Twilight Imperium by Fantasy Flight Games (ft. Vic from Games Y Más)

Ten hours. Six players. One planet daring everyone to blink first. We sat down with our friend Vic Diaz from the Games EMoss podcast to unpack why Twilight Imperium turns a day-long session into a story you’ll retell for years—equal parts senate brawl, star-spanning war, and social chess.

We start with the core loop that makes this galaxy tick: strategy cards that set initiative and shape your round, streamlined actions that keep turns moving, and a center gravity well—Mecatol Rex—that rewards boldness with points and influence. Vic breaks down how public objectives push players out of their comfort zones, forcing timing plays and map pressure instead of passive turtling. When fleets collide, combat stays clean and quick: resolve defenses, roll hits, sustain damage on the big ships, and decide whether to retreat. The rules aren’t the real barrier; commitment is.

Then the table tilts. Once Mecatol is taken, the agenda phase unlocks a political game that steals the show. Influence turns into votes, but the true currency is negotiation. We trade goods for promises, bribe rivals to switch sides, and watch a single law swing two victory points and the entire endgame. Vic spotlights favorite factions like the Mentak Coalition—space pirates who skim trade goods from neighbors—and explains how asymmetry fuels different paths to the same scoreboard without muddying clarity.

If you’ve eyed the big box and felt intimidated, we’ve got you. We share first-time lessons, setup traps to avoid, and sanity-saving prep: pre-draft factions and starting spots on Discord, build the map ahead of time, and cap debates with a timer so agendas don’t sprawl. Curious but spread across states? Tabletop Simulator’s mod is excellent for learning, though nothing beats the spectacle of plastic armadas converging at the center. Start with four to five players to learn the rhythm; graduate to six when you’re ready for maximum politics.

Our verdict lands with a clear caveat: top shelf for seasoned gamers who love high-interaction strategy and dramatic payoffs; a hard pass for beginners until they’ve leveled up. If Dune Imperium, War of the Ring, or Nemesis live on your table, Twilight Imperium belongs in your rotation. Hit play, tell us your faction, and share how you’d balance firepower versus influence for the win. If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe, leave a review, and send the episode to your game group—then start drafting your seats around Mecatol Rex.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Welcome to the Operation Game Night Podcast. Back and better than ever. Joining me for the first time in a long time is Vic from the Games EMOS podcast. How are you doing, Vic?

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Hey, how's it going? It's like the first time this year, huh? I know. The first time this year. It's been a year since we've talked.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

What's the cutoff for Happy New Year's?

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Uh I want to say March, you know. Really? March, March time. I go, I like to give some leeway, you know. Like, yeah, I like to be generous when it comes to that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Larry Larry David says two weeks and then you're done.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Two weeks, man. Oh man. Well, I guess you can uh I guess he can curb his enthusiasm. I guess. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

That's right. That's right. Well, Vic, thank you for joining us. Uh, I am without co-host today. So you are you were just promoted. Step promoted to co-host. Welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

What an honor this is. Wow. Play Jared. Uh play and uh yeah, I I mean, what's going what's going on with playing Jared, man? Like what's the call?

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Oh man, they're an MIA. It's okay. Life gets busy.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

No, true, true.

Enter Twilight Imperium’s Epic Scope

SPEAKER_01 1:15

It is what it is. Uh, but thank you for filling in. And I really want to talk to you because you did something crazy. You did something that no sane person would do, and you sat down and you played an entire game of Twilight Imperium. Tell me about Twilight Imperium, my friend.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Yeah, oh my goodness, Twilight Imperium. Well, um, I will I will preface that this is about my fourth time playing this game, actually. Um I've played it fully twice. Um both times. Took about 10 hours to play. The other the other two times, my uh esteemed friends were like, I'm tired, I don't want to play this game anymore. We're done. And I was like, we're barely halfway through the game. They're like, Yeah, we don't want to play this game. So I was like, okay, whatever. I guess we're done. Um, and so uh yeah, Twilight Imperium. Oh my goodness, where to start with this game? Okay, if you like big epic space battles, space sagas, if you are a fan of Star Wars, you are the Star Wars in this game. Literally, you are you are you are you have different factions fighting for the uh what we call the middle uh planet, you can say, or it's called Mercotol Rex. You're fighting for this planet because you want to be the emperor of the of of the of you know the galaxy, and so um we're fighting to get control of this area. Whoever controls this area uh pretty much controls a lot of the board, a lot of um resources, you get a lot of points when you're when you're controlling this area. So everyone's fighting for the control for that, but you also have your own strategies when you're playing this game. You're also trying to win points via victory points. Um, the game plays up to, if I'm correct, up to 15 points. First of 15 wins, right? Um, I might be wrong, I might be quoting you wrong.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Um, but it's like hard hard to come by, you're not scoring 150 points, right?

Why The Center Planet Matters

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Exactly. Yes, yeah, 15 points, but this is 15 points that will take you a long time to get. Uh, because you're everyone's up trying to get those objectives, everyone's trying to gather as much resources. It is truly a 4X game. Um, this is such a game, I would say not for the faint of heart. Um, I am not introducing this game to someone who's just barely played Catan. Um, yeah, this is a game that even intermediate board gamers, I would try to veer off from until you develop more of your repertoire of gaming. Um, when you've gotten more familiar with like maybe playing a couple sessions of Nemesis, maybe playing a couple sessions of uh Zombicide, um, maybe getting used to more miniatures, and then maybe playing a lot more 4X games, you know, Civilus, some of those type of other games. Uh, yes, I would say um it's a fun game. It's one literally one of my favorite games to play. It's like betrayal, uh, and this. I like my language. I like it. Yeah, yes, like it's it's a such a fun game, tons of replayability. You can always choose. There's so many factions, even the base game has so many different factions you can choose. Different, each of them have each its own special abilities, its own special backstory. So you can get into the lore, immerse yourself into this game a lot. Um, and you just are duking it out, or you're not, you could be playing peacefully and just kind of minding your own business over here and secretly go for the win. Um, so yes, it is a long game. Um, if you are new to this game and you're playing it, you're looking about 10 to 12 hours of playing this game if you are committed to the game. Wow, even at even advanced players, uh players that are you know dedicated can you know narrow it down to maybe eight hours. Um, but you're looking, I think the safe point is like 10 hours for sure. If like everyone knows what they're doing, it's like 10 hours for sure. Um yeah, man, it's it's uh it's a game that you have to clear out your schedule for, and you're gonna be like, hey, we're here for all day. You're clocky into your shift, and you're ready, and you're ready to get to work, and you'll have your 10-minute breaks and your mandated, you know, 30-minute lunches and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Uh on this most recent playthrough, how many people did you play with?

SPEAKER_00 5:18

We played with six. Uh correct. Yes, six players. I think it plays up to eight. Um, if I'm correct. I think it's a three to six. Three to six.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Uh six.

Playtime, Player Counts, And Expansions

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Yes, three to six players, uh, eight players. If you have the uh Prophecy of Kings expansion and the Thunder's Edge expansion, it adds two more players because it expands the map even bigger. Oh uh which is yeah, which it's wild. Um, but yeah, six players is probably the best way to play it. Three players. I tried the three player count. It's fun. The map is definitely smaller, and I think if you really want to get to this game and not like spend so much time on it, three players, you the game will go by a little bit quicker because it's just got you know, you're going kind of kind of going around really quick. Um, so there's that. Uh, but six players is where the game shines for sure. It'll shine and um you'll have the most um fun with it. And again, I said this game's like a forex game, so you have everything you have from resource, you know, resource management. Um, I don't say worker placement, but like maybe like uh, you know, you're you're building uh your armies, kind of like RTS. Like if you're familiar to like with like you know, Age of Empires and all those types of fun games. Yeah, this is this game's right up your alley. You're building your armies, you're building your resource, you're building your synergy of your of your uh of your race, but also it implements like a political kind of aspect to the game. Um, where um the I I believe for the first player that reaches Mercator Rex, which is in the middle, unlocks the the agenda phase. Um meaning that uh after every round, there's an agenda phase where you're gonna draw these cards, which are directives or laws, and whoever is the speaker um gets to read out the laws and or the directive, and everyone around the table has to decide if you're for the law or or against the law. Um an example would be uh when I was playing uh when I had my session uh about a couple weeks ago, one of the laws was like um this round, everyone uh loses all their fleet and can only have one one like one fleet per per soul system, or uh everyone loses uh a token, your little command tokens, everyone loses two command tokens and but keeps your fleet amount count. Okay so and it goes around the table, and you and if you have you have them if you have more planets, you have more influence, pretty much. Yeah, and you can spend your influence saying, I'm spending four influence for yes on this uh law. The next person next to you could go, I'm spending eight influence against this law, and we count up the influences, and whoever and the higher influence either goes for it or goes against it. Yeah, um, there's also debate on and like you know, um scheming. You can you can or bribery, you can say, Travis, you're you're you're all for the the law, but I'm against it. And I can go, Travis, listen, I have four trade goods. I will give you four trade goods if you spend your influence on negative on this one, and so you have a choice and you have to decide yes or no. Another player could be like, No, I will give you five trade goods if you say yes to this, or I will or I will give you this solar system, I will step away from the solar system and let you come in if you agree. So everyone's kind of fighting each other on yes or no, yes or no, whatever they want to agree with. Um, and that's I believe where the game shines a lot too because everyone's just yelling at each other and being political about it.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Yeah, hard negotiations encouraged.

Politics, Agendas, And Bribery

SPEAKER_00 8:35

Yes, yes, big time, yes, hard negotiations encouraged. Um, also encouraged to have a timer because um you can spend hours and hours just arguing over one direction, and like yeah, it could be like like I think the first round that we played, spent we spent three hours on that first round because we were just arguing about each other, like, no, no, no, I'll give you this, I'll give you this. And like the people who are undecided, undecisive were still thinking about me. Should I agree? Should I not agree? Uh, have a timer, guys. Have maybe like say like three three minutes to just deliberate and then come down with your decision. Uh, but yeah, this uh man, I I mean I can rave about this game. This is a game that um I mean it's it's it's a beautiful game, for sure. It's a beautiful game. It's a game that if I play once, I'm done for the month. I'll play that game. Like I need to, I need to I need to recuperate, I need to like refresh my mind because like I went home that night and I was just like, my brain is so fried. Like it was it was so fried. And it and usually when it comes to these games, it's easy where maybe once somebody like pulls out ahead and it's like way ahead, and you get to the end game, and you're just like, you know what, you won, bro. Like it's fine. There's no this game, it came down to the wire. We were all neck and neck coming down, and so it was getting heated. It literally came down to one decision, and um, this player was able to use their gab of sil of their silver tongue to convince us all to do with this one way of this directive. I don't know how he did it, but he did it, and we all weren't thinking. Uh and it was late, also, so we're probably fried. But if we weren't thinking as much, and he was able to convince us to go this way on this law that caused him to automatically get the winning two points, and no matter what you tried to do, you you lost, you you're you're losing. And we're just like, why did we give this guy why did we listen to him? He he got in our heads way too much, yeah. Um but yeah, man, like yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Long game, game of endurance, mental endurance more than anything. Yes, uh, asymmetric factions competing for resources across the galaxy, all competing for the main planet in the center, something, something wrecks, check, got it. Then you start the negotiation phase. So I assume after that negotiation phase ends, that next round is like you're kind of starting from scratch again, or is it like pull back your ships? The person that owns the planet in the middle starts in the middle again. Like, what does that transition between phases look like?

Strategy Tokens And Turn Order

SPEAKER_00 11:03

Yeah, um, so after the agenda phase uh ends, um, pretty much I mean any anything that you have on your on your board, it's it's there. So you're still you're continuing you're continuing from where you are. Um, the thing that changes is that you have they're called your uh strategy tokens or strategy strategy. Uh I will say strategy tokens. They're like these little like technical tokens. I should have brought the board up, but it's like the button on my shelf, and I don't want to pull it out. And it's a lot of components, but you have like these strategy tokens um that you choose at the beginning of the round, starting with whoever the speaker is, they get to go choose. And I believe there are seven strategies. So you have um you have leadership, you have diplomacy, you have construction, you have uh uh technology, all these things, and each of those strategies give you actions you can do. For instance, if you have leadership, you get uh three tokens and then you can use to place on your board to either improve upgrade your fleet uh a limit count and uh put in for your uh uh uh strategic uh they're also called strategic tokens as well. Um strategic tokens, meaning that it gives you more turns on on a round uh to do things. Um, or you could set it down on uh influence, I think they call influence. I'm getting these names from sorry guys if I get the name, but but um yeah, it's like influence or strategy. I might be getting those mixed up, but um you set those to like in case you want to spend them on someone else's turn to do some actions as well. And so you so you but you're getting those one, you're getting those little tokens that's pretty much dictate what you're gonna do for that round, what your what your tactic is for that round. Oh um, warfare is more of like you're you're it's based on moving ships around areas and like negating like the whole whenever you place a token down on a planet, it's kind of acts like as like a magnet. So you place a token down and you're gonna say, I'm bringing these ships in here to this system, and they're locked in for that round. Okay, um, so no ships can go in and no ships can go out. You're they're locked in for that round, they can't be activated again. Um, warfare is like you negate that, you can move ships out as well if you want, because you're trying to, you know, you have like technology. We mean you want to upgrade resources, you want to spend resources to upgrade your ships, you want to upgrade your infantry, you want to upgrade maybe some of your uh uh yeah, upgrade your ships to your infantry. Um, that's pretty much all you can upgrade, and you know, work towards getting the war suns, which are pretty much guys, they're death stars. Everyone's getting death stars in this game. Yeah, so you get war sons. Um, and so you have a lot of options when you're choosing the tokens. So each round to dictate what you're choosing, what's your tactic for that round? Um, if you're the speaker, again, you get first round, first round dibs to choose, and then it'll go clockwise from there. Um, and then that'll also dictate your turn order. So, like, for instance, leadership is number one. So, whenever the turn round starts, leadership goes first. Lastly, uh, I believe it's like uh warfare or um or diplomacy, it's one one to seven. So whoever gets a seven tile, you're going you're going you're going last. Yeah. Um, and then it'll skip around. So, like if two is not around, then we'll go to three. If three is not around, we'll go four, and we just keep going around until everyone's gone. Uh turn order uh can take a while because uh you keep going until everyone's passed, and you have a lot of actions you have to do on your turn. Um, you have a you have a whole list of actions you can do, but you're gonna do one of those per per per turn. So your your strategy tokens is one of those actions, and then you have these other actions that you can use to spend tokens. Um so moving ships is not part of the strategy token. That's that's everyone can move ships. You just gotta you gotta use an action to do that, yeah. Building or building ships again, that's another action. Um, again, once everyone says they're passed, then that's when the round ends, and we start the agenda phase, and then we start we we keep going until the points are so yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

So you've talked there's two objectives capture the center planet, which is like kind of the round by round objective. Then you have the overarching goal that ends the game, which is score 15 victory points or whatever. Correct, correct. Each of the factions has a different way to earn the victory points, like kind of in like in route, or is it um yes different?

SPEAKER_00 15:01

No, so like uh the each of the factions pretty much what you're choosing is their like abilities. They each each have abilities, but the scoring is done through public uh objective uh uh cards that you draw. Okay, so the first round you draw the level one objective cards that are worth one point. Um, and they'll say, you know, uh this round spend at least 10 trade goods. So you're okay, you know, or like or or you know, spend 10 10 trade goods, you know, keep spending them, or uh control two solar systems that are adjacent to Mercutal Rex. Um, so they're like they're kind of those objects. So you're kind of looking at those objectives, and then when you achieve it, you place down your marker saying, Hey, I achieve this goal, and then uh you just keep going, and then they don't get locked out, you just keep keep you keep playing. But I mean, if you're still working on your like the level one objectives, you're you're trying to just play catch-up at this point. Um, but everyone's trying to uh achieve those objectives, but the way you achieve them are different tactics, you know. Uh, if you if you have a race that like can like travel really quickly and does an objective to like, hey, uh I can you know control two solar systems, okay. I'm gonna use my race's ability to be able to kind of jump jump point everywhere you can go, but you also have to be cautious because everyone else is going for that objective too. So if you're in someone else's solar system, they're gonna be fighting for that solar system to be like, hey, no, where I'm playing this. Yeah, controlling controlling Mercantile Rex in the middle is uh is not a uh you get pretty much a victory point each round that you keep get have control of that. So that's constant, that's constant points going your way. So again, everyone's gonna want to uh be taking over Mercantol Rex. So you're gonna get that constant one one victory point each round. So if you can hold it for 15 rounds, you you can you can win the game, you know, by holding. But um, and then it also has the most influence and the most resources that it gives you per per round. So everyone wants to have that that main center, but there's other planets you can get as well that have higher count, but Mercator Rex is like the main one that you can get.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

That's an interesting way to help drive player interaction, not just like you know, above the table negotiations between rounds, but like getting people to try and occupy the same space on the board, yeah. And like you have these big sprawling universes, but if you have one that's really key to the your success in the long run, like you have to go after that and converge on that point, and I think that's really smart. That what what a what a cool design choice.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Yeah, it it's I think it's genius, and yeah, it drives for a lot of combat. A lot of people are gonna be fighting for that. A lot of you're gonna be seeing all these ships just going into that area and just seeing epic space battles going off. And if you're a player that likes to play, like you know, passive, you're just gonna see off in the distance just explosions happening and everything, just people blowing up and stuff because they're just having an epic space battle while you're hiding in in your little home planets or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

What is your favorite faction to play as?

Objectives, Scoring, And Map Pressure

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Oh man, that is a loaded question because there's a lot of them. There's a lot of factions, but my personal favorite that I've learned to love a lot is the Mentec Coalition. Okay, pretty much space pirates. They are space pirates. Um, they uh and what's cool about the factions is if you flip the the the the faction board on the back, it has like this whole lore of like their backstory of like how they came to be and what and why why they're doing this. Mentec coalition were once slaves and then they rebelled against their slave owners, if I'm getting it correctly, and they decide hey, we're gonna be slaves no longer, now we're going to rob everybody. And so they have a fun little uh mechanic um that I was utilizing to like the core to like to the T is that whenever you have anyone that's your neighbor, meaning that's like adjacent to your solar systems, any any player, anytime any player trades or or gains any goods, you get to steal one good from them. Oh, nice. Um, so so any any neighbor, so it could be anyone that's around you. Um, and so I had uh somebody that was next to me the whole time, and every time I'd be watching for them to do trades. Whenever I hear, hey, you want to do a trade? I'm like, Oh yes, do that trade. Please do that trade so I can steal one of those one of those goods from you, and you get to steal goods, or whenever they acquire goods. Again, it's not just trading, it's whenever like you get a card that gives you acquires goods, yeah. Again, you get to steal goods from them as well. So you're pirates pretty much so. Uh you're kind of a bully, a little bit of a bully, bullying a lot of uh players. You you don't have to steal from them, but you know, you could negotiate and be like, hey, I won't steal from you this round if you you know let me go do this thing for my objective. So there's a lot of negotiating for sure. Um within within the game.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

Talk to me about combat for a second. Lots of dice chucking, or is it like resolve your cards? How do you resolve the combat?

SPEAKER_00 19:31

Yeah, for sure. Um, so uh the way combat plays is um obviously you move your whenever you activate your ships into someone else's solar system, you engage in combat. What you do is first you look at um PDSs, which are called planetary defense systems. Okay, um, those are automatic hits. So you're gonna look at that, and if there's any any planets that have it from a faction, they get one hit to the ships. Okay. Um and then after that, you have anti-barra or anti-barrage turret uh uh missiles, I believe. Those are automatic hits. So once you get that out of the way, then you roll some dice. You're gonna be rolling some dice, and you're gonna be rolling to see how many hits they are. Um, I believe you roll, I forgot the number. I think it was like three or three or three up to three dice. Okay, uh, three or four dice, I believe. And you just keep rolling, kind of like risk. You just keep rolling, yeah. Um, and then depending on how many ships. So if I have one ship, then I'm trying to roll one dice. If I have two ships, three, and if I have more than one, more than one ship, you just keep rolling three dice until it goes down. Um, but um all your ships pretty much have one health, unless you have like the big cruisers that have like sustained damage, then that means when they get hit, you just flip it over, it means they're damaged.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

And then that is that is more simple than I thought it was gonna be. I thought it was gonna be like a thousand you know, flow chart just for combat. Yeah, that's great.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

No, no, it's super simple. Like I said, a lot of this game is very intimidating, but when you get down to the core of it, it's super simple. Even the actions, everything is just really simple, and like the turn order goes really quick because it's like I do my action, all right. I'm done. Next, yeah, you do your action, you're done. Next, you just keep going. Um, so uh combat again, super simple. You just gotta take into account like do you have anti any anti whatever and yet whatever, and then at the beginning of each combat, before you combat, you uh you announce any of the factors. Do you want to retreat this round? Oh you say if you say yes, you still go through combat, and if your ships survive the encounter, then you get to retreat and go somewhere else. Okay. Um, and so um, but the combat's super simple. You just roll, and it if it shows hits, it's a hit. If it's a miss, it's a miss. Um, so uh yeah, super simple, super, super play. And same same thing with infantry. If you have infantry on planets, um again, you just count how many of the infantry you have, you roll and you just fight on the ground. Infantry is not um the only thing that that's the thing that bugs me about the infantry a little bit. I know it'd be cost efficient, but the infantry are just little flag tokens, they're not like unique little. Species characters they just little flags. The thing that shines are your ships. Because you you you get your ships, they look different, they're really cool, and then your flagship is like very unique to your players' race. So you get each one gets like its own special like flagship, which is pretty cool. Uh but yeah, combat super simple. Just run that so back way up.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

First time you ever played this game, like how was it getting into it for the very first time?

Space Pirates And Faction Flavor

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Oh geez, man. This game, uh I had to look up videos. I had to look up videos on how to play this game. Reading the rules uh helped out, but uh looking up videos um is was was the best way to do it. Uh shout out to uh RT RTM um Shay. Uh he does a great job on explaining the video, but keeping you engaged because he likes to do it like as a skit and kind of like a good play theatrical way of explaining the game. So he did a good job, Shay. He was great. He got I was blessed to have him on the pod and talk to him about Twilight Imperium. Um curious to hear about that, you can hear about that. Um but uh yeah, it just it was very intimidating for me because when I opened the box, I was like, there is so many components to this game, so many cards, so many tokens, so many everything. How am I gonna get this game on the board? I even tried setting it up on my table, and it was like like I had I utilized every inch of that table. Like I could not have like there could not fit any more like pieces ever anywhere else. I was like, how am I gonna do this? Um, I played it first time with some friends. Um, we were supposed to start at like one, but we ended up going to get some food, and like that was a journey in itself because yeah, there was that's a whole long story, but we ended up getting back home by like around four. Yeah, we started the game. I explained the rules teachers like another hour and a half, and then we played the game, and we got to like maybe we were at like at five points. Uh like the leader was at five points, and it was already like almost hitting midnight, and we were just like, My friends are like, I gotta, we gotta drive back home. I'm like, Yeah, dude. I'm bummed. I'm I'm I am beat, you know, like okay, well, maybe we'll play this game. So we took photos. We took photos, and we're like, all right, we'll take photos, we'll play, get back to it. We never did, we never got back to it. Of course not. Um yeah, we never we got busy, and it's just it's just a complicated game to play. Um, uh to set up actually. Um, and so the first time was a bit of a rough one because I was like, we were looking at the rule book trying to do our turns. Yeah, a buddy of mine was like, Can I build chips? I'm like, No, you can't build chips now, you have to do this. And it's like, and then he'd be like, Now can I build chips? Like, no, you've already activated your system, you can't build chips, you gotta wait your next round. So he was getting frustrated about that. So um, yeah, it was a bit of a tough one for sure.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

Yeah, I I imagine you kind of need somebody to like help Sherpa you through it. Like, there's so many games out there that like at face value, there's tons of little nuances, right? Rude Wonderland's War back here, like takes a little bit of finessing to get into. But like once you get into it, you understand the systems, you understand like the flow of the turns, it flies by so fast. If you have somebody there that can sherpa you through that and just be like, here the first couple rounds, like boom, boom, boom. Here's what you exactly what you do like walk people through their decisions, explain like what they should be considering on the board. That stuff is goes such a long way into learning games like this. So oh, yeah, yeah. I maybe you'll have to teach me this game someday.

How Combat Really Resolves

SPEAKER_00 25:25

I will gladly teach you this game, man. We can play it on Tabletop Simulator if you ever want to play on Tabletop Simulator. They have a pretty good mod for it for sure. Um, I have it on there, it's really fun. I mean, nothing beats physical, uh, but since we're like on the opposite sides of the country, uh, I think yeah, TTS is a perfect way to play. Uh, you just let me know the day, bro. I'll clear up my whole day. We'll play uh a good round. We could get like a three-player game going. Um, I would recommend like a four-player to five player for a first timer just to kind of get a gist of like a little bit, and then maybe we can go six player later. Um, but I mean I'm super down. It's a fun game. Again, uh, it's really fun. You get into it if you get into it and get immersed and have some fun yelling at you and you know, you know, trying to do agendas, it's a great game to play for sure. Um, a game that I highly recommend to anyone that's like on the cusp of like I've played all these intermediate games of what's next for me. It's like Twilight Imperium is like the goal that ain't eclipsed uh new age of the third dawn. Yeah, um, I think those games are like you've you're your pinnacle peak of your gaming. Because like after I got done playing that game, I was like everything else is like this is any other board game, it's just easy for me to play because it's just like it is it's the ultimate fun space saga. It's great, the expansions are there, tons of replayability. Again, you you can always play as a different um faction each time. Uh, there's clever ways to like play a game. If you'll if you're if you're listening to this and you thought like I don't want to set this whole massive game up, a lot of a lot of people what they do. Um, the the group that I got to play with that we spent 10 hours a couple weeks ago, we have they have a Discord channel and they have like a draft system where it's like, hey, this is the map we're using.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

When it's your turn of draft, let us know what faction you want to be, where you want to start your starting location, and then we'll go from there. That way, when you get to when we when we meet up at the house, he has it all set up, and here's where you're at, and stuff like that. And so I love that. It's it saves the time that way. Like, whenever we meet up, you're not going through all the factions trying to see who you want. You got to do your own little homework and figure out who you want to choose, and then we get to it there. Um, I'll probably, if you want to play online, I'll probably might do that with you and be like, hey, here's the faction. Here's a wiki of all the factions. Yeah, Google who you want to do and let me know who you want, and then we'll set up from there and we can just go. Um, tabletop scene might be easy for us to set up, but yeah, yeah, a great game. I said I highly that's a pro tip, right? That's a yes, a big pro tip. Yes, yes. Yeah, prepare in advance, prepare in advance if you're really getting ready to play this game. Don't do it the day of because you you're gonna be up there for like an hour just setting up the tiles. Here's here's all the factions. Everyone, if you're playing with six players and you have and you have six players, six people going through all the faction lists, you're that's another that's another hour of just everyone trying to go through it. So it's like prepare in advance, prepare in advance for sure, and you'll have a great time. And then just don't even think about teardown because that's that's another whole battle you have to do. That's another big battle you have to do for sure.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

All right, final question is this game top shelf or is it yard sale? Oh, don't even think about it.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

Don't even think about it. Okay, just just just for you, Travis, because normally I'd be like, I plug in my podcast episode, go check that out because we did a top shelf yard sale of the game. But you're gonna hear here exclusively. Uh my mine, it's a top shelf game, it's a top shelf game. Um, but it's like barely hits the top shelf because it's because there's a lot of if if if you're going by my rubric, there it's like it barely scrapes by its teeth of of making the top shelf. Because there's some question where you're like it's a no on this one for sure. Um but I yeah, it's a top shelf with the caveat if you've are into deep, if you're deep into the gaming world. If you're deep into the game world, if you've been playing, you know, War of the Ring, if you've been playing Dune Imperium, if you've been playing Wonderland's Wars and you're like having down, you have been playing Nemesis, you're playing all these heavy ended heavy-ended Euros and Ameritrash games. This is a top shelf for you guys. Beginner board gamers, don't even think about this game. Don't don't even bother this game. Move on. Play, let's let's level you up first for sure.

SPEAKER_01 29:23

And if you're listening to this podcast and you're wondering what the heck are they talking about? What is top shelf for yard sale? Go ahead, pause this episode, go over to Vic's YouTube, uh, games eMoss podcast. Go give them a follow, go give them a like, give them some love because Vic is always putting out amazing content, and it's not just about board games. If you like video games, if you like theme parks, if you like concessions at theme parks, if you like Universal Studios, go follow Vic because he puts out some awesome stuff, super charismatic guy. Vic, we love having you on. Uh, go ahead, uh, give a shout to all your socials and where people can find you.

First-Time Learning Curve And Setup

SPEAKER_00 29:57

Yeah, for sure. Uh, before I give my shoulders out, I want your listeners to, you know, if anyone's new listening to this, to give you guys a follow first. Because Operation Game Night is the coolest podcast. They were like my number one on my Spotify rewrapped or wrapped, you know, podcast because I love listening to my boys, they're awesome. They got some great content, they have amazing guests. So if this is your first time, if you happen to just stumble upon this episode from in the interwebs, and you're like, What is this? Give them a follow, please. Give them a follow. All their socials, Operation Game Night, please. I want to plug you guys in first because this is about you guys, and you guys are amazing. And I'm so blessed that we got to meet and our friendship. And it's just uh like I just love talking with you guys. You guys are one of my top favorite people that love to chat and watch your content. So, Operation Game Night, give them a follow before you before I give you my plugs, give them a follow right now. Like, just give them a follow, like, subscribe, hit the hit the notification bell, let them you know, follow their Instagram, everything. Just give them that. And now, after you've done that, we over here at games emass. You can find us on all socials, x, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, um, YouTube. If you like watching YouTube videos, uh podcast, uh, YouTube, Spotify at the podcast. You can find us there at Gamesy Moss Pod. That is at Game Z Moss Pod. Um, yeah, come over if you like like Travis said, um, if you're into all things pop culture and nerdy, you know, we talk about everything. I love talking about everything. I'll talk about board games first. Board games are my top and video games. They're they're fighting they're always fighting for my love. Um, I know for you too, Travis, they're fighting for your love. Um, but I also love again love Universal Studios on Team Universal, but I also like Disneyland and some of the things that they had going on for there for sure. But again, if you're if you're not a big board gamer or video gamer, but are in love with pop culture, movies, anime, manga, everything, we love covering it as well. And so, yeah, it it'd be it'd mean the world to us if you give us a follow. Um, we're growing fast, just just like uh not as fast as Operation Game Night. They're they're like blowing up. Uh we're catching up, we're catching up to them. Um, but yes, we yeah, if you guys give us a follow, yeah. Game Z Moss Pod. That's all socials everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

Uh yeah. So and if you like stuff like this, we have some exciting collaborations coming up in the near future. So stay tuned on both Operation Game Night and Games EMoss because we've got some cool stuff coming up. Uh, thanks for you know shouting us out and giving us so much love. Uh, but we do have a special announcement that this next week we actually will be off and doing some recasts. So it's uh it's not no new episodes next week. We'll be back the following week with all the hot content. But uh, we are gonna take a week off. We got some stuff going on behind the scenes. So thank you for tuning in. Thank you for bearing with us. Go back and listen to those old episodes. Go back to the beginning and listen from episode one all the way through to 120 episodes that we're at now. Listen to this episode again. Run it back, put it on repeat. Yeah. But thank you for joining us, Vic. Thank you for being a friend of the show. Thank you for supporting Operation Game Night. Thank you. For Operation Game Night, I have been Travis. He has been the newly promoted co-host, Vic Diaz from Games E Moss Podcast. Yeah. And we are out.