Space Cats Peace Turtles

7 new factions entered and now the 7 new factions have all been properly introduced. Today concludes our mission to quickly cover each of the factions that debuted in Prophecy of Kings. And it only took us six months! The Vuil’raith Cabal is an infamously mean faction that players try their best to avoid in our tournament, so let’s explore why that is and what we should do about it!   5:55 - Vuil’...

Our friend Shawn is in town and Molly is home sick on recording today, so prepare yourself to be a fly on the wall of a conversation between three friends about how they play against each other and what they think about when they sit down to play. There’s plenty of Molly blabbering in this, and I cut out as much as I could, but this episode has one of those unpolished vibes. Don’t get mad at me ab...

As the tournament has gone on and we’ve seen some Prophecy of Kings meta develop, one thing keeps catching our eye. The ways players treat the Speaker Token and try to get an advantage in Speaker Order. So, similar to our recent Objectives episode, it felt important to talk about this Speaker Order tempo throughout the game and how tournament players are manipulating it. We also get lost in some t...

We’re on the final lap of our Prophecy of Kings faction introductions, and Hunter completes his task with the Empyrean. It’s a wildly fun faction that has a little bit of everything, while rarely feeling “too good.” So, how do you best take advantage of all of these tools? I dunno, but here’s our ideas!   Vagabond Errata - 5:54   Empyrean Overview - 14:32 Strategy Cards - 44:39 Tech - 1:08:24 Expl...

The Galactic Council decided that this month you all needed to be punished. So Hunter and Matt are putting on their designer caps and improvising a Homebrew faction. We took Whose Line Is It Anyways?-style prompts on our Discord and just dove right in. And you know what, I think we came up with something PRETTY GOOD. If...you know, you’re into game-breaking unplayable ideas...   Music provided by...

What a fun treat for you all today. Long ago we promised a follow up to our Learning the Vagabond episode where we would discuss the 3 expansion classes of Vagabond. But that’s not the treat, that’s just the typical episode you’re getting from Matt and Hunter. No, the REAL treat is after that, where we are joined by our friends Jake, Sam, and Kyle from Woodland War Machine! This one was an absolut...

It’s back to back Faction Introductions! This time, Matt tackled the Argent Flight answering the question “What if Base Game Xxcha was good and fit Matt’s playstyle?” These are wonderful little birds that have a wide range of possibilities but are perhaps best served by leaning into their strengths and playing up some “win-more” mechanics.   00:00 - Mahact Gene-Sorcerers Errata   16:09 - Argent Fl...

Kneel, they say. Former rules of the galaxy, they say. Well, with such powerful lore, you may have expected a more imposing faction. But instead, the Mahact Gene-Sorcerer’s are perhaps best known for their winslaying prowess and their rules tomfoolery. Let’s take a closer look and figure out how this faction can help themselves win without tripping over pedantic technicalities along the way!   13:...

The conclusion to last week’s cliffhanger, we wrap up discussion on every objective in the game, and spend some time analyzing what the structure of all of these points means for the pace of winning. When and how should you be trying to score your 10 victory points? What is a “free” point? Also there’s some errata at the beginning here about the Galactic Council episode we recently published and t...

Lot of assumptions in that title that I'm sure will get some responses on its own. Regardless, this is our first Galactic Council episode in our new format! This is an unprepared episode where Matt and Hunter blindly approach a topic and see where the conversation takes them. It was wildly fun to do, so we hope you enjoy it and look forward to future Galactic Council episodes.   Music provided by...

The fact that we’ve never done an episode specifically about Objectives and Victory Points is either a huge misstep, or completely unnecessary. But here’s one anyways! This is part one where we go over all of the types of victory points, and cover our first section of objectives: Control Objectives. We talked way too much, and so this episode turned into a two-parter.   Music provided by Ben Prunt...

With all of the recent episodes about Exploration and Relics, we were clearly building up to SOMETHING. And that something is finally here. The Naaz-Rokha Alliance are white hot right now, so we’re already overdue for introducing them. Spoiler: they’re a really good faction and you probably didn’t even need us to tell you how to do well with them. Patience’s Tech Path Guide 4:02 - Root: Undergroun...

Today we get to complete the meat of our Learning Root episodes (don’t worry, we have more planned!) by learning the Underground Duchy. A faction of order and structure, fittingly, has many detailed ways of playing. Here, we cover what we believe to be one of the safest and easiest to pick up Duchy strategies, saving some of the more complicated stuff for the future.   6:30 - Ep 183 Errata (Relics...

Exploration has been sufficiently covered, but we left Relics on the table. There’s only a handful of them to cover, so to round out the episode, we’re also squeezing Legendary Planets into the discussion for today’s component episode. Stick around to make sure you hear about all 13 relics in Prophecy of Kings! 7:21 - Nomad Introduction Errata 15:54 - Legendary Planets 42:03 - Relics 1:14:21 - Sti...

We’ve done a close look at the Nomad before, but that was back in the before-times when we were only being given a teaser of them by Dane. Now we’ve had time to sink our teeth in, and so, we can now present our Introduction to the, by far, coolest new faction in the game. They drive a Volkswagen around the galaxy while traveling through time, what more could you ask for? 4:36 - Exploration Errata...

It’s time to explore more Prophecy of Kings mechanics! And what better topic than Exploration? It’s the major new mechanical introduction in the expansion and has made the early game vastly different from Base game. This episode doesn’t get into Relics yet, but we discuss the four Exploration decks and what to expect from each of them. 5:20 - Fractured Void Review Errata 10:17 - Exploration Overvi...

What a delightful change of pace the Galactic Council has granted us this month! After some delay, we finally got to spend some time talking about the Twilight Imperium novel, The Fractured Void. We aren’t necessarily literary critics, and we aren’t even experts in TI lore, but we read the book and here’s what we think! 11:55 - Root: Corvid Conspiracy Errata 19:46 - Fractured Void Review - No Spoi...

After some quick Tournament Structure errata, we finally get to sink our teeth into the Underworld expansion talking about the Corvid Conspiracy. We’re on record saying the Lizard Cult is a bad faction, but we didn’t realize how bad it can get. The Corvids can certainly shine, but what we’ve seen from the tournament is a faction that is easy to stop and just enough self-balancing that it can be ha...

Twilight Imperium tournament season is upon us and Hunter and Matt are officially freaked out. There are clearly a lot of people vying for a spot in the upcoming Patreon tournament, so today we decided we needed to set the record straight on the structure of the tournament and give some important sign up information. This is one of those episodes that exists in the moment and won’t really be liste...

As part of the groundwork for truly learning about all of the new things brought to us by Prophecy of Kings, we wanted to take time to break down the new tech and talk a bit about how tech paths have changed, generally, since base game. This episode doesn’t dig into any faction tech, as we’ll do that in faction overviews, but it’s a basic look meant to familiarize us with generic tech.   Music pro...

The galactic council took it easy on us this month. We get to relish in the casual conversations of our current favorite factions. But we took the opportunity to touch on some other topics as well, like how the meta might evolves over the next year, how War Suns might fare, and what to do about “powerful” factions.  42:50 - Titans of Ul Introduction Errata   Music provided by Ben Prunty. Find more...

The day of awakening is finally upon us. We have risen from the Buzzfeed slumber and come to you prepared to begin covering the factions as they stand in Prophecy of Kings. First up, we wanted to go a little easy on ourselves, so we have a Titan of Ul introduction. They’re a good faction. Maybe too good. Time will tell...   Music provided by Ben Prunty. Find more at benpruntymusic.com or benprunty...

The Root Patreon Tournament is officially underway and officially sponsored, so what better way to celebrate than an unofficial episode about how to learn to play the Riverfolk Company? These otters are significantly more versatile than their expansion companions the Lizards, but in some ways require just as much skill to comprehend all of the tools in your kit.   6:58 - Abilities & Setup 10:50 -...

We kick off our Root tournament this weekend, which means the show is about to get crazy busy! So, we decided it was important to set the table for 2021 and go over how we plan to structure future episodes as well as the changes made to the Patreon.   Music provided by Ben Prunty. Find more at benpruntymusic.com or benprunty.bandcamp.com To learn more about our Discord, Twitter, Patreon, Merch, an...

This year’s Holiday Spectacular stream took a lot out of us, and there are so many other things going on that we have a rather short episode for you. It’s a salt filled trip taking a look at what happened, and how we intend to get even next year...   Music provided by Ben Prunty. Find more at benpruntymusic.com or benprunty.bandcamp.com To learn more about our Discord, Twitter, Patreon, Merch, and...