Twilight Imperium 4th Edition Tutorial

welcome galactic species to the twilight imperium fourth edition tutorial twilight imperium is an epic game of space conquest and politics for three to six players sir the game the going to need to nominate one player to be the speaker the speaker is the person who will go first in many parts of the setup and during the first round of gameplay however the speaker can change hands during the game so it's not entirely important who becomes the speaker at the very beginning of the game after you've decided on a speaker each player will then need to pick a unique faction there are 17 to pick from in the game each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses after choosing your faction you're going to need to gather the components specific to your faction this includes the command and control tokens that have the same faction symbol as the upper right corner of your faction sheets - technology cards that correspond to your faction a promissory note specific to your faction the home system tiles specific to your faction which you can differentiate between the other towers in the game because home system tiles will have greenbacks as opposed to blue or red and you might as well find the planet cards for the planets in your home system and lastly if your faction has any other faction specific tokens you'll need to gather them now keep in mind though only three factions in the game have these extra tokens you can always find them because they'll have the symbol matching your faction after each player has picked the faction and gathered a component specific to those factions each player is going to need to pick a color all the colors are exactly the same in terms of gameplay it's only to help differentiate from each other on the board after choosing your color you'll take the corresponding components that match your color which include a command sheet for promissory notes technology cards and of course the plastic units gather all of these components and put them together in your play area your promissory notes and technology cards do not need to be shuffled but you can consolidate your faction cards into their matching decks now you're going to need to construct your game board the tile Mikoto Rex will always be in the center then depending on the number of players the pair's we need to set up around the table in the relative location of their home system starting area the board will vary slightly depending on the number of players so be sure to look at the reference page in the rules reference book to see what those differences are however keep in mind that the footprint of the final game board will be relatively the same size so be sure you have a big enough play space for this game I'm going to set this game up for three players and have placed each of the starting systems in a general location that they'll end up in once the board is complete then depending on the number of players each player will be doubt number of blue tiles and red tiles for three players each player will be doubt six blue tiles and two red ones now starting with the speaker and proceeding clockwise each player will take their doubt system tiles and place one in the innermost uncompleted ring around Mecca tall Rex which tile they use and where to decide to put it is completely up to the player systems known as anomalies which you can identify with these red markings on the outside of the tile cannot be placed directly next to each other unless is otherwise impossible additionally you'll find wormhole tiles which can similarly not be placed next to each other unless otherwise impossible but if the wormhole is of a different type those can be placed next to each other after each player has placed one tile the placement order will reverse starting with the last player to have recently placed the tile entire placement will reverse again when it heads back to the speaker in other words it goes one two three three two one one two three three two one until all the tiles have been placed and then each player will connect with their home systems and here we have a finished board there is the custodian token which looks like this then III placed right on top of my koto Rex with the six side face-up you're going to then need to shuffle the common decks which come in the form of agenda cards action cards Stage one objectives stage two objectives and secret objectives eg these decks would need to be shuffled and placed off to the side of the board there was also a planet deck that doesn't need to be shuffled but should also be kept close by you're going to need to create a supply of tokens which come in the form of fighter tokens inventory tokens and trade good tokens there are also eight strategy cards which should be placed within reach of the speaker and viewing distance of everyone else on the back of every faction will be their starting technology and starting units each pair can gather these components placing the technology in front of themselves face-up and the starting units they can place onto their starting systems you can tell which models correspond to which units by the picture is depicted on your faction sheets structures and infantry should be placed on planets and a word of advice is to always put your space stock on the planet with the highest resource value each planet has two numbers on it a resource value surrounded in yellow and an influence value surrounded in blue I won't go too in depth in terms of the strategy of this game but I will quickly explain that the number of units you can produce on your turn in a single action is determined by the resource value of the planet your space dock is on so be sure that space dark is on a planet that is rich in resources ships and fighters don't go on planets but instead go on to the space area of a system each player is also going to need to take some of their command tokens and place three of them the tactics pace of the Comanche three of them with the ship side face up on the fleet space of the Comanche and two of them on the strategy space of the Comanche will explain what each of these do later but this is how your Comanche starts each player will then be dealt to secret objectives and be allowed to keep one of them we're joining the other one not chosen back into the secret mission deck to be shuffled you're going to need to place the victory point tracker somewhere close by on the board and you can choose if you want to have a 10 victory point Limit game or a 14 point Limit game you can end the game early if you achieve the victory point limit first place it somewhere off to the side near the board and each player will take one of their control tokens and placing it on the zero spot of the victory point tracker the speaker will then deal five face down stage one objectives near the board and five face down stage two objectives below that and finally the speaker will reveal the first to face down stage one objective cards and with that you're done with the setup and you're finally ready to play Twilight Imperium each round consists of three major phases with the fourth phase being added midway through the game the phases in order are the strategy phase the action phase the Status phase and the fourth phase it gets added is the agenda phase again I won't go too far into detail about the nuance and strategy but I will teach you how to play so the first phase is the strategy phase in this phase each player starting with the speaker and proceeding clockwise will pick one of the eight strategy cards needless to say each card has a different effect and a card is broken up into three different parts a primary ability a secondary ability and an initiative number we'll go into more detail about what these abilities do during the action phase but the initiative number means that once each player has taken one of these cards for themselves when we move on to the next phase the action phase the turn order will actually be the Herman by ascending order of the strategy card you possess so whoever has the lowest initiative number goes first and then going on to the person with the second lowest number and so on and that order will be maintained throughout the entirety of the action phase keep in mind though if you have three or four players after each player has got under turn to pick a one strategy card you will need to grab another strategy card because of the lesser number of players any strategy cards are not chosen by the end of the strategy phase will be given one trade good to be more enticing in future phases whenever you take a strategy card that has trade goods on it you will also take all the trade goods and put them within your stockpile located on your command sheet so that was a strategy phase next comes the action phase during the action phase you can take four types of actions strategic actions involve using your strategy card tactical actions come from the command tokens that are in your tactical pool of your command sheet so you can only perform as many tactical actions as you have tokens on your sheet once you run out of those you can no longer perform tactical actions certain components in this game will have the word action on them using these actions are known as component actions that can be found on action cards on your faction sheet technology cards or even agenda cards and the fourth thing you can do in the action phase is pass however you cannot pass until you've used all of the strategy cards in your possession and if you do pass you are out for the rest of the action phase meaning whenever it would be your turn again you get skipped you can still respond to other players and perform the secondary abilities found on strategy cards but otherwise you no longer have a turn in the action phase it may be the case that you have to pass because you can no longer perform any other type of action or you could choose the pass early even though you may still perform actions it's up to you just remember you have to use all of your strategy cards in your possession before you can pass so now let's go into a little bit more detail about those kind of action as I mentioned strategy cards have a primary ability and a secondary ability when you choose to do a strategic action you perform the primary ability for yourself the secondary ability does not apply to you it instead applies to everyone else once you've finished performing the primary ability the secondary ability is usually a lesser form of the primary ability and more expensive but it allows players who did not take the strategy card still perform something similar to that action however it would usually cost them a command token from their strategy pool so it's up to them to determine how they want to use those tokens effectively once you finish performing the primary ability and each player has either taken or passed on the secondary ability you then flip it over it still shows you the initiative number so you don't forget your place in the round order so that's the strategic action the next thing you can do is a tactical action and this is where a majority of your movement conflict and production gets pushed all into one action your command sheet has a helpful reference guide to show you the steps of a tactical action but I'll explain them here now to perform a tactical action you take one of your command tokens from the tactical pool of your command sheet and place it in a system that you do not already have a command token place so the yellow player wants to place their token here they have now activated this system it may move ships towards it each ship in your faction has a movement value which is the number of systems it may move to get to the system you've activated there are some restrictions of how movement works in this manner as an example here the yellow player has activated the system meaning they want to move ships into that system potentially this cruiser has a movement value of 1 and so may move one space to move into that system this Cruiser has a movement value of 2 which means that it could have normally gotten to that system however you cannot move through systems that have enemy ships now I say ships which means ground troops don't count and so this Cruiser can move in freely structures don't count and fighters don't count but in this example here this Cruiser could not move into that system and it cannot move part of the way to that system it must end its movement on the activated system and so cannot move at all also you cannot move ships from a system that have a command token already on it this system is effectively exhausted and so nothing more may move out of it but otherwise you're allowed to move as many ships as you would like into the system you've activated however keep in mind the fleet spot of a Comanche shows how many ships you're allowed to have in one system at a time the game starts with you having three command tokens in that spot if at any point you end up having more than what you're allowed by the number of tokens in your fleet pool you must destroy ships within that system until you no longer exceed your maximum fleet value what you destroy those up to you also some ships might have capacity values this is the number of fighters and ground troops it may transport while moving between systems removing a ship you may decide that you want to take some fighters and ground troops with you these units are not embarked on to any specific ship but you can instead treat it like this you can have as many ground troops and fighters in the space part of a system as long as a number of ground troops and fighters does not exceed like a passive e value of all the ships within that system so here because I have one carrier that has a capacity value of four I can have up to four fighters and ground troops in the space area of a system without any problem if had two carriers it means I could have up to eight but these fighters and ground troops are not tied to any specific ship so if one were to for some reason get destroyed I wouldn't have to lose any of these troops or fighters because they're not considered to be designated honest Pacific ship after you finished moving into the activated system you would ensue space combat if there are any enemy ships also in that system are going to detail on how that works after explaining the rest of the tactical action the next thing you get to do is invade hopefully after being victorious in a space combat or if there are no enemy space combatants as I have here you are then allowed to invade the planets in that system with the ground troops you have embarked on your transports I'll also go into detail about how this works afterwards but in short I can take the ground troops that I have in space and finally be able to plop them onto planets so that I no longer have to worry about carrying them around if those troops land on planets that already have enemy ground troops and then they would fight and start ground combat and again we'll hold off on all the combat stuff later but if they managed to survive and only your troops remain on a planet you can then establish control to do that you take the corresponding cards of the planets you've now landed from the planet deck and place them within your play area exhausted each planet has two sides one full of color and one black and white the black and white side is the exhausted side if you for whatever reason decide to leave the planet later and take all ground troops from said planets in order to remind other players that you are still in control of those planets place your control tokens on those planets as a reminder because you control those planets for as long as you are in possession of their cards which means someone else can take those cards from you if they were to invade the planet and lastly as a part of the tactical action you produce on the system that you activated in order to produce you need to have a space dock on one of the planets in the activated system you don't have that either of these two systems but if I were to activate this system here my home system I could choose to produce on it to produce I can choose any of the ships here in my faction sheep which I can pay for by spending resources equal to their costs you can produce as many units as you want as long as the number of units you're purchasing does not exceed the production value of your Spacedock typically most space stocks have this production rule which says the production values equal to two more than the resource value of the planet that it is on so here the planet that this space stock starts on has a resource value of three which means that I couldn't buy more than five units at a time with one production over the course of the game you might acquire trade goods which can be used as resources one to one so one trade good is one resource that you could use to buy one destroyer in this case or you can take the planets in your possession and exhaust them to obtain the resources on their card however if you exhaust a pan in this way you're only using it for one of the resource values either its monetary resource or its influential resource of course the monetary value of being the only one of use during unit production once a planet is exhausted it can no longer be used for any future purchases until it becomes unexhausted if the unit you're buying has these two symbols next to the cost it means you're buying two at the same time however each of those units counts against your production limit whenever you produce units you'll place any ships produce in a space area of the system they're producing from and any ground troops are placed onto the planet where the space dock is on there's no limit to how many ground troops can be on a single planet but remember the number of units in space is limited by the number of tokens you have in your fleet pool if you want to produce a unit and you no longer have any of those units available to you and your pool you can instead choose to remove one of the units of that type from a system on the board there's not contain one of your command tokens and return it to the pool in front of you so that you may then produce it if you want to produce more fighters and infantry but don't have any remaining in front of you you can use the fighter and infantry tokens around the board to use as your supplements however for the sake of recognition make sure these tokens are accompanying one of your models so the other players know whom these tokens belong to now it's finally started talking about combat first I'll mention that combat actually starts at the end of movement if you have a unit with the space cannon ability there are a number of offensive abilities in this game and you'll see them on the units on your faction sheet these abilities include space cannon anti fighter barrage and bombardment and they all work exactly the same way except they target different units at different times the way that it works is that the ability will be followed by a number this is the number you're trying to roll on a d-10 so let's say in this example here the red player just moved into this system once he's finished moving you can see here on the tactic rafts in reference card 2 after you move ships you do the space cannon offensive because the yellow player here has a unit with the space cannon ability it activates he takes one d-10 and is trying to roll equal to or greater than the number on that ability which in this example is 6 if he's successful he scores a hit if he's not successful nothing happens if there is a second number next to the first number this is actually the number of dice you're throwing so for example if the ability red space cannon six times - it means you're rolling 2d tens and each six or greater scores a hit that is how all the offensive abilities work and then combat starts if the system still has two opposing players ships the first thing that happens in the anti fighter barrage if unit has that ability they get to use it now in the same way that I mentioned before except this ability only affects fighters step two is that you announce retreats however retreating doesn't actually occur until the very end of a combat round and if you do choose to retreat keep in mind that when you do you retreat with all of your ships in that system and you could choose to take any ground units on the planets that you control up into your ships at this time so that they can hopefully retreat later step three is to make combat roles you roll one dice each ship you're going to attack with and you're looking to score the combat value of that ship or greater these rules happen simultaneously so the red player and the yellow player will be doing this at the same time if your ship has these icons next to the combat value that is actually the number of dice you'd be rolling so each player simply designates wish ship they're gonna shoot with throw the dice and if it scores a hit they'll keep it to the side so here by the end of the combat roles the yellow player has scored three hits and the red player has scored two hits step four the players will have to assign those hits onto their own ships each ship only has one health so after you assign it one damage it is destroyed so the yellow player can choose to have their two fighters die while the red player has to choose between the ships that they control step five of space combat is to retreat if you're treating you have to take all of your ships and move them between adjacent system that doesn't have any enemy ships and it must contain either a planet you control or one of your own units otherwise you are not allowed to retreat so here the yellow player does retreat back into his own system even though he was winning the combat because he declared a retreat previously and lastly if you do retreat in the system you retreat to doesn't have one of your own command tokens on it you were then placed one of your command tokens there but if you don't retreat and you still have some remaining ships then you would go on to another round of space combat and this continues until one side is either wiped out completely or one side retreats it is possible that both sides can be completely destroyed during space combat and then starts the invasion step of their tactical action which starts with bombardment which is another offensive action same as before then the invading player may commit any ground forces they have in space onto any planets of the system they're in vain and can spread them out however they wish the third step in an invasion is a space cannon defense same as before except this can only target the ground troops landing on your planet and then ground combat which works exactly the same as space combat where players will roll dice and assign hits except there is no retreat in ground combat once units are locked in a fight they are there until one side is completely wiped out or everyone is dead and lastly if the invading player is successful and there are no longer any enemy troops on the planet they will establish control by taking the planet card from the previous owner and placing it in their play area exhausted and if there are any remaining structures that belong to the enemy player they are immediately destroyed and that wraps up the entirety of how tactical actions work but before we move on to the status phase let me talk about a few things that can happen during the action phase first off the action cards that you will acquire over the course of a game have very specific rules on when they can be used before certain things happen as a component action after certain phases and so on you can use as many of these as you want so long as you fulfill their timing requirements however you cannot have more than seven in your hand at one time once you acquire more than seven you must discard down until you were no longer exceeding seven then after you've used an action card you discard it the next thing we talk about is trading trading is a completely social aspect of this game over the course of the game you might acquire commodities which represented by this grey token on the reverse side of a trade goods yellow token you might obtain this during the primary ability of the trade strategic card and these commodities actually go on the faction sheet and it cannot exceed the limit as designated by your faction sheet these commodities represent goods that your faction creates in excess and does not see as valuable so they're worthless to you but they are not worthless to other players if you are neighboring another player ie you have ships or controlled planets next to a system that has another player's planet or ships you are considered neighbors and may engage in trades and deals during your turn you may negotiate trades and deals with each other player around the table however you cannot complete more than one trade between each player so here if it was the red players turn they could do one trade with the blue player and one tray with the yellow player and no more if you trade commodities to another player once it goes into the other players position you will flip it to become a trade good that will then go into the trade good spot of your command sheet it can then be used as a resource for future purchases these trade goods can represent monetary resource or influential resource how you use it is up to you but once you use it it's gone each player is also in possession of five promissory notes one unique to their faction these may also be traded between players however you may only trade one at a time these promissory notes include special abilities that the player who possesses them may use at any point where applicable and you may trade away promissory notes given to you by other players so for example here the red player could trade his ceasefire promissory note to the blue player and later the blue player may trade that same promissory note to the yellow player you of course cannot activate your own promissory notes and once you use a promissory note is returned back to its original owner and because these trades and deals are completely social there are only a few rules to keep her from getting out of hand if you're working out of trade with another player and that trade is something that you can immediately fulfill that is known as a binding deal and you must fulfill it for example if it's the red player's turn and they turn to the blue player and say if you give me all of your commodities and all of your resources I will not move into your system this turn if the blue player accepts the red player must fulfill that deal this is so that you can't outright lie to other players and go back on your word after making a deal like that however if you and another player work out a deal that does not have to be immediately fulfilled for example if the red player asks the blue player not to move into a certain system so that it can be available for them later on they can agree on the trade but because the details of the deal cannot be immediately fulfilled and instead pertain to an event that happens later the blue player doesn't have to fulfill that deal because it's non-binding and may add a later turn decide that they once move into that planet anyways how this affects the real relationship between people at your table will vary depending on your group but it is worth noting the distinction between binding deals which can happen immediately and non binding deals which do not need to be upheld so now we move on to the Status phase the first step of the status phase is to score objectives there are ten objectives here they will be revealed over the course of the game if any player can fulfill those requirements during the status phase they're allowed to place one of their control tokens on the objective they're fulfilling and move their victory point tracker up the corresponding number of spaces according to the objective they fulfilled however marking an objective in this way means that you cannot complete the same objective more than once but other players may still complete that objective however you cannot score more than one public objective during a single status phase but you may score a public objective and a secret objective that occurred during the status phase as you can see here these objectives have satisfies at the top some might have action phase so during a single status phase you're only allowed to complete one public and one secret it is also worth noting that you cannot have more than three completed and uncompleted secret objectives in your possession the second step of the status phase is to reveal the next public objective public objectives are reviewed from left to right if you set them up as I have done here all stage one objectives must first be revealed before you can start revealing States two objectives it is also important to note you cannot score any public objectives if you do not control all the planets in your own home system if you've arrived at the reveal public objective step of the status phase and there are no more public objectives to reveal the game immediately ends and whoever has the most victory points is declared the winner if there's a tie the player with the earliest initiative order would then win but if that is not the case then you move on to step three of the status phase where each player would draw an action card step four would be to remove any command tokens that are on the board returning them to your stockpile step five would be to gain and redistribute tokens during this step you gain to command tokens that you may place in any of the polls under command sheet and you may also rearrange any tokens that are already there step six is to ready all the cards in your possession so that any exhausted cards you possess become my exhausted SEP 7 is to repair units some units might have an ability called sustained damage if this is the case when they take a hit they aren't immediately destroyed and instead they're flipped upside down if they were to take another hit then they are destroyed but if they survive until this part of the phase and are still flipped upside down you would then flip it right side up and step eight would be to return the strategy cards back to the collective pool and after that you're ready to start a new round starting again what the strategy phase where the speaker will be the first to pick from the strategy cards and proceeding clockwise now I mentioned that there is a fourth phase and this is known as the agenda phase but this phase is not introduced into the game until a player successfully invades mega tall Rex but in order to do so they must also spend six influence points if they're able to do that between the trade goods they have or the planetary cards they control then they will take because Dody and token gained one victory point and placed this in front of them they move up on the victory track and now the agenda phase is permanently added after the status phase until the game ends the agenda phase itself is very simple the speaker will draw the first agenda card on top of the deck and call a vote each player will vote with the planets that they control by exhausting them to spend their influence each influence counts as one vote you can choose to abstain but if you don't you follow the instructions on each agenda card they might ask you to vote for or against or to elect a specific player or to elect a specific planets players will cast their vote using their planets influence but the players are also allowed to conduct trades as I mentioned before even though they might not be considered neighbors it's because you are all sitting around a Galactic Council and that is why you're able to conduct trades and negotiations after voting you resolve the agenda you voted for some are laws such as this card would stay in effect until otherwise stated some are directives which offer a one-time bonus you resolve them and then discard them after resolving the first agenda the speaker would then draw a second agenda and you will resolve that keeping in mind now each player has less resources than they did in the first vote because they might have spent it so it becomes part of the strategy to take into account that there will be two votes during the agenda phase after both agenda cards have been resolved each player will take all of their exhausted planets and ready them back up again so that they are available for the next round and that's most everything you need to know in order to play this game but I will go over one more thing and that is the technology cards you have a deck of 25 technology cards that range from buffs to upgrades to the ships you control on your faction sheet over the course of the game specifically during the technology strategic action you may be allowed to acquire a technology card and you can acquire any technology card in your technology deck so as long as you meet the prerequisites in the bottom left-hand corner of a technology card is the prerequisites for that technology this gravity drive card says you must have one blue token already in your possession before you're allowed to acquire this technology this means that the player will have to have this anti-mass deflector first because this is not however prerequisite and counts as a blue token once acquired however it may also be the case that you're in possession of a planet that also has that blue token if this is the case when it comes time to acquire a technology you may instead exhaust a planet that has that same symbol to count as that symbol for your prerequisites if you require a ship you'll place it on top of its corresponding spot on your faction sheet and it then takes the place of its predecessor and every ship you have currently on the board will now have the new stats of the newly acquired technology keep in mind though these ship upgrades do not count as any symbol so if you do not help in the acquisition of future technologies planets will also have these other symbols beside the name these only apply to special cards which specifically refer to them and they are otherwise unimportant these are known as planet traits red is a hazardous planet Green is an industrial planet and blue is a cultural planet but that's it and that's how you play twilight imperium while the game rules aren't that complicated the time it takes to go through all the steps of a single game can take hours and that's why this game has the infamous play time of an entire day depending on the number of players it's now up to you to figure out your own strategy and how do you want to achieve victory but it's really up to what objective cards you might draw or are publicly available so the strategy changes with every game Nanta mention each faction has their own strengths and weaknesses and there are 17 to choose from for a lot of variety the only rules that I didn't mention are the effects of different anomalies which can be found on the reference portion of your command sheet as well as the specific abilities of all the strategic cards but I'll let you figure those out for yourself and your gaming group if you enjoyed this tutorial give it a like and consider subscribing so that you can help me make future videos if you have any specific questions leave them in the comment section below so that I or another person may answer them but otherwise I want to thank you guys so much for watching and you'll see me in the next video so let's keep on rolling

Channel: CynicallyAwesome

Views: 69,595

Rating: 4.9646258 out of 5

Keywords: twilight imperium, 4th edition, tutorial, how to play, fantasy flight games

Id: 3slYvPlmXL0

Length: 38min 14sec (2294 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 30 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/BeriAlpha]

I'll try to go through this video bit by bit when I can. To start with, you go into the mechanics too fast. (And in including setup as mechanics.) Start a rules explanation with the big picture: we are competing to have the strongest claim to the empty imperial throne, this is a victory point game, the first person to reach 10 victory points will be the winner and new emperor, you'll gain victory points primarily by completing objectives, and you'll interact with many systems, such as combat, political votes, and technological research, as well as your unique faction with its own special advantages, in order to achieve those objectives efficiently.

[u/Turevaryar]

Some day I'll learn how this 'submitt a new link' thing works! (^__^)