Space Cats Peace Turtles

The theme of this week's Preliminary Guide is "The Big Stick." We've got two factions who can pack a big punch, but don't always have the point acquisition to make a successful game. Neither are "bad" factions, but there are tricks to both, and it can be hard to navigate their toolsets to find a victory. The best part of all: we don't talk about blue tech very much! So come listen just for that!
Rasmus' Muaat Guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ltvKIXpCXY5qTXZ4rxCWHIfFQNvGzNdO6L2cZPA6siI/edit?usp=sharing
Music provided by Ben Prunty. Find more at benpruntymusic.com or benprunty.bandcamp.com
To learn more about our Discord, Twitter, Patreon, Merch, and more, visit https://spacecatspeaceturtles.com/

As promised, a narration of the short story included with Fantasy Flight Games' Rex: Final Days of an Empire.
Written by Christian T. Petersen
Narrated by Matt Martens
Music:
Dreaming in 432Hz - Unicorn Heads
Satya Yuga - Jesse Gallagher

The galactic council worked together this month to give us a real treat! It's lore time and we're kicking it off with some lore that's slightly harder to get a hold of: the board game Rex: Final Days of an Empire. We're taking a look at the little clues into factions thousands of years before the setting of Twilight Imperium and during the fall of the Lazax Empire. It's a fun little ride with Matt's best attempts at some stupid accents as well as a wonderfully difficult quiz provided by the resident lore expert, Absol!
Music provided by Ben Prunty. Find more at benpruntymusic.com or benprunty.bandcamp.com
To learn more about our Discord, Twitter, Patreon, Merch, and more, visit https://spacecatspeaceturtles.com/

There's gonna be a lot of chatter about ground forces today. We're looking at two sides of the really tough infantry coin in Federation of Sol (Good) and Sardakk N'orr (Bad). (Yin is the Ugly) Some say Sol doesn't even need a guide, so we made an attempt to make that half of the episode for especially new players looking for a good beginner faction. Sardakk is a considerably more difficult nut to crack, however.
Music provided by Ben Prunty. Find more at benpruntymusic.com or benprunty.bandcamp.com
To learn more about our Discord, Twitter, Patreon, Merch, and more, visit https://spacecatspeaceturtles.com/

Hunter is out this week, and we took the opportunity to bring on noted lore aficionado, Absol! She and Matt both read the second Twilight Imperium novel by Tim Pratt, The Necropolis Empire. So here is our review, overview, as well as some lore implications of this especially good adventure sci-fi story!
Music provided by Ben Prunty. Find more at benpruntymusic.com or benprunty.bandcamp.com
To learn more about our Discord, Twitter, Patreon, Merch, and more, visit https://spacecatspeaceturtles.com/

Well we've teased this idea for many weeks now and finally were able to gather a panel to discuss winmaking. Our thoughts were outlined in depth in episode 203, but this topic bring about different feelings for everyone. So we decided to sit with three prominent players with many different takes on what constitutes winmaking and whether or not we should care. teddysjamforyou is the champion of this year's Patreon Tournament is primarily a player who chooses to follow bliss an fun. TheDeftPiper was a part of our invitational and views winmaking as a necessary tool to be used. And finally, patience_is_a_virtue practically wrote the book about winmaking and has a lot of research and analysis he's been working on for years to bring to the table. Let's enter the final Winmaking Gauntlet!
Music provided by Ben Prunty. Find more at benpruntymusic.com or benprunty.bandcamp.com
To learn more about our Discord, Twitter, Patreon, Merch, and more, visit https://spacecatspeaceturtles.com/

IT'S BACK! Over 100 episodes have gone by since our last iteration of This Imperium Life, the show written by all of YOU. We stopped doing it when we felt like the base game well had run a bit dry, but with Prophecy of Kings having been out essentially an entire year, we've been collecting lots of your stories of your best moments in TI! Here are just SOME of our favorites.
 
Music provided by Ben Prunty. Find more at benpruntymusic.com or benprunty.bandcamp.com
 
To learn more about our Discord, Twitter, Patreon, Merch, and more, visit https://spacecatspeaceturtles.com/

Despite the hype of the ongoing Invitational Tournament, we're still out here working on your preliminary faction guides. Up this week are two polar opposites: the infinite variable that is the Emirates of Hacan next to the fairly understood and simple L1Z1X Mindnet. The Hacan side of things is wildly open-ended, so be nice. You've got some concrete L1 advice, so count your blessings!
Music provided by Ben Prunty. Find more at benpruntymusic.com or benprunty.bandcamp.com
To learn more about our Discord, Twitter, Patreon, Merch, and more, visit https://spacecatspeaceturtles.com/

Can the Galactic Council ever be appeased? Likely not, but we're here to do our civic duty and provide them with the second of the two tied options from last month. Here is EVERY SINGLE TECH, tiered and feared. No contradicting opinions necessary. We nailed it.
Music provided by Ben Prunty. Find more at benpruntymusic.com or benprunty.bandcamp.com
 
To learn more about our Discord, Twitter, Patreon, Merch, and more, visit https://spacecatspeaceturtles.com/

Our special event, the Invitational Tournament, is upon us and before the games begin we wanted to go over the draft structure we'll be using. We're taking an existing community draft procedure called Miltydraft and making some slight modifications. So before we talk about our version, it's important to set the stage by going over the basics of why Miltydraft is so popular!
Music provided by Ben Prunty. Find more at benpruntymusic.com or benprunty.bandcamp.com
To learn more about our Discord, Twitter, Patreon, Merch, and more, visit https://spacecatspeaceturtles.com/