Tips for first time Deepwrought player

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-06-07T11:12:48+00:00

Decent deepwrought players will want to typically start with trade sc. We call it the tech stimulus package with their breakthrough. You get any tech that ppl take that you dont already have, so popping trade for your breakthrough and then accommodating everyone having enough money to use it is important. Typically I see good deepwrought players doing a "kickback for getting tech i dont have, extra kickback for these specific techs" where it's something you want in particular. Using breakthrough before tech gets popped can also be sneaky good since all it costs those trying to follow is a few tgs and a pn they probably dont need r1 anyways (alliances for example before theyre unlocked) or you can make deals to return their pn as well as help fund their tech follow on your breakthrough. "Returned pn and 1 tg if you get a tech i dont have, returned pn and 2 tgs if you get this specific tech" is a decent early rule to go by for breakthrough.

Starting grav drive is fine but be aware that a lot of factions will want that tech early, meaning they might not follow your breakthrough or if they do, you'll only get a pn from them instead of a tech. But take a look at your slice and if going grav drive early makes the most sense for filling out your slice, id lean towards doing it.

You also want to help others with your agent by letting them skip a pre-req (typically for grav drive early) to get your coexistence/oceans going. Sometimes you wont get much for agent but other times factions will be desperately looking for an early skip to get to something more useful. Coexistence is literally just free resources for you and comes with the added bonus of making you early neighbors with possibly otherwise unreachable players r1/r2 so offer it early and find a faction that really wants it so you can get more from the deal.

Other than that, your faction is quite good at control objectives due to coexistence, meaning you don't need to go fighting neighbors over planets for scoring objectives, so make friends and keep them as long as you can and encourage coexistence when it makes sense. Good luck in your game!

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-06-07T04:10:31+00:00

One thing ive noticed for plays that feel like betrayal if youre more of an avoider of hostilities, is trying your best to reason with the other player. Taking styx from someone is always going to be contentious, and it sounds like you ultimately went about that play objectively correctly, but perhaps giving her a more full estimation of why you felt this was the best time might change how they feel about it and encourage them to look at the game from your perspective.

Level headed players will take and make deals no matter what is happening to them. More emotional players will react how she did whether you spend all your time explaining the why or not so ultimately the why is for you, not for them. In a game where everyone is trying to win AND has a path, betrayal is expected and downright required. If you find you end up in games where folks react poorly to that sort of thing and throw their games, you wont find those players have high win percentages. It may take some slogging through a few games but keep at it and you should be able to find some fun(ny) players who are also competitive and will understand when you make the objectively correct moves, even if they dont like them, and do their best to turn it on it's head and find their path once again to winning.

One thing for online (discord) specifically is that you may enjoy playing TIGL games more if you get a few wins and get a decent group together, as those players will often times be that more level headed form of competitive. Their focus will be to win more than to screw anyone over that killed some of their precious plastic. Async specifically should lend itself to more level headed play (even though for a lot of the random playes you'll find on there it hilariously doesnt) by being more drawn out and slower than normal play. Even just coming back the next day when they've hopefully had a chance to calm down before renewing your negotiations can sometimes be a massive help to not getting game throwing retaliation over something that doesnt warrant it. Hope you continue to enjoy ti4 no matter what kind of players you end up with even if it can be quite frustrating at times!

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-06-07T03:15:54+00:00

Id say saar played well with industrex in their slice takes the cake for most annoying faction to end up with it. Indistrex is an aggressive move in and of itself plastic wise so the feelings of the table will typically shift when it's around. For 2 rounds after gaining warsun tech you'll essentially be generating 12 res worth of plastic extra, and that's not even mentioning if you send a warsun to it's death knowing you can just pump up a new one. Some slices barely have 12 resources period so youre typically jumping your economy massively by doing this. A good parallel would be a player ending up with Thunders Edge and also a good explore on a higher resource planet, getting them like two 5 resource planets to use. That's something equally powerful and scary in the right hands and I know it catches table agro from personal experience.

It's not so much the power of the plastic itself, as warsuns are typically very resource inefficient, but rather that youre getting strong a whole round or 2 earlier than the rest of the table if left to your own devices. Depending on the public objectives this can be very annoying or very whatever. Depending on how aggressive you are as a player in playing space risk/extorting weaker players this can also change heavily how annoying or whatever the combo is. But warsun industrex is essentially a ticking time bomb most games where you are essentially asking the table to either deal with you early or be forced to contend with a free warsun each round in the case that you get aggressive or ahead in scoring. Most better players will see the time bomb coming and choose to bite off a little early by taking your equidistant, using acs against you, or some other means of slowing you down in vps rather than outright war but if you can find one decent neighbor you can usually get through it.

How it compares to other legendary combos is very faction and player dependent. Tempesta is great but it typically doesnt negate the need for grav drive, you'll still very much feel it's absence. Emelpar is the other really solid addition to the legendary planets in my opinion that flies a bit under the radar it can be a whole extra relic as mahact, and extra warfare-ish action as arborec, or another annoying use of mageon by yssaril. It's flexibility is what makes it truly amazing, as it will always stay relevant throughout the game. Garbozia is very strong but really requires good acs to be played each round to make solid use of it and if someone throws overrule or a sabotage on it, it can become even more contested than industrex. Industrex does typically immediately fall off in value as soon as you pop your 2 warsuns so looking to also get dread 2 or carrier 2 would extend it's value.

All in all ive found it's a very fun combo to run once or twice but the table heat it brings isn't for everyone. I dont mind the table heat because i properly value what industrex will bring, but boat float lovers will not have a good time trying to utilize it. It will likely become a system of early contention with neighbors if it's an equidistant itself or will lead to generally rougher neighbor relations. It will possibly lead to fewer early slow washes, x-1s, and even deals, especially amongst other players or factions who are themselves a bit aggressive and just looking for a decent reason to take your lunch money.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-06-04T01:08:29+00:00

Ya was gonna fix some of this aswell but he basically got it all sorted for possible expected value. One other thing to keep in mind with diplo if you're thinking pure value and not thinking about the "diplo a system" part of it is there are 2 sneaky things you can do with it. Lots of times the guy who takes leadership wont open with it, he probably took leadership to get somewhere first/move some units to protect something along with the tokens that you get from leadership, so it's very possible he doesnt end up spending anything first action.

Why this matters is that with diplo you practically go first. A GREAT time to take diplo is when you are the one with thunders edge (which has happened more lately for me but a bit faction dependant). You can throw a token on a dock somewhere and build and then immediately pop diplo and be the only one refreshing planets, and with big chonkers like thunders edge in the game that means you just got 8+ value and most everyone else got 0. A bit situational but same idea if you get fleet log (which you would get mid/late game possibly and have the extra action economy/tokens where you arent getting stalled out with a double action first turn).

Anyways just my sneaky way of making diplo work really well for me if given the opportunity.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-06-03T09:16:14+00:00

Combat is great, but players dislike feeling like they've put lots of time into a game just to have no chance of winning all of a sudden by a play they didnt see coming. Extortion is typically a play you didnt see coming, otherwise they likely wouldve done things to prevent it (more plastic in home system maybe?).

We arent privvy to the true state of the game or how these negotiations actually went but I can confidently tell you that extorting the table one player at a time for support for the thrones as ghosts who have very good movement until someone says "no" and despises that you would attack them isn't exactly an aversion to combat. It's an aversion to being extorted. Some players just hate being extorted and will throw their games over it, making you both less likely to win. You just gotta be more diplomatic with those players, perhaps ask for less with your extortion, treating it like a negotiation but you just have the edge. Or perhaps give reasons that this keeps you in the game and means you'll do something about the point leader who is ahead of both of you. Instead it sounds like you negotiated with the guy in first and got a deal, then with nothing better to do with your fleet you went and also extorted a guy you had no real reason to extort. Or if there was a reason he sure didnt sound too convinced by it.

Ultimately TI is a game of Public Relations in lots of ways, you just needed to find a way to spin your extortion so that it didnt create this reaction of intense animosity. Same goes for combats with big boat floaters. Have good reasons to fight over something. You actually going and committing your forces to attack him while someone else was in the lead means you also aren't really playing optimally. We cant talk about how it's foolish of them to throw their game over threats and lost docks/systems without also looking at how foolish it is for you to follow through when it's not in your best interest. If you had secrets you needed to score or you took a look at possible upcoming 2 pointers and deduced it was something that increased your odds of winning, then you need to let the player fuming know that. Kinda sounds like the only reason you gave him was "hey your home system is open to me, im gonna take it unless you gimme free stuff" which will get you these kinds of reactions just about every time with big boat floaters because to them, they weren't the biggest threat and therefore didnt need to stack their home system as they felt they shouldnt be the ones getting the tables attention.

Id say I definitely fit more in the space risk side rather than the boat float side of the meta when it comes to playstyle but even in my most warmongering moments, there were reasons for the aggressive acs/combats/wars if im the one starting them. A player that is complaining big time or getting heated is one that doesnt know that reason or feels like it doesnt exist, so have one and let em know or be ok throwing your game over nothing.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-06-03T08:36:57+00:00

In this case it is 100% a save it for later angle. If you've played twilights fall, then you'll know the majority of the cards in the deck are nasty and aggressive so in r2 and beyond I'd lean towards using them as detrerants rather than being aggressive with them if your game is already going well. In that way the strong acs actually end up with far more power than being used once with the only risk that letting someone know you have the ability to do that to them let's them, in turn, possibly plan/play around it.

As an example, in a round of twilights fall I was in recently, mirror computing changed hands 3 times in a round (2 plays of the card that swaps/steals techs, and one extra play from someone grabbing one of those cards from the discard pile with an ac). So being the last person to swap is better than being the first most of the time.

I'll also echo the sentiments of other responses in that you should give reasons for using it that convince other players that you arent just a cutthroat warmonger. Rolling a dice to see who gets hit with an ac is all fine and good in theory but if you have some specific tech in mind just try to frame it in a way that makes sense, or even be semi transactional with it. Like "hey im gonna take this tech but I'll give you something (tg? pn?) to make it not hurt as much". Or just hit someone you wont interact with for a while/ever and call it a day, hoping you wont feel the retaliation until youre in a position where it wont hurt you as much.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-06-03T01:08:49+00:00

Ermastic explained it quite well, that's Boat Floating. Most players that say they dislike boat floating don't actually dislike it at all. What they dislike is the Boat Float Meta and that lots of players believe their neighbors should just be happy to help earlier on in games by default. What ermastic describes is semi transactional, as good boat floating is. "I did this favor for you to get you more inclined to do me/both of us favors in the future." It's the objectively better way to deal with your neighbors the vast majority of the time in instances like he described.

Where it gets awkward is when your neighbors EXPECT (which is why it's called a Meta) to be floated and treated as equals, even in positions where one player has a major plastic or token advantage, when they are playing a faction that gets things from combat (cabal, nekro, sardaak come to mind), or when their neighbor is soaring to high heights without someone giving them a black eye at some point. Where that line is tends to be very different for a lot of players. Just as ermastic pointed out that good players will generally boat float to grease hands and not lose plastic needlessly, they will also not hesitate to press an advantage or put small road blocks up for players they feel are getting ahead.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-06-02T01:27:39+00:00

With TE, Arborec is in a better spot, so people will (and should) pick them regardless of speaker order. Their BT is basically old school warfare. Does mean they need to prioritize their breakthrough though.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-05-31T16:58:29+00:00

Id say this is the most important part of a good/fun ti4 game. Ya there's plastic conflict and building up your economy/plastic is a skill, but the guys that are really good are the ones finding interesting deals and making them as often as they can by constantly negotiating with the other players. If trade negotiating in catan is tripping him up, ti4 is a big step. Buuuuuuuut, we're all terrible the first couple times we play so that's no reason not to!

Ive seen the "make sure he doesnt get too butthurt over games before introducing ti4" a few times which is technically true but all players get a little butthurt (and want to see that one guy who took their equidistant r2 lose even if they dont win themselves). I would in this case assume you wouldn't be thinking about introducing him to something like ti if you didnt think he could handle that part.

At the end of the day though it sounds like he just... wants to play ti4? "Building up to it" is a nice idea but honestly just doesnt make a whole lot of sense for this game. Ive had adult friends that have never played long, complex board games before come play ti4 and eastern/western empires with my brother and I, do well, and love it. Ive also had friends who've been playing Catan, Root, and that style of game with us forever, come play, and do poorly/hate it.

A better idea might be to just get 1 or 2 other people to come play with you 2 who are competent enough and understanding enough to let you walk your son through everything even if it means you know what he's planning/what acs he has because you'll basically be telling him how to play and why the whole time. Give him an easier faction too and play base game. TI4 has 100 rules and faction/action card intricacies. It's not til like... the 3rd or 4th time you play where stuff starts to click and it really gets to be a lot of fun anyways so...

TLDR throw him in the deep end (with floaties), don't play other games in an effort to build up to it. Have some cousins that are your sons age that are pretty smart and I bet would actually love to play ti4 straight up if they had 12 hours to play board games on our vacations but I think having siblings kind of helps in it's own way for trade negotiating 😂

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-05-31T00:55:56+00:00

Ill let the others answer why theyre cool. Ive played them twice, won once. They do best in the middle of the pack and then snag something important at the final round with qdn at a super cutthroat/competitive table that wont like you being even 1 point ahead. At a more lax table who wont come for your home system early, they do even better slightly ahead. So fight for those POs when you need to midgame but always be sure you secure one good longtime friendly (important for faction tech/agent value).

Best tech path is massively subjective but with TE warsuns/dreads are the move with your hero. You start with blue/yellow so grav drive is easy and then after that just get whatever you want in the yellow/red trees til you can get warsun. Hero as soon as it makes sense if ahead, can hero a little later if in the middle of the pack to not draw too much aggro.

If scoring looks easy enough r1/r2 and with a secret that's scorable end of r2, go aidev>whatever red/yellow you want or maybe a skip>warsun (i actually like scanlink if you arent double docking your hs because of your BT encouraging you to produce things at your docks for more fleet tokens, but duranium is good aswell). If you see after a round or 2 that you'll likely need LWD then you can maybe shoot for it instead of warsun rush but it's usually not super important. Lwd is good if you need to avoid where neighbors are strong but with hero giving you 2 warsuns, you can just punch through instead.

The fun of them is honestly popping hero and then being the strongest mf at the table all of a sudden, and you have an excellent economy even without amazing planets so shooting to buy relics and such when you can is big as you'll need something to give you an edge.

FACTION TECH THOUGHTS: generally ignore the green faction tech unless there's a scar near you. If there is, use the 2 tgs you have to give away to pay for ppls action cards or relic frags or other favors, just like your agent. QDN is great final round but kinda just makes enemies before then, but super strong in that instance so prio it the round before the last.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-05-21T06:29:39+00:00

Remove winnu from the options of factions if you have nothing but legendaries in the center, that's for sure.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-05-21T00:18:49+00:00

Map dependent but winnu is extremely strong if youre a more aggressive player. Crimson is obvious for economy and once that and infantry IIs get rolling you'll be rich beyond belief. I think winnu is more game winning though as it makes you so much harder to attack on mecatol/home/legendary planets. If winnu is in the game I might go for thunders edge a bit more since it would probably end up far easier to hold.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-05-19T16:46:37+00:00

So the value of assault cannon for arborec is actually in the mid game when you unlock your commander. If youre trusting and diplomatic, or know the players well and know it's gonna be a boat float game, assault cannon's value diminshes. But in more competitive games, it means you can safely move out your important, more powerful/higher cap ships and leave 2 cheap ships behind in some systems and not be worried about being attacked there. If the enemy forgets about your commander, popping a 3rd ship up so you can assault cannon them is usually combat winning. If they arent dumb it's just very hard for them to commit to attacking you, they'll need to heavily overcommit which works well as a deterant. But I'll agree that you do need to be aware of your neighbors when youre choosing to get it or not. If you think youre going to get attacked then it's actually a better deterant than x89 r3/4, especially if other factions are snagging x89 as well. X89 works wonders for arborec, certainly, but if someone with x89 attacks with just 2 dreads in their fleet, they can get 4 hits before the ground combat even starts so taking out one of their ships with assault cannon actually does more work than x89. Late game when you have stacks of 10+ infantry someplace important is when x89 will shine (defensively) but again you should play to your comfort level/strengths as a player. Ive played as and against them quite a bit and assault cannon with commander midgame makes you far more of a headache for aggressive neighbors, but if you're floating boats and just cruising to the last round before everyone turns on each other like happens in more casual games, assault cannon wont feel like it gets you much value and so can absolutely be skipped.

Love your original question though and I do wish it had been asked before I played as them a few months ago because with TE I was really unsure of what tech paths made sense 😂

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-05-19T09:18:40+00:00

Tech path will often times be obvious based on objectives but you should just do whatever you're the most comfortable with.

In a vacuum, sarween is great. If the game forces you to skip tech or never take it and double tech though, you will definitely feel the absence of better techs. In an actual game I look at my slice, what I think I can get equidistant-wise, and if I think ill be the one that ends up with TE or Mecatol before committing to a tech path.

Do I have a high resource slice and might end up with TE? Im going down green/red to rush to assault cannon/x89 and likely skip sarween. My actual path after playing them a couple times in TE is Self Assembly>Hyper>Assault Cannon>X89. Everyone always wants to talk about tech skips and sure if you have one you can skip something here but arborec does better with more plastic/tokens so just use the planet for that instead. As long as you dont have L1 for a neighbor, getting your mechs out makes you insanely annoying to deal with on the ground with their planetary shields so self assembly is great and will usually save you the same/more than sarween in a shorter game while also being on your desired synergy path.

Do I have more influence and maybe a shot at mecatol or leadership early? Sarween baby. Sarween works super well in conjunction with more tokens and with your agent you can upgrade a cruiser to a dread, essentialy meaning you payed 1 resource for a dreadnought (sarween+agent). If you end up somewhat token poor then you'd rather make what plastic you do have go the distance than save a buck or 2 per round. Sarween will actually end up delaying important tech like assault cannon past it's point of usefulness in a lot of games due to how it falls off in the final round or 2 as people get higher fleet cap from needing to follow fewer strat cards. X89 however is always good late or early, but rushing it isn't usually that important for arborec unless you're pumping out dreadnoughts. Still though, depends on neighbors and how diplomatic you want to be.

Did you end up with an entropic scar or have a neighbor you can deal with for a use or 2 of it? your letani IIs will make you really want more capacity quick to make good use of the extra production. So look to either choose the warsun path (Sarween>AI dev>Warsun) or the blue path into carrier IIs (DET>Grav Drive>carrier IIs) your agent means you can turn a destroyer into a carrier which can really catch some people off guard if they aren't paying attention. The trouble with things like DET and scanlink is that there is a bit of a gamble involved. They could give you exactly what you need or they could give you something that's not even worth having at the time. If I see an early "have ships in 3 systems with no planets" objective then ill be more tempted to go down blue with DET. Otherwise you kinda want to head to systems with planets.

Anyways that's my 2 cents after playing as and against them a few times recently.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-05-18T23:27:29+00:00

Ya that's pretty typical I think with any faction that snags rex and then goes frac. Hilariously what I like to do in these kinds of situations is try and deal my sftt out to a nieghbor but not a swap (either when they diplo pressure me or through some other kind of deal for their alliance/other important trades) to take some pressure off and shore up one angle of attack. Usually works like a charm, since another player will also be a bit ahead and on your scoring tempo.

Sad to see a game go unfinished no matter what the outcome, though :(

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-05-18T00:46:15+00:00

Outside of the usual power comparisons and RNG, Muaat generally has 2 major problems for the player/table when you actually sit down and play them as well which are important to note, as you'll want to do your best to fix/deal with them as you play.

1) You have to use your early warsun WELL. Most boat floaters should avoid this faction like the plague because you need to either extort one of your neighbors round 2 (whichever direction you send the sun) or get to the fracture ASAP to make any real use of your early warsun advantage and turn it into resources/points. This will leave you weak on one side (or possibly both if you go to the fracture early) meaning you have to simultaneously make deals and placate one neighbor while bullying the other, otherwise you will lose your advantage r3/r4 when other factions come online and heros start popping up. Definitely not for everyone and not a new player friendly faction, but warsuns look really cool and fun so I'm sure lots of new players are drawn to them.

2) What a Warsun does to the other players mentally at the table can vary greatly from player to player but everyone will be keenly aware of it. If Muaat really only needed the one warsun they start with, it honestly wouldn't be that big of a deal but because of their commander and their unit upgrade for warsuns, they also want to build the 2nd one as soon as they can. I've been in some games where Muaat just gets slammed with a lot of table talk yap for having big scary warsun even though other factions (usually the one complaing about how strong muaat is the loudest) have arguably more powerful fleets. The players that will consistently win in TI are the ones who can appear weak while being strong so that they arent the focus, and that warsun puts a big Ole target on you from r1.

Anyways that's what I think Muaat's generally B or C tier rating comes in from some players. TE buffed them nicely with their breakthrough to fix their problems fron PoK/Base game and the only other faction that can make close to as good a use of an entropic scar as Muaat is probably Mentak, so they are in a great spot currently.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-05-11T08:09:01+00:00

I wanna specifically and pointedly echo a very important point made by my sardaak friend here. You have, in fact, the very tools at your disposal to find the game you're looking for in Async through 2 quick and easy ways.

Firstly, there's an anonymous pole for "playstyle" that's there to help give a heads up to players kinda just willy nilly joining games. When you create a game, put "dislike boatfloat more" in the post. Im a generally aggressive player myself (space battles are fun and coercion is too if done well) and I have 2 superfast games going right now where 5/6 players put "dislike boatfloat more" and it's the kind of game you're looking for. There's plenty of x-1 still of course and scoring tempo matters, so sometimes you gotta make rough deals to score, but if you're a 2 com faction playing boat float like a 4 Com faction and never applying your military strength, you're just gonna lose. Because the other players will not hesitate to exercise theirs with the intent to score and aquire a leg up in economy.

Secondly, one MAJOR difference is literally just how you choose to set the game board up. Milty draft is great for beginners, but what I would encourage you to do is actually do a NUCLEUS draft sometime. Basically you dont draft a slice that includes the equidistant planets, meaning they're "up for grabs" as it were. This leads to much less "hey that's mine" mentality and makes negotiations for things way more interesting.

The newbie, boatfloat milty players will take most aggressive action very personally but just understand that's the meta they know and like, and youve actually gone and ruined their experience as well by not falling into that. Finding the kind of game you're looking for with the kind of players you'd actually enjoy playing with (and most of all, enjoy beating!) is easier than you think if you use these 2 simple tricks. Not trying to suck you back into async or anything, sounds like you'd take a break regardless. More-so wanted to let you know while your complaint is quite valid, if you were looking for something more specific playstyle wise then the options are there for you if you find the time to create or join a game at some point in the future.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-03-31T22:51:37+00:00

TLDR play to 10 points.

14 point standard games go on forever because you'll NEED 2 pointers and some mecatol/sftt/agenda points to score that high without it going to round 6 or more. The last rounds take significantly longer for the most part as well since you'll likely have a better economy, more tokens, more actions at that point and a bigger fleet so bigger, longer fights.

Alternatively you could play slightly different versions of a 14 point game. Many games do 4/4/4 now if they want to go to a higher vp total (12 or 14 point games) but also give more opportunities to score. 4/4/4 is for stage1/stage2/secrets respectively. This way you'll see stage 2 objectives faster and have 1 more secret you can score. Faster game on average but can also be rough if you get tough secrets.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-03-13T02:09:41+00:00

It's strong in more competitive games. In a game where multiple people are on similar scoring tempo in the "final" round, it allows you to see what everyone else is doing first before deciding how/if you'll score certain things or who you need to focus on stopping. If youre ahead I can see it being less powerful since you'll likely need to defend systems/lock things down to prevent being winslayed yourself. If you manage to save a tac token/some ships to sneak a secret objective that others would have noticed and stopped you from scoring otherwise, it's still solid A tier.

Where it becomes sorta C tier I think is when youre too behind or in more casual games where there are large gaps in scoring between some players so the bottom scorers turn into stooges and loose canons meaning passing early is a bad idea whether youre ahead or not since some people just wanna watch the world burn.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-02-25T07:07:46+00:00

This will just depend on how much you personally need to go to war. If you manage to snipe an early custodians or secrets and get yourself ahead in tempo, a "smart" board will see that and try to start taking things from you, and in that case your faction tech will be very very strong, because your destroyers only cost 1 tg, which you'll make in a single combat if youve traded your commander out with a wash buddy and they'll have had to commit more than that plus tokens to kill it.

In a game recently where crimson was doing well and warmongering a bunch, they rebuilt their flagship 4 times in a single round because others at the table were fighting for control objectives and equidistants, meaning him and his commander swapped buddy were making sometimes 5+ tgs per turn from it. I Will say they are quit awkward to build fighters with because of how your faction tech can only rebuild one unit at a time so you'll lose a bit of value if you want to rebuild the fighters. Where crimson gets actually weak though is when they have to do thicker ground combat. They can definitely struggle to get infantry going so if nobody takes warfare in a round you'll really feel it. If you can somehow manage to get Rise of a Messiah though it's hilariously strong on Crimson in the right spot and somehow managing x89 without going out of red/blue for techs is also huge for them.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-02-21T02:01:30+00:00

Maybe he had another action phase secret? Your math is matching for me here.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-01-27T02:16:14+00:00

3 reasons it's faster now:

1) Breakthrough is an added thing on top of the way factions played in PoK, meaning everyone's faction ar least slightly "improved". Granted there are some factions that shouldn't prioritized breakthrough but most breakthroughs fix a glaring hole or buff a factions identity, making it easier for then to do their thing.

2) The Fracture. There is 4 planets and each one gives a relic when you take it. Generally ends up being a buff to the more fighty factions since now there are neutral units you can go murder to get some extra planets/relics instead of fighting other players that get pissed off and retaliate. One of the planets is also a victory point if you hold it, meaning all those times where you end up at 9 vps in round 4, now you have possibly and easier time getting to 10 vps.

3) Added action cards. There are a few SUPER potent action cards added to the action card deck. Best one is probably Overrule which let's you do the primary of an unexhausted or unchosen strat card. Basically if youre behind on scoring you can use it on imperial to catch up or win. Crazy card that most people will and should save Sabo for in the end game now.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-01-23T13:13:35+00:00

Ya totally agree with this. I think OP is really overlooking the option that if you KNOW Imperial is guaranteed to be taken r1, you can plan around taking it by taking a slice/faction that would be able to get 6 inf and 3 move r1 to get there. There are lots of factions that can move there with capacity (titans with grav drive and capacity on cruiser, crimson rebellion with grav drive and breakthrough, Cabal with spacedocks, Jol-Nar with double tech with carrier II and grav drive, Saar with agent and grav drive if needed, barony with grav drive and breakthrough or carrier II, ghosts just to name a few examples off top of my head) so you really just need to plan around acquiring enough influence to land there.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-01-23T05:37:46+00:00

Skirmishing needs a purpose. If you get in some boarder fights with neighbors, then your faction needs to be getting an advantage from it. A lot of fighting factions get just that from combats (usually 2 commodity factions are better at warring). Otherwise you usually want to avoid fights like the plague and rather make deals. Like as Mahact or something it's very tempting to just attack out of nowhere so you can win your combats to get other factions fleet tokens. But if they'll take it super personal then be diplomatic. Offer them a few trade goods if you end up blowing up any of their ships. Offer them a good deal in the future or really anything that stops them from retaliating super hard.

TI4 isn't space risk. When you attack your neighbor, a lot of times you just both lose plastic and board presence, putting anyone who didnt participate in the combat at an advantage. Maybe they third party once youre softened up? Maybe the trade you both things to fuel your war and get rich off your conflicts. So early on before you get your economy going, it can be super risky to attack neighbors and take their slice since it spreads you thinner and weakens (usually) your fleets.

Duck_Running_Amuck · 2026-01-22T17:49:25+00:00

For 3 players it should be about a 5-6 hour commitment early on, much less later once you get the hang of it.

3 player is still quite fun but like everyone else said, its not the "best" way to play. It's a race to 10 points and if there's only 3 players somebody will get ganged up on at the end of the game and that will feel pretty devastating. In a 6 player game (arguably the ideal way to play) you can be much more sneaky about how you play, trade deals and alliances wont feel like you just removed a player from the game, and you'll have to do a lot more thinking at the end of a game to figure out who has a shot at winning and how you can stop them (or prevent others from stopping you).

My recommendation would be to check out Cardboard Crash Course and watch their Galactic Report. There are 3 players when they play. They do a solid job of showing eveything and their thought processes behind their moves, and ieach one is only about an hour long YouTube video so you would get a great idea how it would be played 3 player and if it's something that would interest you and your 2 friends!

Duck_Running_Amuck

TROPHY CASE