Here I am posting another journal that's more of me just typing out thoughts for the fun of it, here to be read by whoever feels inclined. Hopefully I can at least make this a bit of an entertaining read.
Those that know me know I'm a fan of tabletop board games and I've played a good variety over the years. While I have no shortage of memories of fun board games, there are some games that stick out to me because of really memorable moments from those games. While left to my own thoughts I remembered a moment from one game that (as far as I can remember) probably takes the trophy of "my greatest play".

The board game in question was Twilight Imperium, where I had gathered five of my friends to play it with me for the first time over my Birthday. For those that don't know, Twilight Imperium is a game of galactic conquest for 2 - 6 players, played on a large board of hexagon tiles, each tile representing a sector of space that has planets, asteroid fields, or other spacial anomalies. Every player takes control of a unique race, each with their own special racial/faction abilities, and attempts to prove they are worthy of leading the galaxy by gaining 10 victory points through completing objectives that are revealed over the course of the game. Players build and move fleets to conquer planets and battle each other for control over sectors of space but the game is as much of a social experience as it is a 'war game'. You can trade resources with other players, make deals, offer agreements, and at the end of each round everyone comes together in a Galactic Council to cast votes on whether new galactic policies or laws will pass or fail. And that's about as quick an explanation of what the game is and how it works as I think is needed here.

For anyone curious that knows the game, here were the races involved in this particular game. This was everyone's first time playing:
The Federation of Sol (Humans. Played by me!)
The Xxcha Kingdom (space turtles)
The Barony of Letnev (angry blue people)
The Yssaril Tribes (little green goblins)
The Emirates of Hacan (lion-people merchants)
Sardakk N'orr (bugs)

I won't go over every bit of how the game played out from start to finish but suffice to say that we got into the game pretty quickly. Everyone moved out from their home systems to start expanding their territory and gain more resources. Several players made a beeline for the central planet of the whole board: Mecatol Rex. Mecatol Rex is basically Twilight Imperium's version of Coruscant from Star Wars. It's the center of government in the galaxy and once it's been taken, the Galactic Council will start meeting at the end of each game round. I didn't have an easy path to Mecatol so I focused on securing my territory and trying to complete the first few objectives that had been revealed.
I made a peace deal with the Xxcha Kingdom to my right by offering not to try invading and starting a war with them (though we did have a bit of planet control deals going on between us that nearly broke out into war when I had to hold onto one of their planets for one more turn than I originally planned to). The Sardakk N'orr were to my immediate right and my peace agreement with them was basically me offering whatever they wanted to ensure that they didn't immediately start attacking me for extra territory. Thankfully, my pleading worked and the bugs directed their aggression towards the poor space goblins.

The other side of the galaxy quickly devolved into mass combat, with the unfortunate Yssaril Tribes getting beat back by the Sardakk N'orr and the Emirates of Hacan. Hacan and the Barony also frequently got into skirmishes with each other. There was never peace between those two but rather breaks in the fighting as both sides needed to rebuild their fleets to go at it again. But eventually the Barony and the Sardakk rose as the two most prominent military powers in the galaxy. The Barony in particular had amassed a rather terrifying fleet that would undoubtedly win almost any straight-up engagement. They were a threat to everyone so it became a careful dance to not overly antagonize the Barony while still not letting them have their way completely.

It was around this time in the game I made my play.

I don't consider myself a very 'smart' or 'clever' player when it comes to board games. Especially games that involve some level of tactics or social interactions. I'm very much the kind of player that will try to use brute force to solve a problem or only risk a battle when I've got overwhelming numbers or an obvious advantage. I'm also pretty easy to read so any attempts at deception in social games are hard for me to keep hidden. I act very much in the now and not so much thinking about the turns ahead. And the players I was playing with were objectively 'smarter' than me and were very good in board games themselves. But this was our first time playing Twilight Imperium so we were all still learning how best to play the game.
I'm putting this out there just so that it's clear that I don't often make smart plays or what I think are smart plays. But in this instance, I remember this as being the smartest, most clever play I'd made in a game like this because one choice caused the rest of the game play out exactly as I planned.


I had built up a sizeable fleet of my own and was sending it to take control of Mecatol Rex while some of my smaller fleets protected the main body of my territory. Control of Mecatol Rex would provide me strong voting power in the Galactic Council phase of the game, but it would also give me a victory point every round to keep pushing me towards a victory. The problem was that I had to move my main fleet to the tile right next to the Barony's main fleet. If they decided to attack me it was going to be a bloodbath. I had more fighters in my fleet to take hits and protect my Flagship and other big ships, but the Barony had more raw firepower. If it came down to a fight it could have gone either way but the scales tipped closer to the Barony and I would lose my strongest fighting force and best chance to work towards a victory, and no doubt Xxcha and Sardakk would take advantage and snatch up my unprotected systems while I recovered.
However, at the end of the same round that I had moved my fleet close to theirs, an Arms Reduction directive was brought up before the Galactic Council. If passed, this policy would force everyone to destroy all but 2 of their Dreadnought ships and all but 4 of their Cruiser ships. The Barony's main fleet had 5 dreadnoughts in it and multiple cruisers. Everyone else either had 3 or less dreadnoughts so the directive wouldn't hurt them much, if at all. When this directive passed it would cripple the Barony's strongest fleet and leave them vulnerable. Voting began and one by one everyone cast their votes for the obvious choice, with the Barony using all their votes to push against the directive from passing.

In Twilight Imperium, control of planets gives resources to build ships and ground forces but planets can also provide a number of votes to put towards the Galactic Council. So the more planets you control, the more potential voting power you have in order to swing new policies, laws, and directives in your favor.
It came to my turn to vote. Already most of the players were celebrating their apparent victory while the Barony player was already slumped down in defeat. The choice was obvious: send a little support in passing the directive and the Barony wouldn't have a strong enough fleet to stop me from taking and holding Mecatol Rex, they would need time to recover, and they'd be too busy defending from the Hacan trying to take their territory.

But then I had a few thoughts.

By this point in the game I hadn't done anything to upset the Barony player. I hadn't attacked their systems, I hadn't made any debilitating deals with their enemies, I had made it clear I wasn't bringing a fleet to take their planets, and they didn't seem to show much interest in taking Mecatol Rex for their own. So if they weren't interested in going after me, why should I be worried about their fleet? Maybe this was a chance to get good will with the player who had the biggest stick?

Without saying a word I cast my votes against the directive. The other players immediately stopped their cheering and immediately began asking what I was doing. I simply answered "I have a plan". With the planets I had under my control combined with what the Barony controlled, the two of us had enough votes to outnumber the four other players and the directive failed, allowing the Barony to keep their fleet and their fighting strength.
I never made any deal with the Barony player, and he never asked me to do what I did. I didn't want to say anything and tip the others off to what I was trying to make happen and risk the wrath of the other players for my choice. Wordlessly, I had nudged a gun over to my enemy and my actions helped ensure enough unsaid goodwill that he would point that gun at anyone but me. He was already obsessed with fighting the Hacan, and the Barony keeping their fleet would keep those two fighting each other for the rest of the game. In addition, it meant there was a rival military power that the Sardakk N'orr couldn't ignore, and it forced them to keep the bulk of their forces in the parts of the galaxy that were closer to the Barony rather than me and my main territory. If they wanted to take retribution on me for my choice they would have to move their fleets out of ideal positions just to get some attacks on me, leaving them vulnerable not just to the Barony but any other players that might see undefended territory as easy opportunities.
At the same time many of the other players now had their eyes, worries, and military might focused on the Barony. The Barony was strong but being attacked from multiple sides of their territory from multiple different enemies would whittle them down until they weren't a threat. And it came with the added bonus of other players keeping their attention on the Barony instead of me. I'd given them the weapon and also set them up for the fall at the same time.

There was no guarantee that the Barony wouldn't immediately turn on me and attack at the start of their next turn. Like I said, there was never a deal made and what I did was an enormous gamble that could backfire in my face tremendously. But during the next round when it came to the Barony's turn, they moved their fleet away from mine to get into a better position to fight and defend from the Hacan. I moved in to Mecatol Rex and took out the meager Yssaril Tribes force that defended it's space and ground, taking control of the center of galactic power in the galaxy to start gaining additional victory points.

My risky gamble had paid off. While the Barony, Hacan, Sardak, and Yssaril all exhausted their forces fighting each other, the Federation of Sol quietly completed more objectives and secured vital territory. With one simple choice, I set entire galactic powers on a course that they didn't even know I had put them on. It felt amazing and was by far the most clever game playing I've ever done and remains my greatest play in my tabletop gaming history. At least for now.

My only rival in for a victory was the Xxcha Kingdom who managed to equally fly under the radar. And the way that game ended with the Federation and Xxcha both on the cusp of victory was a story all of its own. But maybe that'll be for another long journal.