We had planned on starting at 10am on Saturday so everyone could make their events, but we ended up not starting until 11:40 due to alarm failures. I've now played every faction but the Keleres Council, which is banned at our table, however the new player may have convinced me they aren't as good as they seem to be. More research is needed.

But to celebrate this game I made Queen's Punch.

• 2 cups of a strong Earl Grey
• 1/3 cup Lemon Juice
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup Batavia Arrack (a funky white rum adjacent booze)
• 2/3 cup Port (I used tawny, instead of Ruby which might have affected the final products color) You mix that all together and then mix it with -1 cup whole milk

That milk curdles when mixed into the alcohol, because of the lemon juice, and pulls out the tannins and polyphenols. Itreally smoothing the drink out. It looks incredibly gross. If you're a sympathetic vomitter, I would advise against using this process. You let that sit in your fridge for about a day, and then strain all the curds out.

I'd post pictures, but honestly you don't want to see it.

My drink turned out orange instead of purple like the recipe indicated, I assume my port wine choice is why that happened.

It was crazy delicious and would recommend you get your mixed drink friend to make you some.

The Players

Speaker - Winnu - Blue (U) - Me

Naluu - Yellow (Y) - Evan

Argent Flight - Orange (O) - Jordan (A new but experienced player to the group)

Nekro Virus - Red (R) - Gokul

Titans of Ul - Pink (P) - Ian

Starting Objectives:

Stage I

• Have your flagship or warsun on the game board
• Have 5 or more non-fighter ships in 1 system

Round 1

Round 1 was pretty uneventful, zero people scored a public objective. I took warfare to set myself up to take Mecatol Rex early round 2. Evan is a pretty defensive player, and Ian had to defend himself from a very aggressive Nekro Virus, so I was not super worried about getting murdered from over extension. I started with scanlink drone network, thinking I'd explore more, should have taken sarween tbh. I research AI Development Algorithm.

I forgot to take a picture after round 1, no one had scored or done anything interesting.

Round 2

Objectives

• Have your flagship or warsun on the game board
• Have 5 or more non-fighter ships in 1 system
• Have 3 units in 3 systems on the edge of the board other than home system

I end up taking diplomacy just so I can get to Mecatol before Argent Flight. I build my flagship upon taking Mecatol and score the custodian point and the secret objective. I research Cruiser II, as far as I could tell, they were likely the easiest thing for me to research that gave me a lot of flexibility.

Round 3

Objectives

• Have your flagship or warsun on the game board (U,Y)
• Have 5 or more non-fighter ships in 1 system (R)
• Have 3 units in 3 systems on the edge of the board other than home system (O)
• Spend 8 influence
• Secret Objective: (Y)

I have a considerable number of the public objectives in the bag, but I take leadership over Imperial because I am very Command Token poor and really need to fortify my slice. Naalu discover the gamma wormhole on Everia.

I spend all my resources building plastic, Winnus starting fleet is pathetic.

Round 4

Objectives

• Have your flagship or warsun on the game board (U,Y, P, R)
• Have 5 or more non-fighter ships in 1 system (R, U, O, Y)
• Have 3 units in 3 systems on the edge of the board other than home system (O, Y)
• Spend 8 influence
• Control more planets than each of 2 of your neighbors
• Secret Objective: (Y)

I am now positioned to make taking Imperial a good option but other players are now blocking me. I take Politics and make my neighbor speaker, now only one person is capable of blocking me and if they do I get pick of the litter.

I continue to control Mecatol and solidify my board presence. I also make a deal with Naalu to swap alliances if they give me Malice so I can score the 3 edge system public objective. It also scores me my have units in the wormhole nexus secret objective.

Round 5

Objectives

Stage 1

• Have your flagship or warsun on the game board (U,Y, P, R, O)
• Have 5 or more non-fighter ships in 1 system (R, U, O, Y, P)
• Have 3 units in 3 systems on the edge of the board other than home system (O, Y, U, R)
• Spend 8 influence (Y)
• Control more planets than each of 2 of your neighbors (O)
• Discard 5 action cards (O) (Law based Shenanigans)
• Secret Objectives: (Y, P, U)

Stage 2

• Control a planet in an other players Home System

Titans take Imperial to block me, so I take Leadership. I use my first turn to invade Argent Flights home system and take a planet. Its a close battle, My 3 cruisers vs a flagship and PDS leaves me with 1 cruiser and 1 ground troop. I make a deal to take the planet without the spacedock if they agree to let me pop my hero before taking their home system back. He agrees. But it also has the added bonus of forcing to return to his home system with atleast 2 ships from his forward fleet and removes the possibility he can remove me from Mecatol this turn.

I score 3 points off my hero and give everyone but argent flight the ability to get a secret to smooth over the fact I was at 8 points.

It doesn't really work as soon as everyone realizes the only way to stop me from winning is taking my home system before the end of the next round. The issue is I can get 15 ground troops onto my home system before anyone can get any troops there, because they need warfare to make it happen this round.

Argent Flight player realizes he needs to leave, and convinces everyone that they can't beat me and playing another 4 hours of trying to kill me is likely a waste of time because even if you stop me, it's not really getting anyone any closer to victory.

So they concede. It does feel a bit dirty, but I'm very happy with my play and I felt I had over a 50% chance of keeping my home planet to the onslaught. My infantry hit on 6s on my home system, and I likely would have made that 5s by the end of the next round with Infantry 2 plus mechs were next on the build list. I had both 8 influence with trade goods alone and 5 action cards, and that was the 2 points I needed, I also qualified for other stage 1 objective still.

In all the hubbub I forgot to take my last couple pictures.