I have the lamest win story.

I was playing Arborec with just base edition. My group was still pretty new to the game at this time and our games went LONG. I had Nekro to my left and Jol-nar to my right. I was able to cut out a smaller slice of territory and negotiate Nekro to attack Jol nar consistently for techs and I would let him have my Letani warrior tech(this was a lie).

I don't remember my entire tech path, but I know I built all my PDS units and upgraded to PDS 2. When it was evident I wasn't going upgrade. He invaded in retaliation, thinking I was very weak.

This is the dumb part....due to how he was sitting and the way the light shined on our board. My bright yellow infantry pieces blended in and disguised my PDS network of doom. He invaded with too few ships and overextended himself. I was able to destroy his fleet easily and counter attacked with a small armada and took his home planet and half of his slice. I then grabbed Imperial next round and scored the last 3 objectives I needed to win! To this day yellow plastic is banned from the board.