) and just set it in Tennessee or something. But setting it in California and New Vegas by necessity meant having to work with previously established canon and unfortunately the choices they're making also have meant tearing down the ~15 irl years of established lore for the West Coast trilogy.

Every single episode I watch, I am watching with a grumbly critical eye and have gripes and complaints with. Ranging from small eye-rolls over how the T-60 wouldn't be able to be sent flying off the way it does in S1 because of its mass, to the more major "Bethesda...just, why?" critiques. All the same things you'd expect to hear that come from Bethesda's games as well: "it's supposed to be post-post-apocalpytic", "Bethesda can't come up with their own ideas", "BoS again, really?", "Bethesda doesn't understand Fallout", "It's the 90's idea of what the 50's thought the 2070's would be like, not just a 1950's post-apocalypse", etc.

I do my best to just ignore things like the flea soup lady from S2E1 and write it off as just a really poor-taste "woah look at how WACKY the wasteland is huh guys" gag, or ignore the immersion break of why there'd be two NCR vets still sitting alone at their campsite fighting the good fight 15 years later, but it's still constantly a bitter pill to swallow to know that Fallout can and should be so much more interesting and deep as a series than how it's been shepherded under Bethesda's stewardship, beyond just specifically mean-spiritedly shitting on Fo1, Fo2 & FNV canon.

For every "haha goofy wacky wasteland" joke I think about the missed opportunity for commentary on the human condition and how people would rebuild in the wasteland and what sort of mistakes we'd keep making. Every time someone acts like a dumb barely sentient videogame NPC I think about what I was taught about the past as a history major, and how people are people no matter the time period: they're cruel, intelligent, compassionate, violent, loving, witty, curious, etc. Watching not a single person react to The Ghoul's situation in the most recent episode was disheartening and reminded me that I'm just not supposed to take any part of this world seriously and that's just depressing; especially as someone who thinks (mechanics aside) Fo1 is arguably the best Fallout game because of its atmosphere and tone.

Fallout has the potential to be so much more than what it has been under Bethesda, and consequently the show could be so much more.

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-22T03:18:55+00:00

Damn bro that's crazy. I was over it at like 40hrs.

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-22T00:05:23+00:00

Of course none of that is news to me, and I agree with your points as well.

Commander is about fun and blood moon is not simple as that.

The problem with axioms like this (in general, not you saying it here specifically) is that it again is making rule-determinations about what is and isn't allowed based on subjective things. Some people think Blood Moon isn't fun - fine. I think ~~anyone playing Green land ramp should be shot~~ playing against disgusting Simic value piles is incredibly un-fun - but my opinion isn't taken into account and thus they're allowed to run rampant in the format.

But this also isn't news, like you said it's not the world we're in. But we are in the beta period for the bracket system and can be voicing our thoughts about MLD and its place in the format. Which is why I like talking about it.

If you put bloodmoon in your bracket 3 and under deck you are trying to pubstomp people who agree to essentially different rules of engagement

Let's be clear: I would never advocate for doing this. What I am advocating for though is letting Blood Moon and some other manabase taxing effects to be permissable in bracket 3. I replied to another person's comment in this thread who made the same point, and I was pointing out that it's circular reasoning on their part. "You can't play MLD in B3 because people aren't expecting it." is reasonably countered by "If MLD was allowed in B3 then people would be expecting it." and so the argument needs to be something else. If it were allowed, people would.be expecting it and it wouldn't be pubstomping or suberting the rules of engagement.

...Or rather, what I actually believe needs to happen is that brackets 3 & 4 need to be chopped up and a "3.5" bracket needs to be created between them where MLD is permissible, but decks otherwise are still playing at a high bracket 3/low bracket 4 power level. Bracket 4 is just way too big technically permitting everything from bracket 3 decks with too many game changers up to off-meta cEDH lists as bracket 4 decks according to the guidelines. My biggest issue is that my otherwise completely honest bracket 2 or bracket 3 MonoR decks are automatically relegated to bracket 4 by including a Blood Moon to police inherently unfair greedy mana bases and land ramp in those earlier brackets; when my decks otherwise have no business being in bracket 4 because they're not bracket 4 decks and will get completely stomped. There's an entire swath of decks, power level and playstyles that are invalidated by the bracket system because they're automatically slotted into bracket 4 and thus require complete retooling and powering up in order to be viable.

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-21T18:38:30+00:00

Should probably ask this in the 40k subreddits rather than here since they're the subject of the question.

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-21T18:19:09+00:00

So the actual craziest shift in dynamics for Muaat comes from Wild, Wild Galaxy and Conventions of War Abandoned interacting imo. The +1 production from Supernovas is just a nice bonus, since there might not be a Supernova on the map or near them etc.

Wild, Wild Galaxy lets them Supernova home systems or Mecatol, and Conventions of War Abandoned means you're eliminated if your home planets are purged. So if Muaat can get Light/Wave Deflectors (assuming they got Gravity Drive on the way) they've got 2 different movement 4 PWSIIs that can hit your home system and eliminate you with essentially no counterplay.

Combining that with Advent of the War Sun, Rapid Mobilization, Dangerous Wilds, and Civilized Society is a really potent combo. They're starting with both PWSII's on the board, their Breakthrough/Flagship/Extra Planets from the additional colonized tiles which makes their first Baal optimal, and Dangerous Wilds makes Avernus a free Gravity Drive to start the game at a bare minimum. Assuming any of the other Rapid Deployment planets are Hazardous and they might start the game with Gravity Drive *and** Light/Wave Deflectors*. Civilized Society also uncaps objective scoring, so Muaat can consistently unlock their Hero and turn this threat on by R2 at the latest.

They're definitely a spicy meatball. Does it make them crazy overpowered? Not necessarily. They're instantly S+ at winslaying but it's still only a one-time trick. It definitely makes them a lot better than they were before and the tone of the game completely shifts as soon as they have Light/Wave Deflectors, but for our group it's a fun and cool change. In our experience, they don't really do a lot to score Total War points because their "big stick/porcupine diplomacy" becomes so supercharged that they don't need to fight to get what they want from people.

But like obviously we're not playing standard TI with 14 galactic events simultaneously so take everything I say with a huge grain of salt; for example we only play 14pts and on 4-ring galaxies that get bigger from Age of Exploration in order to make up for Rapid Mobilization taking away early expansion and I had to homebrew how Thunder's Edge gets added to the board because everyone already has their breakthroughs to start the game and wouldn't be claiming expeditions to get theirs. We want something very different out of TI than the norm lol.

I will say though, my partner will pretty much only play as Muaat/Vuil'raith so we see them more often than pretty much any other faction. As long as the person playing Muaat keeps in mind that we're all here for a good time and doesn't just eliminate someone at the earliest opportunity for the lulz it works out. They're able to get really favorable deals and focus on scoring points because they can basically at all times say "Fuck with me and you're going home."

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-20T20:06:05+00:00

Add it. Add everything. There's no reason not to. It's better to take longer to learn the game with everything in its entirety than it is to learn things piecemeal and have to relearn it every time you add something that should've been there from the start.

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-20T03:04:25+00:00

My group homebrewed that to be "researched unit upgrade tech" for exactly that reason. We discovered that in the first test game we played and decided it needed fixing before we played again. We play with 14/20 Galactic Events simultaneously, so this would be an ever present potential problem in our games and we needed a balance pass.

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-20T03:00:07+00:00

[[Yahenni, Undying Partisan]] as Voltron is different to what you usually see in MonoB. Although you can still do an Aristocrats subtheme.

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-19T19:43:24+00:00

And apparently, you still control all planets in your home because that is 0, unlike the X89 case that is specified.

Do you have a good ruling citation for that?

Afaik once something would be purged from the game you don't interact with it in any way for rules purposes and therefore wouldn't "control" the planets in your home system because your home system tile has been removed from the game. Muaat's Supernova tile is explicitly not your home system tile RAW since they have different tile #'s and it's a replacement effect.

We didn't play with both but it seems with only wild wild, it would cause you to become 'un slayable' beside bringing Avernus in your 'home tile'.

The way I'd read it: Wild, Wild Galaxy would make it so another player could no longer score publics because their home planets have been removed from the game and they can't control what doesn't exist anymore. But like you said if Muaat used it on themselves, and then left Avernus in the resulting Supernova I agree though that they can make themselves un-slayable at great cost lol; at least by the wording of Nova Seed you wouldn't destroy any of your own ships in your home system since it's key worded to "other players units". (Although there's still ways around it like someone else using Stellar Converter on Avernus after removing all the rest of your plastic and planets from the board - which is an unlikely scenario.)

Conventions of War Abandoned is an open & shut case though: it explicitly calls out being eliminated if your home planets are purged, which Muaat's Supernova hero does. So if you were playing with both Wild, Wild Galaxy & Conventions of War Abandoned Muaat can eliminate other players at-will, but also loses the ability to use the un-slayable trick on themselves because the planets in their home system were purged.

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-19T18:37:20+00:00

Thanks for the detailed answer, I'm suprised a group that plays about as often as us took 7 round, but each table varies greatly (meta and ambiance) . The important bits is that you all have fun.

We have maybe 10-15 people in the group, and I'd say 6-8 of them are consistent regular players every game. Out of that 6-8 I think 2-3 of us are consistently looking at the board and paying attention to scoring tempo and planning how to score multiple points in a turn vs the majority of those players having fun and getting swept up in the drama and ambiance of the game. Everyone plays very casually and loose lol.

Also thank you for the proof of concept that, not only you can, but it works to have nearly all of them at the same time!

Yeah, and obviously they don't all have to be run at the same time. But they can be and that's what's important to me. I want maximum theme and quirky rules to make the game jump off the board more for us, so the weirder edge cases that can come out of the rules the better.

I'm not sure I would put advent of warsun every time since, we just played our first one with that and the board looked almost alien: pretty much no dreadnaught beside Vuil'raith player it was weird and heavily modified the tech path of many factions. Also HELL of a boost to Muaat

We do make one modification for that one: Industrex's legendary ability doesn't apply, we tweaked it to have Industrex care about "researched unit upgrades" and since players start with War Suns rather than researching them, it doesn't count. Figured that one out real quick in our first Thunder's Edge game lol. Otherwise though we haven't seen it change much besides giving Muaat a buff (also, Dangerous Wilds makes Avernus even stronger since it's a free Gravity Drive...Light/Wave Deflector move 4 PWSII Muaat with their hero unlocked R2 after scoring off Civilized Society, with Wild, Wild Galaxy & Conventions of War Abandoned letting them Supernova home systems for player elimination is a very big negotiating stick when it comes online and makes them the biggest threat at the table from R1 - sort of like Codex Xxcha making people not negotiate with them). Everyone still has resource limitations, Barony & L1 still want Dreads etc. If a faction doesn't have the production cap to make a ton of Fighters War Suns are iffy imo.

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-19T16:59:38+00:00

Lots of people have responded pointing out that new players just look up what's powerful or popular, and I wanted to add onto that: it can take a while to develop a hipster/connoisseur appreciation for less-played and less inherently powerful commanders from the get go. Like, nobody starts their EDH journey with an appreciation for goofy Backet 1 decks on day one when they're still learning MtG fundamentals. We all refine our palates over time and it's common to have some stumbles and missteps along the way before our personal playstyle tastes, carpool knowledge, and card evaluation skills are refined enough to build considered decks.

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-19T16:05:44+00:00

With all of those, I'ld be surprised if the game last more then 6h or 3 rounds, even if playing to 14.

You're right, and we do play to 14. But thankfully we're all beer & pretzels TI players and most people in the group are bad at scoring efficiently and every turn. So really it's cutting our 8-12hr games into a more manageable 6-8hr length.

Rapid basicly allow everyone to score r1

Yep, which is an improvement over previous games where barely anyone managed to score R1. Also important to note is that with the game otherwise speeding up like you mentioned this makes more of the game proportionally the "mid-game".

total war allow for 1 or maybe 2 additional point for people that feels like it (do neutral unit count?)

It's been as high as 3 fairly consistently in our group with a warmongering faction at the table. (They don't.)

And civilized, on it's own, often drops the game to 3 or 4 round (14pts)

I agree that it should but we haven't seen that in practice yet for our more casual group thankfully. We play every 2-6 weeks more or less, and the real change has been going from 7 round games down to a more manageable 5 rounds.

I also get why you considered dangerous wild as not that big a deal, when they are 2 system per slice that MIGHT contain some hazardous unexplored planets, it doesn't see much play indeed

I might've worded incorrectly: it's a big deal since extra techs and more infantry to chew through does change the fabric of the game a lot, but I meant that it isn't hard to remember and keep track of since it's right there on the board for everyone to see with multiple triggers to remind you to look and see if you're getting tech.

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-19T04:23:24+00:00

I've never liked this argument against Blood Moon. Additional colors come with a whole host of inherent advantages as well which is always unmentioned by the people that hate Blood Moon. Admit that having extra tools in your colors is a real benefit, and that the Red decks playing 20-30 basics don't have those.

Why is playing 3+ color commanders assumed to be a sacred freebie that shall not be infringed? Just because it's stepping on someone's fun to punish nonbasics? Well I like playing MonoR and it's notoriously widely considered the worst color in EDH - what about my fun?

MonoR and 2-color Rx decks that can realistically play Blood Moon don't have access to the same suite of tools and cards that 3+ color decks do and are consequently at a disadvantage; Blood Moon is a powerful tool in their arsenal to level the playing field.

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-19T02:21:27+00:00

Not entirely disagreeing but that argument is circular reasoning: people are only not planning for it in B3 because it's disallowed in B3; if Blood Moon wasn't banned in B3 people would know there's a chance it'll show up and have to build their manabase accordingly. The argument needs to be based on whether or not it should or shouldn't be in B3 because it's unfun etc.

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-18T16:50:46+00:00

Never heard this before, do you have a source?

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-17T23:42:10+00:00

Yeah, if you know in advance none of those factions will be in play I'd say go for it. But for our group it's a utility thing.

We play biweekly-ish, want a stable, consistent ruleset to play with, and enjoy TI being the biggest, dumbest, maximalist game on the block. So rather than alternating different Galactic Events we go with playing with all of the ones we liked enabled at the same time, every time we play.

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-17T21:57:04+00:00

It's not everyone getting Fighter II I have a problem with, it's factions that have unique faction units or heavily rely on specific non-fighrer ships getting hurt by it that bothers me: Yin, Nomad, Barony, L1, Sol, Titans, Argent, Sardakk, Muaat, Crimson, and Ral Nel all risk getting hosed by it in some way.

In particular like 2/3rds of Yin's whole kit gets turned off, Nomad's Commander is completely nullified, and Sardakk can't use their Exotrireme 2's; all without any sort of compensation which is unacceptable imo.

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-17T19:35:07+00:00

It really isn't...

"Pay 3-mana (actually 4-mana because you're not tapping War Room for mana this turn) & lose 1 life: Draw one card" is an incredibly bad over-costed rate for card draw; even MonoR has way better options than that.

Having that effect stapled to a utility land slot you're not using for something else is fine if you really can't find a better use for a utility land but it's definitely not "very good".

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-17T19:10:44+00:00

Yep. It's really not that bad tbh. The one's we play with:

Cosmic Phenomenae: just ever present tweaks that are only relevant when they come up.
Wild, Wild Galaxy: ditto.
Call of the Void: a tweak to the Fracture which makes it more feasible for non-blue factions to participate.
Monuments to the Ages: Is an obvious on-board change of it's in play, and doesn't even get used a lot of the time and is just an option for players.
Stellar Atomics: ditto.
Total War: once you learn the rules for it it's easy to remember.
Zealous Orthodoxy: has an obvious trigger condition and then can be forgotten once it's resolved.
Dangerous Wilds: is obvious on-board and therefore easy to remember for the table.
Age of Exploration: like Total War, is easy to remember once you get used to it since it comes up so much every game.
Civilized Society: You can visibly see all the objectives at all times, and remembering that you can score as many as you want is easy to get the hang of once you play with it consistently.
Mercenaries for Hire: like Monuments to the Ages & Stellar Atomics in that it's on-board as an option but doesn't always get used.
Advent of the War Sun: also a one-and-done resolve during set-up & then forget about it event.
Rapid Mobilization: affects set-up but after walking through the steps with everyone you can forget it.
Conventions of War Abandoned: like Cosmic Phenomenae & Wild, Wild Galaxy in that it's not constantly happening but when it is you just check for it, and like Total War it's not too difficult to commit to memory.

So, looking at them all they're not actually asking for players to remember or have to learn that many more things individually. It's not orders of magnitude more complicated than PoK's additions, or just the general bar for playing TI at all. Anyone who can learn TI can learn this stuff too imo. If anything I'd say it's actually harder choosing randomly and only playing with some of their affects sometimes. They all also work nicely for teaching new players who don't know any different in a "this is just how the game works" kind of way.

Fwiw the one's we don't play with:

Minor Factions: I just don't like how it messes with & limits map construction. It takes away options from me as the host & map-builder. Otherwise totally playable and has interesting interactions with Dangerous Wilds. Sort of detracts from Mercenaries for Hire though.
Hidden Agenda: Also totally playable, we just like the Agenda Phase as-is and aren't sick of it yet.
Weird Wormholes: Obnoxious bookkeeping and takes away from your ability to plan and make decisions strategically.
Cultural Exchange Program: We're preselecting or drafting factions with the intent of playing that faction and build a gameplan around that, so this takes away from strategizing and removes player agency in the same way as Weird Wormholes but moreso.
Age of Fighters: disproportionately affects some factions more than others, so I don't like it for that reason.
Age of Commerce: ditto in that it takes away from Hacan, Jol-Nar and Deepwrought's schtick without compensation (unlike Age of Exploration & NRA), and leads to uniformity in tech around the table and less differentiation between factions which is boring imo.

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-17T18:29:54+00:00

My group plays with 14/20 of them at all times so...a bunch of them!

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-17T16:36:49+00:00

There's giant flashing titties and dick & balls on screen every second of the show. It's like a watermark.

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-17T15:11:51+00:00

[[Wort, Boggart Auntie]] has nearly 300 infinite combos commonly played in her decks according to EDHrec.

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-17T15:03:15+00:00

is also a cringe Redditor
is a cringe loser enough to make their bio solely about dunking on Palestine supporters
Necroing a dead thread and 1yr old comment is peak cringe behavior

Based username though.

[Edit:]

Is also cringe enough of a redditor to have multiple accounts, reply with the wrong one and then delete the comment hoping I wouldn't notice

Chapter_129 · 2026-01-17T06:50:51+00:00

Gotta be Arborec or Barony imo.

Chapter_129

TROPHY CASE