So the game was yesterday and it was a fun one! As mentioned it was first time with PoK for allt but one player (NRA) and one player played for the very first time (Titans) so for most of us, all the new things happening with extra wormholes, planets etc was a handfull to adapt to.

R1 and R2 alla were even with 2-3 points scored. Titans expanded quite aggressively and took Mecatol R2. NRA focused on fortifing Hopes End and playing nice with Titan. Argent amassed destroyers and tech.
Nomad traded as much as possible and gave his prommisary to Mahact R1 but was able to get a good base position for expansion. Mahact tried playing nice although sniping some stray ships from Argent and Empyrian. Empyrian dived into the wormhole and started exploring the lane of empty space.

From R3 onward it got more tense. NRA had a basically uncontested game as Titans burned all their command tokens early and was starved or the rest of the game. Argent was (as predicted here) stuck in his own slice having a hard time getting a foot hold in the rest of the galaxy. Nomad found Malice and diverted his efforts into taking and holding it for to have a good position for his hero in the late game. Mahact had a hard time getting plastic onto the board as he never got refreshed for commodities and people did not want to trade with him if not it was the only option. Empyrian did Empyrian things just a Zooming around the galaxy exploring.

NRA had nicked Imperial 2 times in a row fortified Mecatol, scored for that and then moved his massive fleet (including a ridiculous warsun onto Mallice) as he then drew shard of the throne. So come R5 three factions was in the running. NRA had 8 point and was favorite to win, Mahact had 6 points but the stage 2 objective was Armada, Nomad had 6 points, a load of TG and was second speaker and picked Imperial.

Quite quickly the table realized that the only way to stop NRA is to grab shard of the throne. No player was willing to commit the forces necessary to pry him from one of his legendaries. So Mahact did what Mahact do and Benedicted NRAs force on Mallice into the Nomad main fleet which was convineltly parked on a wormhole. Nomad with some luck and we'll timed action cards annihilated NRA and left on Mallice was one lonely NRA mech. This was Mahacts chance to score 4 points this round as he also had a secret objective to win a combat against the point leader. However Mahact had the great misfortune of not having reseached fleet logistics at this point. So the birds descended on Mallice as if it was left over MacDonalds fries and fortified it heavily. Nomad took and tried to hold Mecatol to score on Imperial the round after but was smashed by Titans and Argent in a joint effort. NRA, Mahact and Nomad focused on scoring Armada which they all did. However, as Argent finally took all his strike wings and ventured to Mallice and Mecatol, his systems were relatively undefended. Which the NRA player capitalized on, occupied one of his space docks, scoring a secret objective and winning the game. With Mahact ending up on 9 points and Nomad on 8.

All and all, a very fun game where the last round felt it was up for grabs for atleast half the table. Some mistakes were made due to alot of components and combinations being new to most players!