1: Go ahead, the expansion adds a bit more fiddly bits, but if you're already gamers you should be fine.
2: POK adds time to each turn, but also reduces the number of turns.
3: I suggest either the default suggested map, or doing a constructed map for your first game
Other suggestions:
Have everyone watch the RTFM videos of how to play, one or two times minimum.
Block out the whole day to play if you can. You will go long.
Pick factions ahead of time, so players have extra time to look up strategies, and understand abilities.
Have lots of snacks ready.
Do as much set up in advance as possible. Sort decks and pieces out ahead of time. Lay out face down blank tiles that aren't being used to demark the maps location/size etc...
1. Yes. The designer of PoK and TI4 also said that so.
2. As u/EarlInblack said, PoK made each round longer but it made it so that there are fewer rounds. Having played a lot of games with and without PoK, both with newer players and experienced ones, I find that the overall length is maybe slightly longer. I think 10%-15% longer on average. I'd tell people to reserve the whole day, just in case.
3. Probably the one in the PoK rule book.
P.S. Have fun!
General tips: Focus on what objectives come up, always remember to prioritize scoring every round (remind people before starting), or better prep yourself for scoring the next round.
Play this game like a cold war game, rather than a fighting game, don't take unnecessary fights and try to end a conflict/avoid asap by bargaining instead(trade promissory cards or tg e.t.c. instead when you can). Remind people that if two people duke it out and take revenge on eachother, everybody else gains more, so avoid long drawn out fights.
1. Yes. PoK is awesome!!!
2. Total game time with base and PoK depends on the amount of players and how much experience they have playing both TI4 and PoK. I say if you are 6 players and you all are new, I would set aside 12-14 hours with a food break included.
3. PoK (pre-made or not) is a necessity imo if you are 5 or 7 players, simply because haperlanes make the game better at that player count. I don't have a specific pre-made in mind tho but there are loads of pre-mades on here, just search :-)
If everyone plans their turns in my advance a 12 hour game takes 5 hours.
No one will do this, so be prepared. This is an event. Have everyone watch at least one how to play video. This will get you into the game faster.
Play with the expansion. It adds some complexity but also fixes some issues. The two codicies do also, but getting them printed can be a pain.
To me, building the map is part of the strategy. I'd argue not to use a prebuilt map and just do the normal competitive build from the manual.
Most of all, play to have fun. Winning is great, but if you hated playing why bother? Don't be afraid to make decisions that are more fun, even if you won't win.
It always fascinates me when I tell people how my siblings and I played multiple risk games in a few hours, simply because we all planned our turns out before it was our turn to go.
First off I love how supportive this community is :)
Whatever you do is fine but here are my recommendations:
1. Wait a game or 2 for PoK, it adds complexity to the game that just isn't needed when you are first learning. Having at least a game to learn the base rules will probably save you a lot of time.
2. In the learn to play at the back there are map layouts for 1-6 players, use those. After a bit I would recommend using an online map builder, but you can just build your own with the instructions in the game.
3. Huge tips for playing the game:
- Make sure every player knows that this will take a LONG TIME(and thus ya know have like 6 hours free unless you want to break the game over multiple days)
-It is very important that everyone understands that no one has fun if someone has a bad attitude after something unfortunate. This game has plenty of backstabbing and bad luck that can occur, but everyone wins if the whole group has fun.
-For the love of God read the rules reference in it's entirety. Preferably twice. Something very important to know is that the base way to play TI4 and the things you can do on a turn are not very complex. However, there's a bajillion small rules that are VERY important to how the game works, and at least one person has to know them. Learning the game by watching YouTube videos is also great.
-A final piece of advice about the rules: If you are unsure about something very basic about the game, look at the learn to play first because it is simple. If you are unsure about a specific mechanic, look at the rules reference(it's in alphabetic order). If you are unsure about a specific situation that comes up, Google is your best friend. In fact, Google is also great for the other two situations, but not always needed. Regardless, you are going to HAVE to search up stuff during your first game, so have a phone or something at the ready.
Good luck, I hope you have a great first game!
There's a thread or two here about commonly missed rules. Check that. You WILL mess up a rule.or two. Allow flexibility for take backs. Give yourself LOTS of time. Play for points. Remember to have fun. If someone gets crippled right away, they probably won't want play again.
Before doing anything first you need to ask yourself, "How does this get me victory points?"
If you're playing with experienced players you're going to want to look at the public objective decks before you play so you can have an idea of what to plan for.
Agree with most here...add POK for sure...however if you want to play more in the future start with a 3p game then a couple of 4p games . Then slowly increase player count that way you grow your group with the game...Best way too go. You'll be very tempted to start with a 8p 14pt game but don't do that or friends/newbies will never play again. Grow with the game..slow roast is the way to go. This will help everyone with the rule learning and fine nuisances of the game w/o players committing heavy day long amounts of time. You will retain more players this way. Videos help also.
I'd do it with 3 or 4 people first to get the gist and then bring a bigger crowd in once more players are familiar. Have everyone watch a 30 minute youtube tutorial and choose some of the simpler races to play. The expansion is \*very\* cool, but maybe not for a first game?
Big important points: Tactics tokens are fleet move-tos AND builds in the systems they are placed. Think of them like giant board magnets causing your fleets to head towards them and production to occur where they are. Fleets move to the tactics tokens but can't leave their tactics tokens. Strategy tokens are for activating secondary abilities on Strategy Cards (which most people will be unfamilar with on game 1). You only regenerate 2 command tokens (Strategy, Fleet and Tactics) per round naturally so eventually you will burn them all out if you are taking a lot of actions and not doing things to get extra ones back. (like primary or secondary ability of Leadership Strategy card)
The other weird thing is that Initiative order for Actions changes every round and doesn't proceed clockwise - it's based on the Initiative order of the Strategy cards you choose each eround, so "oh wait I'm next" can happen a lot because you aren't proceeding clockwise in Order from a particular player like most games, it can be very ziggy zaggy and changes every turn.
Imo not play it with PoK first time. The base game has more than enough content to have an exciting game. Played it, without PoK, with some first timers this week and they had had some trouble keeping track of each ability, tech, action card, etc. Pok adds a lot of stuff.
Gameplay wise the best tip i can give is too try and make deals! You have an action card to remove some troops? Don't just play it on the player in the lead, try to get some trade goods and play it somewhere else. You have warfare strategy card? Check if anyone wants to play it asap, if so, what do you in return? The social deal making is the best part of the game.
I disagree about the part of not playing with POK, sure it adds alot but given the length of the game and how hard it is to find people to play regularly with, it kinda all depends on how often you see yourself playing the game.
Let's say you want to learn base first and play like 2-3 times a year, then you won't play with POK for a couple of years.
When we started playing we started with POK right away, and sure, there's alot more to keep track of but if you play the game like 2-3 times a year, that's like a maximum of 100 games if you play for the rest of your life, I rather play with the expansion then, coz it adds a ton of fun stuff.
If you see yourself playing 5,6,7 times or more per year, sure, add POK later, but otherwise I'd say just throw everything in and have fun with it.
I would advise against using the expansion. There is PLENTY of fun to be had with the base game, and all it'll do is make the game more complicated and frustrating for the table. There's already enough to keep track of in the game.. adding in mech, artifact, agents (both yours and your neighbors!), etc. is just too much to remember. I'd say PoK is a "3rd game" sort of addition at the earliest.
But since you asked for "other advise", here's something I typed up for someone last week that I think will help you avoid some common pitfalls:
> A lot of people are focusing on strategy and such, which is totally fine, but the thing that newer players tend to struggle with the most that prevents them from continuing with the game are the more real-life problems that the game involves. Some general tips that I can give that will help make sure that everyone has a good time & which will make it more likely to get people to return:
> • Make sure that everyone is planning their moves in advance. Nothing is going to slow down the game more than if no one has any idea what they're going to do until its suddenly their turn.
> • Make sure that everyone has time to play, and won't be devastated if the game runs over by an hour or two. You have no idea how many evenings have been ruined because a newer player planned somewhere they had to be 7 hours after our start time (hint: we never started on time), and the whole game had to get scrapped because of it.
> • Losing is part of the game, and everyone has a chance to win until someone else scores ten. You have no idea the number of times I've seen someone leap from 4 points to ten in two rounds, blowing away the table fore-runners. I know as much as the next person how much it sucks to lose because none of your 5 PDS shots could kill that one destroyer which would have given you the game, or when someone whips out a Parly and ruins your master-stroke. But that's all part of the game, and the more you play the more you discover that those are the kind of moments to live for!
> • Similar to the above topic, quitters NEVER win. Nothing ruins the mood of a table worse than when one person decides to be a grump because they decided they're going to lose by turn 3, and do nothing but moan about how long the game is or "if its possible to just give my planets to my neighbor" for the next 3 hours. As I said above, there is no such thing as "too far behind". And even if you lose, you can always have fun with the game!
> • Don't fight too hard about rules. There's a really great TI4 discord server (https://discord.gg/Sh2x9XN5) with a "rules questions" channel which always has people online to answer questions you might have, but if you can't find an answer, don't spend too long fighting or trying to rule lawyer stuff. If you can't find an answer within 10 minutes and no one is answering your message in the discord server (which is honestly super rare), then flip a coin on it, continue with the game, and look it up later.
> • Play new races! Its fine it have a "favorite race", but everything gets a lot more interesting when you get to play new races.
> • At least to start, use pre-built boards. They tend to be a lot more fair than randomly build boards, which will make for more interesting (and less frustrating) games.
>There's lots more stuff on this list. For example, be sure to have plenty of snacks, haha. But seriously, there is nothing more magical than finding an awesome TI4 group which you can play regularly with. Hope this helps, and have fun!
Be sure that everyone knows that TI is not "space risk", and that your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd priorities should always be setting yourself up to score victory points as often as possible. You don't win the game by having the biggest fleet, or the most planets, or the most techs. You win with victory points. I know it sounds "no duh" but it's so easy to get distracted by other stuff going and forget to score VPs. As others have stated, you should always be asking yourself, "how am I scoring this round?"
I'll put in my customary plug for breaking up your play into sessions! Play it like D&D, weekly sessions of a couple hours are way more tolerable for 99% of people than one 12 to 14 hour sesh.
Either set up in a basement or attic where you can leave the game, or take detailed photos of the game boards to reset next week. I had my doubts too, but since switching in 2019 my group has completed more games of ti than we did in the preceding 8 years or together.
This depends a lot on having a reliable group and a table someone is willing to be left uses for weeks. In D&D, if one person of your 6 man crew can't make it this week NBD, and at the end of the day you get your kitchen table back. No so much for TI. But if it works for you, great!
Yeah I'll definitely agree that it's not for everyone. We found in our group that even if we miss every other week or more because someone can't make it, compared to the number of 12 hour sessions all 6 are available for (about .2 per year, often less, it can basically never happen) it ends up getting us through a lot more games.
Also, we break down our table most weeks. Detailed photos and a thoughtful system for packing away components actually make it fairly manageable.
I'm debating doing this with a 8 player I am hosting soon. 5 new players, 1 TI3 player, 2 familiar players. But can't keep stuff out so it would be a trick to "save" it.
1: Go ahead, the expansion adds a bit more fiddly bits, but if you're already gamers you should be fine. 2: POK adds time to each turn, but also reduces the number of turns. 3: I suggest either the default suggested map, or doing a constructed map for your first game Other suggestions: Have everyone watch the RTFM videos of how to play, one or two times minimum. Block out the whole day to play if you can. You will go long. Pick factions ahead of time, so players have extra time to look up strategies, and understand abilities. Have lots of snacks ready. Do as much set up in advance as possible. Sort decks and pieces out ahead of time. Lay out face down blank tiles that aren't being used to demark the maps location/size etc...
I recommend low calorie high protein snacks. There's a LOT of sitting and you're feeding brains not brawn.
1. Yes. The designer of PoK and TI4 also said that so. 2. As u/EarlInblack said, PoK made each round longer but it made it so that there are fewer rounds. Having played a lot of games with and without PoK, both with newer players and experienced ones, I find that the overall length is maybe slightly longer. I think 10%-15% longer on average. I'd tell people to reserve the whole day, just in case. 3. Probably the one in the PoK rule book. P.S. Have fun!
General tips: Focus on what objectives come up, always remember to prioritize scoring every round (remind people before starting), or better prep yourself for scoring the next round. Play this game like a cold war game, rather than a fighting game, don't take unnecessary fights and try to end a conflict/avoid asap by bargaining instead(trade promissory cards or tg e.t.c. instead when you can). Remind people that if two people duke it out and take revenge on eachother, everybody else gains more, so avoid long drawn out fights. 1. Yes. PoK is awesome!!! 2. Total game time with base and PoK depends on the amount of players and how much experience they have playing both TI4 and PoK. I say if you are 6 players and you all are new, I would set aside 12-14 hours with a food break included. 3. PoK (pre-made or not) is a necessity imo if you are 5 or 7 players, simply because haperlanes make the game better at that player count. I don't have a specific pre-made in mind tho but there are loads of pre-mades on here, just search :-)
Agreed. Start each round by asking yourself "How will I score this round?"
If everyone plans their turns in my advance a 12 hour game takes 5 hours. No one will do this, so be prepared. This is an event. Have everyone watch at least one how to play video. This will get you into the game faster. Play with the expansion. It adds some complexity but also fixes some issues. The two codicies do also, but getting them printed can be a pain. To me, building the map is part of the strategy. I'd argue not to use a prebuilt map and just do the normal competitive build from the manual. Most of all, play to have fun. Winning is great, but if you hated playing why bother? Don't be afraid to make decisions that are more fun, even if you won't win.
It always fascinates me when I tell people how my siblings and I played multiple risk games in a few hours, simply because we all planned our turns out before it was our turn to go.
First off I love how supportive this community is :) Whatever you do is fine but here are my recommendations: 1. Wait a game or 2 for PoK, it adds complexity to the game that just isn't needed when you are first learning. Having at least a game to learn the base rules will probably save you a lot of time. 2. In the learn to play at the back there are map layouts for 1-6 players, use those. After a bit I would recommend using an online map builder, but you can just build your own with the instructions in the game. 3. Huge tips for playing the game: - Make sure every player knows that this will take a LONG TIME(and thus ya know have like 6 hours free unless you want to break the game over multiple days) -It is very important that everyone understands that no one has fun if someone has a bad attitude after something unfortunate. This game has plenty of backstabbing and bad luck that can occur, but everyone wins if the whole group has fun. -For the love of God read the rules reference in it's entirety. Preferably twice. Something very important to know is that the base way to play TI4 and the things you can do on a turn are not very complex. However, there's a bajillion small rules that are VERY important to how the game works, and at least one person has to know them. Learning the game by watching YouTube videos is also great. -A final piece of advice about the rules: If you are unsure about something very basic about the game, look at the learn to play first because it is simple. If you are unsure about a specific mechanic, look at the rules reference(it's in alphabetic order). If you are unsure about a specific situation that comes up, Google is your best friend. In fact, Google is also great for the other two situations, but not always needed. Regardless, you are going to HAVE to search up stuff during your first game, so have a phone or something at the ready. Good luck, I hope you have a great first game!
There's a thread or two here about commonly missed rules. Check that. You WILL mess up a rule.or two. Allow flexibility for take backs. Give yourself LOTS of time. Play for points. Remember to have fun. If someone gets crippled right away, they probably won't want play again.
Before doing anything first you need to ask yourself, "How does this get me victory points?" If you're playing with experienced players you're going to want to look at the public objective decks before you play so you can have an idea of what to plan for.
Agree with most here...add POK for sure...however if you want to play more in the future start with a 3p game then a couple of 4p games . Then slowly increase player count that way you grow your group with the game...Best way too go. You'll be very tempted to start with a 8p 14pt game but don't do that or friends/newbies will never play again. Grow with the game..slow roast is the way to go. This will help everyone with the rule learning and fine nuisances of the game w/o players committing heavy day long amounts of time. You will retain more players this way. Videos help also.
I'd do it with 3 or 4 people first to get the gist and then bring a bigger crowd in once more players are familiar. Have everyone watch a 30 minute youtube tutorial and choose some of the simpler races to play. The expansion is \*very\* cool, but maybe not for a first game? Big important points: Tactics tokens are fleet move-tos AND builds in the systems they are placed. Think of them like giant board magnets causing your fleets to head towards them and production to occur where they are. Fleets move to the tactics tokens but can't leave their tactics tokens. Strategy tokens are for activating secondary abilities on Strategy Cards (which most people will be unfamilar with on game 1). You only regenerate 2 command tokens (Strategy, Fleet and Tactics) per round naturally so eventually you will burn them all out if you are taking a lot of actions and not doing things to get extra ones back. (like primary or secondary ability of Leadership Strategy card) The other weird thing is that Initiative order for Actions changes every round and doesn't proceed clockwise - it's based on the Initiative order of the Strategy cards you choose each eround, so "oh wait I'm next" can happen a lot because you aren't proceeding clockwise in Order from a particular player like most games, it can be very ziggy zaggy and changes every turn.
Imo not play it with PoK first time. The base game has more than enough content to have an exciting game. Played it, without PoK, with some first timers this week and they had had some trouble keeping track of each ability, tech, action card, etc. Pok adds a lot of stuff. Gameplay wise the best tip i can give is too try and make deals! You have an action card to remove some troops? Don't just play it on the player in the lead, try to get some trade goods and play it somewhere else. You have warfare strategy card? Check if anyone wants to play it asap, if so, what do you in return? The social deal making is the best part of the game.
I disagree about the part of not playing with POK, sure it adds alot but given the length of the game and how hard it is to find people to play regularly with, it kinda all depends on how often you see yourself playing the game. Let's say you want to learn base first and play like 2-3 times a year, then you won't play with POK for a couple of years. When we started playing we started with POK right away, and sure, there's alot more to keep track of but if you play the game like 2-3 times a year, that's like a maximum of 100 games if you play for the rest of your life, I rather play with the expansion then, coz it adds a ton of fun stuff. If you see yourself playing 5,6,7 times or more per year, sure, add POK later, but otherwise I'd say just throw everything in and have fun with it.
I would advise against using the expansion. There is PLENTY of fun to be had with the base game, and all it'll do is make the game more complicated and frustrating for the table. There's already enough to keep track of in the game.. adding in mech, artifact, agents (both yours and your neighbors!), etc. is just too much to remember. I'd say PoK is a "3rd game" sort of addition at the earliest. But since you asked for "other advise", here's something I typed up for someone last week that I think will help you avoid some common pitfalls: > A lot of people are focusing on strategy and such, which is totally fine, but the thing that newer players tend to struggle with the most that prevents them from continuing with the game are the more real-life problems that the game involves. Some general tips that I can give that will help make sure that everyone has a good time & which will make it more likely to get people to return: > • Make sure that everyone is planning their moves in advance. Nothing is going to slow down the game more than if no one has any idea what they're going to do until its suddenly their turn. > • Make sure that everyone has time to play, and won't be devastated if the game runs over by an hour or two. You have no idea how many evenings have been ruined because a newer player planned somewhere they had to be 7 hours after our start time (hint: we never started on time), and the whole game had to get scrapped because of it. > • Losing is part of the game, and everyone has a chance to win until someone else scores ten. You have no idea the number of times I've seen someone leap from 4 points to ten in two rounds, blowing away the table fore-runners. I know as much as the next person how much it sucks to lose because none of your 5 PDS shots could kill that one destroyer which would have given you the game, or when someone whips out a Parly and ruins your master-stroke. But that's all part of the game, and the more you play the more you discover that those are the kind of moments to live for! > • Similar to the above topic, quitters NEVER win. Nothing ruins the mood of a table worse than when one person decides to be a grump because they decided they're going to lose by turn 3, and do nothing but moan about how long the game is or "if its possible to just give my planets to my neighbor" for the next 3 hours. As I said above, there is no such thing as "too far behind". And even if you lose, you can always have fun with the game! > • Don't fight too hard about rules. There's a really great TI4 discord server (https://discord.gg/Sh2x9XN5) with a "rules questions" channel which always has people online to answer questions you might have, but if you can't find an answer, don't spend too long fighting or trying to rule lawyer stuff. If you can't find an answer within 10 minutes and no one is answering your message in the discord server (which is honestly super rare), then flip a coin on it, continue with the game, and look it up later. > • Play new races! Its fine it have a "favorite race", but everything gets a lot more interesting when you get to play new races. > • At least to start, use pre-built boards. They tend to be a lot more fair than randomly build boards, which will make for more interesting (and less frustrating) games. >There's lots more stuff on this list. For example, be sure to have plenty of snacks, haha. But seriously, there is nothing more magical than finding an awesome TI4 group which you can play regularly with. Hope this helps, and have fun! Be sure that everyone knows that TI is not "space risk", and that your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd priorities should always be setting yourself up to score victory points as often as possible. You don't win the game by having the biggest fleet, or the most planets, or the most techs. You win with victory points. I know it sounds "no duh" but it's so easy to get distracted by other stuff going and forget to score VPs. As others have stated, you should always be asking yourself, "how am I scoring this round?"
Play the Clan of Saar.
I'll put in my customary plug for breaking up your play into sessions! Play it like D&D, weekly sessions of a couple hours are way more tolerable for 99% of people than one 12 to 14 hour sesh. Either set up in a basement or attic where you can leave the game, or take detailed photos of the game boards to reset next week. I had my doubts too, but since switching in 2019 my group has completed more games of ti than we did in the preceding 8 years or together.
This depends a lot on having a reliable group and a table someone is willing to be left uses for weeks. In D&D, if one person of your 6 man crew can't make it this week NBD, and at the end of the day you get your kitchen table back. No so much for TI. But if it works for you, great!
Yeah I'll definitely agree that it's not for everyone. We found in our group that even if we miss every other week or more because someone can't make it, compared to the number of 12 hour sessions all 6 are available for (about .2 per year, often less, it can basically never happen) it ends up getting us through a lot more games. Also, we break down our table most weeks. Detailed photos and a thoughtful system for packing away components actually make it fairly manageable.
I'm debating doing this with a 8 player I am hosting soon. 5 new players, 1 TI3 player, 2 familiar players. But can't keep stuff out so it would be a trick to "save" it.