Hello internet, I'm Shea Parker. This is RTFM. And if this is all seeming a little familiar it's
because I've kind of already made this video. See, back in 2015, I sought out to teach the biggest
baddest board game I know: Twilight Imperium, third edition. Now, that video got a lot of great feedback
and I'm really happy with how it went, but... now fantasy flight has seen fit to gift
us with Twilight Imperium fourth edition. And it's great. They've taken all the great stuff from the expansions
and put it right into the base game, and they've also streamlined and simplified it quite a bit. That being said, the easier "Learn to
play" manual is still 24 pages long. So here we are again. Now, just as with the last video, I'm going
to try and be as concise as possible while still being thorough and entertaining. And you also may have noticed that the
number in the title of the video is a little bit shorter than the length of the video. Well, that's just because I'm going to have a
few things to say before and after the video, but if you want to give rights to the rules
explanation, well, you can go to this number. If not, let me set the stage for you. Your people have suffered. You were once part of an empire that spanned the entire
galaxy, but that all ended during the Twilight Wars. The once great emperors, the Lazax, are no more - hunted
down and eradicated, they exist only as a memory. This led not to salvation as many hoped but
to a new dark age that lasted for centuries. Now, finally, your people see a way out. The Winnarans, custodians of the galactic council on
Mecatol Rex, have put forth a decree that anyone who could prove themselves worthy would claim the throne. However, you are not the only ones to have heard this call. And if you plan on winning their favour, you will
need to surpass all others and earn your place. But like, what does that mean for you as a player, right? Okay. So in Twilight Imperium you and two to five other
people will be playing as a great race of aliens, all trying to claim the title of galactic emperor. And you'll do this by colonizing new planets,
building vast fleets of ships, researching new technologies and engaging in diplomacy, trade
and occasionally interstellar war. All the while you'll be attempting to complete
objectives, both public and private, to earn points, which represent the favor of the Winnarans. The first race to reach 10 points has
proven their worth and claims the throne. I should also mention that this game takes
all day to play, and I am not exaggerating. If more than one person is unfamiliar with the
game, it will take at least 12 hours to finish. And I'm not trying to scare you off,
because this game is absolutely worth your time, but you need to know that going in. That being said, and once again, with my good friend
Nick acting as the players, it's time to get started. The first thing you'll notice if you've played
Twilight Imperium Third Edition is that there are a lot of similarities between that and Forth. And there are a few big changes and a lot of
little ones, but most of the game is the same. So in order to speed things up for people who are
familiar with Third, anytime there's a new rule or something that's changed, you'll see this symbol in the
corner here: the bigger it is, the bigger the change. So feel free to skip through the video
looking for those if you want to. In any case, it's time to set some things up. You'll start by picking your faction, either
randomly or by picking your favorite, uhm, there are 17 to choose from - so, go nuts. I think we're going to stick with our old friends, the
Sardakk N'orr, who are looking a little less Men In Black and a little more Starship Troopers this time around. But as long as the enemy doesn't have Neil Patrick
Harris on their side, I think we'll be good. Anyway, the reason I'm picking them is because their special
power is simple and effective: Plus one to combat rolls. So grab your faction sheet, a command sheet matching
your color, your home planet tile, along with the corresponding planet cards, a technology deck
plus your two factions specific technologies, your command and control tokens, and of course your units. You can build a custom galaxy if you want, but the game
recommends to use a pre-built galaxy for your first game. And I happen to agree since building a
galaxy well is something of a learned skill. I will still be talking about that at the end of
the video for those who are interested, but for now let's say we use the standard six person galaxy. There are other rules for three, four or
five players, but they're easy enough to figure out, so I'm not going to go into it. On the back of your faction sheet you'll see your
starting ships and technologies, if you have any. Alongside a really cool summary of
your factions, history and ideology. Once you've got all your starting things,
there are a few more bits to take care of. First, you place the custodians token on Mecatol
Rex, the planet at the center of the galaxy. Then set up the score tracker with five
stage one and five stage two objectives. Reveal the first two and place one
control token for each player at zero. Each player will also draw two secret objectives
and keep one (this should happen first!) On your command sheet, you'll place three tokens in
"Tactics", three in "Fleet" and two in "Strategy". And lastly, you want to place all
the other game components nearby. We'll talk about them later. Okay. We are all set up and ready to play. So... how do we do that? Well, despite there being a lot of rules, the
basic structure of this game is pretty simple. Each round of the game has three or four phases: Strategy,
Action, Status, and after it gets unlocked: Agenda. The strategy phase has each player picking
strategy cards, which give you special abilities and sets your turn order for that round. The action phase is where you move your ships, land
on planets, get in fights and all that good stuff. The status phase has a bunch of little steps, including
scoring and resetting things for the next round, and the agenda phase has you debating and voting on different
political agendas that can have serious lasting effects. Once you're done, you go right back to
the strategy and start it all again. Now most of the game takes place during the action phase. So we'll talk about that first. During the action phase, each player takes turns
doing one of four things, tactical actions, strategic actions, component actions, or you can pass. Once you pass, you can't take any more actions, but
you can't pass until you perform your strategic action. So with that in mind, let's talk about... tactical actions. See, like the action phase itself, most of what
you're doing in this game will be tactical actions. It's pretty much the bread and butter of Twilight Imperium. So let's dive in. Here we are at turn one: We've got our home system,
our starting ships and the rest of the galaxy awaits. We want to start by colonizing some worlds. So we take a tactical action to do that. First part of every tactical action is activating a system. You do so by taking a command token from
the tactics pool of your command sheet and placing it on the system you want to activate. Now that we've activated a
system, we can move ships into it. Since our goal is to colonize, we'll bring
one of our Carriers and a few ground forces. Ground forces are needed to colonize and defend planets,
but they can't go anywhere without a ship to carry them. Carriers are the workhorse of your fleet. They aren't good in a fight, but
they have an ability called capacity. In this case, they have a capacity of four,
which allows them to carry up to four ground forces or fighters in any combination. The next step of the tactical action
would be space combat, but since there's no one here to fight,
we move on to invasion. And since there are no enemy ground forces
on the planet, we simply land our own and put the corresponding planet card
in front of us, exhausted. You'll notice that there are some numbers and symbols next
to these planets: The numbers refer to their resource and influence values, which are important for a few different
things that you don't need to worry about just yet. Most planets also have a type which doesn't
do anything on its own, but some game effects will target specific planet types. And lastly, some planets have tech specialties
corresponding to the four types of technologies. I'll talk more about those when I
get to the strategy phase, though. The last step of a tactical action is production,
but since we don't have a space dock in the planet we just activated, we can't use it. We do however have one in our home system, so let's see how that works. After our turn, each other player in
turn order gets to take an action. When it gets back to us, we decide to activate
our home system so that we can produce some units. It starts the same way, with us taking a command token
from the tactics pool and placing it on the board. However, since we aren't moving units,
fighting enemies or invading planets, we skip right to production, which is nice and easy. You simply take the ships you want to
produce from your reinforcements and place them in the system you've activated. And then we pay for them by using the
resources provided by your planets. We have two unexhausted planets here with
a total of four resources for us to spend. The cost of the ships we produce
is listed on our faction sheet. Now let's say we want to build up our military a bit. We might want to start with some
cruisers, that'd be nice, uhm... here's the problem: We already have two ships in
the system, and because we have three tokens in our fleet pool, we only have room for one more. The fleet pool determines how many non-fighter
ships you can field in any one system at a time. If you ever have more than that, you'll have to
destroy ships until you make it back to your limit. And we don't want to do that just yet. So we only build the one cruiser. But we've still got two more resources to work with. This space dock can build up to five
units because of its production capacity. So let's build four more fighters. Both fighters and ground forces cost
one resource for up to two units. But in case you're wondering: you can't split it and
get one of each, you have to buy them separately. So we've built some more units, but maybe we want to
build more or we want to annex a few more planets. Oh, there's just one problem. Well, two actually: First is that when you
activate a system, you can't activate it again until your tokens are removed, and that
usually only happens at the end of the round. Second, is that when a system is activated,
no units can move out of it, which means that every one of our ships is currently landlocked. We do still have one command token. So if we wanted to stall for a turn, we could
activate a system and then just do nothing, but that's not going to help us that much. So let's move on to something a
little more interesting: Combat. Okay, so ...
Wait, wait, wait. What? We can't move on just yet. Oh, come on. Combat! Okay fine, "dad". So there are a few important things to talk
about before we move on to the cool stuff. So, I'm going to let Nick take care of the
boring rules, and I'll see you when he's done. Okay. Listen, Shea doesn't know what he's talking about. I mean, who wouldn't want to
learn about movement restrictions? Uh, okay. It's not the flashiest stuff, but if you master what
I'm about to tell you it'll really help you out. The first thing is that some units move faster than others. Your cruisers, for example, have a move speed of two. And if you upgrade your carriers, they will as well. Now we said you can't activate a system twice. So even if our home system wasn't activated, we
wouldn't be able to move more ships into this space. But fast shifts can move through
activated systems, no problem. Also, if you're flying through a nonactivated
system, you can pick up ground forces on the way. But you can't drop them off on the way, they
have to stay with you until the journey's end. And until you research a high level technology, you
can't fly through any system that contains enemy ships. Lastly, there are anomalies. These are special systems that
have some weird rules of their own. First is the supernova. *Kapowwww* ...I like supernovas... which you can't activate or move through. Period. Next is the asteroid belt. This is like the supernova, unless you have
the technology "Anti mass deflectors" after which it's just like any other system. There's also the Nebula, which you can move
into and out of, but you can't move through it. And when moving out of a Nebula, the speed of all your
ships is reduced to one, that all kind of sucks, but if someone attacks you while you are in the Nebula, your
defending ships will have plus one on attack rolls. The last red bordered system is the gravity rift. Any ship that moves through or out of the
gravity grift has its speed increased by one. But for each ship that does this, you have to roll a die. And if it lands on a one, two or
three, that ship is destroyed. So, you know, be careful. And finally there are the alpha and beta wormholes. These systems are considered adjacent to their
partner systems, no matter where they are on the map. All right, you've been pretty good. And I think we can let you have a little
combat now, if you think you're ready. Okay. All right. Now that grandpa's done explaining the boring stuff,
let's talk about why you're really here: space combat. But first let's set the scene a little bit. A few rounds have passed, and you've developed
some beef with one of the other factions. The Arborec, a bunch of glorified houseplants, have
swooped in and landed on some prime real estate. And even though he said "Dude, look, it's fine. I'm not even doing anything there. Like, you don't have to worry about me at all. You're going to be fine and we're going to be best buds... get it, "buds", because I'm a plant... anyway. Everything's totally cool. I promise." Well, somehow you know, he's full of sh*t. In response to this unprovoked invasion,
you've built an overwhelming retaliatory force. Oh, yeah, it's on now, buddy boy. Now, after the scenario is over, you'll know
everything you need to know about combat. So let's start small and work our way up. Every unit, except for the PDS and
the Space Dock, has a combat value. That means that whenever they attack, you roll a
D10, and if the number you rolled was equal to or higher than their combat value, that counts as hit. So it's time to get this thing rolling. As before, we start by activating a system. Now, because the space is about to get packed with ships,
I like to move all the relevant pieces to the side. That way, when you roll your dice, you don't accidentally
knock a bunch of other players ships across the galaxy. Anyway, first up is your War Sun. Strongest ship in the game and it has capacity six. So you can bring some fighters and ground forces along. Yeah, it's definitely coming with you. Next is your Dreadnought. It's coming from a different system, but that's fine. As long as it's not activated and the ship can make
it there, you can bring units from wherever you want. You figure another carrier with some more ground
forces wouldn't go amiss, and let's say we upped our fleet supply to four so we can bring this cruiser too. Since we took the last of the ground forces,
put some of your control tokens on the planets to remind people that they're still yours. Anyway, before combat starts, a
couple of things have to happen. First, and this technically triggers at the end of
movement, any PDS in the system can fire on enemy ships. The Arborec has one. So it gets to fire a shot at us. It hits on the six or higher, and they rolled an eight. So we have to lose one ship. Relax. Whenever you score a hit, the other
player chooses, which ship takes the hit. So we're just losing a fighter. Next, as space combat officially starts, any Destroyers
get to use an ability called Anti Fighter Barrage. If you look at the destroyer stats on the
faction sheet, you'll see that each ship gets to fire two shots that hit on a nine or better. You may have accurately surmised that this isn't great,
but Destroyers can be upgraded, and it's still a good response to an enemy with a lot of fighters - like us. Anyway, green has two destroyers, so
they get four shots before combat starts. And let's say they managed to get three hits,
which means we only have two fighters left. As soon as that's done, you move on to
the combat rounds, which have four steps: Announce retreat, make combat
rolls, assign hits and retreat. Green scored some good hits, but
he isn't confident about winning. So instead of going out in a blaze
of glory, he announces a retreat. In order to do this, you need an adjacent
system with a planet you control, or at least one of your ships, which he does. Before our retreat can happen, though,
we have to have a combat round. Both players roll dice for each
of their ships and calculate hits. You can do this simultaneously or in turns. It doesn't really matter because
all hits happen at the same time. It is important however, to designate which
ships you're rolling, for since different units have different combat values. On green side, they're rolling for four Fighters,
a Carrier, two Destroyers, and their Flagship. Each faction has a unique flagship
with different stats and abilities. And the Arborec Flagship is more of a mobile
factory than a fighter, but it does get to shoot twice, which is what these two blast icons mean. Let's say they get four hits. We'll choose where they're going in a minute. Our armada is a little worse for wear,
but we're still in pretty decent shape. Looking at our units, we've still got some
Fighters left, the Carrier, a Cruiser and Dreadnought, and of course our War Sun. And yes, the War Sun gets to fire
three times and they hit on threes. Oh, and if you remember, our faction ability gives us plus
one to all combat roles, so they basically hit on twos. When all is said and done, we scored seven
hits and now it's time to assign damage. We took four hits, so first we lose our fighters
because, well, that's what they're there for. And might as well lose the carrier too. Now, even though we brought those ground forces
along on the carrier, as long as the ships that are left have enough capacity, we won't lose them. And we have the War Sun, so we're fine. If we didn't have any capacity, but we still
had ground forces or fighters in the system, they would be lost at the end of combat. Anyway, we've got one more hit to assign. We could lose the cruiser, but instead we
decid to sustain damage on the Dreadnought. This ability allows us to cancel one hit
made against a ship by flipping it over. You can kind of think about it as having an extra life. There's only one danger with the strategy though,
and the Arborec are going to pounce on it. They play an action card called direct hit and... crap. I haven't talked about action cards yet. Uh, oh, well, we'll get to that later. The point is, if this card gets played when you
sustained damage, then the ship is destroyed. So it's something to keep in mind. Okay, that kind of sucked. But we dealt a lot more damage to them, their left with
their flagship, which also sustained damage, and a carrier. And now it's time for them to GTFO. Because they announced retreat at the start of
combat and they have a suitable, adjacent system, they move in all their ships and activate the system
with a command token from their reinforcements. If the system was already activated,
that's fine, you just leave it as is. All right, now their fleet is dealt
with, it's time for planetary invasion. First some ships get to bombard the planets from orbit. Again, our War Sun gets to fire three
shots that hit on threes are higher. Unfortunately, bombardment as well as anti Fighter barrage
and the PDS's space cannon don't count as combat rolls. So we don't get our plus one on those. The Arborec have a lot of ground forces on both planets. So let's aim for the one with the PDS. Normally the PDS would provide a shield from
bombardment, but the War Sun just cancels those out. We score three hits, so they
lose all of their ground forces. We don't have the planet yet, though. In order to do that, we need to land our own troops. We need to commit troops to each
planet, so let's split up two and two. As we land, the PDS gets one last shot against us
and it hits, but we still have one more soldier, so it lands and takes the planet, destroying
their space dock and PDS in the process. The other invasion will be a little trickier. The fight plays out just like space combat does,
both sides shooting at each other simultaneously. The difference is that there are no more retreats:
you fight until one site is completely destroyed, or - as might be the case - both sides are eliminated. If that happens, the original owner
of the planet remains in control. They still have a space dock here, but as long as we have
any ships in the system, that space dock is under blockade. Blockaded space docks can't make ships,
but they can produce ground forces. And that wraps up both combat and tactical actions. And I know it was a lot, but like I said, that covers
most of what you're actually doing in the game. And before we move on to strategies, which really
make the game interesting, Nick is going to talk about transfer actions while I grab a drink of... wait a minute! Transfer actions don't exist anymore. Alright, no it's fine, I'll leave
you to the next, but anyway... that face is so creepy. So transfer actions were thing in Third Edition, and if you
really liked them, there's no reason you can't house rule them back in, but they aren't technically part of the rules. The last type of action besides strategy is component. This is literally referring to game components: your
faction sheet, for example, or action cards or technologies. If any of these have the word "action" on
them, that means you can, as your action, perform whatever it says on the component. Nice and easy. There's also a new thing called "deals": during
your turn, you can make a deal with someone. The terms of that deal are up to you, but if
the conditions for it can be met instantaneously and both sides agree, they must adhere to it. If the deal would resolve sometime in the
future, then you can feel free to honor or not honor the deal as you see fit... "insert Game Of Thrones reference here"... nailed it. Now, let's move on to strategy, because like Shea
said, that's where things get really interesting. The last action we have to talk
about is the strategic action. And this is what really makes Twilight Imperium shine. See, at the beginning of each round, during
the strategy phase, you'll be choosing one of eight strategy cards, starting with whoever
has the speaker token and moving clockwise. Each strategy card works the same way: they have a primary ability and a secondary ability. And when it's your turn during the action phase, you
can spend your action to activate the primary ability. Then, in clockwise order around you, every other player
may perform the secondary ability if they want to. Usually this requires them to spend a
command token from their strategy pool. The strategy cards also determine the
turn order by the number on the card. If it is six players and eight cards, some
of them will invariably not get picked. And when this happens, you place
one trade goods token on the card. The next player to pick that strategy card gets
all of the trade goods that have accumulated there. Anyway, let's talk about the cards themselves. We've got Leadership, Diplomacy, Political,
Construction, Trade, Warfare, Technology, and Imperial. Let's do things normally this time
and start with number one: Leadership. The primary ability is simple: you play it and get three
command tokens, which you can place wherever you want. On your command sheet, dude! The secondary ability allows other players
to buy command tokens by spending influence at a rate of three influence for one token. You spend influence the same way you spend resources: by
exhausting planet cards and getting their influence value. As you might've guessed, this means that if
you spend a planet for influence, you won't be able to use its resources and vice versa. Anyway, once you buy your tokens, just like with
primary, you can put them anywhere you like. I swear to God, if those are in
your mouth, I'm going to kill you. Anyway, Leadership is unique in that it's the only
card that doesn't require you to spend a command token from your strategy pool to use the secondary
ability, which makes sense when you think about it. Next up is Diplomacy.
(FGG released a new version of this card) When you activate the primary ability, choose
one of your systems besides Mecatol Rex. Then each other player places one of their command
tokens from the reinforcements on that system. This is a good defensive move because it means that
other players can't invade that space during this round. Also after everyone places their tokens, you
can ready each exhausted planet in that system, allowing you to spend them again for their resources
or influence. The secondary ability is similar. It allows other players to spend a command
token from their strategy pool to refresh two of their exhausted planets, which - because you can
pick any two planets - is arguably more useful. Anyway, number three is Political. The primary for this one has three effects:
First is that you take the speaker token from whoever had it before and give it to someone else. The speaker token will come up when we talk about the
Agenda phase a bit later, but it also determines who gets to pick the first strategy card during the next
Strategy phase, so it's a pretty good thing to have. You also get to look at the top two cards of the agenda
deck, then place each card on the top or bottom of the deck. In any order. These cards have game-changing effects that each
race is going to vote on, but unlike in third edition, this isn't triggered by the political card. Instead there's a completely separate Agenda phase that
starts taking place once any player lands on Mecatol Rex. Again, I'll get into this a little more later. The third thing is that you get to draw two
action cards and the secondary ability allows other players to spend a command token from their
strategy and draw two action cards themselves. And I guess now's a good time to
talk about what those actually are. During the game, you'll be drawing action
cards and these cards can do a lot of things. Now, while there are some repeats,
there are also a ton of unique ones. The cards themselves will tell
you when and how to play them. And the only restriction is that you can't play two
of the same card for the same benefit in one round. For example, there's a card called morale
boost, which gives you your units plus one to attack rolls for a single combat round. If you have two of these cards, you can't play them
both at once for plus two bonus, but you can play one on one combat round and the other on the next. If multiple players want to play action cards at the
same time, the cards are resolved one after the other in initiative order, starting with the active player. All right. Next up is construction and it's completely
different from any Third Edition strategy cards. It's also pretty simple. You build one PDS or Space Dock on a planet you
control, then build a PDS on a planet you control, and it doesn't have to be the same planet. This is a big departure from Third Edition, because this is
now the only way you can build Space Docks and PDS units. The secondary allows other players to build a PDS
or Space Dock, but they have to spend a command token from the strategy pool and they have to
place it on the system in which they're building. This effectively activates the system, but the ability can also be used on systems
that have already been activated (see Errata). Number five is Trade and it's a big one. There are three things that happen
with the Trade strategy card. But first we need to talk about commodities and trade goods. Trade goods are a kind of currency that you can
spend to get either one resource or one influence. Commodities are tokens you produce that are
useless to you, but once you give them to somebody else, they turn into trade goods. This is called a transaction, and you can make one
transaction per turn with each of your neighbors. It usually works like this: After his humiliating defeat, the Arborec
retreated to this adjacent system, which means he and the purple player are now neighbors. He's neighbors with us too, but he's also dead to us, so... He wants to rebuild his economy. So in his turn, he asks purple to perform
an equal trade of three commodities each. You can hand the commodities to each other, but
since I can't afford that kind of CGI, when it's equal like this, you can also just flip your tokens. Okay, now for the Trade strategy card: First you gain free trade goods. Then you replenish your commodities by adding
commodity tokens until you reach your maximum. Lastly, we can choose any number of players and
allow them to replenish their commodities for free. Anyone we don't pick can use the secondary
to replenish their commodities by paying one token from their strategy pool. Trading commodities is a great way to make up for if
you have some lackluster planets, but keep in mind that while you might not mind helping your neighbors
now, they are still your opponents in the end. Anyway, let's move on to number six: Warfare. Now, despite its name, Warfare, isn't purely aggressive. The primary ability allows you to remove
one of your command tokens from the board. You then gain one token and can redistribute
the tokens on your command sheet. So why is this good? Well, remember all the times that I said,
once a system was activated, you couldn't activate it again or use any of those ships? This is the exception to that rule. Warfare effectively deactivates a system,
allowing you to do a ton of different things. Maybe produce twice at a Space Dock, move ships
you just produced, move a fleet twice, attack the same location twice - you get the idea. Also, redistributing your command tokens allows
for some pretty sneaky maneuvers as well. The secondary ability is really good too, though. It allows you to spend a token from strategy to
produce at one Space Dock in your home system. And keep in mind, I didn't say
you had to activate that system. That means that whatever is produced
there will be free to move this round. So keep that in mind before picking this card. Number seven is Technology, and you can usually
expect it to get picked almost every round. That's because technologies will give you new
or improved abilities for the rest of the game. Now in Third Edition, this was really complicated,
but this edition they've simplified it. So let's take a look at what technologies
there are and how you'll be researching them. These are the basic technologies
of the four different types. The bottom left shows the prerequisites for researching that
tech and the bottom right shows what that tech gives you. So if you research anti mass deflectors, you
now have one blue technology, which will allow you to research gravity drive in the future. You can get around this if you have planets with
tech specialties, which we mentioned earlier. When researching, you can exhaust a
planet with a tech specialty to ignore one prerequisite matching the symbol on the planet. I also need to quickly mention that at least on the
copy I have, the technology hypermetabolism has a typo. It should say: "You gain three command
tokens" instead of two, which is kind of a big mistake, but I got an early access copy, so
hopefully they fix that before general release. Moving on. There are also upgrades for each unit in the game. I mentioned upgrading our carriers
earlier - well, this is how you do that. We now have two blue technologies, which
meets the prerequisites for this upgrade. So when we research it, we simply place the
card over the space on our faction sheet and use the new stats and abilities for that unit. This is also how you learn to make War Suns. Upgrades usually have more complex
prerequisites, and they don't provide any tech symbols, but they can be very powerful. So you don't want to forget about them. And lastly, you'll also have two faction specific
technologies that you can research during the game. These are the Sardakk N'orr's, and they are absolutely
vicious, but every fraction has different ones. There are a lot of technologies in the games,
so I would take a look at them before your first game and see what appeals to you. Now, back to the Technology strategy
card, the primary ability allows you to research any technology you qualify for. Just take the tech card and put it in front of you. Congratulations! Your people are now smart. Then if you have the cash, you can spend six
resources and research another technology. The secondary allows other players to research a tech if
they spend a token from strategy and pay four resources. After the first turn, this will be pretty doable
for most players, so you can expect each faction to get quite a few new abilities as the game goes on. All right. The last strategy card is Imperial and oh
boy has this one changed from Third Edition. I won't talk about what it used to be - suffice
it to say it was a lot less interesting, but the new one makes for a much better game. The primary ability allows you to score one public
objective immediately if you fulfill its requirements. Normally you can only score objectives during the
Status phase, and we'll talk more about that in a bit. It also gives you one victory
point if you control Mecatol Rex. Otherwise you draw one secret objective card. The secondary allows other players to draw a secret
objective card if they pay a token from strategy. So this card is basically all about points. I should also mention that you can only have
up to three secret objectives at a time. And with that in mind, let's get into how you win this game. Okay. So I mentioned in the intro that each race is trying
to prove themselves to the Winnaran custodians who hold the keys to the empire, so to speak. And in order to do that, you must fulfill certain
objectives that they'll put forth throughout the game. The first player to reach 10 points has successfully
shown that they've got the right stuff to rule the galaxy. So how do we score points? Well, besides when the Imperial strategy is used, that
mostly only happens during the status phase, which happens after everyone has passed during the Action phase. The Status phase has eight steps, but they move really fast. First in initiative order, each player can achieve one
public objective and one secret objective, if they qualify. When you score an objective, place one of your control
tokens on the objective card and move your token on the score tracker as many points as you just earned. If anyone reaches 10 points, the game ends and
someone is crowned the new galactic emperor. If the game hasn't ended, move on to step two,
which is to reveal the next public objective. You reveal stage one objectives until you
run out and then start revealing stage twos. After that, each player draws one action card. Then remove all your command tokens from the
board, placing them in your reinforcements. Gain two command tokens and redistribute tokens
in your command sheet however you like, ready all of your exhausted cards, repair any damaged
units by flipping them back right side up. And lastly return all strategy cards to the center. After all of this is done, if no one has
landed on Mecatol Rex yet, you go back to the Strategy phase and start a new round. However, if Mecatol Rex has been taken,
then for the rest of the game you perform an Agenda phase after the Status phase is done. And, very quickly before we move on, landing on Mecatol
Rex is a little different from the other planets. At the start of this game, we placed
this custodian token on Mecatol Rex. It has a six on it because in order to
land here, you must pay six influence. Then whoever landed there, keeps the
token and earns one victory point. And since we're getting close to the end, I'll
let Nick come in and describe the Agenda phase. All right. Now who wants to get into some
stimulating political discourse, yeah? Okay, now that Shea's gone, the
agenda phase is actually awesome. So I'm going to gather my clones and show you how it's done. After the status phase, the speaker will draw the
first card of the agenda deck, read it out, and then starting with a player to their left, each person will
vote on the agenda, with the speaker breaking any ties. Then once that's done, you draw a
second card and do it all again. So why is it cool? Two reasons. First, these agendas have a major effect on the game and
you'll be discussing, bargaining and pleading with each other to make sure your opponents vote in certain ways. And second, you vote by spending influence
and you can choose how much you spend. This is important because you usually don't know what the
second card will be when you're voting on the first one. And your planets don't refresh between votes. Meaning that you might spend most of your
votes on the first agenda only to be hamstrung when the second agenda is even more important. The tactics involved in this phase
are not to be underestimated. And let's quickly look at the agenda cards themselves. There are two basic types of agendas: laws, and directives. Directives have a one-time effect, whereas laws
will stay in play for the rest of the game. An agenda might also have you electing
something or choosing to vote for or against. When you cast your votes, you have to pick one option. However you can abstain from voting completely. You also can't spend trade goods to gain more votes. So if you've exhausted all your
planets, you're out of votes. Once you've voted on both of the agendas, everyone refreshes
their planet cards and you go back to the Strategy phase. And lastly, during each vote, players can
perform a transaction with each other player, even if they aren't adjacent on the board. And that's how you play Twilight Imperium fourth edition, Wait, wait, wait! Hold and move. Okay. So we're not quite done. I mean, basically you now know everything
you need to play your first game. There's annotated links in the description if you wanted
to re-watch something, but I got a bit of flag last time about not teaching any expansions or modules and while
fourth edition doesn't really have those yet, there are two optional rules that you might want to bring into your game. First are promissary note. These are cards that do nothing for you while
you hold them in your hand, but you can give them to other players during transactions. And while another player has them, they have
power over you in some way, depending on the card. Usually once the card is used, it
gets returned to the original player. It's also important to note that once you
give a promissory note away, that card can be given to another player without your consent. So, be careful. The second optional rule is building a custom galaxy,
and this will take a little bit more explanation. Before you start the game, you can choose to build your own
galaxy by dealing out a hand of system tiles to each player. Since we've been assuming a six player game,
let's keep going with that and deal out three blue backed systems and two red backed systems. The blue tiles are normal planet systems while
the red tiles have anomalies or empty space. First place Mecatol Rex in the center and each
home system in its approximate location on the map, then starting with the speaker and going
clockwise, each player will place one system tile. Then when it gets to the sixth player,
they'll place a second tile and the order reverses until it gets back to the speaker. And it goes back and forth like
this until the galaxy is complete. When placing systems, there are a few rules to follow:
First is that you have to complete the inner ring of systems before you can start on the middle ring, and you have to
complete the middle ring before placing in the outer ring. Second, you are not allowed to place anomalies
or matching wormhole tiles next to each other, unless you have no other options. And the last rule is... no hitting! I mean it. Even if they put the supernova right in front of your
home system, just save your aggression for the game. And now you know how to play
Twilight Imperium Fourth Edition. Or, you know, maybe you need to re-watch some things. That's okay. It's a complicated game. I mean, you might need to play a few rounds before you
really know what's going on, but this game is worth it. If you have any questions about Fourth
Edition, any rules that you're still confused about, or if you think I got something wrong,
well, first check the description box below. I'll be updating that along the way, but
also feel free to ask me in the comments. And if you'll indulge me, there's one
more component that I want to talk about. And you won't find this in the box because it's
something I wrote myself and that is: Player epilogues. See, playing this game is an amazing journey, but I've found
that the ending can occasionally be a little anticlimactic. So to that end, I've written two different
player epilogues for each of the 17 races to be read by the winner at the end of the game. And if this is something that you might be interested
in, you can find them by joining my new Patreon. See, I love making these videos and I want to do
them much more frequently than I currently do. So if you think they're valuable and if you want access
to some of the extra stuff that I make for games - like these epilogues - please consider chipping in a few bucks. Any little bit helps. Anyway, the next video I make will be for Above And
Below, which I promised last time, but then this game fell in my lap and I had to make a choice. But now it's happening for real. And in the meantime, I'll be making a
few extra videos about Twilight Imperium. The first will be a strategy video, and that's going
to be for Patreon subscribers only, but the next two will cover the transition from third to fourth
edition, and those will be available for everybody. So, see you next time!
I really want to play this game but I'm unsure if my group would be down for such a long game.
Got a group of 4 other people and played the game this past Saturday. It was amazing. Rules explanation took about an hour and the full game with a pizza break took 10 hours. Absolutely worth the time investment.
LOUD NOISES!
WHY ARE WE SHOUTING?
Great video! Thanks a bunch! Just about to play today and this helped a bunch. Sent it to all my buddies before they come over.
Great video. Any chance you'd do a video for Forbidden Stars?
Ah I came here to Share this but Gary beat me to it the bastard!! Shae (the guy who made this video) is a good friend of our and lives two apartment buildings away from us. I honestly don't have any real interest in playing TI4, but this video is insanely well done. I'm glad it's getting some love!
The absolute madman!
best boardgame ever made by mankind