Game Day at Mark Woodson's House, Saturday Feb 28, 2009

News spreads quickly throughout the Empire that the Emperor has died. The circumstances are still unclear but he was involved in an "accident" leaving a power vacuum in the Empire. Now the nobles of the various houses have begun their struggle to position themselves to become the Galactic Emperor.

From 2009_02_28 - Galactic Emperor

Of all the noble houses, only four have a real chance to gain the throne, House Woodson, House Dejecacion, House Bausman, and House Boone. All factions have established their power bases on Omega Sector systems to use as jumping off points for further exploration and expansion into the newly discovered Omega Sector.

It's Hard to Conquer the Galaxy on $5 a Day!

From 2009_02_28 - Galactic Emperor

Another game of Galactic Emperor at Mark Woodson's house. We had played before at Mark Bausman's  place back in November of 2008. This was my second time playing and the game ended up pretty close in the final scoring. Mark Bausman pulled out the win, his first he remarked, with 51 points followed by Mervyn and I tied at 49 points, and Mark Woodson in 4th place with 47 points. Mark B was able to score 13 points in the final scoring round for a come from behind win.

From 2009_02_28 - Galactic Emperor

After Galactic Emperor ended, we played a quick 4-player team game of Neuroshima Hex!, Humans (Outpost and Hegemony) vs. Mutants (Moloch and Borgo). Mervyn (Moloch) and I (Borgo) ganged up on Mark B's Hegemony HQ and destroyed it for the team win. Mark Woodson's Outpost HQ was undamaged at game end. At one point, Mervyn and I were scoring a combined 7 hits on Mark's HQ every battle. At that rate, it didn't take long to knock it down to 0 damage points!

Galactic Emperor - Saturday 11/15/08

Played Galactic Emperor (GE) at Mark Bausman's house today with Mark Bausman, Mark Simonitch, Mark Woodson, and Robert(Bob) Woodson. Mark had hosted GE before but this was the first time I was able to make it to his house.

Galactic Emperor is a space exploration and conquest game from CrossCut Games and their first foray into boardgames. I give their first attempt two thumbs up.

On first playing, it reminds me of Twilight Imperium III (TI3) "light". This isn't a bad thing in my opinion as is seemed to play faster and I don't think the turtling that seemed to be more apt in TI3 is present. I have not played TI3 with the Shattered Empire expansion, but I heard it fixes some of the problems with turtling in TI3.

Being the newbie to the game I consistently came in last in the scoring rounds through most of the middle game so lucked out by not being a threat. In the turn before last I was able to score 3 points for destroying 3 Empire tokens and then scored 9 more VPs in the final turn scoring round to come in second, 1 point behind Bob's 39VPs.

Half way through the game, it appeared to me that having a good supply of Food producing planets is a good idea as Bob was never strapped for money. In the end this was the margin of victory as the player with the most money at the end of the game is awarded 2VPs.