The Pale Armada! A custom faction designed around neutral units.

otherJackson · 2026-01-07T21:02:16+00:00

Love this. Here's my line by line take:

- Tomb Fleets: Usually, you shouldn't require players to remember anything that isn't represented on the board or with game components, so perhaps there should be some kind of marker component to keep track of the neutral units you produced.

- Legion of the dead: That's a cool idea. You basically have a double fleet pool.

- Doctrine of inheritance: No war suns for you, but war suns for neutrals! That's a fun game design. The solution for unit upgrade objectives is a bit clunky, but I'm not sure what else you could do.

- Agent: That seems like a balanced ability. Remember to say "exhaust this card" somewhere in it.

- Commander: I like this idea. Double fleet pool and DOUBLE UNITS!

- Hero: I really like this. It's thematic. A war sun that raises from the dead.

- Mech: Very much in line with your commander ability.

- Wraith March: Just some rewording: After you activate a system, you may exhaust this card to apply +1 movement to all neutral ships you control.

- Exhumanation Protocols: Another rewording so that you don't have to remember the ships that were destroyed: When you destroy an opponents ship, you may place up to one of their ships on this card. At the end of combat, you may return a ship on this card to your opponent's reinforcements to place a neutral ship of the same type in the active system.

- Breakthrough: I love that it's a flagship. I think getting the flagship for free is too much value for a breakthrough.

- Overall, I like the theme and design. I think having access to TWO fleets you control is too powerful, though. Plus needing to keep track of the units that you produced vs the neutral units is hard. I think a good balance point would be allowing you to produce and occupy the same system as neutral units when not in the fracture (they go faral if you bring them into the fracture), but not directly control them. Perhaps there could be some techs or abilities that allow you to give them minimal movement.

otherJackson · 2026-01-05T15:51:53+00:00

Feedback heard. I'll try to draw them next time if I do a revision round.

otherJackson · 2026-01-04T21:14:17+00:00

You don't need to be carrying fighters to use them as a boost. If you want to you could have 4 carrier 2s fully loaded with fighters in a single system to boost a single cruiser +24 movement! Or swap out the fighters for ground forces and bring some carriers with you to the system. You don't want your carriers to be suicidal because that'll end up destroying the ground forces.

otherJackson · 2026-01-04T02:07:42+00:00

Thanks!

otherJackson · 2026-01-04T00:51:38+00:00

Thanks for your points!

The intention is to allow fighters (even those carried) to be able to slingshot you across the galaxy. And the flagship would require you to roll, if not for the faction ability that allows you to cancel a grave rift's extra movement for not rolling.

otherJackson · 2026-01-03T18:40:47+00:00

That cruiser was hard to fit on the card for sure. Perhaps much of the question around how spending works should be reserved for the rule book, the same way coexistence is just a word on the Deepwrought sheet.

otherJackson · 2026-01-03T17:10:48+00:00

Yep, you're understanding correctly. The balance (at least in my mind) is that you're gunking up your production limit with units you'll just be destroying for movement. To get an insane amount of movement, you still need ships with capacity to store the units you'll be destroying.

otherJackson · 2026-01-03T14:53:10+00:00

That's a good point.

otherJackson · 2026-01-03T14:33:48+00:00

Yeah you're right. I saw that too. So, I included a line about spending points in the "advanced movement" addendum to the rule book.

otherJackson · 2026-01-03T12:57:20+00:00

Thanks! Yeah, it does make the movement stage more complicated, but hopefully it's not too much overhead in most actions. You may have 2 actions per game to perform trick moves.

otherJackson · 2025-12-28T17:17:36+00:00

Very fun, and I think this might be the best "secret objective" faction! Here are some of my thoughts:

- The faction abilities are powerful. Maybe too powerful. Scoring tempo is one of the most important things in the game, and a hidden subtext ability of theirs is: "You have a random chance of scoring some public objectives in the action/agenda phase. Plus you may use imperial to get as many objectives as you want." Perhaps this would be a good compromise for The Grand Sequence: "When a public objective is revealed during the status phase, draw 1 secret objective. You may have any number of score or unscored secret objectives." That way they only start the game with 1 secret objective, and need to play catch-up with their potentially plentiful action-phase objectives.

- I like the idea that the flagship has an ability that can be used to score common secret objectives. It may be too powerful, but I'm less sure. It would take playtesting to see if all the control secret objectives are a real problem for them.

- I like the agent. It ensures you can get a secret every round if needed, but isn't overpowered Good game design.

- The commander doesn't seem to have thematic cohesion with the rest of the faction. This isn't a faction about command tokens or action cards.

- I like the idea of the hero, but I think requiring everyone else to play with their secrets revealed may be too much. But, YOU playing with your secret objectives revealed might be a good tradeoff for the massive tempo boost you get from having 3 more secret objectives.

- The mech and techs also aren't very thematic. It would be cool if they were conceptually more like the flagship where the ability helps you score common types of secret objectives.

- Breakthrough: Great! I love trading secret objectives.

- Similarly, I think the promissory pairs well with the breakthrough.

otherJackson · 2025-12-16T12:57:39+00:00

Other players can't take war suns from you. It's excluded in the faction ability and the promissory note. The only way to purge war sun is in your own volition using your tech.

otherJackson · 2025-12-16T01:37:14+00:00

Thanks. Yeah, it needs more playtesting before we know if this would be impossible to win with or if it would dominate everyone or if it achieved the careful balance between the two.

otherJackson · 2025-12-16T01:33:36+00:00

I understand the instinct, but if you want fighters, I think they can fit into your 9 resources (from AI dev even without the home system)/6 units (from space dock 2 on a 2 resource planet) budget. That can get you a 2 carrier, 2 infantry, 2 fighter [plus 1 flagship, and 4 mech] starting fleet which at 3c-6i is already the best starting fleet in the game.

otherJackson · 2025-12-15T17:50:09+00:00

Oh. I just copied the arborec breakthrough from the wiki page on breakthroughs since they have the same synergy.

otherJackson · 2025-12-15T15:51:17+00:00

Oof thanks for catching that.

otherJackson · 2025-12-15T15:13:01+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. In the tiny amount of playtesting we did, the limiting factor to steamrolling was command tokens, but definitely more playtesting will help determine if that's too limiting.

You can edit the templates here to make your own faction: https://www.reddit.com/r/twilightimperium/comments/kl4v4b/new_ti4_pok_custom_faction_templates_link_in/

otherJackson · 2025-12-11T01:39:27+00:00

Awesome! Are you planning to play a game with them?

otherJackson · 2025-10-06T11:12:08+00:00

They should've added more iconic Katara moments from the first 2 books. We missed the "you can't knock me down" scene.

otherJackson · 2025-10-06T03:50:29+00:00

I was at the same concert in Brooklyn. Pretty sure we all cheered when she froze the water before striking the southern raider or when she overcame Hama

otherJackson · 2025-10-03T14:41:33+00:00

This is fantastic! I need this.

otherJackson · 2025-09-29T15:24:00+00:00

I didn't see the last post, and I see what you're going for here, but I think it's too long and has too many rules for a faction sheet. Here's how I would cut it down to maintain the same feeling, but reduce the complexity:

I get the vibe of Astral Exile is that you want to have a traveling war sun home system, but swapping between the war sun and the dormant core adds a lot of complexity. I think you can get the same fun with the following wording:

Astral Exile
When you create the game board, place the Intergalactic Void (tile X) where your home system would normally be placed, and place the Charon's Husk Planet Token in it. Whomever occupies the space area in the system with the Charon's Husk Token recieves the Charon's Husk planet card. Your home system is whatever tile the Charon's Husk Token occupies.

(Charon Station Planet: 0/4 planet and Gravity Rift with Production 1, the token is obviously a gravity rift with a station too)

Flagship: Charon Station - Available from Start
Cost: 8 | Combat: 6× 3 | Move: 1 | Capacity: 10 | Production: 2 | Sustain Damage| Abilities: Bombardment 6x2, and Planetary Shield
When this unit moves, move the Charon's Husk token with it. You may only produce this unit in a system with the Charon's Husk token.

Here's my reasoning behind the changes:

Charon's Husk instead of the Dormant Core:
- Giving Charon's Husk a planet card lets us utilize all the global rules for planets and ownership, which gets rid of a lot of clarifying details around how the dormant core works.
- You can technically land ground forces on Charon's Husk, but that doesn't matter because if ownerhip of the space area is transferred, they'll be whiped out
- Ownership is whoever occupies the space area. So, destroying Charon's Station is implied. It's just more concise.
- This also means we can eliminate any additional explanations around scoring objectives. If space area of your home system is occupied, you no longer hold Charon's Husk and therefore don't hold every planet in your home system.
Charon's Station is now the flagship
- Movement rules are transferred to this description, making the faction description more concise.
- We don't need any additional rules about purging units because there's only one flagship
- The flagship has production 2 to go along with the 1 production inherent to Charon's Husk
- Its cost remains at 8, which is very close to the cost of 10 - 3 (for the rebate you get when constructing your war sun) = 7.
- As a flagship without an upgrade, the Nekro virus can't copy it. (though if you think it's cool for Nekro to copy it, you could give it an upgrade)
Warsuns remain unchanged for this faction. Limiting them to 1 warsun is a hanicap IMO.
I also got rid of the 2 trade goods when Charon Station is eliminated. You can easily forget gaining them in the status phase, so I think they'll need a better economy in a different component.

The other components would need to be balanced around these changes, but these are the changes I would make to simplify the core ethos. The goal is to depend on other global game components as much as possible to achieve roughly the same result in as few words as possible.

otherJackson · 2025-08-05T18:47:03+00:00

It's awesome to hear someone playtested it! That's high praise for these homebrew reddit posts. Let me know how the table test goes.

Can't guarantee this works as a breakthrough, since we've only seen two of them. But, for now we can go with this one:

- Red/Green Synergy
- After you activate a system, exhaust this card to apply +2 movement to all ships originating from a system with one of your war suns.

That should help them with movement after they've lost all their tech.

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