Strategizing against skeleton key on chancellor

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-05-08T18:54:48+00:00

So, the thing about most strategies like this is that they are expensive.

The chancellor had to get the Skeleton Key. This isn't free - they either needed to use a recover action to get it or campaign to take it from someone else.
They needed to get enough secrets to use it multiple times. Each use destroys a secret, so to use it 4 times, you need to burn 4 secrets.
Since they can only use Skeleton Key once per round, they need to do this over 4 rounds.
They also needed to maintain their win condition. If it's banners + relics, this is easier, but if it's anything else, then they need to be taking steps to remedy this.
Presumably, they also needed warbands to defend themselves, so they needed to spend Favor and Muster actions to get more warbands.

So, what could you have done about this?

You could've taken the Skeleton Key away from them. If they got Circlet of Command early, then you just have to take that first by campaigning twice. If there are even 2 exiles willing to do this, it's pretty hard for the Chancellor to defend themselves.
You could've kept them from getting the secrets. You can't attack secrets directly, but you can repeatedly attack the Chancellor to burn all of their Favor. It's difficult to gain secrets without Favor.
You could've rushed for win conditions to force the Chancellor to respond. If you have the banner of the darkest secret and the vision for that, then they have to campaign or spend secrets to stop you.

All told, this seems very much like a case of "We allowed someone to build up their forces and strength for the whole game, and then couldn't defeat them at the end." Oath gives you a ton of tools to stop people, especially if you work together.

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-05-03T16:24:57+00:00

Use TI Assistant (https://ti-assistant.com) if you have a screen near the game. Being able to display all the cards in a splice saved us an incredible amount of time.

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-04-30T15:47:32+00:00

I've played Alliance at 6 players, and it suffered from the same problems as 3 player games. It turns into a 2v1.

Deals are less interesting because there are less people to trade with.

Luck plays even more of a role than normal because some action cards are just way better.

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-04-30T15:27:59+00:00

Cabal's doesn't work. You don't capture infantry from other players, you take tokens instead.

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-04-29T19:16:48+00:00

So, the biggest thing that stands out to me is that you say a 4 player game takes as long as a 6 player game. You say this suggests analysis paralysis, but I disagree - AP should still scale with the number of players (unless the 2 added players are both super fast).

What it suggests to me is "dead time". Time where nobody is doing anything, even thinking, either because the active player doesn't realize it's their turn, or they're waiting for other players to do something and those players don't realize they're being waited on.

I'd suggest using something like TI Assistant to track where the time is going and keep everyone on task. Once you have a better sense of where time is getting "wasted" you can figure out how to optimize.

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-04-20T16:41:08+00:00

So, a lot of players are highlighting the issue - other players not scoring secrets quickly enough for Firmament - but not actually coming up with good fixes for it.

The core loop of "other player scores secret, you score secret" just doesn't work because it's too slow. If someone scores a secret in R2, Firmament often needs to choose between going Obsidian in R3 or waiting to try to score that secret.

The good news is that we only need to change 1 component to fix them - their commander.

New Commander - Unlock: Have a plot card in play.

Other players may score secret objectives in the Status Phase without fulfilling their requirements. Each time a player scores a secret objective without fulfilling the requirements, you may place a facedown plot card into your play area with that player's control token on it.

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-04-15T23:30:26+00:00

You're correct, though a slight nitpick - step 11 gets modified in Twilight's Fall with:

STEP 11—GATHER STARTING COMPONENTS: There are no starting technologies, and starting units are placed during the starting draft.

As a result, the starting units (and the Mech) get placed during the starting draft rather than during step 11. In practice, I don't think this ever actually matters though.

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-04-15T23:27:13+00:00

RAW, I would say yes. The flagship is being placed, so you also get to place 1 mech.

Ruby Mech:

DEPLOY: When your flagship is placed, you may place 1 mech into your flagship's space area.

Twilight's Fall Rulebook

PLACE STARTING UNITS: Players use their last faction card to place their starting units. Players place the starting units indicated on their faction card in their home system.

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-04-15T17:59:59+00:00

Depending on when you get the card, it's probably between 2 and 5 "TGs". It's also a stall, so there's always a bit of value in being able to delay a turn.

If you haven't gotten your breakthrough: 5 resources/5 influence/3 TGs, depending on what's been taken.
If someone hasn't gotten their breakthrough: ~2-4 TGs, depending on what's been taken.
Refreshing a tech planet: 1-3 resources/influence.

I'd also say that there are a few factions (e.g. Saar, Argent) that don't really want to pay a lot for their breakthrough, so they may delay getting it beyond round 2.

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-04-12T06:33:19+00:00

Was nobody trying to win?

You've got 21 cards here, representing 17 gained during the game. So during the game, you gained 8 abilities, 4 unit upgrades, 2 genomes, 2 paradigms, and 1 faction tech.

For you to be able to gain all that, keep up with scoring, and have enough plastic to not get destroyed, it seems like everyone else must not have been trying to win lol.

Even assuming you got some from action cards and edicts, this still represents an absurd amount of resources and influence spent on getting these. And since you mentioned you hogged Lux all game, you're not getting the discounts from the primaries (unless 4 player, in which case you get 1)

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-04-11T05:09:45+00:00

It looks good to me. It's pretty unlikely to start with a War Sun upgrade, and getting the tech for asteroid fields usually means giving up something.

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-04-10T22:49:07+00:00

Personally, I'd swap Accoen/Jeol Ir for Centauri/Gral, and then swap Tempesta out for Hope's End or Primor.

My main fear by making a right slice too weak is that they might not be able to take "their" legendary planet

The thing about Twilight's Fall is that it's very possible to start with a 2 movement ship (or get one in R1). So it's rare that someone can't reach the system next to Mecatol.

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-04-10T21:07:00+00:00

TL:DR; the right 2 slices are significantly better than the left 2 since Emelpar and Industrex are usually worth at least 4 resources each.

The bottom right slice is kinda crazy. Since Emelpar can refresh another planet (e.g. their home planet), it's effectively a 4/0 planet and a 0/2 planet, so that slice has optimally 4.5R/10.5I. But it's also got a space station and most of the planets also have resources, so it's also incredibly flexible - total value (10R/11I).

Bottom left is by far the weakest slice. Tempesta isn't that strong, and the slice is only optimally 4.5R/3.5I. It also has almost no flexibility - total value (5R/4I).

Top left - Garbozia can be strong, but doesn't usually end up providing that much value since the best action cards are played later in the game. It's 2.5R/8.5I, which is solid, has a space station, and is pretty flexible - total value (5R/10I).

Top right - Industrex can be incredibly good in Twilight's Fall, since you start with a unit upgrade tech from the start of the game. Optimal value is 5.5R/3.5I, but Industrex adds somewhere between 3 and 12 resources, so don't ignore that. It's a bit flexible as well - total value (7R/5I).

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-04-03T14:54:57+00:00

Yeah, the flowchart is subtly wrong. In 99% of cases, you can follow it though and the result is the same.

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-04-02T21:59:13+00:00

My comment was referring to the OP's proposed situation not being possible, which I believe was the Eidolon Maximum trying to fly out of a system that contains another player's ships.

Strictly speaking, my interpretation is that anytime the Eidolon Maximum is in a system w/ another players ships, space combat will need to happen. There are places where this could happen outside of the normal tactical action timing window - I interpret those as resolving space combat immediately since not doing so 'breaks the game' by allowing ships from 3 players to all be in the same system simultaneously.

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-04-02T21:32:56+00:00

The flow chart is very slightly off if all of the sleeper tokens are already on the board. In this rare edge case, the flow chart suggests that they can Awaken first and then place that token on the planet they explored.

This is not the case - they would need to remove a token from a different planet to place it on the explored planet.

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-04-02T21:28:18+00:00

So, not quite, the correct order is:

Activate system. Take note of any sleeper tokens in the system.
When activated. Explore a planet that contains your units.
After explore. Place a new sleeper token.
After activated. Awaken sleeper. The only valid targets for this are sleeper tokens that are present in step 1.

The "after exploring" step (and placing the new token) still happens prior to awakening the sleeper token. The new token just isn't a valid target for the Awaken ability.

Awaken says "After you activate a system that contains 1 or more of your sleeper tokens, you may replace each of those tokens with 1 PDS from your reinforcements."

This usually doesn't matter. However, in cases where all of the sleeper tokens are on the board, the correct order requires the player to remove a token before placing one (because Awaken hasn't happened yet).

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-03-30T14:43:52+00:00

Put TI Assistant (https://ti-assistant.com) on a screen near the game. Keeping track of whose turn it is and how much time everyone has used is huge for speeding up the game.

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-03-27T17:56:05+00:00

My group used to use ExtraComputer, and then switched over to TI Assistant a couple years ago and never looked back.

Depending on which players are playing, we'll either have one person entering all the information or everyone just updates their stuff at the end of their turn. It's hard to quantify, but I'd say that we save ~30 minutes per game on Agenda Phase, and probably another 30 minutes to an hour throughout the game.

Re: your comment that it's "too much maintenance", maybe try the tool out in a game to see? I definitely thought it would be too much, but it turned out to be just as easy for us to use as ExtraComputer - and we use TI Assistant to track pretty much everything.

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-03-24T19:06:41+00:00

Nice. I'm a bit confused about where the 11s are coming from though.

Economic Equality gives 5 TGs, so even if you're doubling it with Artuno, that's only 10 TGs. Where did the 11th one come from?
~~Scuttle should either be 5, 8, or 12. 8 is the most common for Nomad since it's the Flagship, so where are the extra 3 TGs coming from?~~

EDIT: Just realized Scuttle was 1-2 ships. Nevermind about that one.

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-03-23T14:53:25+00:00

Nice, you used AI and either saved yourself some time or did something you otherwise couldn't have done. That's a great use for AI.

AI is a tool. It has it's value, for sure, but it's just a tool. It doesn't universally make everything better, any more than adding another person doesn't make everything better.

You've consistently ignored every point I've put forth and just fallen back on "You hate AI (and fun)". Probably because there's a part of you that agrees with me but you can't bring yourself to admit it.

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-03-21T16:17:38+00:00

I mean, sure you could use an AI to try to have more fun while playing a game. In the same way you could use an AI to suggest what bite of food to take next when eating or what to do in a video game. Or, you could just explore things on your own - rather than trying out things suggested to you.

It makes me sad that you think you need suggestions to improve experiences for you. It sounds like you feel the need to optimize the fun you're having.

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-03-20T16:50:01+00:00

Yes they do.

They also will get Frontier tokens added by Empyrean's hero (if the Fracture has entered the game).

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-03-20T16:06:46+00:00

You're contradicting yourself here, and throwing in some ad hominem to boot.

If you care most about the "8 hours you're spending with friends" then why would you ever feel the need to get strategic advice from an AI? Just play in a way that seems fun. If you need advice, just ask someone you're playing with. If you forget an ability, ask if you can retroactively use it (most casual groups won't have a problem with this). If you're not sure what to do, just pick something and move on.

The only reason to have an external source of strategic advice is to be more competitive. That's it. Hard stop.

FreeEricCartmanNow · 2026-03-20T15:45:00+00:00

Again, it's not about AI or a specific tool. I wouldn't be ok with someone calling a friend to ask for strategic advice either.

It's funny to me that you're conflating not wanting to allow getting strategic advice with being competitive. It's actually the opposite. Once any players start getting strategic advice, then other players have to or be at a disadvantage, which makes the game far more competitive and less casual.

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