Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition (2017)

How To Play Twilight Imperium 4th Edition

In Twilight Imperium 4th Edition, you will play as one of 17 different factions, all fighting to be the first to reach 10 victory points and claim the Imperial Throne. You will do this by colonizing planets, building fleets of ships, researching new technology, trading, plotting, and waging war.

Setup the Game

Speaker – Assign the speaker token randomly. Who get the speaker will go first when the game begins.

Factions – Each player will receive a faction sheet, home planet tile with matching home planet cards, rectangle control tokens, triangle command tokens and two faction-specific technology cards. On the back of each faction sheet will list the starting technology and starting units.

Placing units – Place the starting units in your home system. Infantry, planetary defense systems (PDS) and space docks are usually placed on planets, but ships are placed in space.

Choose color – Each player chooses a color and takes the plastic units, technology cards, and command sheet that matches that color. Each player will place eight command tokens on their command sheet; three in tactics, three in fleet, and two in strategy.

The galaxy – The galaxy is comprised of system tiles that either contain planets, anomalies such as a supernova, or empty space. Each planet will have a resource in yellow and an influence in blue. Resources are generally used to buy units or technology and influence is used to gain command tokens and to vote during the agenda phase.

Cards – Shuffle the action, agenda, stage one, two, and secret objective cards and place them near the game board.

Victory point track – Each player will place a control token on space zero of the victory point track, with five stage one and five stage two objective cards being displayed, with the first two revealed.

Secret objectives – Each player draws two secret objectives cards and keeps one.

Other components – There will be eight different strategy cards, supply of trade/commodity tokens, infantry/fighter tokens, and D10 dice nearby.

Playing the Game

Twilight Imperium, published by Fantasy Flight Games, is played over a series of game rounds. Each round consists of four phases which are resolved in order.

Strategy Phase

Starting with the speaker and going clockwise, each player chooses a strategy card that will provide powerful abilities during the action phase. During the action phase, players take turns in an order corresponding to the lowest number of their strategy cards. I will briefly go into why you may pick certain strategy cards:

Leadership – You will gain more command tokens enabling more actions during the action phase.

Diplomacy – This can be used to prevent attacks or reuse planets.

Politics – This card determines who gets the speaker token for the next round as well as letting you draw action cards that grant you special abilities.

Construction – You will be able to construct PDS units or space docks. PDS units are good for defending planets and space docks allow you to produce units.

Trade – This card will give you trade goods to spend on units/technology and commodities to trade to other players. Commodities have no value on their own but turn into trade goods once traded.

Warfare – A player may choose this card in order to move the same units twice or build units and then move them in the same turn.

Technology – A player may choose this card to research new technology. Technology gives you powerful abilities or upgrades your units. In order to research technology, you have to have the required prerequisites which are on the bottom left of the card.

Imperial – This card allows you to score additional victory points and gain secret objective cards. Secret objective cards give you additional ways to score points.

Action Phase

This is the main phase of Twilight Imperium, where you will move units, resolve combat, produce new units, use strategy cards and interact with other players. You may also trade with players who are adjacent to your systems. Trades are usually for commodities, trade goods or promissory notes (cards given to players granting some power over you). You can also make alliances and deals but always be careful of betrayal.

On your turn you may take one action and players keep taking turns until everyone has passed. On your turn you can do one of the following:

• Tactical Action – Move ships, space combat, invade planets and produce more units.
• Strategic Action – Play your strategy card.
• Component Action – Use any ability on action cards, technology and faction sheets that have the word Action: on them.
• Pass – You can’t perform any more actions or no longer want to. Once everyone has passed, the action phase is over.

Status Phase

The status phase in Twilight Imperium is all about refreshing things for the next round and scoring objectives, perform the following steps in order:

• Score objectives.
• Reveal new objective.
• Draw action cards.
• Remove command tokens from the board.
• Gain two command tokens and redistribute tokens on the command sheet.
• Ready any exhausted cards (face-down cards).
• Repair any units if applicable.
• Return strategy cards.
• Don’t worry about remembering all of this as it is on the command sheet which you can follow during the game.

Agenda Phase

The agenda phase is only unlocked once the planet (Mecatol Rex) in the middle of the board has been taken. Mecatol Rex can be taken by paying six influence and invading the planet, the first person to do so will gain one victory point. In order to pay influence, you can exhaust planets for influence or use trade goods.

During this phase players will vote on an outcome of two agendas which can have lasting effects on the rest of the game. Players can vote by exhausting their planets for influence. Once both agendas have been voted on, refresh all planets ready for a new round. Players can trade with other players that are not adjacent to their systems during this phase.

How to Win Twilight Imperium 4th Edition

Once you finish the Agenda Phase, you go right back to the strategy phase and start over again. The game only finishes once someone reaches 10 victory points or there are no new objective cards to reveal. You mainly score victory points by completing public and secret objectives. However, you cannot score public objectives if you do not own all the planets in your home system.

Twilight Imperium 4th Edition Review

“A 4th edition is like a clean slate. It’s so much easier to teach, and the new rulebooks (the now classic learn-to-play and rules-reference booklets separate) are much better references. The updated graphic design just makes the game easier to play. The new rules enhance everything that makes the game fun. Yeah, it sucks if you just recently bought the 3rd edition, but that doesn’t mean the 4th edition is a bad choice, and it’s a much better starting place.

And, it includes some of the best stuff from 3rd edition expansions; the full set of races, capital ships, race technology, promissory notes, the better Strategy card variants. The plastic ships are so high quality, and very intelligently designed with unique silhouettes when looking down at them from above.”

Wolfie, islaythedragon.com

“I liked the game quite a bit. When I played, the time flew by so it didn’t feel like an eight-hour game as we were all engaged and active throughout. This truly is an “epic” game. I enjoyed my time with it BUT after our group finished, we were wiped out mentally. I didn’t leave the playthrough excited to play the next game as much as I was hoping to be.

And I really could wait another year before visiting Twilight Imperium again which honestly is a good thing since I probably won’t be able to find the time again until next year. The thing is though………is that I WANT to play again. I may not be excited to play RIGHT NOW, but I can for sure see myself months from now thinking, “I wonder how those shrouded lions play…..”.

fuzzyllamareviews.com

The content of this article is originally from Board Game Geek and boardgame.co.uk. For more information and a better understanding of the game, you can watch the videos below.