0:04

This is Space Cats Peace

0:06

Turtles, the unofficial podcast for

0:09

Fantasy Flight's Twilight Imperium. Episode

0:12

328, Super Federation of

0:15

Soul Guide, music by Ben

0:17

Prunty, featuring Matt Martins and

0:19

Hunter Donaldson. Hunter,

0:45

we have two tournament

0:48

winners in our midst

0:50

today, actually. Today

0:52

you did it, you've done

0:54

it. Hunter has progressed through

0:56

the qualifiers. Yeah, who

0:59

cares? And Matt Martins won

1:01

a game in the Async

1:04

Tournament. Wow, he's really

1:06

done it, folks. He's really, he is,

1:08

he's the one. He's a winner.

1:11

Man, what a world we live in. I

1:13

mean, I'm just so good at the game. Great job,

1:15

dude. And yeah, I really want

1:18

to congratulate you on winning that game

1:20

that took however long it took. I

1:22

mean, I'm sure it took a long time. So

1:24

that's great. And you

1:26

know, I always knew you could do it. I don't feel like

1:29

you always knew you could do it. I mean, actually, your tournament

1:31

record is like kind of flawless at this point.

1:34

Like every time you've played a tournament game, you've

1:36

basically won or at least progressed through the first

1:38

round. I mean, yeah, it's two, yeah, two for

1:40

two. You are right that I'm two for two

1:42

in the first round of extraneous

1:45

tournaments. You are absolutely

1:47

one of the greatest Twilight Imperium players that

1:49

has ever lived. What?

1:52

Why are you laughing? That's not even,

1:54

I'm not joking. You are absolutely that.

1:57

That's an absurd thing. You are the man, dude. The

1:59

man. You are the guy I

2:01

love pumping you up. I want to be the

2:03

guy. Yeah I

2:06

don't even know who those other players were that you were

2:08

playing against. They probably stuff, you know, I don't know who

2:10

they are They're not

2:12

known to me. Uh-huh. They're not like

2:14

absurdly famous Rand Did

2:16

end up being in that game but only for the whole

2:18

round You know who Rand

2:20

is but but but she was not

2:23

in the game from the beginning She joined at the

2:25

last minute and was like, oh no, I don't know

2:27

what any of this is I don't I don't know

2:29

what this person's strategy was but I'm here to take

2:31

over for them And it was a it was a

2:33

pretty wild thing. Oh that they do over there. They

2:35

don't know people out When

2:37

when someone doesn't respond for a week

2:40

you take extreme. Ah, I

2:42

see But hey, let's

2:44

talk about your tournament. Let's talk about tournament

2:46

updates. I'd love to introduce six winners For

2:49

this week's games. What do you say? Yeah,

2:52

go ahead and well sure we've

2:54

got dr. Baba ganoush Congratulations

2:58

The moon loose mikmak moose ganoush and

3:00

moose have both made it through a

3:03

noosh and moose We've

3:05

got tis 11 and gin

3:07

the fourth. We've got wiley

3:09

wasl and of course SCPT

3:13

hunter donaldson probably turn six

3:15

winner has finally made it

3:17

through the qualifiers

3:23

And we're gonna do an episode about it

3:25

next week. Not about me getting through

3:27

the call. I mean like my Experiences

3:29

playing how many qualifier games that I even

3:31

play Six. No,

3:33

I think I played six at least. I

3:35

don't know. I lost count at some point

3:37

It was enough to where I lost count.

3:40

Yeah Yeah, but on my sixth or seventh

3:42

or eighth or tenth, whatever it was on

3:45

after that many attempts I'd taken so many

3:47

else that it was time for a W

3:51

And yeah, and you know what a you

3:54

know, they say they say fool me once

3:56

shame on you Pull

3:58

me seven times You

4:01

know shame on the president of the United

4:03

States. That's how yeah and goes hey,

4:06

but I've always said I'm just a

4:08

student I'm trying to learn from my

4:10

sensei who is of course Matt. Yeah,

4:12

Matt did not need many attempts Matt

4:14

got it in one Matt just won

4:17

Because he's the thing is he's got a killer's

4:20

instinct. That's the whole thing about us and and

4:24

Expert diplomat, okay. He always keeps things

4:26

on there I didn't even kill with

4:28

everybody just the right way, you know.

4:30

Oh, yeah, he's got it. Oh It's

4:34

like a rosé his wine. It's

4:36

it's so tasty. It's effervescent. It's ugly.

4:39

It feels good It's easy to drink.

4:41

You know I mean it's like Matt's

4:43

wine you you gonna get drunk too

4:45

fast You're gonna be like I'm about

4:47

to make myself a fool at

4:49

this party and I did not mean to you know

4:51

It's that it's that type of deal. So

4:54

yeah, congratulations Matt No,

4:56

congratulations, of course to me. I am supposed

4:58

to eventually win after many attempts Oh, I

5:00

give I get nothing I get nothing at

5:03

all of anything. I just get more and

5:05

more shame every day for the

5:07

rest of my life Well, I'm excited to congratulate

5:09

you in the prelims whenever that happens It's really

5:12

fun that I have to now try to schedule

5:14

you in the prelims the prelims of course being

5:17

Everyone has one shot We have to get 216

5:20

players into 36 games and make that schedule

5:22

work and you're just a part of that

5:24

now Which I find I'm just a part

5:26

of that. I am I am happy to

5:28

contribute in that way And I'm happy to

5:30

contribute my one little Number

5:33

to it. It'll make that weekend

5:35

interesting if because the the prelims

5:37

this year the plane is sort of like

5:39

the old-school Style of you and me are

5:41

very busy during the prelims But I'm curious

5:43

how the the weekend of your game how

5:46

that will shake out Oh, it'll be a

5:48

horrible weekend because I'll have to play and

5:50

commentate. Yeah, I don't know Well, I think

5:52

we might let you off that hook because

5:54

that sounds like way too much to me

5:57

but let's talk about scheduling the tournament in

5:59

general because we have kind of an update as

6:01

well for everyone in the tournament and this will be posted

6:03

on the Discord as well and we'll try to get everybody

6:06

this information, but it is December now,

6:08

it is in theory the final month

6:10

of the qualifiers and as

6:13

many people have noted things have slowed down a little

6:15

bit as you even saw

6:17

I'm in only six winners this week. That's certainly

6:19

below our expectations and what

6:21

we want for the pace of games and

6:24

everything and we've seen more

6:26

and more games like really struggling to fire

6:28

off, especially weekday games are like really hard

6:30

right now. A

6:32

lot of them get to like four

6:34

or five players and then just can't quite

6:37

cross the threshold or whatever and to

6:39

help with that I think we've made

6:41

it clear our intent with the once

6:43

per week rule but honestly everything I've

6:45

seen so far is nobody

6:47

being weirdo little freaks trying to cheat

6:50

the system or anything. So

6:52

there's not really a reason for

6:54

that rule to exist as long

6:56

as everybody is being cool

6:59

about stuff and I think Hunter and I

7:01

both just look at December as like a

7:03

month where a lot of stuff could happen,

7:05

there are holiday breaks that some people have

7:07

access to at the very least and I

7:10

think we just want to give people as

7:13

many opportunities as possible to get games in

7:15

so we are waiving the once per week

7:17

rule for the month of December.

7:20

It is out. You can play as

7:22

many times as you want. Obviously, we're

7:24

still keeping our eye on you. Please

7:26

don't be weird. Please don't like tank

7:29

a game so that you can just pick another

7:31

one. If anything, I'm not gonna say it hard

7:34

and fast but I would strongly discourage people from

7:36

trying to think they can do two in one

7:38

day is the idea, right? And by that I

7:40

mostly don't do that. If I find out you

7:42

did two in one day it probably means you

7:44

did one really early, it went badly,

7:47

you tanked it, made the game happen in five

7:49

hours and then jumped on another one. I don't

7:51

want to see that kind of behavior. That is

7:53

like I don't think one player Yeah,

7:55

I don't think one player can tank their game

7:57

and make it take five hours. That's not really

8:00

I don't think that's a real doable although

8:02

I think we're good at with this rule

8:04

in place what I'm saying is five players

8:06

could agree one person has it five support

8:08

Thrones for the Thrones go to so-and-so five

8:10

of them reset find a six player and

8:12

make a new game Why

8:14

are you like making new bad ideas

8:16

for yeah? Why are

8:18

you doing the work for them you it's like you

8:21

want bad things to happen? I do you put

8:23

that energy I want people to know I see

8:25

through you and someone else could be like oh I've

8:27

come up with this idea, and it's like I've already

8:29

considered all the possibilities. Okay. You can't get

8:31

by you You're not doing anything you're

8:33

actually just no no no no no

8:35

no you don't present yourself as some

8:37

sort of mastermind here What you're doing

8:39

is volunteering a bad idea that you

8:42

thought of and you have no way

8:44

to prevent it basically Except

8:46

for this suggestion that you're just gonna be

8:49

hyper vigilant and that we'll find out yeah

8:51

like we don't know that we'll find Out

8:53

Matt like we can't know that so what

8:55

are you doing? I don't know oh? You

8:58

know what I have a marking here too

9:00

that I forgot to say we

9:02

last week Incorrectly labeled schoonie as

9:04

a winner, and it was actually Zavaron

9:06

I blame one of you two or

9:08

somebody else in your game somebody filled

9:11

out the form wrong for shame for

9:13

shame anyways Well that will be ever

9:15

on that would be

9:17

Zavaron's own fault actually because I believe ever

9:19

on a supposed to fill out the form

9:21

And technically Zavaron is supposed to fill his

9:23

own name in that first one, but oh

9:27

Zavaron somebody else did the did the full night. Oh,

9:29

maybe I have no idea It's hard. It's like you

9:31

blame the winner because the winner is the winner so

9:33

I think the winner I think

9:35

the winner deserves the congratulations, but also you

9:38

messed up. Yeah, hey I left my game

9:40

before I even I just like

9:42

now what do I do and I was like oh? That's

9:44

I'd already left the game. I was like I was like

9:46

well. What am I I mean? I'm not gonna do anything

9:49

now like what I just played a

9:51

whole game of Twilight and period now. I gotta

9:53

do work Yeah, it is a dumb. It is

9:55

a silly silly thing we request of people but

9:57

uh, but yeah congratulations as ever on and yes

9:59

everybody get as many games in as you want,

10:02

please play to your heart's content in the rest of

10:04

the qualifiers. We are trying to hit 2016. The other

10:06

thing I will note is, even

10:09

if this like greatly picks up our pace, I

10:11

would say there's a pretty likely chance that

10:13

we haven't hit quite too, even if we

10:15

get very close, there's going to be some

10:17

holdover games, and it's a very easy

10:19

solution everyone. It just continues into January. So if you

10:22

are someone who's like, I don't think I'm gonna get

10:24

it in in January, keep an

10:26

eye on the schedule. We'll post like the

10:28

number of games as we get towards the

10:30

end of December. There's a very good chance

10:32

that early January, there's plenty more opportunity to

10:34

get some more qualifiers in, and essentially what

10:36

that will look like is they will overlap

10:38

the prelims. We will start scheduling, we're gonna

10:40

have to start scheduling prelims soon, because there's

10:42

gonna be people who want to get their

10:44

games in kind of that first weekend of

10:47

the new year or whatever, and we want

10:49

that to happen, of course. So we will

10:51

start scheduling relatively soon with the prelims

10:53

players we already have, and

10:56

as people win more games, they will get thrown into the

10:58

mix. The prelims

11:00

are still a fairly open kind

11:03

of ecosystem of scheduling. There's enough of you that

11:05

people can hot swap and move things around. It's

11:07

the semis when things just get incredibly rigorous, and

11:09

it's like, no, no, no, you're playing this day,

11:12

you have to make it work. I don't know

11:14

what else to say. Well,

11:17

yeah, so that's exciting. Prelims right around the

11:19

corner, qualifiers, we gotta get that finished up,

11:21

so play as many games as you want.

11:24

We are unleashing you. We're

11:26

technically only, I would say, a

11:28

little bit behind schedule. We

11:30

had kind of a slow week as

11:33

far as winners go, but hopefully

11:35

changing this rule, and also just

11:37

putting the call out of, if

11:39

you've been holding out on the

11:41

tournament, now is the time

11:43

to get in. The

11:45

window is beginning to close. There

11:47

are less than 100 spots available

11:49

now at this point. I

11:52

think our pace has been just fine,

11:54

just dandy. Yeah, I agree. I think

11:56

this experiment has worked out to be

11:58

really good. What

12:00

we need is just that final push to get

12:02

us over the finish line there. And

12:05

then, you know, and then it'll be prelims time and

12:07

we're going to be doing kind of we're going to

12:09

be doing a pretty old school. There's going to be

12:11

like three games a weekend, that type of deal. Probably

12:15

one match stream, one hunter stream and then a guest

12:18

stream. Considering

12:21

what I already know, I bet you Big Al

12:23

will take up a majority of those guys around.

12:25

Big Al's around, Elspeth's around, Carnel's around. There are folks

12:27

that we know. We got a

12:30

lot of people, I just know Big Al is

12:32

the one that is like, I'm free. Big Al

12:34

will be calling us. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

12:37

Yeah. So be expecting that.

12:39

It's going to be great fun. And

12:41

yeah, I kind of regret that we didn't do it

12:44

last year. Like I think it's a big, it's,

12:46

you know, it's 36 games, which is a

12:48

lot. It is a lot. But

12:51

I think it will be worthwhile to have

12:53

that story on record. Yeah.

12:56

Enjoy it. Absolutely. Well,

12:59

we, I suppose can get into the

13:01

meat of today, which is a Federation

13:03

of Soul Guide. Yeah. Well,

13:05

let's get into the meat. Let's have.

13:07

And potatoes. Okay. I

13:09

would prefer, I would prefer more potatoes than meat on this one.

13:12

Okay. Let's just eat

13:15

potato then. Thank you, Matt. I'm

13:17

like, I'm trying to intro this. I

13:20

love that. It's like I'm trying

13:22

to bring us into the segment. And

13:24

you can't even wait like

13:27

10 seconds. You can't even

13:29

let me finish an intro

13:31

to a sequence before interrupting

13:33

me with your Oh,

13:35

I've got it. Oh, okay. Sorry. You

13:38

made me think of half a bit. You made me think

13:40

of half a bit. I got to get half the bit

13:42

out of my brain. I had half a bit there and

13:44

potatoes, you know, you said me. I

13:47

got to say and potatoes. Matt, what

13:49

are we talking about today? Oh, we're

13:51

talking about human humanity. Just us,

13:53

all of us here listening to

13:56

the show. Oh, philosophically. Just, wait,

13:58

what? are we

14:00

coming at it? Yeah, you know what

14:02

we're talking about. Does it maybe

14:04

have something to do with the show? It could, it

14:06

perhaps does. This is an interesting faction to talk about.

14:09

The Federation of Soul, because it is the humans. And

14:12

we make room for a little lore bit here.

14:16

And it's funny to talk about humans in

14:19

fiction. In the future, like

14:21

what do we decide has

14:23

happened to us or whatever.

14:25

Right. And so that's

14:28

a fun hook of the Federation of Soul. I

14:30

wanted to note how the

14:33

faction sheet really wants to like concern

14:36

itself with the, I guess,

14:39

the extension of like a

14:41

couple of Earth-based

14:43

governments. Like we have

14:45

considerable effort put into this faction sheet

14:48

of saying, the Federation is nations governed

14:50

by biannually elected High Minister, who

14:53

has the executive control of the economy, budget, and soul military.

14:55

The executive powers of the High Minister. And

14:58

the checks and balances held

15:00

in check by three distinct houses. The

15:02

House of Law, the House of the

15:05

People, and the House of Industry. The

15:07

four governing bodies. I just find it

15:10

funny that we have to sort of infer

15:12

these like, you know,

15:14

just like America has its three

15:16

systems. It's got the three

15:18

there. We added one. We added one. And

15:20

when our capital moved to New York. That's

15:24

how we'll fix it. If we just make

15:27

capitalism part of the government, it'll

15:29

all be fine. That

15:31

goes well, doesn't it? Yeah,

15:35

we could infer that on Earth

15:37

the Corpo Wars did happen and

15:40

Walmart won, I guess. Oh, okay.

15:43

You think Walmart's going to win the Corpo Wars. Who

15:45

do you think will win the Corpo Wars? I think

15:47

it'll be Walmart. Walmart,

15:49

I mean, Walmart's the one buying up

15:51

all the land with water, you know.

15:53

That's the thing. Yeah, yeah.

15:55

I don't think it'll be Walmart that

15:57

wins the Corpo Wars. I think that...

16:00

And I think actually in the world where it

16:02

is Walmart, that's like kind of, you're being too

16:04

optimistic. It's

16:06

gonna be, let me tell you who's gonna win the Corpo

16:09

Wars. Oh,

16:11

oh, oh, oh, Riley's.

16:16

Matt, we have

16:19

to allow for the possibility that we joked around

16:21

a little bit in the intro, so perhaps they've

16:23

gotten way too much joking around at this point,

16:25

Matt. So you

16:27

are correct, yeah, absolutely. The lore is

16:30

very, is written for people, for

16:33

humans, if you can believe it. And

16:36

also I think it's important to note that

16:38

the Federation of Soul are

16:40

not the good guys of Twilight Imperium.

16:44

They're kind of the bad guys. I mean, they're

16:46

not, I mean, actually, Twilight Imperium is just kind

16:48

of chock full of bad guys with

16:50

almost no good guys really at all

16:52

to speak of, which

16:54

I find very accurate to the

16:56

world, you know? I find this

16:59

quote, the humans themselves represent the

17:01

most numerous and most diverse species

17:03

of the galaxy. That's

17:05

an odd thing to say, that they're the

17:07

most diverse species of the galaxy. Aren't some

17:10

of the species in the galaxy specifically, like,

17:12

I think

17:14

of Hylar, like aren't Hylar many

17:17

very different kinds of fish, some of

17:19

which don't even live underwater? And then

17:21

the humans here have the audacity to

17:23

be like, we're very diverse. We have

17:25

people and we have other people. We're

17:27

the diverse ones in the galaxy here.

17:29

And Mentat Coalition is in the corner

17:32

being like, what are you talking about?

17:34

What are you happening? Yeah,

17:36

well, I mean, it's a very human thing

17:38

to sort of pout your own accomplishments as

17:41

if they are a real big deal, when

17:44

in fact they are not and we are

17:46

small and little. So in

17:48

that way, I feel like Federation of Soul

17:51

is kind of a genius kind of meta

17:53

fiction kind of satire

17:56

of humanity. And yeah, that's great.

17:59

Well, okay, we can actually. talk strategy then.

18:01

That's enough goofing around everybody.

18:04

How about Hunter, you talk

18:06

to me, I will present you with some

18:08

units in tech and we can talk through

18:10

there. They're starting business. Sound good? Sounds

18:13

great. They start with a blue

18:16

tech and a green tech, anti-mass deflectors,

18:18

famously good blue tech, and neural motivator

18:20

which has gone out of style, the

18:22

one that lets you draw extra action

18:24

cards but I love having

18:26

it and they're starting units. Well hold

18:28

up, it's gone out of style for

18:30

researching it, it's not gone out of

18:32

style for having it if that makes

18:35

sense. Yeah, it's great to have, it's

18:37

great to start with. They

18:39

start also with two carriers, five

18:42

infantry, one destroyer, three

18:44

fighters, and it's based like a home. That

18:46

is an adequate start if not

18:49

great start. Five infantry is actually like kind of

18:51

the key nowadays, right? And POK, every once in

18:53

a while the wriggles or the devils pop up

18:55

in your slice and the sole

18:57

basically never has to worry, right? I mean you

19:00

just never worry about the start. Yeah,

19:02

I mean this is kind of where

19:05

we coined 2C4i I feel like is

19:07

the idea of like having a start

19:10

similar to sole start. This is about,

19:12

I mean you started with a meat

19:14

and potatoes riff, I think that it's

19:16

very fitting here when it comes to

19:19

the starting units. Yeah, and it's like

19:21

you said, we even have one infantry

19:23

extra. So even in a three planet

19:25

system situation, we're taking two systems, we're

19:28

fully occupying them, everything's cool and good

19:30

and we like that. Our

19:33

home system is a single planet home

19:35

system, Huzzah, it is Yord, which is

19:38

the four resource and two

19:41

influence planet. Can I read you the flavor

19:43

text of Yord? Yeah please, please. It's

19:46

not earth, we always have to remind

19:48

people that that's super weird.

19:50

Yord is distinctly seasonal

19:53

with the greatest variety of climates and

19:56

ecologies in the galaxy. Once again, I

19:58

feel like we're shooting our own. Horn.

20:00

I don't feel like that's true

20:03

at all. The Federation of Soul

20:05

rules the Yord humans from the

20:07

great city of New Moscow. New

20:10

Moscow, yeah, hey, that's cool.

20:12

That's fun. So what

20:14

is Yord? It's not Earth? Is

20:17

it not Earth? I don't know. I think we

20:19

sort of know that if you look at the

20:21

image of it, nothing about it looks earthen,

20:24

right? You remarked on this

20:26

in our planet, our super-tile

20:28

tier list, that it's just

20:30

not Earth. And we sort

20:32

of posited that perhaps it

20:34

is a, I mean, we're talking about millennia

20:36

in the future, it is perhaps a inverted

20:39

pangea we continued to draft

20:41

until we formed whatever

20:43

this sort of supercontinent is. I don't

20:45

know, maybe we can someday talk

20:49

to the artist of these planets and see what

20:52

this is supposed to be. I genuinely

20:54

can't tell if there's earthen

20:56

qualities here. There might be. Some

20:58

of these things, I don't know, seem mildly

21:00

familiar. So it either is or isn't Earth.

21:03

That's the two options. Okay.

21:07

Matt, do you want to read their abilities? I'd

21:09

love to. Their abilities are Orbital

21:11

Drop. As an action,

21:13

you can spend one token from your strategy

21:15

pool to place two infantry from your reinforcements

21:17

on one planet you control. I don't

21:20

feel like you see this as

21:23

often these days. Yeah.

21:26

I feel like it's not

21:28

super necessary. It

21:31

is important to note that it is

21:33

absolutely a stall. And in some, I

21:35

think, very niche situations,

21:38

you might really love that you

21:40

have this, basically. But

21:43

it's kind of pricey. It's a little

21:45

expensive. And we won't really

21:47

be talking about it a whole lot. But

21:49

I don't think it's bad. It's just very

21:51

situational as far as how much value you

21:53

might get out of it. I have a,

21:55

later on in the guide, I have a

21:57

very particular situation where you might love having

22:00

orbital drop. Cool. Their other ability

22:02

is versatile. When you gain command

22:04

tokens during the status phase you

22:06

gain one additional token that means

22:09

the first status phase you take

22:11

three instead of two and if

22:13

you get hyper metabolism you would

22:15

start getting four tokens per status

22:17

phase which is quite a lot.

22:19

They're also notable in having two

22:23

special units that you obviously can upgrade

22:25

later one of which

22:27

is advanced carrier one they have a they

22:29

have a souped-up carrier. Its

22:32

basic improvement is that it is actually

22:34

two more capacity so it's really you

22:36

start with carrier two and then

22:39

later you'll upgrade those to be even better

22:41

but just to remark on that start you

22:43

have five infantry and three fighters and

22:45

you carry almost all of that just in a single

22:47

one of those carriers because they start with six capacity.

22:50

You also start with spec ops which are

22:52

your ground forces which cost one

22:55

for two their combat value is just

22:57

increased to seven instead of eight. Yeah

22:59

I just want to go back real

23:01

quick though I don't want to mislead

23:03

people it is not carrier two because

23:05

its movement is still locked at one.

23:07

Yeah so you know it's a cost

23:09

three combat nine movement one capacity six

23:11

carrier one that you

23:13

know then is going to get

23:15

upgraded from there and yeah

23:17

spec ops one is a

23:19

very excellent ability having

23:22

infantry that hit on a seven just

23:24

kind of feels magical to me versus

23:27

eight I'm not really sure why but

23:29

it just seems like it's very good

23:31

and it's perhaps so good that spec

23:34

ops two is kind

23:36

of unnecessary by comparison. Yeah

23:38

but yeah let's let's talk about the

23:40

upgrades okay so the upgrade to advanced

23:42

carrier is advanced carrier two it

23:45

is the standard requirement to blow all that stuff

23:47

but this is where you get that move to

23:49

you also upgrade to a full capacity of eight

23:51

which is a lot and

23:53

the wildest addition is these

23:56

carriers gain sustained damage. Yeah

23:59

so it is a sustained damage that you

24:01

can never protect from

24:03

direct hit, which is interesting. And

24:07

yeah, I mean, it's kind of a

24:09

win more ability that they even have sustained

24:11

damage. I would say

24:13

that it's spiritually useful, but not

24:16

necessarily gonna see a lot of

24:18

play. That capacity

24:20

eight though is wild. I mean,

24:23

like being able to soak that

24:25

many hits with fighters is

24:28

enough in the sustained damage is absolutely

24:30

unnecessary. Well, yeah, why use the sustained

24:32

damage when you're risking direct hit when

24:34

you are fully loaded on fighters and

24:36

HP? Like it's like, I could just

24:38

lose a fighter and it's actually fine

24:40

and I don't need to risk losing

24:42

my carrier and sacrificing the invasion I'm

24:44

going for or whatever. I'll tell

24:46

you this though, the reason you do it is

24:48

because you have more than one carrier in a

24:50

system. And one of the things that this

24:53

isn't really like a problem, I would

24:55

say, but most of the time when

24:57

I'm playing soul, I have more capacity

24:59

than needed. You out capacity yourself. Yeah,

25:01

right. Well, and we haven't gotten

25:03

to it, but how often do you have fighter

25:05

two, which means then the carriers really only need

25:08

to hold the infantry anyways, and then you're really

25:10

falling on capacity, right? Like you're just doubly, doubly

25:12

safe from losing what you

25:14

might be afraid to lose. The

25:17

spec ops two upgrade moves that combat

25:19

value to a six. It's

25:21

also got the, what do you call them?

25:24

Not stasis capsules, the gen synthesis ability after

25:26

this unit is destroyed, roll one die. If

25:28

the result is five or greater, place the

25:30

unit on this card at the start of

25:32

your next turn place each unit that is

25:34

on this card on a planet you control

25:37

in your home system. The normal gen synthesis

25:39

is a six or greater. So this is

25:41

a 60% chance to receive your infantry at

25:43

home as opposed to the 50% chance. Yeah,

25:47

and don't forget about it. I'll say that. Don't

25:50

forget if you do happen to research this,

25:52

which I am not going to recommend basically

25:55

in any tech path in any scenario, spec

25:58

ops two. combat hit

26:00

on a six sounds great but

26:02

I think we're gonna win with numbers and that's

26:05

how we will win on the ground is by

26:08

having more stuff, by carrying more stuff

26:10

you will win the day and it's

26:12

all hitting on sevens already so what

26:14

do you know what do we care

26:16

about increasing that to six? Another

26:19

way we can carry more stuff is

26:21

our flagship the Genesis is

26:23

cross state combat value five on a two

26:25

that's the part that feels really unnecessary to

26:27

me about this flagship I'll say it because

26:29

the other ability it has is capacity 12

26:34

that's a lot of capacity which means why

26:36

did this ship need to have such a

26:38

good combat value it's going to win most

26:41

fights just by having so much more HP

26:43

than anything else available also

26:45

it does have an ability that is off forgotten similar

26:48

to our arborec friend with mitosis

26:50

at the end of the status phase you

26:52

can place one infantry from your reinforcements in

26:55

this system's space area

26:58

so you forget often and

27:00

then when you remember later you're like

27:02

I don't even I don't know the

27:04

infantry is just floating in space anyways

27:07

it's not defending anything useful I disagree

27:09

it's yes when you start remembering it

27:11

it's very good yeah like it this

27:13

is useful that you are getting free

27:15

infantry on top of because you have

27:17

a need to overwhelm your opponents already

27:19

for sure if you happen

27:21

to build the Genesis early it's great

27:24

I had a an anecdote I wanted to share

27:26

here which is that I was playing a soul

27:29

in a sink which of course

27:31

automates more stuff than I'm even used to

27:33

automating yeah and I built the genesis and

27:35

then the next round was like oh I

27:38

guess I had a I

27:40

kept an infantry in space God a think

27:42

is so weird I was just like thinking

27:44

about how you mad at forgetting yeah I

27:46

was like mad at the game for remembering

27:48

this ability for me and I gotta tell

27:50

you I I have I have held to

27:53

remembering this and I even pull an arborec

27:55

when I build the Genesis I put little

27:57

markers on the arborec

27:59

gets to do it, I get to do it as a whole. And

28:02

I remember and honestly, I feel

28:05

like it's nice. It's nice. It's nice

28:07

to have extra infantry. There's no reason

28:09

to just say, oh, I don't need

28:11

it, you know? Well, especially with the

28:14

flagship being 12 capacity,

28:17

you know, you'd almost think the fear is, oh,

28:19

I'm putting in infantry in space and I might

28:21

not have a, like, I might be full of

28:23

fighters. You won't be. You'll, wherever this flagship is,

28:25

you'll never be using all of its capacity. I

28:27

just want to remark to fun anecdote for people

28:29

from Twilight and Pure in third edition. This

28:32

flagship was infinite capacity in third

28:35

edition, just so everyone knows. Yeah,

28:37

that's funny. This was, you could just keep,

28:39

it was broken. It was, that's, you can't do

28:41

that is what I think hopefully everybody learns. Yeah.

28:44

That's not okay to just have an infinite capacity ship.

28:47

Yeah, that's gonna get really wonky, really

28:49

weird, not good. Yeah. And I mean,

28:51

like, again, a lot of the

28:53

time you're gonna over capacity yourself with soul. But,

28:57

you know, yeah, we don't need to give you

28:59

infinite because then it will just get real, real,

29:01

real weird. 12 kind of feels infinite, basically. It

29:03

feels like a lot. If you got a fully

29:05

loaded party bus, which is what we call the

29:07

Genesis, it

29:11

just feels like this is completely unnecessary,

29:13

the amount of stuff I'm bringing. Right.

29:16

So there you go. Their mech is the

29:18

ZS Thunderbolt M2. Very, very militarized name for

29:20

this thing. Everything else has like a fun,

29:23

flavorful name. And this is just like the

29:25

whatever the brand who I'm gonna I'm going

29:27

to assume ZS is a weapons manufacturing company.

29:29

So this is the ZS Thunderbolt Mark 2.

29:31

So that's the brand. There's my lore for

29:34

you. It of course has sustained damage. It's

29:36

got all the normal stats. Its deploy ability

29:38

is after you

29:40

use orbital drop, flak faction ability,

29:43

you may spend three resources to

29:45

place one mech on that planet.

29:48

Yeah. So like we said earlier,

29:50

orbital drop is a little

29:52

pricey for what it is. And it's more

29:56

useful, I feel like, as a stall than it is

29:58

anything. I feel like spending

30:00

three resources for a mech is

30:02

maybe a little too expensive also. Even

30:05

though we are talking about getting two infantry and a

30:07

mech on a particular planet you

30:10

control. Now there are some situations where

30:12

that is gonna be very important and it's, this

30:14

is one of those abilities where it's like, I

30:16

encourage you to remember that you can do this.

30:19

I do not encourage you to build a strategy

30:21

around it. Right. Yeah, yeah.

30:24

It's not like you rush for fleet logistics so you can take planets

30:27

to then fleet logistics into orbital drop. But like,

30:29

if you have access to that every now and

30:31

then, keep that in mind. It's

30:33

a good thing to have in the fleet rounds or

30:35

whatever. Yeah, let's talk about their leaders. Their

30:38

agent is Evelyn De La Oui,

30:40

the master tactician. At

30:43

the start of a ground combat round,

30:45

you may exhaust this card to choose

30:48

one ground force in the active system.

30:50

That ground force rolls one additional die

30:52

during this combat round. Yeah.

30:54

So this is like kind of part of I

30:57

think the wind more

30:59

aspect of soul, which is they

31:01

have too many ground force tools

31:04

and some of them are free. Like Evelyn is free.

31:07

We just have Evelyn. I don't have to do

31:09

anything to unlock it. And

31:11

so that's why when thinking about orbital drop

31:14

that costs something, when thinking about the mech

31:16

deployability that costs something, when thinking about spec

31:18

ops 2 that costs something, I start looking

31:20

at, well, what are the freebies we got

31:23

and are those good enough to make it

31:25

work? And I would say

31:27

that they are. Evelyn is not

31:29

a great agent on the face of

31:32

it. But combined with all the

31:34

other facts that we have, she's

31:36

gonna help you like with a

31:38

critical ground combat pretty often. And

31:42

you know, is it enough to make the difference a lot of

31:44

the time? It kind of is because

31:46

ground combat is really swingy. That's something you got

31:48

to remember about ground combat is it's, ground

31:51

combat is all low numbers for the

31:53

most part. So

31:55

throwing in an extra die, well, if it's a

31:57

2v1, that means in that first round, we we're

32:00

rolling three die and all we have to do is

32:02

get one hit. Yeah. That's huge. Yeah,

32:05

that's huge and that's enough to swing. You

32:08

know, 2v1 is that type of really

32:10

tricky ground combat where, yeah, sure,

32:12

it seems like offense should win

32:14

but because the tie goes to

32:16

the defense, we actually can get in

32:18

a little bit of trouble. Right. And

32:20

this is exactly the type of juice that's gonna help

32:23

us kind of swing that. And again, you

32:25

don't have to do anything. We just have this.

32:27

You just get it. Yeah. And

32:29

the rounds where you, for some reason, aren't using

32:31

it at all, like it is a somewhat mildly

32:34

sellable thing. I mean, maybe for a dollar but

32:36

it's such low odds that I don't know that

32:38

you can really ... you're not shopping

32:40

it around, right? Yeah, yeah, for

32:42

sure. The commander is Claire

32:44

Gibson. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Oh,

32:47

sorry. Sorry. You have my telephone. I

32:49

can't believe you. Excuse me. I

32:51

had it. I was looking at it and then

32:53

I skipped it. I'm sorry. We have some flavor

32:55

text for Evelyn. We're going to give you the

32:57

flavor text is coming at you from now on.

33:00

Which means that ... and there's a lot of guides where we

33:02

didn't do the flavor text or everything, which means ... Looks

33:05

like we have to do them all again. Do it again. Well,

33:07

compound it. We

33:09

finally figured out how to do this

33:11

just now. Here's

33:13

the flavor text for Evelyn. This is if you wanna know

33:15

what's going on with her. She

33:18

is a daughter of

33:21

supreme admiral Alastair de Louis,

33:24

lauded for her contribution

33:26

to the massively successful

33:29

Centauri campaign, a brilliant

33:31

tactician possessed by a

33:33

fierce love for Yord. She

33:36

is every bit her father's

33:38

daughter. Hilarious little final note

33:40

there. Because that's not

33:42

even a character we know anything about. So

33:44

that's cool. We're just making references to other

33:47

stuff. We got it. We know that she's

33:49

daddy's girl, I guess. Yeah. It's

33:52

important. Well, I'm glad you said that because

33:54

I wanna propose from now on. We have

33:56

to reference Evelyn as being

33:59

daddy's girl. Okay, I'm

34:01

going to use I'm so glad you

34:03

because I had that thought Yeah, yeah

34:06

from now on people right you gotta

34:08

talk about how she's daddy's girl Yeah,

34:10

okay every time every time

34:12

that extra die roll gets a hit you

34:14

just say to yourself making daddy proud There

34:21

we go the now you see why we

34:23

needed to read the lore matters folks the

34:25

lore matters Okay, let's do that commander now

34:27

that way you go I guess in the

34:29

voice of the people the unlock is to

34:32

control planets that have a combined total of

34:34

at least 12 resources You start

34:36

with four so you're a third of the way there. You just

34:38

got to get eight bucks outside of home a Mildly

34:41

tall order given certain slices, but sometimes

34:43

it's tough. It can be tough But

34:45

at the start of a ground combat

34:48

on a planet you control You

34:50

may place one infantry from your reinforcements

34:52

on that planet. So you get to

34:54

sort of Daxive

34:57

on the front end Basically, yeah, and

35:00

what was I saying before about

35:02

ground combat being about small numbers?

35:04

Okay, so again Isolated Claire Gibson

35:06

not that great of ability not

35:08

super exciting but with everything

35:10

else we know about soul This

35:13

is just a gimme. This is just yeah

35:15

I I'm gonna do a little bit better

35:17

on the ground and doing a little bit

35:19

better on the ground plus Daddy's

35:22

girl, you know helping us do a little bit better on

35:24

the ground plus spec ops 1 helping us do a little

35:26

bit better on The ground means we're doing a lot better

35:28

on the ground. Yeah, that's just how it works with that

35:30

Yeah, I mean run the numbers on it. Let's say I

35:32

have a planet with n Infantry

35:34

on it one infantry on it and you

35:37

want to come invade me Well that infantry

35:39

will instantly turn into two infantry and on

35:41

the first round of combat I'll roll three

35:43

dice and those three dice are rolling One

35:47

die roll better than you what on whatever

35:49

you're bringing you're rolling on eights and I'm

35:51

automatically rolling on sevens with my three dice

35:54

When I just had the one infantry there in the first

35:56

place So everybody at the table has to look at your

35:58

planets and go that's at least whatever

36:01

percentage that adds to in terms of

36:03

the swinging odds, that's a pretty

36:06

stark contrast and everybody at the table has to

36:08

be like, well, that's not

36:10

an easy planet to take actually. That's three

36:12

dice rolling on a seven, even if it's just

36:14

a single infantry. And we're just

36:17

talking about some whatever punky planet

36:19

that, you know, soul doesn't even

36:21

care about. The planet soul cares

36:23

about. Much more difficult

36:25

to take from them. I mean, essentially you

36:28

need lots of bombardment or we have to

36:30

focus fire the mechs, essentially. Yeah. Oh,

36:33

yeah. It's tough. Claire

36:35

Gibson is beloved in the house

36:37

of the people. General

36:39

Gibson sees the diversity of

36:41

humanity spread across the stars

36:44

as the Federation's greatest potential

36:46

strength. I just realized I

36:48

don't think I like Claire Gibson very much. Wait,

36:51

why? She's beloved in the house of the

36:53

people. Yeah, she sees the

36:55

diversity of humanity spread across the stars

36:57

as Federation's greatest potential strength. And again,

37:00

every time I see diversity of humanity,

37:02

I'm putting that in air quotes in

37:05

relation to the diversity of species

37:07

in the broader universe. It sounds

37:10

a little colonial to me is

37:12

what it sounds like. It sounds

37:14

kind of colonial, you're right. Yeah,

37:16

Claire, I'll say this. If Evelyn

37:18

is daddy's girl, then Claire is

37:20

not the voice of my people,

37:23

is what I would say. Not

37:25

my people, I'd say. The

37:28

voice of a people. The voice

37:30

of a people. Maybe not

37:32

mine. The

37:35

hero is the Helio Command

37:37

Array, the Twilight Directive. I

37:39

love that heroes have like 900 names. The hero

37:42

is Jace X, Fourth Air

37:44

Legion, the Federation hero. This

37:47

dude listens to heavy metal in the air

37:49

crew. I'm Jace X, bro. Our

37:54

action is to remove

37:57

each of your command tokens from

37:59

the game board. and return them

38:01

to your reinforcements, then

38:03

purge this card. Yeah,

38:06

very good ability. Not

38:08

sure why they got this. They didn't

38:11

need it, but they have it.

38:13

And they were already good, they're great,

38:18

and now they have this, so now people can

38:20

argue that they might be one of the best

38:22

actions in the whole game. This

38:24

is like one of the best heroes in the game.

38:27

This is so good, especially if you set up for

38:29

it. Oh, that's stupid.

38:32

There are so many stage two

38:34

objectives that can just be that

38:36

much easier to take because of

38:38

this. I mean, any time

38:40

we're removing command counters from the board, it

38:43

has this like kind of two-fanged approach to

38:45

it, right? Which it means we

38:47

can build more. It means we can possibly

38:49

make up for a lack of movement. It

38:51

means we can possibly make up for a

38:53

lack of light wave. Like, there's so many

38:56

different ways to make use of this type

38:58

of ability, and they're getting it everywhere.

39:00

Across the board. And

39:03

they already, so just to

39:05

take quick stock of where we're at,

39:08

this is a top

39:10

tier, non-dreadnought dependent action,

39:12

right? So that means we're

39:14

cheap, and we can

39:16

focus a lot of our economic resources

39:19

on command counters, which is

39:21

very important, I think, when it comes to

39:23

thinking about Helio, Command Array. Yeah,

39:26

this one, Jace has a little quote

39:28

from Jace. Yeah, it's a quote. It's

39:30

a quote. In quotes, we're

39:33

not falling back! Here we hold

39:35

until the text can activate the

39:37

Helio Array. Let's show these scum

39:40

what it means to face the

39:42

fighting force. What did

39:44

it do, did it do? Yeah,

39:47

so Jace X is sort of

39:49

the Starship Troopers character. Essentially,

39:52

he's hanging out with Master Chief and

39:54

Doom guy, that's Jace

39:57

X, he's one of those guys, essentially. I

40:00

love that his name is Jace X, or is he Jace

40:02

the 10th? Who knows? There's

40:04

no- He's Jace X. We've

40:06

just decided. Jace X. Let's

40:09

talk about their economic stuff they've got going

40:11

on. A four commodity faction as if we

40:13

needed it. Yeah. But

40:16

we have it. So yeah, we're making three

40:18

trade goods in an X minus one meta and

40:21

in other metas, we're I guess not making

40:23

that. I guess.

40:26

As if it matters because we're going to talk about the

40:28

promissory note right now. Which is military

40:30

support. Military support? And what does

40:32

that do? It is always included in the deals

40:34

surrounding your commodities. It is at the start of

40:36

the soul player's turn. Remove

40:39

one token from the soul player's

40:41

strategy pool and return it to

40:43

their reinforcements. Then

40:45

you may place two infantry from your reinforcements

40:47

on any planet you control. Then return this

40:50

card to the soul player. So basically you

40:52

can make soul do

40:54

orbital drop on your behalf,

40:56

sort of. Yeah. However,

40:59

there's like some specific hooks to

41:01

this ability that become very abusable.

41:04

Right. Here's

41:07

a question. Can a card

41:09

such as a promissory note with a specified

41:11

timing of a certain window that is acquired

41:13

from a transaction during that window be played

41:16

immediately? The answer is

41:18

yes. For example, military

41:20

support which is at the start of your

41:22

turn, you can trade it. So you do

41:24

not have to trade it before,

41:27

you don't have to trade it ahead of

41:29

time, right? You can just basically

41:31

forget about it. And

41:33

then, well, and also we have another question

41:36

that, okay, so I actually could not

41:38

find this anywhere. Yeah. This

41:41

is a ruling that may have been lost

41:43

to time or I just couldn't figure

41:45

out where it is. This is

41:47

a very old ruling, but people have asked,

41:49

can I play this card even if the

41:52

soul player does not have any tokens in

41:54

their strategy pool? And the answer to that

41:56

question is yes for some reason. Well, so

41:58

the logic is essential. The reason it's not

42:01

an FAQ question is it's based on the

42:03

wording of the soul thing which the If

42:06

you look at the rules like the the golden

42:08

standard rules for is like what do you do

42:10

with? Periods and VENs right so the first yeah

42:12

abilities remove one token from the soul player strategy

42:14

pool and returns their reinforcements That's like a thing

42:16

you do or don't do right if there's none

42:18

There's nothing to remove then comma

42:21

you place then comma Does

42:23

not care about what comes before

42:26

it was essentially how the ruling

42:28

works So then comma means anything

42:30

above that didn't have to

42:32

happen and then you may place to infantry

42:34

So the idea with soul is of the

42:36

start of every single one of souls turns

42:38

after they've spent all of their strategy counters

42:41

Soul is just like hey friends who wants

42:43

an orbital drop here. It is. It's worth

42:45

some amount of money I've decided on or

42:47

whatever, but they just start hawking it around

42:50

every single turn Yeah, and

42:52

you can do it even on the turn that

42:54

you pass Yep, because you have a start of

42:56

turn window on your pass turn So

42:59

yeah pretty much after you've spent all

43:01

of your command tokens from your strategy

43:03

pool You are free to just kind

43:05

of sell it for whatever you can

43:07

get This is exactly what's interesting about

43:09

this component is that I

43:11

don't really get to test stuff like this

43:13

anymore people do not

43:16

Allow me to pedal something like military

43:18

support right even if I sell it

43:20

for as cheap as possible like one

43:23

trade good It

43:25

may it makes people mad and I get

43:27

too much heat on me already Yeah, so

43:29

I literally can't I can't sell this anymore

43:32

I know that other people

43:34

other people do get to sell it and will

43:36

make a lot of money off of it But

43:38

y'all play against me with such venom that

43:41

I basically this is this is

43:43

like my textbook example of Something

43:45

I don't get to do anymore Yeah Basically

43:47

something that is fun for me to start

43:49

incorporating into these guides is like how much

43:52

more a sink has become a part of

43:54

My diet and I'll say from

43:56

the invert side This is one of my

43:58

least favorite components in a sink because because

44:02

the way a lot of those kinds of

44:04

deals, the pedally deals work in async is

44:06

like the first person to respond just gets

44:08

the thing. Like if you're up and you're

44:11

awake or whatever and you say

44:13

yes to the thing, you will get it. And

44:15

there's no optioning or anything in time. We don't

44:17

have time to wait. Like here you go get

44:19

the thing. And I'm never the one that's on.

44:21

I have not a single time received military support

44:23

in an async game. And I've played like against

44:26

soul maybe like three times or something. Never

44:28

gotten it. You have to

44:31

be forward thinking in async with this stuff and you

44:33

gotta like work this stuff out long in advance. It'd

44:35

be like hey whenever it is your turn please, please,

44:37

please, please, please let me get that

44:39

military support. The problem with military support is it's really

44:41

not a component thought that much about.

44:44

Like very often it's the soul player

44:46

hawking. People don't come looking

44:48

for military support all that often. Every once

44:50

in a while, maybe in around one especially,

44:52

some deals get made because it's like listen,

44:54

I need those infantry at home to do

44:57

something with. L1 or necro might be desperate

44:59

to get ahold of some infantry or whatever.

45:02

But yeah, I think I've

45:05

had a lot of annoyances with this

45:07

and components like it in the async

45:09

world. I was playing an

45:11

async game where I hadn't sold military support

45:13

at all because I don't, I just don't

45:15

even like wasting time on the piddly deals.

45:18

And someone in the next round was like

45:20

we gotta stop soul. They're selling military support

45:22

and making all this money. And I was

45:24

like I haven't sold it a single time.

45:28

I have not even bothered. This is normal

45:30

money. Yeah, I didn't sell it. You're just

45:32

making up that I sold it. Yeah,

45:36

so it's one

45:38

of those things where I think when

45:40

we first started the show and

45:42

we were going over soul for the very first

45:44

time, we could not

45:46

have predicted that it would be such a huge

45:48

part of their kit. But it really is. This

45:51

is big. The fact that they

45:53

have this little cookie that they

45:56

can sell over and over and over

45:58

has become, it's really changed. satisfaction

46:00

that ruling we gave that just

46:03

now about the strategy pool about the and

46:05

the ends and the then right if

46:07

that Got switched back It

46:10

would nerf well wouldn't nerf them

46:12

and it would hurt them like it would

46:14

change the next one they work Oh, it

46:16

would yeah. Yeah, I mean in in a

46:18

really active meta Military support

46:21

is like like three bucks around or whatever right

46:23

or or like three favors around or whatever it

46:25

is Like you work you work out all sorts

46:27

of stuff and you get a lot of advantages

46:29

out of it if that's if

46:32

that's how your Group is I'm sure some people are

46:34

listening to this and like we've never sold military support

46:36

ever It's like yeah Well, you're violent and that's how

46:38

your meta works out and who's gonna right I get

46:40

it Like who's gonna go around handing people? That's my

46:43

thought all the time like I feel like I identify

46:45

with a more violent meta every now and then and

46:48

I'm always afraid to give out military support cuz

46:50

I'm like, I don't just like I would like

46:52

people to have less infantry I want I want

46:55

to keep my numbers up. I'm not really interested

46:57

in everybody getting more stuff But if

46:59

you're getting the right price for it, then it all it all

47:01

equals out I mean, I'll push

47:03

back on that whole idea right there

47:05

Matt because you out capacity and you

47:07

out punch everybody at all So what

47:09

do I care how many infantry you

47:11

have right if you're giving me money

47:13

for it and then turning into whatever

47:15

I want Yes, I'm I am going

47:17

to outpace my opponent right in

47:20

in that situation So I do my do not

47:22

mind giving out military support now I would do

47:24

it more if not for I get a lot

47:26

of bad Response to it

47:29

and I feel like it adds heat to me

47:31

I'm really doing any transactions with other players that

47:34

eat on me in general. So I try

47:36

to Minimize that

47:39

yeah, so that the other players

47:41

don't get I don't know that so they they

47:43

don't talk about you as much Yeah,

47:45

so they don't just do random stuff in order to

47:47

hurt my game. Yeah Let's

47:49

talk about their strengths. There's a

47:51

lot to talk about here It

47:53

is hopefully a lot of it's kind of obvious. So

47:56

we'll we won't spend too much time on this. Yeah

47:59

but We're a blue start faction,

48:01

which means we're great at taking custodians, not

48:03

necessarily on round one. So

48:05

we're not top dog in

48:08

that particular arena, but

48:10

we're decent, all right, we're hanging in there. We've

48:13

got a strong economy, we're a four commodity faction

48:15

with a promissory note we just got done talking

48:17

about for a while, we can sell it over

48:19

and over. We get

48:21

an extra command token for no reason, just because,

48:24

we just get it. We

48:26

have advanced carriers that provide us extra

48:28

capacity that allows us to quickly build

48:31

up cheap fleets that can soak hits,

48:33

and we can just throw in so many infantry

48:35

at a certain fight to be like, oh, we

48:37

will likely win this. We don't need to sideline

48:39

it with bombardment, we can just do it. If

48:42

we have some bombardment, we can throw it in

48:44

and it makes odds even better in our favor.

48:46

We have one of the best flagships in the entire game. We

48:49

have, I would say probably, op

48:52

five or top 10 hero on

48:54

our hands. One of the better

48:57

heroes that is available. We

48:59

didn't talk about this yet with the hero. It's good

49:02

for wind-slayed defense, and it's

49:04

good for wind-slayed offense. That's

49:07

wild. You know? Like,

49:09

L1 has a great wind-slayed hero, but

49:11

you can't use it for defense. Yeah.

49:14

You know? The wildest thing of that hero is,

49:16

you can not even have enough stuff on

49:18

the board or whatever. First action,

49:21

defend your home, spend the

49:23

rest of the round doing stuff, stalling out whatever, and

49:25

then deactivate that big

49:27

fleet on your home, and then that

49:29

big fleet goes out and does stuff

49:31

to finish the round and close out

49:34

your win or whatever. Right? You

49:36

can just be holed up and defended all around,

49:39

unlock all the tokens, and then send the stuff

49:41

out and do stuff. Yeah.

49:43

My errata since was

49:45

tingling, I misspoke slightly with L1.

49:47

You can't wind-slayed defense and offense

49:49

within. You can do one or

49:51

the other. What I'm saying

49:53

with soul, you can do both. Yes. With

49:56

this one component. Exactly. I'm gonna

49:58

double build at home to defend. I'm

50:00

gonna strike at my opponent. Yeah. That's

50:03

crazy. It's a lot. That's just, that's a

50:05

wild amount of versatility. They

50:07

start with neural motivators, which I want

50:09

to highlight as being good. Like

50:12

it is good to just have

50:14

extra action cards. We're

50:16

talking about a faction that has a really strong economy. We're

50:19

gonna talk about adding action cards into the

50:21

mix. Like that's something you can do when

50:23

you have extra tokens. And

50:25

then I guess we could talk about problems, which

50:27

I've only got one that I can come up

50:29

with, which is heat. We are

50:31

a top tier faction. People know it.

50:33

We don't have, we have

50:35

pretty decent boat float capabilities,

50:38

but it's not top tier like Jollnar.

50:40

Jollnar has this uncanny ability to be

50:42

like, I'm one of the best factions

50:44

in the game, but I've convinced one

50:46

of my neighbors to be my best

50:48

friend and is going to continue to

50:50

be my bestie because they're getting some

50:53

sort of great deal on tech with

50:55

it. We don't have that particular

50:58

dynamic. So in some groups, people

51:01

are gonna do a lot of early stuff to try

51:03

and block you. But to be honest, even

51:06

in a situation where the other players

51:09

are really trying hard to block you,

51:11

you might even come out of that

51:13

situation ahead, depending on what objectives are

51:15

available. So I

51:17

mean, yeah, I would say like, you're a

51:20

fabulous faction. But here,

51:22

I'll throw this in as a problem because I just want

51:25

to echo the community. There's a

51:27

huge portion of the community that just

51:29

thinks that this is a boring faction

51:31

to play. And

51:35

I see where they're coming from even, and I

51:38

have agreed at times. I mean, I

51:40

think I sort of agree now because

51:42

I mean, the research on this one

51:44

did not take very long because it's just kind

51:46

of, it all clicks. They're

51:49

a little obvious. Well, they're vanilla TI,

51:51

right? Like their abilities. Sure. Here's

51:54

the thing. If I were to give them a weakness, it's to

51:56

say there's no tricks here. I mean, except for like, really the

51:58

hero. The hero is the trick. And

52:00

it's the only trick but everything else your

52:02

other four rounds of the game are trickless

52:04

They're just play solid have more stuff than

52:07

everybody else right don't do any fancy Shenanigans

52:10

you just make some money

52:12

build some ships win some combats Yeah,

52:14

get into a good spot in the game, and then

52:16

you can be tricky with that hero But for the

52:18

most part you you are not doing super

52:21

fancy stuff Which means yeah? You don't have as

52:23

many ways to like just like curry weird favor

52:25

with other people or whatever because you don't just

52:27

have like funky tools

52:30

in your kit to like encourage

52:32

weirder deals Yeah,

52:34

I think that what I'm

52:36

trying to highlight here though is the idea that There's

52:39

a lot of factions in the game. There's

52:41

a lot of different ways to play Twilight

52:43

Imperium Maybe it's okay if there's one that's

52:45

just kind of obvious yeah, and and it's

52:47

like I think it's a great first First-time

52:50

faction yep, I think generally our policy on the

52:52

show is to say like oh if it's someone's

52:54

first time They should probably just play a faction

52:56

that they're interested in yeah But

53:00

if they're just kind of trying to like

53:02

from a student perspective Like

53:05

I just want to learn a lot about this game in general why

53:08

not start with soul yeah I say I'd

53:10

also go this far if you're introducing a friend

53:12

to this game And you know they

53:14

suffer from analysis paralysis You know that they'll get

53:16

tripped up on trying to solve the whole game

53:18

from the beginning right there's those players that when

53:20

they approach Ti yeah, they're not there to have

53:22

a goofy time They're like no I want to

53:24

map this thing out give them soul because they

53:26

can't get caught in the weeds like there's nothing

53:28

They get caught in the weeds It's just like

53:30

you're gonna build your units and you're gonna take

53:32

planets and and and They'll save

53:34

themselves a lot of heartache on their first

53:37

session by not making it take too much time I

53:39

think they're great for that Yeah, anything

53:41

that me I like them like I'm an

53:43

analysis paralysis player. I I forget

53:45

a lot of weird Niche

53:47

rules like a lot of the weird components

53:50

I'll just so often I'll be playing a

53:52

faction and then I'll realize two rounds in

53:54

that I've barely used half my abilities because

53:56

I Just like yeah, I get roped into

53:58

vanilla Ti really often and at

54:01

least with soul it's like great that's

54:03

to my benefit. That's what I'm doing

54:05

today. Yeah, most

54:07

of the abilities are just kind of

54:09

automatic. They're not like

54:12

things you have to figure out how they work.

54:14

I mean even the leader suite, the

54:16

agent and the commander, yeah sure you got

54:18

to remember some stuff, you got to remember

54:21

to use them but they're not, they

54:23

kind of just work, you know? And

54:26

I think that this is a faction that

54:28

just works and you know it's

54:30

no shade in anybody that wants to play as

54:33

them because there's a lot

54:35

here that is competitive. So

54:37

like if you're trying to win the

54:39

game, I think soul's

54:41

not really a bad choice. I'm sorry to

54:44

say to all the haters out there. I

54:46

mean if anything the hater meta really helps

54:48

their, I think helps their

54:51

milty draft potential because there's a lot of people that

54:53

just won't pick soul. I won't pick them and you'll

54:55

be like fifth pick and it'll be like soul

54:57

is still sitting here? Yeah,

54:59

yeah okay. I'll take that and I definitely will

55:02

do well this game. Right, yeah

55:04

I agree. Well okay, before

55:06

we get into the nitty gritty

55:08

other stuff, let's take a quick

55:11

break. Okay

55:27

Hunter, we're back. Let's

55:29

talk our standard operating procedure. Let's

55:31

talk about strategy cards. Let's talk

55:33

about round one, how to get

55:35

soul out the gate. Absolutely. I

55:38

want to talk about secondaries before we even break down

55:40

the cards. Soul

55:43

I think is just looking to tech gravity

55:45

drive and this isn't a vacuum obviously, you

55:47

might have other things that you need depending

55:49

on the objectives. In a vacuum,

55:52

let's just pick up gravity drive, everything

55:54

else is extra and

55:57

I think you should get something extra either

55:59

way. Push for extra. Push for

56:01

extra. Push for extra. But

56:04

that extra could be a lot of

56:06

different things. Yeah. Okay. And

56:09

we're gonna kinda cover them as we go through.

56:11

But yeah, let's start

56:13

with leadership. I'm gonna take a

56:16

weird swing here. I normally talk

56:18

down leadership round one. But

56:20

I actually kinda love taking leadership round

56:23

one as soul because let's

56:25

just get way too ahead on

56:27

tokens. Right. Like, why not? Let's

56:30

just get extra about everything. If

56:33

you take... The difference between taking

56:35

leadership round one with soul versus other factions

56:37

is like, I would wager

56:39

that leadership round one on soul means we're

56:42

now just kind of ahead on tokens and as

56:44

long as we spend them on smart stuff and

56:46

not waste them, we're just gonna be ahead on

56:48

tokens now. We've sort of... Unless

56:51

our slice is really bad, we're

56:53

probably just chill on the tokens

56:55

now. And that's kinda crazy,

56:57

you know? Yeah, I wanted to call out,

57:00

and I know you have it kinda elsewhere,

57:02

but I feel like this is just such

57:04

a great moment to call it out. CodyTCT

57:06

did have a bit of pre-erata about... Yes.

57:09

About versatile but also just about tokens in general.

57:12

And the idea that Federation of Soul

57:15

is just really great

57:17

at having the secondary of

57:19

politics. It's something I think we talk about

57:21

in a lot of guides. It's like, you

57:23

know what? Every once in a while you

57:25

can afford politics. And more importantly, that's usually

57:27

our knock against researching neural motivator. It's like,

57:29

why do that when you could just make

57:31

a point to do the secondary of politics?

57:34

More often, right? Two action cards per round.

57:36

You have a max of seven anyways, whatever.

57:38

But because this is such a command

57:40

counter focused faction, you can

57:43

always afford to do the secondary

57:45

of politics. And especially leadership round

57:47

one is like, let's come

57:49

out the gate, let's do it, let's start with an action card hand,

57:51

you know what I mean? I

57:54

definitely agree with this mentality of like, if

57:57

NazRoca is a faction about like...

58:00

rolling dice or whatever, I think

58:03

Sol's command counter surplus that you

58:05

definitely can quickly get into is

58:08

I can do every secondary of

58:10

every strategy card every single round and

58:12

have just like more of everything while

58:14

not costing myself the units I needed

58:16

to build or whatever. Right,

58:19

we're doing, we're following any secondaries that

58:21

we want and

58:24

yeah, and then just, and even the ones that we

58:26

don't want, we can just kind of be like, alright,

58:28

well I have tokens. Yep, and

58:30

I want to spend them. I have them and I want

58:32

to get them out of my hands like I can sell

58:34

military support. I have an investment opportunity

58:36

here in burning greedy strategy

58:39

tokens. Here's a fun

58:41

bit of analysis that we never do on

58:43

this show. This is a direction that is

58:45

new that I was realizing when thinking about

58:47

Sol. Diplomacy, we don't like it at all.

58:49

There's two reasons we don't like it. First

58:51

of all, I don't want somebody getting custodians

58:53

round one and Diplo opens that up a

58:55

lot of the time. So

58:58

I don't like that. Secondly, I'm already

59:00

rich. I don't want to take stuff

59:02

that makes the other players rich

59:05

too. Now of course, if someone

59:07

takes diplomacy and it's,

59:09

and I'm Sol, I'm probably going to follow

59:11

it. I have extra tokens, I may as

59:13

well do it. But

59:15

for once, I

59:17

would say that Sol is a faction

59:20

that in a last pick scenario, absolutely,

59:22

I'll just take construction. I

59:24

don't care. I do not

59:27

want you to get to refresh your

59:29

planets because

59:31

I am going to outpace you economically

59:33

unless you're Joel Narr or Khan or

59:35

whatever. So yeah,

59:37

what do I need Diplo in the mix for?

59:40

Politics is next, I would

59:42

say this is a pretty high tier pick. It's

59:45

a little bit, it's a little different because

59:48

we have to correctly call whether somebody's gonna

59:50

take custodians round one, which is a little

59:52

bit tricky these days. But

59:54

if you're confident that no one's taking it round one,

59:56

you may as well take it first action round two.

59:59

I mean, it's yours. It's right there. You

1:00:01

literally already have it all figured out.

1:00:03

You just follow tech, you get gravity

1:00:05

drive, your carrier takes. This is like

1:00:08

one of the earliest Space Cats piece

1:00:10

turtles like, here's a play. We're describing

1:00:12

a specific play. And it's

1:00:14

soul taking, mechatol wrecks, possibly

1:00:16

using, we used to say like, oh, you'd

1:00:18

use orbital drop to lock it down. No,

1:00:21

there's the, who cares about locking it down.

1:00:23

That's not important. Just take it back later if you need

1:00:26

it. It's not, you

1:00:28

know, it's not the biggest deal in the world.

1:00:31

But you know, it's important to recognize

1:00:33

when that old logic still works

1:00:36

because it does and it

1:00:38

will. So let's

1:00:40

talk about construction. Better than Diplo, but

1:00:42

not still just whatever. In

1:00:45

a structure objective scenario, it's important.

1:00:48

Otherwise, the only thing to really talk about

1:00:50

is like, forward docks

1:00:53

kind of make sling relay better.

1:00:56

PDS gives you planetary shield. One

1:00:58

of the only ways around soul

1:01:00

is using lots of bombardment, but

1:01:02

that depends on what factions you're

1:01:04

facing off with. I like to

1:01:06

maybe throw a PDS down on a

1:01:09

tech skip planet to say

1:01:12

like, yeah, maybe this will be important.

1:01:14

I don't know. We like sling relay

1:01:16

as a spoiler I'm gonna throw out,

1:01:18

which is another reason that like, maybe it

1:01:21

doesn't really matter construction. I

1:01:24

like it better than Diplo. I

1:01:26

think the better than Diplo is really the

1:01:28

only argument because in rounds two and on,

1:01:30

you're almost never taking construction unless explicitly the

1:01:32

objectives are out beyond that. You don't care.

1:01:35

So this is just a last pick, didn't

1:01:37

want Diplo scenario and that's it. And

1:01:39

you're fine with having that forward dock, but I

1:01:42

wouldn't sit there and overthink the PDS or anything.

1:01:45

Yeah. Trade, it's good.

1:01:47

I mean, it's always, it's never bad. This

1:01:51

is a situation where we're rich, we

1:01:53

may as well be even richer,

1:01:55

basically. I

1:01:58

like it more than I like probably something. something

1:02:00

like leadership, leadership is a little more locked in.

1:02:03

Trade means that like our mid game is

1:02:05

gonna get pretty wild and we're

1:02:07

just generally going to have a very

1:02:09

strong game. The only thing about trade

1:02:12

is that we're not, if we took

1:02:14

trade, we're probably not doing

1:02:16

custodians. No. So

1:02:19

that's a bummer but you're investing in

1:02:21

I'm gonna have a great game overall.

1:02:24

Although there's always, I always remind people

1:02:26

that there's the sort of other classic

1:02:28

play is you be trade, you get

1:02:30

the next person to take politics and

1:02:32

you buy speaker token from

1:02:34

them. They send it one backwards and then

1:02:36

maybe you still can do custodians with trade.

1:02:38

I think trade is almost your next best

1:02:41

benefit but that's gotta rely on. I wanna

1:02:43

play with these people you're playing with. It

1:02:45

relies on a faction that like they can't,

1:02:47

you know, they're taking politics but they can't

1:02:50

do custodians themselves or whatever which is probably like a

1:02:53

rare case. The other thing I wanted to sort of

1:02:55

pick your brain about or just

1:02:57

allow us an opportunity to like really spell out

1:02:59

because I think there's so much that's like very

1:03:01

basic about this. So I think it's good for

1:03:04

this to be super new player focused. Why

1:03:06

is it okay to be

1:03:09

rich and get richer with trade than

1:03:11

it is with Diplo? What

1:03:14

is that financial difference between

1:03:16

trade and Diplo and what

1:03:18

makes trade acceptable basically? Trade

1:03:21

goods are the most

1:03:24

versatile currency. So

1:03:26

what it means is when we build up a

1:03:28

bunch of trade goods on round one, even if

1:03:30

we don't spend them all, they're going

1:03:32

to be useful going forward and

1:03:34

we might be able to use

1:03:36

them for anything. They are useful

1:03:39

for every single economic objective.

1:03:43

Diplo planets, we

1:03:45

have to spend that round

1:03:48

otherwise they're pointless. And they

1:03:50

also cost a token to

1:03:53

get them in general. So we're like spending

1:03:55

some of our resources in order to get

1:03:57

some back. So it's very like, it's

1:03:59

like a rebate. Right? Like,

1:04:01

it's tough to figure out exactly how much

1:04:03

value we're getting out of it, whereas

1:04:06

trade goods are just like raw

1:04:08

value that I can spend whenever

1:04:10

or whatever. Yeah. I'd

1:04:12

also throw this out there that with

1:04:14

Diplo, our home system is for resources.

1:04:17

Let's say our best case scenario is like we took

1:04:20

a three resource plan. It maybe even got

1:04:22

an attachment, right? So with Diplo, we're getting

1:04:25

seven to eight dollars back in like the

1:04:27

best case scenario. And

1:04:29

the people doing Diplo alongside us are probably

1:04:31

doing it because they also are getting seven

1:04:33

or eight dollars back. They also have a

1:04:35

four plan at home system and they also

1:04:37

are using it after tech and all that.

1:04:40

So we're all getting seven bucks. The reason

1:04:42

trade is different is I get

1:04:44

three trade goods, then I get my commodities. And if

1:04:46

we're talking this X minus one meta, which

1:04:49

even to go further back, X minus one

1:04:51

is your commodities minus one, which really just

1:04:53

means for each player in the game, the

1:04:55

person with trade makes one dollar and they

1:04:57

make the rest of their dollars, right? So

1:05:00

the difference here is I make three

1:05:02

bucks and then I wash all of

1:05:04

my commodities in just

1:05:06

doing business with everybody. So I make four more

1:05:09

bucks for free and then I

1:05:11

make five more dollars because I get

1:05:13

one buck from each player. So

1:05:16

I just made 12 bucks and

1:05:19

you made two to

1:05:21

three dollars. Yeah,

1:05:24

per player. That's

1:05:26

like why trade is wildly better

1:05:28

than Diplo and isn't overly floating

1:05:30

boats. It's like

1:05:32

I'm doing great and y'all got a little bit of

1:05:34

something. Whereas Diplo is like, let's all do way too

1:05:36

good, basically. Yeah.

1:05:39

I want to talk about warfare, fun, because

1:05:42

Sol has round one

1:05:45

custodians warfare potential because

1:05:48

of their good economy. Yeah. So

1:05:50

they're going to get gravity drive. If

1:05:53

somebody takes Diplo, which I would say

1:05:55

if Sol takes warfare around one, consider

1:05:57

not taking Diplo. Yeah. to

1:06:00

enable this. They are probably gonna figure out

1:06:02

how to make it happen. Yeah, because it's

1:06:04

like, we're talking about a situation where your

1:06:07

blues start, your only

1:06:09

real concern is that somebody's gonna grab it

1:06:12

before you do. But

1:06:14

if you pick up gravity drive, which you're guaranteed

1:06:17

to, and then sell

1:06:19

military support as soon as you can,

1:06:22

and build up a little bit of extra money,

1:06:24

that means we're gonna need to follow two other

1:06:26

things. Maybe we follow tech, obviously we're following tech.

1:06:28

Maybe we follow politics as well, get some action

1:06:30

cards, whatever. Then we try

1:06:33

to wait to play warfare last, and

1:06:36

then move again. As long

1:06:38

as all we have to do is come up

1:06:40

with six bucks, well we got three off trade,

1:06:43

we're guaranteed, and

1:06:45

then we find three more with military support.

1:06:47

That seems doable to me. And

1:06:50

if you throw a diplo in there, then easy

1:06:52

peasy. Easy peasy.

1:06:55

So yeah, I would definitely consider

1:06:59

taking warfare round one as sole, and I

1:07:01

do not say that a lot. Yeah, right.

1:07:04

Even with other blue tech factions, basically. It's

1:07:07

because military support is the main thing. You

1:07:09

have this tradable that people want early, and

1:07:11

might even go out of their way to

1:07:13

get a hold of. But you

1:07:15

can send that destroyer out too, if you need

1:07:17

to, or whatever. There's a few

1:07:20

options at your disposal. And

1:07:22

yeah, I think it's just that you

1:07:24

maybe can make the money. Now, I

1:07:27

don't know, maybe your table's really mean, and

1:07:29

it's like, well we're not gonna let you make the

1:07:31

money, because we don't want you to take custodians. But

1:07:33

realistically, here's the argument about custodians that always comes up

1:07:35

that people need to remember. It's

1:07:37

sort of like doing trade with Hakan.

1:07:40

Someone has to get custodians, okay? So

1:07:42

most deals fall apart, because it's like,

1:07:45

well, if we're just preventing soul from

1:07:47

getting it, Hakan's just gonna

1:07:49

get it. Somebody else

1:07:51

also good at getting custodians, and also too

1:07:53

good is going to get a hold of

1:07:55

it. So at some point, someone's like, I

1:07:57

could get four infantry down. And

1:08:00

yeah, I enable Soul to get custodians, but I

1:08:02

have four infantry on planets I didn't have before.

1:08:04

Seems fine. Yeah, and depending on what your neighbor

1:08:06

is, that four infantry might be a really

1:08:09

big deal. Now, I will say one

1:08:11

thing that we're maybe discounting a little bit

1:08:13

with this, it's not Christmas land, but it's

1:08:15

maybe a little specific. We

1:08:18

do start with a trade ship, and that trade ship is gonna

1:08:20

have to do a lot of work. But hopefully we have a

1:08:22

wormhole in our slice. If we don't have a wormhole in our

1:08:24

slice, this is maybe a little

1:08:26

bit, a little ambitious. A little

1:08:29

ambitious. But again, if

1:08:31

somebody later down the line takes Ziplo, you've

1:08:34

got them. This is not hard

1:08:36

to do. Yeah, so. Yeah,

1:08:38

definitely. I don't know. It

1:08:40

just depends on the situation

1:08:43

that you're in, but I felt like I would

1:08:45

be remiss if I didn't say that

1:08:47

hey, warfare round one soul is not bad. Yeah,

1:08:49

gotta give it points when it matters, yeah. Tell

1:08:52

me about tech. Last thing I wanna say is that

1:08:54

tech is not very important for a soul, in my

1:08:56

opinion. I think they get more out

1:08:58

of trade. I think they get more out of leadership, even. I

1:09:02

think they potentially get more out of warfare, though it's a bit of

1:09:04

a gamble. We're not

1:09:06

very tech dependent, and I think that

1:09:09

double-tecking with soul is kind

1:09:12

of win-more-ish, not

1:09:14

going to come into play fast enough. I

1:09:16

think that we don't need to research that

1:09:18

much tech in an overall game, and that's

1:09:20

the strength of ours. So

1:09:23

you're not really fixing anything if you double-tech

1:09:25

round one. I also think

1:09:27

you're just spending a little too much

1:09:29

on tech from the beginning. I

1:09:31

think you should be building more plastic round

1:09:33

one than double-tecking, pretty much as anybody

1:09:36

except for Jolnar or Akon or

1:09:38

whatever. Anybody with a shallow overall

1:09:40

tech path is always better off

1:09:42

focusing on plastic early, because you'll

1:09:44

get the tech situation in time

1:09:46

for it to matter. The

1:09:49

only fact is that Rush tech are

1:09:51

the ones that need some critical tech

1:09:53

to save themselves from disaster or whatever.

1:09:55

Exactly. And you value that.

1:09:57

Yeah, you don't have that problem. I would even...

1:10:00

I dare to go one step further. This

1:10:03

is maybe less about soul but more about,

1:10:05

this is more about blue tech factions in

1:10:07

general and their relationship with tech, I would

1:10:09

say, is there is this

1:10:11

interesting dynamic of if I start with

1:10:14

the blue tech, you know, you

1:10:16

always have technology as your first

1:10:18

action available to you and

1:10:20

that might kick

1:10:22

other people out of tech and

1:10:24

that becomes the topic of the round, right? That

1:10:26

becomes the thing. I'm not saying do that to

1:10:29

people. Go, you know, I mean maybe Nazroka, right?

1:10:31

Cut Nazroka out of tech. I would say that's

1:10:33

a good thing to do. A lot of the

1:10:35

other factions that are starving for that tech and

1:10:37

don't have enough money, that's

1:10:40

where you are making a deal. That's where you get your extra money

1:10:43

as soul or as any other blue tech

1:10:45

faction, right? It's like, well, I won't screw

1:10:47

you over on tech if I

1:10:50

get the free wash on trade, right? I don't need

1:10:52

to owe you a dollar, no X minus one or

1:10:54

something like that. There's going to be a number of

1:10:56

elements like that that I think come up with any

1:10:58

blue tech faction and soul is like chief among them

1:11:01

because again, we're kind of like wealthy in general and

1:11:03

so you get to sort of hold tech over people

1:11:05

because it definitely is good for you to do it

1:11:07

first unless there's like a construction you need to do

1:11:09

the secondary of or something or you need to blow

1:11:11

out there. Beyond that,

1:11:14

having both of your carriers with gravity drive for them

1:11:16

to go get the best planets in

1:11:18

your slice is advantageous. So

1:11:20

like you have a leg to stand on on

1:11:23

kind of making the threat basically. Yeah,

1:11:25

I would definitely upgrade technology in

1:11:27

a situation where you have like

1:11:29

a weird slice, right? If you

1:11:31

have something you need to get,

1:11:34

then sure, take tech because you

1:11:36

need gravity drive at the right

1:11:38

moment and we don't. But

1:11:40

the other thing too is even in

1:11:42

like a really, even in a bad

1:11:45

situation, you could always do an

1:11:47

emergency, you know, orbital

1:11:49

drop and then have your other secondary

1:11:52

be tech. But that's not, that's

1:11:54

kind of annoying. We'd probably like

1:11:56

more value than that. But I

1:11:58

think if that's the worst case. Scenario I can

1:12:00

come up with that's not so bad. Yeah,

1:12:03

I'll say one stupid thing because we were talking I'm just

1:12:05

having fun on this one. But but because you brought up

1:12:08

the stuff with warfare and especially with Diplo if

1:12:11

you have tech and Diplos out there go

1:12:13

back to rethinking about custodians

1:12:16

because that is where you can double-tech in the

1:12:18

custodians around one if you can get if you

1:12:20

have like the right slice for It you can

1:12:23

like get your trade goods off trade afford to

1:12:25

double-tech gravity drive carrier to and then something from

1:12:27

home Go straight to mek at all if you

1:12:29

can get the six influence off Diplo basically You're

1:12:33

talking you're talking What

1:12:36

you that's the most Christmas land thing

1:12:38

I've ever heard why you're talking ever

1:12:40

it's not I don't think it is

1:12:42

resources for gravity drive and advanced carrier

1:12:45

to thanks influence for custodians and

1:12:47

then also We only

1:12:49

have two carriers at home So did we build

1:12:51

another one or are you saying you're somehow gonna

1:12:54

get all this value out of taking only one

1:12:56

system? You take one system you Diplo that system

1:12:58

plus your home after you've gotten the tech, right?

1:13:00

You do the tech you get the money you

1:13:03

Diplo Yeah, I think it's I

1:13:05

don't I don't think it's far-fetched or the system

1:13:07

you took was your your influence system, right? And

1:13:10

then you're just and then your destroyer goes out

1:13:12

to get the money for trade right

1:13:15

air namir or Joel

1:13:17

jollier A co and

1:13:19

jollier. So there's your six influence.

1:13:21

Enjoy your go to make on three trade goods Off

1:13:25

three trade goods off trade that

1:13:27

affords Carrier to

1:13:30

yeah, and then you Diplo it back and then you've got

1:13:32

your stuff Yeah, all

1:13:34

that stuff pop doesn't have to be air and

1:13:36

I'm here You also have military support to make

1:13:38

some extra money You also have like

1:13:40

we there was one unspent trade good there like

1:13:42

there's extra value within that you could have a

1:13:45

for influence system in front of you and still

1:13:47

Pretty reliably afford it. I'm

1:13:50

saying yeah. I yeah.

1:13:52

All right You're

1:13:55

right, you're right Matt we're playing or we're

1:13:57

rolling we're playing the odds in this this

1:14:00

soul guide because if we don't we would just

1:14:02

be saying yes carriers and blue tech is good

1:14:04

I suppose I don't know that it was my

1:14:06

thought is I see a man

1:14:09

I get it on in my recent game

1:14:11

the harkans not sold but soul makes good

1:14:13

money around one is my main point I'm

1:14:15

saying if you open yourself up to the

1:14:17

possibilities really really cool stuff can happen I'm

1:14:19

and I wasn't trying to say that was

1:14:22

impossible yeah it's more Christmas land than warfare

1:14:24

which is I think your point warfare is

1:14:26

not very Christmas landy and yeah a bit

1:14:28

more the I I

1:14:31

think I generally push back on round one

1:14:33

strategies that have to do with a lot

1:14:35

of multiple timings happening and the reason I

1:14:38

want to talk about that warfare one is

1:14:40

I feel like I'm like oh this is

1:14:42

kind of timing resistant is yeah like yeah

1:14:44

like we can wait very late yeah and

1:14:46

then do this and because I feel like

1:14:48

any time a cool round one play comes up

1:14:50

it's like the problem is gonna be different cards

1:14:52

going off at the right time but

1:14:56

let's talk about tech in general and

1:14:59

this this will actually for once be a

1:15:01

pretty short section core tech I want to

1:15:03

highlight is of course gravity drive it's already

1:15:05

come up over and over and over in

1:15:07

this advanced carrier to

1:15:09

is the other one and

1:15:11

that's it yeah our core tech

1:15:13

path is that once we have that I

1:15:15

would say like our position is

1:15:17

decent are we gonna get more tech

1:15:19

well of course we are but I

1:15:22

think we're pretty much like doing just

1:15:24

fine at that

1:15:26

point yeah I wouldn't say we we

1:15:28

lack for much of anything and I think you could

1:15:30

win a whole game just with

1:15:32

that yeah why

1:15:35

not spec ops to I want

1:15:37

to talk about why

1:15:39

there isn't really a point to it

1:15:41

yeah I think Jen synthesis

1:15:44

is kind of unimportant that the

1:15:46

free roll to get it back on your home system

1:15:48

thing it's not that it's useless

1:15:50

it's just like I can also just build infantry

1:15:53

at home I do I have six production at

1:15:55

home I'm probably going to build you know more

1:15:58

stuff yeah And

1:16:00

then the other thing is that the mech

1:16:02

exists. So if

1:16:04

we want to be even punchier on the

1:16:07

ground, we already have access to something that

1:16:09

will allow us to do that. And

1:16:12

SpecOps 2 is not that.

1:16:14

Right. So I, you

1:16:16

know, I feel like it's not really an argument at

1:16:18

this point. I think most people have

1:16:20

accepted that like SpecOps 2 is just not that

1:16:23

important. But I just wanted to throw it

1:16:25

out there as like, this is

1:16:27

a thing of like, it's just kind

1:16:30

of win more unimportant. Yeah, I would

1:16:32

categorize it as like SpecOps 2 is

1:16:34

kind of like maybe an okay tech,

1:16:36

but there are other okay techs that

1:16:39

don't require you to skip a green

1:16:41

or research another green. Right? Like,

1:16:43

obviously we don't want to do like research two greens to get SpecOps 2, but if

1:16:45

we did have the green skip, there's just other

1:16:48

things we could be spending

1:16:50

our extra tech on, right? There's

1:16:52

so many other better tasks

1:16:54

in SpecOps 2 that you're about to list all

1:16:56

of them off. There's just so many better things

1:16:58

in SpecOps 2. It's true. And

1:17:01

I'll say this for once, we're not

1:17:03

really gonna talk about tech skips this

1:17:05

week. Right. Soul is not

1:17:07

very tech skip dependent. It doesn't really matter what tech

1:17:10

skips you have in your slice. I

1:17:12

would just go for raw value and don't

1:17:14

worry, you know, when in a drafting situation,

1:17:16

I don't care. I

1:17:18

don't need a yellow skip. I don't need a, I

1:17:21

don't, yeah, the skips nothing.

1:17:23

Yeah. But let's talk about supplemental

1:17:25

tech. So blue tech, all of them are on

1:17:27

the list. Every single one of them. Sling relay

1:17:29

in particular is great. Sling logistics can help you

1:17:31

lock up the game in the,

1:17:33

you know, in a late round Imperial

1:17:36

situation, like I always say. Lightwave

1:17:39

is gonna help you utilize your hero

1:17:41

even better. DET is

1:17:43

gonna help you roll the dice on

1:17:45

more stuff just to get even more

1:17:47

good things happening to you. But

1:17:49

yeah, I mean... The good thing for once,

1:17:52

DET is like actually like last in my order

1:17:54

here. Because you already started with a blue, you

1:17:56

don't need to research like a basic thing to

1:17:58

get there. all the other stuff

1:18:01

is like I see it paying off a bit

1:18:03

more because again, we're like a decent faction. It's

1:18:05

not like I need to draw that secret from

1:18:07

the Frontier deck or whatever. I don't need the

1:18:10

command counters from the Frontier deck. Like there's a

1:18:12

lot of stuff in that deck where it's like,

1:18:15

it'd be great to have that but I definitely don't need

1:18:17

it. It's not saving me from anything. Right,

1:18:19

right. Green tech, I

1:18:21

really just wanna talk about Biosysims. I got nothing

1:18:23

else to say about any other tech that's green.

1:18:26

Biosysims combos really well with Sling Relay.

1:18:29

So BLT had some really good pre-erata

1:18:32

about Biosysims Sling Relay, which is

1:18:34

essentially this. The more

1:18:36

start of turn windows we hit,

1:18:39

the more military support we can

1:18:41

sell. My brain hadn't pieced it

1:18:43

together yet. That's so stupid and

1:18:45

hilarious and fun and wonderful. So

1:18:48

when you, so Slinging, that's a

1:18:50

turn. Biosysims, that's another

1:18:53

turn for Sling. So

1:18:55

we wanna do that basically.

1:18:58

I will say one thing overall with Soul is

1:19:01

that we have a lot of tokens. We wanna

1:19:03

really always make sure that we have just as

1:19:05

many strategy tokens as we need

1:19:07

for that round because we wanna get rid

1:19:10

of them quickly so we can start military

1:19:12

support. That is when Orbital Drop is the

1:19:14

most useful, right? Oops, I put too many

1:19:17

into strategy. All right,

1:19:19

I guess I'll get two free

1:19:21

infantry. Darn. Just to

1:19:23

burn it and it's like next turn

1:19:25

now, I'll make that money back or

1:19:27

whatever. Absolutely. But

1:19:30

yeah, so Biosims Sling Relay is a

1:19:32

really good tool because basically you can

1:19:34

probably get all of your necessary capital

1:19:36

ships out just with that. And

1:19:39

then every time you actually activate your home

1:19:41

system to build, you are just building fighters

1:19:44

and infantry. That's all you care about and

1:19:46

you build six at a time. You're spending

1:19:48

three to just plop down

1:19:50

more stuff. In that case, you honestly probably want

1:19:52

a forward dock because you just wanna be pumping

1:19:54

out more and more things if

1:19:56

at all possible. Yellow tech.

1:19:59

I think. The handling is great. This is

1:20:01

exactly the type of stuff we can

1:20:03

invest our command tokens into. We've got

1:20:05

extra tokens, we've got extra economy. Let's

1:20:07

just explore more. Let's get more attachments

1:20:09

in case that becomes relevant or whatever.

1:20:13

Predictive intelligence is

1:20:15

always a good tech. I would say not

1:20:17

the most important thing for Seoul

1:20:19

because we would have to skip into it.

1:20:22

And I really just don't care. Like we

1:20:25

don't need that level of, I

1:20:28

can't come up with some sort of really cool

1:20:30

thing predictive enables specifically us to

1:20:32

do. I think you're just ahead in general.

1:20:35

So that level of versatility of

1:20:37

moving your tokens around, I

1:20:40

don't know. We don't, we're not starved. I

1:20:43

will note that predictive intelligence does have a bit

1:20:45

of synergy with the hero. I

1:20:48

think the big thing that makes Seoul go from

1:20:50

a faction that's good for like a new player

1:20:52

to like a, this

1:20:54

could be a winner of the finals

1:20:56

kind of fashion. The kind of play, it

1:20:58

all revolves around the hero, right? If

1:21:01

you can do like the trickiest, slickest stuff

1:21:03

with the hero, that'll be your game-winning maneuver.

1:21:06

And I see the one advantage to predictive being

1:21:08

like, I had a bunch of tokens

1:21:10

and tactics for the round.

1:21:12

I've been stalling things out. I've been sending

1:21:15

ships kind of all over. And

1:21:17

then I pull all those tokens

1:21:19

off the board. I still had a few in tactic

1:21:21

or whatever. Like I'm just like hard stalling. I

1:21:24

can pull on the turn at the end of my

1:21:26

turn, when I pop the hero, I

1:21:29

can pull more tokens into fleet at the

1:21:31

last minute and all that stuff that got

1:21:33

spread out because I just needed the token.

1:21:35

I just needed to over invest in tactics

1:21:37

cause I'm doing the stall, but then I

1:21:39

didn't need the full extent of that stall.

1:21:42

I reconvert all of that into fleet pool.

1:21:44

And now the finishing move that the hero

1:21:46

was setting up for is that much more

1:21:48

powerful or whatever. Yeah.

1:21:51

Also, I mean, yeah, if we're talking, let's

1:21:53

do it. So you

1:21:56

could, if you wanted to not have

1:21:59

it in the game, any strategy token so

1:22:01

you can sell mill support early in

1:22:03

the round and then predictive the

1:22:06

tokens into strategy that you're then gonna use

1:22:08

to follow. So you could get an

1:22:11

action one, military

1:22:13

support sale and

1:22:15

then say just kidding, now I have all

1:22:18

my strategy tokens because it is

1:22:20

an end of turn window for predictive.

1:22:23

So yeah, there you go. I don't think mine

1:22:25

was that goofy. I think mine was pretty, I

1:22:27

thought mine was a pretty. I wasn't making fun

1:22:29

of it. You're fine, you're

1:22:31

a safe here. I'm just saying like,

1:22:34

yeah, you don't have to react that

1:22:37

way, what I'm saying is if we're

1:22:40

gonna put our theory craft hats on,

1:22:42

then I wanna get mine, okay? I

1:22:45

was trying to, I'm trying to do

1:22:47

a very blue collar tech and pathing. I'm

1:22:50

trying to keep it simple. Sure, sure. Red

1:22:53

tech, no, none. Leave

1:22:56

me alone. A-Sir, not

1:22:58

a single one. What about AI

1:23:00

Dev? No, you don't need. For

1:23:02

what? For what? Just

1:23:05

get, if you need Dread 2, get a

1:23:07

yellow. Just get a yellow and then you're

1:23:09

done. Like it's fine. Take what's yours. Take

1:23:12

what's yours. And the other thing is like you

1:23:15

shouldn't be struggling resources wise, so you

1:23:17

don't need all the little extra juice

1:23:19

that AI Dev gives you. I'd

1:23:21

rather have something like Scan Link that gives me like

1:23:24

extra, all kinds of stuff. I don't even know

1:23:26

what it's gonna yield me. That's

1:23:28

what I'm saying is like, soul has

1:23:30

such a good economy that I'm wanting

1:23:32

to play a little bit of roulette.

1:23:35

I'm wanting to like, let's spin the

1:23:37

wheel a little bit. Let's not just

1:23:39

try and have an even better economy.

1:23:41

Like we're gonna do fine in that

1:23:44

arena. Invest your economy in odds to

1:23:46

win, not in more plastic you didn't

1:23:48

need. You will just, at

1:23:50

this point, you will actually just run

1:23:52

out of production capacity to keep up

1:23:54

with the money you have. Because

1:23:57

you're building mostly fighters. Like you're just gonna run

1:23:59

out of space. in the space stocks. Yeah,

1:24:02

it's true. Unit upgrade

1:24:04

wise, I think fighter two

1:24:07

is relevant. We can research it from

1:24:09

round one, although we shouldn't

1:24:11

be researching it round one. Unless

1:24:13

you get some weird objective that

1:24:15

it becomes very important, I

1:24:18

wouldn't bother. Dreadnought two is

1:24:20

fine depending on what the match up

1:24:22

is. Sometimes we just need to hit

1:24:24

harder and sometimes bombardment is actually important.

1:24:28

But overall, I don't think

1:24:30

you need either of these, to be honest. I

1:24:32

think advanced carrier two will get it

1:24:34

all done for you. Even Dreadnought ones

1:24:36

will suffice to kind of supplement everything

1:24:39

and you just use the gravity drive

1:24:41

on that. Yeah. One Dreadnought or whatever.

1:24:43

Or don't even do that at all

1:24:45

and just do the flagship and

1:24:48

that's your punch. Yeah. And then the

1:24:50

rest of it is just hit points,

1:24:53

which by the way, hit points is what

1:24:55

decides the outcomes of battles. How many

1:24:57

hits you can take most of the time. So

1:25:00

there you go. I would even say fighter

1:25:02

two is something I think I consider a

1:25:04

lot. Like I think I maybe even over

1:25:06

like fighter two as a tech for a

1:25:09

lot of factions. Because for me, the biggest

1:25:13

trial with it is like, it's not

1:25:15

like the not being a part of

1:25:17

capacity matters usually because then they just

1:25:19

apply to fleet supply so that's not

1:25:22

a factor. But the ability to

1:25:24

like very easily kind of micro manage what fighters

1:25:26

are staying behind to be a part of a

1:25:28

defense and what's going. Like the fact that a

1:25:30

fighter can move to a place and then become

1:25:33

a part of a capacity, I

1:25:35

think is the useful part of fighter two. And

1:25:37

I think with soul, it's sitting right there

1:25:40

as a tech I would almost always get

1:25:42

like because the lizard part

1:25:44

brain in me just like does that. Like

1:25:46

the knee jerk reactions to get it. But

1:25:49

you have like such a

1:25:51

capacity bonus that you

1:25:54

don't even feel yourself needing that little

1:25:56

maneuverability. So that's sort of my thing

1:25:58

is like with ghosts or other facts. where I

1:26:00

want Fighter II, it's about maneuverability of

1:26:03

getting stuff where it needs to be to then

1:26:05

be a part of the fight. With Solas, they're

1:26:07

always where they need to be. They're with the

1:26:09

big ships that carry lots of stuff, so they

1:26:11

get to go wherever else they need to go,

1:26:13

and it just kinda works itself out. It

1:26:16

just works, people. But yeah,

1:26:18

it's worth talking about Fighter II and

1:26:20

Dreadnought II as possibilities, but I think

1:26:22

it's a little more niche as far as when

1:26:25

they are important. If you need to gum, it's

1:26:27

important. If you need to score those

1:26:30

annoying control objectives where you need to

1:26:32

be somewhere where there's no planets, Fighter

1:26:34

II might help you do that. Also

1:26:36

can potentially combo well with the hero

1:26:38

and allow you to keep making attempts at

1:26:41

various places, and then you're only

1:26:43

restricted by how many ships you have, which

1:26:45

is Fighter II helps you get around

1:26:47

that. But yeah,

1:26:49

that's all I got for tech. In

1:26:52

a smooth tech conversation, not

1:26:54

a whole lot to really say.

1:26:58

And nobody's gonna give us pushback for that. That's

1:27:00

the best part. Everyone in the world agrees like,

1:27:02

yeah, blue tech does look pretty good here, huh?

1:27:05

Right, and Biosim Sling, this is another

1:27:07

faction that gets a lot out of Biosim Sling,

1:27:09

so there you go. Let's talk

1:27:11

about trading, and let's talk about

1:27:13

the values of

1:27:15

what? Of stuff. Of

1:27:18

this stuff. And we've been kind of talking about

1:27:20

this all game, but my

1:27:22

suggested sale price for military

1:27:24

support is one

1:27:27

trade good. That's how I do it.

1:27:30

You just wanna trade it as many times as you can, and

1:27:33

one trade good is like the cheapest you could

1:27:35

possibly charge for it. I mean, I wouldn't charge

1:27:37

less than a trade good, whatever that would be.

1:27:41

I think I see that happen though, like

1:27:43

in weird complicated deals, someone's like, well, I'll

1:27:46

do this for two promises of military

1:27:48

support or whatever, right? People love to

1:27:51

get really non-binding with military support. I'm

1:27:53

thinking of you, Nine of Spades. You

1:27:56

get crazy with this thing. You're like, you're

1:27:58

hawking. You're writing checks

1:28:00

you know you won't cash later. It's like, I'll

1:28:03

give you three military supports within the next two

1:28:05

rounds. And it's like, I am not gonna remember

1:28:07

any of that. So I don't like that deal

1:28:09

at all. Yeah, there's

1:28:11

a lot of people that don't, like non-bindings are

1:28:13

starting to break down in my brain, everybody. Like

1:28:15

they are kind of not great.

1:28:17

Because as soon as you meet somebody that doesn't

1:28:20

hold to them, you're like, oh yeah, we've

1:28:22

just been playing this all on faith. And

1:28:25

so it kind of starts falling apart. But

1:28:29

yeah, one trade good for military

1:28:31

support is dope. Or like yeah,

1:28:33

some sort of favor. I

1:28:35

think the alliance is tough

1:28:38

to figure out because like Claire Gibson is

1:28:40

nice, but it's not

1:28:42

great. I would sell

1:28:44

it for like maybe two, I would try and get

1:28:47

two trade goods out of it. Or a trade good

1:28:49

and then some sort of cookie. Or

1:28:52

just a swap with

1:28:54

another like mid-tier commander. I think generally,

1:28:56

the thing about Claire Gibson

1:28:58

is you gotta recognize when somebody could actually get

1:29:00

some use out of it, which is if they're

1:29:03

trying to defend some control objectives. So

1:29:06

there might be a player that

1:29:09

wants it. But

1:29:11

you have to kind of recognize who that is and where they

1:29:13

are at. But I

1:29:15

wanna also mention like alliances that

1:29:17

we might get special use out of.

1:29:21

The Ghost Alliance, which we've been talking about, we've been

1:29:23

talking about the Ghost Commander a lot on the show

1:29:25

lately, we just realized it was good recently. But

1:29:28

getting extra fighters by moving through wormholes, obviously if

1:29:30

we have a wormhole in our slice, we're gonna

1:29:33

get a lot of use out of that. We

1:29:35

want as many fighters as we possibly can get.

1:29:37

And we've got extra capacity for them. So yeah,

1:29:39

let's get the Ghost Alliance if we can.

1:29:42

SARDAC Alliance, if somebody gives you this,

1:29:45

they've ruined the game for everybody. It's

1:29:48

really nasty in your hands. I

1:29:51

would, oh, I'd love to get

1:29:53

it. I would love to get it. Cabal,

1:29:56

Commander, is great because we

1:29:58

would love to produce more. more fighters,

1:30:00

more infantry, and this is gonna enable us to

1:30:02

do it. The SAR

1:30:04

commander is fun if you happen to

1:30:06

have a forward dock because like, being

1:30:08

able to just kind of move

1:30:10

your fighter builds around

1:30:12

in interesting ways is

1:30:15

useful. And then

1:30:17

of course, the Nomad, because we love our

1:30:19

flagship and I would pay four trade goods

1:30:22

to save me a little bit of

1:30:24

money and get my flagship for some

1:30:26

cheaper value. I think the SAR is

1:30:28

the best example here of like a

1:30:30

perfect swap where it's like, Claire Gibson's

1:30:33

not amazing, SAR is probably not getting

1:30:35

amazing alliance deals anyways, SAR's alliance

1:30:37

is kind of awkward to put into other

1:30:39

people's hands. So the two of you can

1:30:42

just be like, hey, should we just swap

1:30:44

our dumb kind of bad commanders

1:30:46

and do quite a bit better

1:30:48

on both counts? I

1:30:50

think it works out for both of you basically. Yeah,

1:30:53

if I'll say this, this is like kind of

1:30:56

a weird niche case, but since we're kind of

1:30:58

talking about a lot of those, because otherwise it's

1:31:00

like, it's just gonna be boring, right? The

1:31:03

Muat commander is kind of cool for us

1:31:05

because we have an action

1:31:07

that we can take by spending

1:31:10

out of strategy. And

1:31:12

the situation where that would be cool is

1:31:14

a stage two trade objective thing comes

1:31:16

out and everybody wants to try and

1:31:19

stop us from getting enough trade goods.

1:31:21

And then we just say like, this is

1:31:23

not a good way to do

1:31:25

this, but I can get a few more trade

1:31:28

goods and suddenly I can get to 10 or

1:31:30

whatever. So I mean,

1:31:32

that is definitely a niche consideration and the

1:31:34

only way that's gonna work out is if you

1:31:36

already got it. But if you can't

1:31:38

get any of these and you can't get any of

1:31:40

the good ones, I would just

1:31:42

take Muats just for some money, so there

1:31:45

you go. Can we talk

1:31:47

about some agendas that get special consideration

1:31:49

with Seoul? We're talking about a very

1:31:51

vanilla sounding faction, so it's interesting to

1:31:53

me to try to mark what stuff

1:31:56

Seoul cares about in a special way. Yeah,

1:31:59

let's. Let's do it. What's the

1:32:01

first one you got for us? You've

1:32:03

listed out conventions of war for players

1:32:06

cannot bombard units against that

1:32:08

are on cultural planets against each player that

1:32:10

voted against discards all of their action cards.

1:32:13

Conventions of war is a really funny one

1:32:15

that always passes because the against is incredibly

1:32:17

hard to make happen. Yeah,

1:32:19

and I just like to note that bombardment is

1:32:21

one of the only ways to deal with soul.

1:32:23

Turning it off on some of the planets is

1:32:25

always a win for you. Oh, yeah, I like

1:32:28

conventions of war or soul.

1:32:30

It's real good. Can I note the

1:32:32

craziest thing about conventions of war here?

1:32:35

Cultural planets. Three

1:32:38

of those are legendary. Plegendaries. Yeah.

1:32:41

And two of them are in wormholes

1:32:43

that then you like have access to

1:32:45

stuff. This law is like not a

1:32:47

joke. The cultural planets are like wickedly

1:32:49

important to the game. So this is

1:32:51

such a nasty law actually that I

1:32:53

don't think it's talked enough about because

1:32:56

it's such an auto path. Like it's

1:32:58

it is forced to come into play.

1:33:00

But I think it actually really jacks

1:33:02

up very important parts of the

1:33:04

game except for then everybody forgets that it's

1:33:07

in play and then you bombard cultural planets anyway.

1:33:10

Well, yeah, we're going to remember from now on

1:33:12

I'm remembering all the stuff of my new goal.

1:33:15

But yeah, next one is economic equality, which of

1:33:18

course everybody already knows about. Yeah, but I just

1:33:20

like to highlight that we're rich so we don't

1:33:22

like it. Yeah, you don't. Of course, we're

1:33:25

doing a capitalism. We don't want, you know,

1:33:27

a socialism. Yeah, essentially we've been we've been

1:33:29

saving up trade goods for the stage two

1:33:31

on like a lot of the time. Next,

1:33:35

you've got executive sanctions law for each player

1:33:37

can have a maximum of three action cards

1:33:39

in their hand and against each player discards one

1:33:41

random action card from their hand. Oof. Yeah,

1:33:44

we got Norah. We like the action cards.

1:33:47

I concur with Cody that we

1:33:49

should be investing in

1:33:51

having a great hand of action cards.

1:33:53

So no executive sanctions is bad. We

1:33:55

don't like it either way. We don't

1:33:58

like either outcome, but obviously the. Four

1:34:00

is worse. So we'll take that against, please.

1:34:02

Yeah. Prophecy of X is a

1:34:05

law. Elected player, the player gains this card.

1:34:07

The owner of this card applies plus one

1:34:09

to the result of their fighters' combat roles

1:34:11

when the owner of this card uses production.

1:34:14

They discard this card unless they produce two

1:34:16

or more fighters. Yeah, we

1:34:18

love this. Don't let Soul get

1:34:20

this. It's pretty cool. I got

1:34:22

no problem building fighters. I'm gonna build

1:34:24

fighters every time anyways. And

1:34:27

a plus one is just always good. Obviously,

1:34:29

I'm not recommending fighter

1:34:31

two, so I don't love a plus one

1:34:33

that much. But I

1:34:36

think that if you can get this for

1:34:38

cheap or get this on the sly, it's

1:34:40

best in your hands, possibly. Obviously,

1:34:43

it's probably even better to not lose hands, but it's really

1:34:45

good in your hands. Next was regulated

1:34:47

conscription law. Four, when a

1:34:49

player produces units, they produce only one

1:34:51

fighter or infantry for its cost instead

1:34:54

of two. Gross against no effect. Even

1:34:56

grosser. Ugh, I hate a no effect.

1:34:58

We hate the four. We don't want the

1:35:00

four. Obviously, the against is the way to go here.

1:35:03

But yeah, whatever. I don't know, it's tough. This

1:35:06

one, you almost argue when everybody's suffering from

1:35:08

this problem. Regulated

1:35:11

conscription has that fun quality of if

1:35:13

it's the round three or four agenda.

1:35:16

Anybody who's been investing in the infantry

1:35:18

all game long is suddenly like, oh,

1:35:21

I have the advantage. I actually don't need

1:35:23

to build that many more infantry. Everybody

1:35:26

else will now be stifled. Nobody can do the

1:35:28

last minute, build a bunch of infantry on their

1:35:30

home to protect it or whatever. And

1:35:33

you still have orbital drop. And military

1:35:36

support just went up in money. So I don't

1:35:38

know, maybe I push back on this. Maybe this

1:35:40

is kind of cool. Again,

1:35:43

in that later scenario, if you've already

1:35:45

invested well in your infantry or whatever.

1:35:48

Yeah, but I think the problem is that

1:35:51

one of our strengths is our ability

1:35:53

to make just infantry and

1:35:55

fighters and call it a day. We're

1:35:58

not very capital ship. dependent

1:36:00

so I don't like a

1:36:02

situation where suddenly my builds

1:36:04

just cost more money basically. Other

1:36:07

factions are more capital ship dependent

1:36:09

and they're okay with like well I

1:36:12

mean I've got my fleet of dreadnoughts or whatever whereas

1:36:16

depending on when this comes out you're right if

1:36:18

it comes out later if it comes out later

1:36:20

though it's almost just unimportant for everybody including soul.

1:36:23

Yeah I think in a in a

1:36:25

round one agenda situation I don't want to see

1:36:27

this. I just don't want it

1:36:30

to cost more to do business basically. And

1:36:33

then finally swords to plow shares is

1:36:35

the ever-present question of is this good

1:36:37

or bad I feel like that debate

1:36:39

comes up every single time this agenda

1:36:41

comes out. This is the one where you make money

1:36:44

off of killing infantry on planets and whatnot. Or you

1:36:46

just get one on every planet and I have no

1:36:48

idea it doesn't matter. People think

1:36:50

too much about this one I just roll the

1:36:52

dice. Why are we making the

1:36:54

agenda phase take longer on this? This of

1:36:56

all things let's just move on

1:36:59

with our lives. Either give me the money or

1:37:01

give me the infantry and I think either way

1:37:03

I'm happy. Yep. Oh always just hard to say.

1:37:05

Yep. The only time you care is when

1:37:07

like there's a planet everybody's talking about and losing

1:37:10

the infantry there would mean some nasty

1:37:12

person can get in and take the planet too

1:37:14

easily or whatever. Right but how often is one

1:37:16

infantry the difference is never. Well actually it's half

1:37:19

the infantry right so sometimes yes that is a

1:37:21

big deal if you're removing too many infantry or

1:37:23

whatever. Let's talk

1:37:25

about objectives on this very good faction

1:37:27

and how easy all these are gonna

1:37:29

be. Yeah I want to take us

1:37:31

home now because I kind of feel

1:37:33

like we've sort of said everything you

1:37:35

can say that's good but

1:37:38

just real quick I'm just gonna wrap

1:37:40

it fire the rest of the sky to you. I'll stay out

1:37:42

of the way. We're gonna talk

1:37:44

about stage ones all the categories. Tech

1:37:46

we're fine with this we start with

1:37:48

two we have easy unit upgrade access.

1:37:51

Control objectives we got movement we got punching

1:37:53

we got capacity if we don't have it

1:37:56

in our sights we can go get it

1:37:58

who cares. Economy that's great. Great for

1:38:00

us, we have a good economy, we've

1:38:02

got the tools. Structures is our worst

1:38:05

category. We just don't have reasons to

1:38:07

grab structures in a world without objectives.

1:38:10

Sling plus Biosims can kind of make it where

1:38:12

we don't need any structures at all. But hey,

1:38:14

you've got extra tokens. We've already talked about how

1:38:16

you could invest in structures just on the off

1:38:18

chance it comes up. Why not do it? I

1:38:20

don't see why not. You might as well. Yeah,

1:38:22

get the three outside of home and move on.

1:38:26

Secret objectives, we got action phasers, we

1:38:28

got decent options. I

1:38:30

will say, we kind of have this weird thing of

1:38:32

like, we're good at secret objectives, but

1:38:35

we don't lean towards bombardment, anti-fighter

1:38:37

barrage or space cannon. And that's

1:38:39

three right there. But

1:38:41

we get one of those, we have to

1:38:43

kind of pivot. Now is it a pivot