Twilight Imperium has a new edition.
I was at GENCON 50 when they showed it off. Where they let people play it and later on buy it.
It looked awesome. I waited in line and by the time I got into the Fantasy Flight games booth proper someone had bought their last copy.
Yet I knew I would get it. Twilight Imperium has shaped all board game experiences since I played it. All great games are not just great by themselves. Instead they challenge the everyone. They challenge the industry to do better and go bigger, they demand more of their players, and the experience is so defining that it shapes all other game experiences.
So I picked it up when I got back from Toronto. I was sick all week and I stopped by Out of the Box and there it was. The owner offered me at no extra cost a poster and the deluxe rule book plus the 15% off from the Black Friday sales.
So I picked it up.
Now lets go look inside and see what's new with this beast.
Twilight Imperium Fourth Edition is just as big at first glance, they you see it all and realize that even though it only plays six players all of the races from the last edition and its expansions are all there.
They even tried to provide some sort of organizers in the box. I found out very quickly that the provided organizer was not bad and has plenty of room for most of the stuff - it just can't cut the organizational needs that a game of this size has.
Each coloured set of plastic ships, ground troops, space docks, and PDS are light and harder than the last edition. At first they seemed flimsy and cheap but once I put them side by side to the previous minis the higher quality was stark.
This needed the same treatment I gave the last edition. So filled with maple whisky from du Bois, I ventured out to Home Depot and Micheal's. I was lucky to have found a Husky tool box that had an upper area with plenty of small storage units. Sadly there was only fourteen so I needed to find three free floating containers later if I was going to use these bins to organize the seventeen races.
It would also be able to hold all the tiles, play mats, rules, and other odds and ends. Leaving for Micheal's I was now set to find a way to organize the new high quality minis and the various game pieces, that would also fit in the tool box.
It took some time but I found a stackable set of cases that fit inside the Husky toolbox. Staff at the store was very curious why a grown man was sitting in the middle of the isle putting plastic bits in bin and trying out those bins in a tool box he showed up with. In the end I found a solution - not as perfect as the double sided bins I found for the last edition but enough to work up from in case I stumbled on a better solution.
Next I spent time putting all the pieces in their places fueled by some maple Whiskey - a very Canadian thing to do.
The process of punching out pounds of carboard tokens was long and after a while it started to look like this. With the above mentioned fuel and motivation from Gary Numans' new album in the background I was away.
The end result was almost 100% what I was looking for. I was surprised by a few new qualities of my storage solution, including all in one carry system. The previous edition was the main box and two individual cases for everything. Now I was down to a single toolbox.
My only compromise was the three races that would not get a bin. Instead they got three covered plastic blisters thanks from my various Infinity products that still need painting.
It looks awesome and I was happy with how portable I was able to make it. It also meant that when I showed up and opened the box it was a single point in the room and now a box and pair of cases that were put down somewhere. The toolbox was also far for sturdy then my previous solution.
The inner walls in each of the stacked bins were sorted out with some Testors glue. I then started organizing each of the plastic pieces. From left to right I was able to store in the top row: Cruisers-Carriers, Warsuns-Flagship, and Dreadnaughts. While the bottom row was sorted by Destroyers-Fighters, Tech and Promisary cards, PDS-Space Docks-Infantry.
I still have some labeling to do but I've got a good start. I was able to finish the trade goods, fighter and infantry tokens in one bin. The other bin was loaded with the individual spaces for the cards, tokens, and die.
The final result was this. Each player gets a section and bin and they are ready to start setting up. Grab a play mat, a faction mat and bin, plus one of the stacked bins for their chosen colour.
Man I love the look of the new pieces and how it looks when setting up. Next Twilight Imperium post we play!
- Cheers
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