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How many board games let you play as a lion? In space?!

The creative conquest of space will serve as a wonderful substitute for war.
— James S. McDonnell

The throne to the galactic empire is empty and several alien races put forth bids for it. Your goal is to guide your race to meet the conditions necessary to claim the throne and take control of the known galaxy/universe.

Twilight Imperium (now in its fourth edition) is a tabletop/board game that uses hex map tiles to build a new map for each game. The setting is a galaxy where 3 to 6 players can choose from among ten different alien races. Gameplay strategies may include battles, trade, and/or politics. In fact, it is entirely possible and not all that uncommon to win the game without fighting a single battle, by earning points for accomplishing goals not related to combat.

The game set includes the map tiles, race sheets, ten-sided dice, several different types of cards (action, political, technology, and objective), plastic pieces for starships and ground forces, and many other extras. The ultimate goal of the game: To conquer the universe? To destroy your enemies? Nope: To get ten objective points.

The players begin the game by taking turns using the system tiles to create the map of the galaxy. Putting empty systems or systems with obstacles by your opponents and keeping all the resource-rich planets for yourself can lead to alliances or vendettas forming before the game really begins.

Once the map is built, each player starts off with preset ships, resources, a home system, and certain special abilities. Markers dictate how many tactical actions can be taken in a round, how many strategic actions, and how many ships may be assembled into a fleet. Through the use of these tokens the player can move fleets, increase fleet size, or activate strategy cards. Objective points are collected by achieving randomly-selected goals or controlling certain systems, most prominently Mecatol Rex, the former Imperial capital. Each turn, each player chooses a strategy card that lets them perform a special action and lets all the other players perform a "secondary" action. Strategies aid in building ships, attacking other players, forcing cease fires, developing new technology, fostering trade, or most importantly: scoring victory points directly.

The Shattered Empire expansion set added several new races and enough plastic pieces to play the game with up to 8 players, along with lots and lots of cool optional rules.

The Shards of the Throne expansion added a few more new races, a few more cool new optional rules, and a more structured scenario covering the end of the old empire with a fixed map.

The fourth edition of Twilight Imperium was released in 2017. It includes some of the content from the third edition's expansions, such as factional technology, flagships, and all the factions. It also makes a number of tweaks to the game's mechanics, largely with a mind to fixing perceived flaws with the previous edition.

The Prophecy of Kings expansion for the fourth edition was released in 2020, adding a similar variety of features as the original Shattered Empire expansion did, including more pieces for up to 8 players, leaders, an exploration mechanic and 7 new races, bringing the total to 24.

Fantasy Flight Games also released The Roleplaying Game of this setting, but unfortunately it was short-lived (approximately two years, tops) as company restructuring and fears over the extensive Shout-Out use becoming fodder for plagiarism lawsuits took their toll. Hints have emerged during GenCon 2020 that Edge Studios (the successor to FFG's own now-closed RPG division) is developing a new roleplaying game for the Twilight Imperium universe using the Genesys rules.


This board game features examples of:

  • 20 Bear Asses: The vast majority of objectives is about having or doing X of Y, like controlling 6 planets, having 2 upgrade unit techs or winning a battle involving a specific unit.
  • 4X: A board game example, but contains all four elements. You explore new planets, expand over them and exploit their resources, while the vast majority of interaction with other players will be trying to exterminate their fleets (and take over their planets).
  • All Planets Are Earth-Like: Averted: Each planet has its own unique description. Not that the descriptions have much real effect on the game.
  • Anti-Hoarding: At least when it comes to fleets and ships in them. You can only have as many battleships per hex as your Fleet counter (Fighters don't count towards it, as long as you can get them within the transport Capacity of units of the fleet and/or the space dock). Any single ship above the counter will be instantly destroyed.
  • Asteroid Thicket: Special technology is the only way to get through systems filled with asteroids. Some factions start with it, others have to research it first.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: The Stellar Converter relic. At first glance the ability to blow up a planet might seem cool, but it is limited to non-home, non-legendary, non-Mecatol Rex systems. Unless someone conveniently parks a huge contingent of ground forces on a planet near you to target, it often won't accomplish much more than killing a couple infantry and pissing off whoever you used it on. While it might happen to be useful, many players actively avoid creating situations where the Converted would bite their asses.
  • Awesome Moment of Crowning: You winning the game means you become The Emperor.
  • Bad Luck Mitigation Mechanic: Certain Action cards allow players to either re-roll the combat outcome or add +1 to it. Some factions even have it as part of their specialty.
  • The Battlestar:
    • The WarSun ship. Oddly similar to the Death Star from Star Wars.
    • Most of the race-specific Flagship units from the second expansion also qualify as Battlestars.
  • BFG: PDS, the Planetary Defense System. Artillery big enough to fling projectiles capable of taking down WarSuns, and in case of certain factions, fire half across the galaxy.
  • Big Creepy-Crawlies: The Sardakk N'orr are giant insects, and their racial ability lets them fight better.
  • Bilingual Bonus:
    • Pax Magnifica Bellum Gloriosum, the Latin motto on the box, translates roughly as "peace is magnificent, war is glorious!"
    • The name used for the Earth, Jord, means "earth" in the Scandinavian languages. Not the Earth, mind, just earth.
  • Binding Ancient Treaty: One of these falling apart is the background for the game.
  • Bizarre Alien Biology: A few races qualify. The Arborec are sentient plants, the Ghosts of Creuss are sentient energy patterns from another dimension animating suits of armor, and the Embers of Muaat seem to be living flame.
  • Bizarre Alien Reproduction: All Arborec unit is organic, and they don't need space docks (factories) to produce new units, instead they use their infantry for that purpose. They must have a very unique reproduction cycle, as a single Arborec infantry can produce even the largest ships/battlestations.
  • Body Horror:
    • The L1Z1X were derived from the Lazax, only they have altered themselves cybernetically so far that they aren't really the same race anymore.
    • The Arborec from the Shards of the Throne expansion definitely count. They're a race of sentient plants that infest the corpses of other races with their spores, turning them into zombies they can use to communicate. The race description suggests this practice has led to them developing imperial ambitions through osmosis.
  • Brain in a Jar: The Hylar of the Universities of Jol-Nar. Or dare I say, the Universities of In-Jar?
  • Cannon Fodder: Fighters. You produce 2 by default and they are the cheapest type of ship to build (even if you were making just one), there is no limit for how many can be build and their main role is to soak up incoming damage during combat. Oh, and destroyers get a special attack that allows them to simply wipe out a bunch of fighters before the fight even starts. Said that, they can still win all on their own, especially with the upgrade.
  • Casual Interstellar Travel: Played so straight it hurts. Also highly depends on how many parsecs per hex. Though one hex includes planets explicitly stated to be in different solar systems
    • Though an "instantaneous point-to-point" type FTL would explain all the mechanics but deep-space cannons.
  • Cat Folk: The Lion-like Hacan.
  • Changing Gameplay Priorities: The objectives are revealed one-by-one each turn, which adds new goals each round. Secret goals, depending on edition, are either assigned at random at the start of the game or can be drawn later on. Since the only way to win is to score 10 objective points, this might force people to radically change whatever they were doing (or even break their alliances) just to score points.
  • Cool, but Inefficient: Many abilities or even entire factions might qualify, but War Sun unit deserves particular mention. While it is incredibly powerful and versatile, possessing devastating firepower, high movement and capacity, and a massive bombardment to support invasions.... it is also dreadfully expensive and requires many prerequisite technologies, meaning that by the time anyone could even feasibly produce one, the game may be nearly over (by which time players typically cannot afford to divert resources or attention away from scoring objectives). It can also be destroyed in a single devastating hit if a player risks using its "Sustain Damage" ability and the opponent has the dreaded "Direct Hit" action card.
  • Cool Starship: The Dreadnought and the WarSun are both awesome ships that are also a force to reckon with.
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: Certain Action cards become only useful when you start losing the fight or at least getting your units into damaged state, rather than opening it with an extra salvo or a sneak attack to even the odds.
  • Conveniently Close Planet: It would make playing the game rather difficult if this were not the case.
  • Corralled Cosmos: The board representing the entire galaxy consists of 37 hexes, and each player starts with their own hex in it already. Controlling 6 planets or hexes are seen as feats worth a point, in a game resolved after collecting 10.
  • Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: The L1Z1X Mindnet are a completely cyborg race that seem to have lost touch with their original race characteristics. Rather reminiscent of a certain Star Trek species...
  • Cyborg: The L1Z1X.
  • David Versus Goliath: A single fighter is perfectly capable of demolishing an entire armada, as long as the rolls are right. The sheer randomness of the combat resolution means there are rarely situations where retreat is better (since a first round of combat is going to happen anyway).
  • Defenseless Transports: Nope. Carriers share their Combat rating with Fighters and Destroyers and while obviously not intended to fight, they still roll for attack whenever in combat, and can take down units like every other ship, even if they need to roll 9 or 10 to do so.
  • Deflector Shields: Defense weapons that you can set up on captured planets double as shields to prevent bombardment.
  • Digital Tabletop Game Adaptation: There is no official version, but there are 1st, 3rd and 4th edition mods for Tabletop Simulator.
  • Disc-One Nuke:
    • Players are given tiles to build the universe the game will be set in. It is entirely possible - if unlikely - to get a legendary planet and some solid systems with technology bonuses, and then simply put them right next to your homeworld system.
    • Certain Action cards and Exploration results offer massive early game advantages. Highlights include: the ability to Ready just colonised planets (or re-Ready them after they were Exhausted), the extra research option without Technology strategic card being played or downright stealing tech from other players, free trade goods and commodities, free units, forcing players to give away their promissory notes and attaching a wide plethora of bonuses to planets, or even free Command tokens. Particularly, the option to Ready new planets and access trade goods massively increases starting resources.
  • Divide and Conquer: A reasonable strategy if you control politics or trade.
  • Dolled-Up Installment: REX: Final Days of an Empire, as a result of getting the rights to remake the classic Dune board game but not the actual IP rights.
  • Drafting Mechanic:
    • The universe is constructed by players being dealt tiles from the common pool and then adding them one by one, starting from a ring around Mecatol Rex and expanding further.
    • Strategic cards are a shared pool, where players start with the Speaker and then pick them one by one until everyone gets one.
    • Action and Exploration cards are drafted from a shared pool during the game.
  • Draw Extra Cards: Certain Exploration outcomes and the Neural Motivator tech offer the option to draw additional Action cards, either right here and now or during the action phase.
  • Earth Is the Center of the Universe: Totally averted. The seat of the empire's throne lies on another planet called Mecatol Rex, and it is in the middle of the map.
  • Earth-Shattering Kaboom: The Prophecy of Kings expansion has a relic called the Stellar Converter, which allows you to destroy planets. As mentioned above, it's a bit of a letdown, because you cannot target Mecatol Rex, homeworlds or legendary systems, which means that almost any planet that would be worth using it on is out of the question.
  • An Economy Is You: Played With. Trade only happens when players engage in it, and it requires first having commodities. Normally, it takes to play Trade strategic card, but there are exceptions to this. However, controlled planets work as a source of resources without engaging with other players and it is entirely possible to win the game despite never trading with others and sticking to yourself.
  • Empty Levels: Without expansion, the most likely outcome of trying to research tier 3 technology will be first getting something completely useless for your faction, just to qualify for the quota to unlock tier 3 technology.
  • Every Man Has His Price:
    • Bribery, an Action card, and Gila the Silvertongue, the Hacan Commander, allow players to cast additional votes by paying trade goods for those: 1 with Bribery and 2 with Hacan.
    • On a meta-level, it is entirely possible to simply pay people off in a binding contract to do something for you here and now.
  • Expansion Pack: Each edition came with its own expansions. The current, 4th edition came out with four so far: Prophecy of Kings and three Volumes of Codex, while at least one more Codex is expected to arrive.
  • Extra Turn: Normally, players have only one action per their action phase, and it goes around the table until players pass (either because they run out of Command tokens or simply decided to do so), concluding the turn itself when everyone has passed. Fleet Logistics tech allows for two actions per move, which can be handy.
  • Fantastic Racism: Almost every race has another race that they absolutely cannot stand, though that's only in the background fluff. Anyone can ally with anyone in the actual game.
  • Fantastic Science: Most acquired technology in the game is a completely nonsensical futuristic nonsense that simply adds specific options to your faction.
  • Fish People: Universities of Jol-Nar. Also doubles as Brain in a Jar.
  • Flavor Text: Omnipresent. All the cards have some flavour text, and then there is the backside of faction cards, covering their lore.
  • Galactic Conqueror: One possible way to achieve victory is to straight-out conquer other players. Good luck achieving that, thou. To a lesser extent, conquering specific number of planets (sometimes of specific type, sometimes just a number), or even homeworlds of other factions, is often part of objectives, both public and secret.
  • Gambit Pileup: Likely to happen with several opponents trying to out-think each other. The final two-three turns of the game are usually all about the pile-up imploding, with everyone at their ropes to get the missing points to the final 10.
  • Gunboat Diplomacy: Directly attacking other players in this game isn't considered as an effective way to achieve victory, so players with aggressive races tends to use this method of negotiation. Also, just because some race isn't combat oriented, that doesn't mean they can't use their ships for leverage.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Averted: The cyborg race is actually completely non-human.
  • Hard-Coded Hostility: There are some "aggressive" races in the game, but most of them can be played without causing much conflict. And there are races like the Nekro Virus, which must attack other players to absorb technology as they can't develop them on their own. They are considered so hostile, they can't even participate in the political aspect of the game.
  • Hive Mind: The L1Z1X Mindnet. MIND. NET.
  • Humanoid Aliens: Most of the races, though not all.
  • Humans Are Warriors: The Federation of Sol gets more ground troops and command counters for them.
  • I Lied: Contracts are binding, when they happen instantly on declared conditions, and non-binding, when players aren't obligated in any way to fulfil their side of the bargain. Of course, usually It Only Works Once, since lying to another player is a great way to lose trust from everyone at the table.
  • Impossible Task: Some of the secret missions can look like this, and a few map combinations will make them actually impossible. For instance the mission to capture all the wormholes is impossible if there aren't any on the board.
  • Insignificant Little Blue Planet: Huma- I mean, Terran- erm, Those People From Jord are seen as latecomers to the galactic scene. They're pretty good at making lots of ground troops but don't have a whole lot of other advantages over other races.
  • Interstellar Weapon: Planetary defense systems can be upgraded to fire at adjacent hexes. It's not very powerful, but it's fun.
  • Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Most of the smaller ships (and the regular ground troops) require you roll an 8 or higher on a d10 to obtain a hit on an enemy ship, especially when they haven't been upgraded. Be prepared to do lots of rolling before you hit anything.
  • Intrepid Merchant: The Hacan (Lion guys) have this as their hat.
  • Invisibility Cloak: You can develop a cloaking device like technology, that let's you move through systems occupied by enemy ships, ignoring their presence or zone of control.
  • It's the Only Way to Be Sure: With the X-89 Bacterial Weapon tech upgrade, you can kill every unit in a planet's surface with a single bomb. In case of some races (like the Arborec or Sol) that could be the only way to get rid of them after they get hold of a planet.
  • Kill Sat: The WarSun type ship.
  • Landfill Beyond the Stars: One of the neutral systems, "Garbozia", is described as this. The name is something of a giveaway.
  • Literal Wild Card: Trade goods can be used instead of resources to get things done. With the right cards (or faction), they can even replace influence.
  • Lost Colony:
    • A few of the planets that are unclaimed when you start the game are said to have belonged to certain races at some point in history.
    • There is also an optional rule which allows some planets to be lost colonies when you first explore them. Unfortunately they may be some other race's lost colony as well, handing one of your opponents a free planet when you explore it.
  • Luck-Based Mission: Public and secret missions are randomly assigned. If you are lucky, you might have the objective already fulfilled or within hand's reach. If you are unlucky, it might be downright impossible to finish.
  • Magikarp Power: Faction technologies tend to have pretty steep requirements that are rarely combined with starting technology (meaning additional research to unlock them), but offer very powerful options in return. This might even involve researching Empty Levels of technology, just to qualify for the faction tech.
  • Massive Race Selection: Ten in the regular game, four more in the first expansion, and four more in the second (one of which is only playable in a single scenario, but that's still seventeen races in the regular game). The fourth edition has all seventeen of the third edition's races in the core box, and with all of the expansions, there are twenty five to pick from.
  • Master of None: Cruisers, in their vanilla form. They have no special abilities, they aren't particularly cheap, fast or combat-worthy; but they are going to be the workhorse of your fleets, precisely because they are so average - and there are a lot of them in each player's pool. Even the tech requirements for their upgrades are all over the place. Once they do get upgraded they turn into Lightning Bruisers.
  • Mecha: Each faction gets theirs. They operate as a stronger version of infantry, with much better Combat value and also two, instead of just one HP.
  • Mechanical Monster: The Nekro Virus is an offshoot of the L1Z1X Mindnet obsessed with rendering all organic life into a fine paste, then dumping the paste into a gravity rift.
    • You Will Be Assimilated applies as well, but only for tech — if the Nekro Virus player blows up an enemy unit in battle he gets to copy a technology belonging to the unit's owner.
  • Mêlée à Trois: Requires at least three people to play.
  • Mental Fusion: The L1Z1X Mindnet, a race suspiciously similar to the Borg from Star Trek.
  • Meta Game: Various seemingly nonsensical or weirdly aggressive actions from other players are usually a cue on their secret goal. Being able to read those is what decides most of the games, particularly when it's a head-to-head point count in the late game.
  • Mighty Glacier: For all of their firepower, un-upgraded Dreadnoughts have a Move rating of 1. In fact, their upgrade doesn't increase their Combat rating - it solves the issue of how slow they are while making them also even more resilient.
  • Money Grinding: What trade is for: you replenish Commodities (each faction has their own pool of those, from 2 to 6, plus potentially more from planetary Attachments or Artifacts) one way or another and then exchange them at a mutually agreed rate with other players, turning them into trade goods.
  • More Dakka: Several ship types and ground troops (especially if you are playing as humans Jords) seem to encourage you to make as many as you can.
  • My Death Is Just the Beginning: Since each race is limited by the number of playing pieces available, sometimes it can be more convenient to deliberately loose poorly-placed ships in a battle so that they can be rebuilt at a more advantageous location without having to travel through the intervening space. Ships can be scuttled without fighting a battle for this purpose as well.
  • Naming Your Colony World: Although the game makers were nice enough to name all the planets for you, they certainly used several of the methods here.
  • No-Sell: Upgraded Dreadnought combine the default Sustain Hit ability with being immune to the "Direct Hit" Action card, making them significantly hard to take down.
  • No Warping Zone: Most red-bordered map hexes restrict the movement of ships through them, at least until said ships are upgraded with certain technologies.
  • Not Worth Killing: Probably a good idea if you don't want to start a war with everyone. Unless you like that sort of thing.
  • Numbered Homeworld: The L1Z1X Mindnet have their homeplanet numbered as the galactic center: "[0,0,0]".
  • One-Federation Limit: With enough expansions, you can have an Empire, Barony, Federation, Emirates, Universities, Mindnet, Kingdom, Coalition, Collective, Tribes, Clan, and Brotherhood: although not all of these will be in play at the same time.
  • One-Hit Kill: With a few exceptions, most units need to only take a single hit to be destroyed.
  • One-Hit-Point Wonder: Every single unit that isn't a dreadnought, WarSun or a mecha will die in a single hit.
  • One Stat to Rule Them All: Command tokens, which are effectively your action points. Anything that increases their number is great and often should be prioritised by mid-game, because you by default get only 2 back after each round (Hyper Metabolism tech gives 3, and that's part of the whole "anything that increases") and lack of Command tokes means you have to pass your actions.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: The Barony of Letnev race look suspiciously like vampires. They even have super-strength and the aristocratic air to them. And they're pale!
  • Our Wormholes Are Different: Alpha and Beta create connected tunnels (all Alphas connected with each other, same with Betas). There is also Gamma, which is something else entirely, leading to a pocket dimension. And to make things really different, certain galactic laws can change how those wormholes operate and can be used. The power of bureaucracy!
  • The Plan: Each player is pursuing the currently revealed public goals, and each starts with a secret one. The whole game is about planning your moves in such a way to fulfill as many of those goals, which might or might not be possible in the first place.
  • Planet of Hats: Each faction has their own hat, and it's faction-wide, making their starting homeworlds and later colonised planets uniform to their hat, too.
  • Planet Terra: The planet itself is called "Jord" (Scandinavian for "earth") but the faction is known as the Federation of Sol.
  • Player-Generated Economy: While there are ways to get trade goods in other ways, the most reliable one is playing Trade strategy card (netting 3 trade goods) and replenishing commodities, then exchanging them between players. Hacans are particularly good with this, as they can trade with everyone, rather than just the factions they border with.
  • Playing Both Sides: Half of the game isn't as much about the tokens on the table, or factions at play, but (sometimes secret) deals of the players sitting by the table and their (often short-lived) alliances. Hacans take it a step further, since their goal is to get rich by trade - which makes both sides engaged in a war great trade partners, as they need all the goods they can get.
  • Programming Game: Each turn, you have a finite amount of Command tokens to spend, that have to be spread over your tactical, strategical and fleet pools. Tactical is for your moves, strategical is for using secondary abilities of strategy cards played by other players and fleet decides how many non-fighter ships per hex you can get. You can only assign those points before the turn begins, having to anticipate what's gonna happen and who is going to play what.
  • Proud Merchant Race: The Hacan in particular, but many races are better at it than others.
  • Power Copying: Few of the Action cards allow players to copy technologies (including unit upgrades) from other players.
  • Random Number God: The dice can certainly ruin all your plans if they don't cooperate. It's entirely possible for your 7 warship strong fleet with a swarm of fighters to be wiped out in the first round of combat or a token force of two fighters and a carrier to resist said invasion.
  • Read the Fine Print: The Confounding Legal Text series of action cards. It changes the elected player due to an implied legal loophole.
  • Recycled In Space: The original Avalon Hill Dune game was remade as Rex: Final Days of an Empire, with all of the Dune licensing replaced by Twilight Imperium factions.
  • Refining Resources: Commodities only turn into trade goods when exchanged with other factions. Otherwise, they are useless. Commodities first have to be replenished, or at least generated, as factions start with their commodity pool empty.
  • Scary Dogmatic Aliens:
    • The Yin Brotherhood, a group of religious fanatic clones. They can convert others and employ suicide ships.
    • The Nekkro Virus as well, with their crusade to exterminate all organic life.
  • Scoring Points: The game is instantly resolved when any player reaches 10 points. The main source of those is fulfilling objectives, both public and secret ones, but there are a few other ways to score.
  • Series Mascot: Hacans are present on every box art, poster and marketing material. This works on a meta-level, too: The Emirate is an excellent faction for people completely new to the game, as their faction bonus operates as a set of training wheels, offering near-limitless funding for everything, allowing such players to focus on the rules of the game, rather than also having to juggle very limited resources, which is always tough to greenhorns.
  • Shout-Out
  • Small Universe After All: See Conveniently Close Planet above. A three player game will only feature 27 systems, and some of those will be empty. It's still called a galaxy though.
  • Space Clouds: Nebulae are dense enough to stop movement through them and give a defensive bonus to ships occupying them, and Ion Storms are good anti-fighter terrain.
  • Space Cold War: The game starts in this position - there is no actual war yet, but all factions are gearing toward it. And any kind of encounter will turn into instant hostilities.
  • Space Fighter: Check. Fighters are cheap and not limited by the number of playing pieces in the game, unlike larger ships. They're most effective in large numbers and with some tech upgrades.
  • Space Marine: Federation of Sol ground troops in the artwork are obviously space marines. Surprisingly useless for space battles.
  • Space Pirates:
    • The Mentak Coalition race are essentially space pirates. Their racial advantages let them attack from ambush, salvage enemy ships destroyed in battle, and steal trade goods from other races.
    • The Shards of the Throne expansion includes an optional rule for random encounters with space pirates in empty systems.
  • Space Romans: Many of the factions have this sort of flavour. To begin with, the Lazax themselves are Space Rome, being a former great empire of many cultures, forcing Pax Lazax through its own military might, brought down by its own decadence.
    • The Winnu are Space Byzantine, seeing themselves as the successor of Space Rome.
    • The Letnev are Space Germans, with parts taken from both World War I (the aristocracy) and World War II (the fascism).
    • The Hacan are Space Bedouin, nomadic desert spice merchants.
    • The Mentak are Space Australians, with their home planet originally being used as a Penal Colony.
    • The Saar are Space Romani, an oppressed people with no fixed home.
  • Space Station:
    • The Shattered Empire expansion has two of these built into the map hexes. They can produce trade goods instead of resources. Conquering one is much easier than conquering planets, too, since you only need to get a ship into the system for the station to surrender to your control.
    • The Shards of the Throne expansion includes a random Precursor space station that lowers the number of victory points a player needs to win if they control it.
  • Standard Sci-Fi Fleet: There are the standard types here: swarms of tiny fighters, slightly larger destroyers (that are anti-fighter unit), cruisers and dreadnought to bring in the bigger guns and also WarSuns, along with support carriers (that transport land units and unupgraded fighters). You don't need to build them all, but it's definitely worth to have a healthy mix of units in your fleet.
  • Starfish Aliens: There's the Arborec (sentient plants), the Nekro Virus (insane machines), the Ghosts of Creuss (other-dimensional energy wisps) and the Embers of Muaat (living flame).
  • Sufficiently Advanced Alien: A few races start off with more technology bonuses than others. One race gets bonuses for the acquisition of technology.
  • Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder:
    • The Naalu Collective default Fighters, Hybrid Crystal Fighters, have stats of the upgraded version, and their upgrade offers them stats on par with default Cruisers. Since they are just as cheap as the regular variant, Naalu can spam the hell out of them (you get 4 Fighters at a price of a single Cruiser or, in a more extreme situation 2 Fighters for free vs. a single Cruiser that costs 2). Those fighters still can be squashed by the Anti-Fighter Barrage of Destroyers, but once said barrage is over, whatever fighters are left can decimate the fleet they are facing.
    • The Argent Flight gets significantly buffed Destroyers. They have 1 Capacity right off the bat (the only Destroyers with Capacity), allowing them to transport units, have a higher Combat rating, and also decimate enemy infantry after a successful Anti-Fighter Barrage in case of the upgraded variant. This further combines with their faction bonus, as it offers Argent the option to use Surplus Damage Bonus of said Barrage to also apply damage to any unit with Sustain Damage ability - and they get to roll that even if the enemy has no Fighters to begin with.
  • Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Fighters are your Cannon Fodder, good mostly at taking hits for other units. Destroyers are dedicated anti-fighter units that are really good at clearning swarms of them before the combat even happens, but otherwise are just as bad as fighters. Cruisers are the backbone of your fleet due to being good at nothing in particular, but relatively cheap and numerous. Dreadnoughts are the powerful heavy-hitters, particularly useful for taking over planets due to their bombardment ability, but there are only 5 of them in your pool. You need a healthy mix of those to make your fleet work (usually 2-3 cruisers and 1-2 dreadnoughts with some fighters and a token destroyer), and at the very least you want to carry a token screening force of fighters to die instead of your battleships.
  • Tech Tree:
    • A regular tree of pre-requisites was present in the first, second and third editions. It was infamously clunky, particularly in the 3rd edition. A flow chart was provided in the instruction book.
    • 4th edition has a non-standard one. Rather than having a direct tree with interconnected technologies, they are tiered, and players need a corresponding number of techs of a specific type to unlock stuff from the higher tier.
  • Taking You with Me: Some units can destroy themselves to kill enemy ships. Sardakk N'Orr Dreadnoughts use this tactic very efficiently, and that's the main schtick of the Brotherhood of Yin. Also there are cases when it's rewarding to sacrifice some cheap units to weaken larger enemy fleets. (Like Mentak cruisers, which shoots the enemy before the battle, and for that faction they're unexpensive)
  • Telepathic Spacemen: The Naalu. Their telepathy lets them always act first in turn order, and retreat before a battle even begins. This also makes their fighters to be much stronger than those from other factions, acting as if already being upgraded from the start (and they do get an upgrade on top of those).
  • Teleporters and Transporters: Certain technology allows you to create ground forces on one planet, then transport them to another.
  • That's No Moon: The WarSun.
  • Tier System:
    • Public objectives are divided into two decks. The first one offers 1 point for fulfilling the objective, and the second one gives 2 points. Five from both decks are randomly assigned to the game during game prep, and revealed one by one, starting with five 1 point objectives.
    • Units come with a default and an upgraded form, which even has a handy "II" to its name.
    • Technologies are tiered by their requirements: default can be freely researched, then there are tiers 1, 2 and 3, for which players need a corresponding number of techs in the same colour.
  • Timed Mission: The Imperium Rex objective card sets a time limit on the game. When its drawn, it ends the game immediately with the player with the highest score winning. When exactly the Imperium Rex card comes up is semi-random. It's guaranteed not to be in the first six public goals in a regular game, but it might be anywhere between the 7th and 10th in the deck, and it's guaranteed to be in there somewhere.
  • Trigger-Happy: A few races, like the Sarrdak N'orr, have advantages that are only good in battles.
  • The Turret Master: Some races prefers to set up a network of sentry-gun like installations on their planets, instead of building a large fleet. Such players may even collect "taxes" from passing ships to not fire at them.
  • 2-D Space: It's a 2D boad game, so the 3D space is presented as the 37 flat hexes, all on the same plane.
  • Unstable Equilibrium: Once some player gets the ball rolling with either trade goods or Command tokens (and it's possible to get both in order), short of a long string of particularly bad luck, it's very hard to catch up with such a player.
  • Utopia Justifies the Means: Slaughter, trick, or trade with your opponents so that your race controls the throne of the galactic empire. Then everybody is happy!
  • Variable Player Goals: Each player gets his own Secret Goal, worth 2 points. The second expansion offers a new set of "Preliminary Goals" worth 1 point each.
    • In fourth edition, the secret objectives are only worth one point, but players can get more of them. Up to three, to be specific.
  • We Have Reserves: If you have sufficient resources, you may be tempted to use this as a tactic. Several races receive special rules that can help this.
    • The Arborec receive free ground units every turn.
    • Humans can raise additional ground troops.
    • The Yin Brotherhood can employ suicide tactics in space battles, crashing their destroyers or cruisers into enemy ships.
    • The Hacan often have absurdly large money reserves that allow them to effortlessly rebuild an entire fleet from scratch as if nothing happened.
  • You Require More Vespene Gas: Everything has its pricetag in ubiquitous resources that can be replaced with just as ubiquitous trade goods. Once you run out of both given turns, you can no longer produce new stuff.

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