I have already written and posted my article on the epic board game Twilight Imperium, but I have always looked back at that article and felt it just wasn’t complete. Twilight Imperium really is a wonderful game and deserves far more then a simple endorsement article so this month I have decided to write a series of in-depth articles taking a closer look at this amazing game of galactic conquest, this time however I'm going to assume that you already own the game, know a little about it and are looking for some detailed advice and clarification to improve your experience and perhaps get a better understanding of the games subtitles that may Not be immediately apparent. Another words this article is for the fans!!
Twilight Imperium can very easily be broken down into its three largest contributing mechanics and when discussing the games intricacies you will find that these three mechanics are the key to unraveling the games secrets. The big three are races, strategy cards and units or more specifically ships and I am going to go into great detail about each of these components. In addition we will look at the various minor mechanics, some variants both good and bad and a few ways you can alter the game to get some interesting effects into your games.
The Races
Whether Twilight Imperium races are balanced and/or require house ruling is always a topic of hot debate on the official forums (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/) and in my own gaming group, one which I have butted heads with people about on a number of occasions. Many players are quite passionate about the topic on how to best alter the Races to 'balance them out', however in my experience no matter what alternate version you use ultimately you effectively correct one thing while breaking another. In My humble opinion there is really no way to balance out the Races in comparison to each, at the absolute best you can bring them closer into scale to each other and the best way to achieve that is through minor alterations. Personally I find that the races have far less an impact on your chances of winning or loosing then say your opening draw of planets or the skill of the player sitting next to you. Still there is a considerable difference between races, especially in the best approach to playing them and the various challenges that they pose.
One thing I can say from experience is that Twilight Imperium suffers from the ‘Consensus Fear Effect’, a phenomenon I have seen in many board games in which a perceived advantage is mentally projected to be so great that people go out of their way to stop it making having that advantage actually the biggest disadvantage of them all. For example it’s a general consensus that the Yssaril Tribes are one of the best races in Twilight Imperium and the Xxcha one of the worse, yet in my experience the Yssaril tribes and Xxcha win loss records are pretty much even. The reason for it is that the Xxcha are assumed to be such a weak race that they are generally left alone to build up throughout the game because they are perceived as weak while the Yssaril are ruthlessly harassed and often unnecessarily so just because of the perception that their mechanics give them such a big advantage. Each gaming group is different of course and how much weight the Consensus Fear Effect will have will vary but as a rule I strongly recommend to players that they play with the races unaltered for several games and keep track of how the so called weakest and strongest races do. I think most people will find that there really is no consensus at all and that victory in Twilight Imperium has far less to do with what race you get and far more to do with how you play that race and the hundreds of other variables that make up a Twilight Imperium game.
"The Only Good Bug is a Dead Bug"
The Sardekk N'orr
This is often the race by which Twilight Imperium is judged a war game as it is really the only race who’s only advantage is combat, unfortunately combat is probably not the best way to execute this race and strictly speaking war is definitely the absolute worse way to try and win a game of Twilight Imperium. It’s a debatable whether or not the combat advantage is strong enough considering the competition and the fact that Twilight is really not a war game at all. This is probably why despite their combat prowess this is by far and wide considered the weakest race in the pact. In my experience if there is any race that can be justifiably altered it would be the Sardekk as they do not benefit from the ‘Consensus Fear Effect’ in my experiance. Their military technology gives them at least the appearance of a threat and players generally will not ignore you when you start building up. In fact it’s a very good strategy if you are neighbors with Sardekk N’orr to make an early strike or to punish them politically or through the use of Action cards as they really have a hard time recovering from any sort of negative effect. Sardekk N’orr are notorious in my gaming group for falling way behind on points. Once they do actually manage to build up a fleet and get going while not generally a threat to win the game by victory points they can be a very considerable threat militarily and usually have considerable stopping power to prevent someone they don’t like from winning. There is an elegant simplicity to the Sardekk N’orr and you might think it’s a good, simple race to play, but in my humble opinion this is probably the toughest race in the game to run successfully because you really need to have a very strong grasp of the rules, the potential tactics of each race and how to best expose everyone else’s weaknesses because you can not win on the Sardekk N’orr’s strengths.
The Good: A +1 to space combat and Invasion rolls and the fact that its starting conditions place the Hylar V and Deep Space Cannons into its hands means this race is unmatched in combat early in the game and if managed correctly for its entirety.
The Bad: Pretty much everything else. Weak trade agreements means you aren’t likely going to entice anyone to trade. Weak Starting fleet makes you a juicy target despite your technological military strength early on. Poor political influence means you are usually short on Command counters and have a weak position in the political Assembly round and thats just to name a few I’m sure I could think of other things, needless to say there is plenty of disadvantages to the Sardekk N’orr.
Strategy: The best strategy when it comes to Sardekk N’orr is to take the ‘quiet as a mouse approach’ and actually avoid political and military conflict while quietly creating the conditions you need to gain victory points as victory points above all else is going to be the toughest thing for you to get. Always maintain a intimidating enough defense to keep people from engaging you directly, so spend your resources on Destroyers, Cruisers, ground forces and PDS’s so that you can get as many dice rolls as possible for the least amount of resources putting that extra +1 to the most use you can. I suggest really playing up the peaceful player card, be sure to really give the impression that your intention at the table is to scathe by and that you appear to be relatively scared of the competition and not a contender. The chief overlying goal is to keep up on victory points. You might ask at this point, ‘wait a minute, isn’t my whole advantage combat?’. Yes indeed it is, but keep in mind that there aren’t that many opportunities to gain victory points through war and galactic conquest victories are practically impossible in Twilight Imperium. I have been playing since the game was released with relatively regular groups the entire time and I’ve never seen or heard of anyone coming even close. War is what you do to stop people from winning but in on itself it very rarely leads to you gaining more then what it will cost you to wage it.
What strategy cards to pick with the Sardekk N’orr is probably the toughest part of playing them as it really depends on the game situation and no generalization will work which is why I always say this race is best played by an expert TI3 player. You really need to have the forsight and game knowledge to know what each strategy card will mean to each other player and which card will give you the overall best round by both hurting your opponents and helping you. In my experience its best to do whatever you can to ensure that you gain a victory point each round, picking the right strategy card is often key to this and only once you have secured your point for the round consider other strategies. The Sardekk N’orr benefit from the blocking of other player strategies the most because if you can’t get a point, your only other option is to stop someone else from getting one too. If you can’t secure a point for yourself, be sure to do whatever you can to block someone else’s, again often times the easiest way to do that is to take a strategy card that someone needs as this is a very non-hostile way of making a point stop. If I were to pick a central card for the Sardekk N’orr however it would probably be Production if using the expansion. Building up a strong fleet is central to any good strategy and since you are likely to have less of everything production saves you both a command token and offers 2 free resources so it tends to be an easy pick for Sardekk N’orr. I also like them for the trade card as this is a poor man’s production and it’s always better to prevent others from gaining the free trade goods it offers. More importantly if you can get the Trade card in the first round you can stall resource gathering or negotiate your way into 2 for one of your 1 trade contracts.
When it comes to technology make a B line for Warsuns but don’t be in too big of a rush to get there, you just need to make sure you have warsuns for the end game (the last couple of rounds). This is probably the only part of your strategy that should be automatic. If you get lucky with technology resource planets and can get there sooner then later action cards are your best friend so push for Neural Motivators next. You have to be flexible on this strategy however, its far more important to get victory points then Warsuns especially early on so if technology based Public Objectives come up, get them, don’t let yourself give up turns (letting a turn go by without gaining a victory point) else you will find yourself falling behind very quickly and the warsuns won’t help. None the less before the end game you should have some Warsuns on the table because you are going to need them for the final moments. Technology is really not that crucial to the Sardekk N’orr beyond warsuns as strictly speaking you have the two most important ones to setup a proper defense at the start so always keep in mind that you should be letting the Public Objectives make most of your decision as to what to go after.
Going for the win. With the Sardekk N’orr its tough to get a win, frankly I think it’s the toughest race to win with, but then again when you do pull it off its far greater glory then winning with other races and you should give yourself a big pat on the back. The best approach to winning with Sardekk N’orr is being flexible in your strategy. Don’t hardwire yourself into doing it a certain way or following some pre-determined path, don’t get involved in personal political conflicts and keep your eye on the ball, the ball being public objectives. The most important thing for you is to get a victory point each turn and keep up with the pack, as this in itself will be a challenge. Tactically you should be setting up invasions on your neighbors by having lots of units like destroyers and cruisers that can reach 2 and place as many as you can on whatever borders you have with your neighbors as possible. Be a threat to them towards end game so they are forced to burn resources on units to maintain their own defenses. Be stingy with your action cards and hold on to as many combat based cards as you can. When the end game comes if you have kept up you actually have a pretty good shot as your military will be hard to stop and you should have a lot of stopping power to prevent other players from making their last points, especially if you followed the warsun doctrine and you have some on the table. The ultimate goal is to get yourself into a position where you have the potential to win on points, so that you can use your military to force it through.
When to go on the war path? With the Sardekk N’orr there may and most likely will come a moment fairly early on when you realize that it’s just not possible to keep up with the pact point wise. At this point take a round or two to put yourself in the best possible tactical position to hurt your neighbors and let them have it. Take out as much as you can and hit them as hard as you can. Enrage them, distract them and make them pay with blood. Sometimes this strategy will actually buy you enough time to get caught up and possibly even win. You never really know what the end game will look like and what people need to happen to gain their own victory points. Doing something completely unexpected, at an unexpected time is often the catalyst to derail their plans and this might be just what you need to get back in the game. If it fails, shrug your shoulders and pat yourself on the back because there is nothing to loose when you already know what the outcome will be if you don’t attack.
Bullet Point Strategies: Here are some quick tips to keep in mind.
* Your destroyers are as good as everyone else’s cruisers at the start of the game but for half the price so don’t be shy get them on the table first and remind players of how strong they are to entice them to build up their fleets in response (the more they spend on fleets the less they spend on other things).
· Controlling Mecatol Rex can make winning with Sardekk N’orr considerably easier so secure it if you can early in the game.
· Don’t get involved in personal political conflicts, quiet as a mouse should be your motto.
· Remain flexible in your strategy, don’t look for a fight just because you have the military might, use it as a deterrent as you complete public objective and strike only to prevent others from winning so that you can.
· If you don’t think it’s possible to win, go on the war path and weaken the strongest players as much as you can, this might buy you enough time to catch up.
· Get the Warsuns on the table as soon as possible, but remember that public objective (victory points) always come first.
Adjusting Sardekk N’orr: The best adjustment for Sardekk N’orr is to help them out in the one place they are the weakest, getting victory points. Start the Sardekk N’orr out with 1 victory point more then the other players. While this doesn’t really make up for the disadvantages they face in comparison to the other races, it does buy them a little time they need to establish themselves without the pressure of falling behind on victory points which is usually at the center of the problem when playing Sardekk N’orr. More importantly it is an adjustment that does not require anyone to remember any additional rules.
Something of a standard in the general FFG (Fantasy Flight Games)forums is to give the Sardekk N’orr an additional carrier. I have never tried this so I’m not sure how much difference it would make but generally unless you are using Simulated Early Turns having a second carrier is a considerable first round advantage. Given that the Sardekk N’orr play pretty slow early on I can see this being a reasonable way to improve their starting condition and again I like it because it doesn’t require anyone to remember any additional rules which is always the best way to make adjustments to races in my opinion, there are enough rules in the game already.
Beating The Sardekk N’orr: There are really two common scenarios when it comes to the Sardekk N’orr. The first is the ‘I can’t win’ scenario. If you end up with the Sardekk as a neighbor you have to be prepared to face a potentially frustrated player who gives up on the idea of winning by points and is going to want to take someone down with them. More often then not they are going to be looking for payback against people who attributed to their downfall and/or the strongest players. The fact is that even a weak Sardekk N’orr fleet can do considerable damage and put you out of contention. The best strategy is to make good with them right out of the gate, offer them up good trades when the trade contracts come up and avoid confrontation with them while quietly building up a intimidating enough defense in hopes when the preverbal shit hits the fan you are not going to end up in his/her crosshairs. If you find yourself squabbling with the Sardekk a good offense is the best defense. Take out their space docks and blockade them rather then trying to do invasions.
The second scenario is a Sardekk player who is in contention to win. This is actually the worse possible scenario and the best action to take is a preventative one. If a Sardekk player is clearly holding his own and able to stay with the pact on points you need to act before he gets warsuns on the board, else you will find yourself in some real trouble. Its usually enough to hit him once or twice when he doesn’t expect it militarily and derail his plans enough to prevent him from getting warsuns on the table or at least delay it. Be careful to ensure you get the better side of the unit vs. unit akilesheel. If war is not an option for you, action cards or a pact with another player to slow him down may be necessary.
Conclusion: The Sardekk N’orr are indeed a race really ment to be in the hands of a more experienced player. They really suffer considerably more from strategic errors then any other race, it’s quite difficult to recover from a dramatic event with them and because you really can’t lean on their strength you are forced to play the game in a more straight up fashion using sound tactics and strategy. I suggest that this race is removed from the pool when playing with a relatively green group and in the event you have a mix of veteran and newbie players this is a good time to challenge the vets by having them play this race. In a room full of vets making a minor alteration like an extra victory point or an extra carrier can bring them up to pace, but regardless of anything whoever plays the Sardekk N’orr should be prepared for a challenging game.
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