445: Deepwrought Scholarate Beginner's Guide

[music] This is Space Cat's Peace Turtles, the unofficial podcast for Fantasy Flight's Twilight Imperium. Episode 445. Deep-Rot Scholar at Beginner's Guide. With music by Ben Prunty, art by Sun Sanders, produced by Shelton Brister, hosted by Hunter Donaldson, and featuring Jadim Jedi. [music] This feels like a big one. This feels like a big episode, a big important episode, right? Oh yeah, it's a big one. It's the best time of the year. Yeah, I feel like whenever Thunder's Edge came out, I was like, I was like scared to go right to this one. So this is your favorite addition to the game, correct? 100%. Yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna surprise you right now. I'm gonna hit you with something I think it's my favorite to be honest. Oh yes, yes. I'm a big fan. I think Deep-Rot is like such a nasty bad boy, and it's so tasty, it's so fun. It's like the best way to play the game is to just play as Deep-Rot. I like that it's all about sharing, it's all about caring. Yes. I think personally that I am bad at boat float, but the thing about Deep-Rot is it doesn't matter. The float, it boat, it don't matter. Like it's gonna work out, it's gonna happen because you just have so much float built into your boat that it's impossible. Yeah, no, it's true. There's, there's, and we'll get into all this in a little bit, but there is so much like that they can just give out to the world. It's like if you were a philanthropist, and you said you get a tech, you get a tech, everybody gets tech. Like that's how it feels to play this faction. Yeah. When, when, when I was in play testing, I mean, so first of all, I played this faction more than any other faction by far. And I was, you can, you can file all your complaints to me. It is my fault if there's something that you love or you hate about this faction. It is probably my fault. We played so much and, and when we were playing them at the start, I always just used to call them my, my little fish like, CHIS age. They're just little happy little happy little happy fish that were just making sure everybody has tech in the galaxy. And it was, it was great. It was super fun. Yeah, they're friendly. They're sweet. They had, yeah, there's just a, I mean, what people have been saying that I feel like has been very true for them is that it is, you know, you know, Dane building boat float into the game and actually responding to that attitude and that playstyle. But by, you know, doing I would say it's kind of Dane being the bigger man a little bit because he could just continue to insist like, well, that playstyle isn't, you know, even though lots of people play that way, that's not, you know, that's not daddy's intention. So when you do that, you're going against daddy's will, but instead he's like, okay, that's how you play. I'm going to build it into the game. Coexistence is that way and the whole spirit of the deep rock scholar it is one of, you know, cooperation, right? Like working together, making sure everybody's got a little cookie that no one is left out, you know, no bug left behind. Not a single one. And I would say comparisons to the Bush administration are apt because of course deep rock is going to win in the end, you know, it's not we're just going to share forever and no one's ever. In fact, actually, JJ, you very much as a player as a recent semifinalist, you have qualified for these semifinals. You were the first semifinalist this year. So congratulations. But you, I feel like as a person, sort of embody this style of almost when I'm playing with you when I'm watching you play, sometimes your desire for the war cooperative elements of the game will run so deep that I wonder if you've lost the plot. Like do you get what I'm saying? Does that make sense? I think so. It's like I want to help you so much. And I mean you specifically, but you the player base also, right? I want to help you so much that sometimes I don't necessarily keep track of whether it's actually good for what I'm trying to do. I just think it can be cool and fun. And like let's let's just try it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. We're here to have a good time. And let's let's see what happens if we can get war sons into the hands of Sardak or what. Right. It's good. Right. And obviously you have a strong enough grasp on the game that that spirit works out for you, you know, because, you know, otherwise we wouldn't see you at this point, you've, you've had a lot of success in competitive, at least space gasp, startle style, Twilight Imperium, you know, you are a finalist in the first intergalactical, which is listen, we're getting close. No, we're closing it on it. It's going to happen. It's going to be funny because you were the first and that was like a year ago now. And we still have it done the finals. So that's funny. I hope no one decides that they're like, oh, I actually don't play Twilight Imperium anymore. That would actually be the funniest thing to do. It's hard to find out that somebody's like, yeah, actually quit. It's kind of just like not my thing anymore. No biggie. You know, it's just not. It's that I just have to click with the game anymore. You know, I like it, but I don't love it. That is actually what used to happen with the online tournament. Affirm out. I remember that. Yeah. Because like it was, you know, there's a lot of discussion on this. There's a lot of discussion on the discord about that kind of stuff over the last week or so. And, you know, for folks who weren't around when that was was different. There were so many people who just would suddenly say, I just don't want to play anymore. I'm just not as into it. Yes. Even though they they had one and played a full six player game, we we were suddenly scrambling again to fill spots in the prelims because people just decided it wasn't their thing anyway. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you're bringing that up. Actually, I would like to talk a little bit about that because there was some conversation on the discord about sort of where the online tournament is at versus like past years. And there was a fair amount of I would say rose colored glasses because and I'll just be completely transparent make it absolutely clear because I feel like I would know, you know, I think about this a lot. And also I see the numbers. It also it's my job. So we had bigger turnouts for tournaments several years ago. And actually part of it was some press that we got. I know that sounds weird to say, but because it's like normally I would say you know other instance does press for the show actually like make eyeballs happen. But we got some press and in general due to I think the kind of aftershocks of the pandemic. There were a lot of people that were like really thirsty to play online toilet and purium that actually found out in the process that they did not like doing it that way. And having, you know, let's say you're coming to me and you're like, would you rather have around 600 players, unique players because that's like the biggest tournament we've had was around 600. But half of them basically drop and it's chaos and from an administrative perspective, it's not really all that like it's not cool. It's kind of uncool. In fact, I would say we used to have many many many problems and issues with the tournament. So yes, the population of people that participate in the tournaments is lower than past tournaments, but it is better this way. And some people were saying like, oh, like the we want to always see that the community is growing. The community is is always growing just because the online tournament had those kind of inflated numbers doesn't mean that it's somehow like less of a success today. Technically, if you want to measure growth or space cats, I would say one of the best ways that you could measure it would be well, first of all, looking at download numbers. Second of all, the amount of increase that we've seen over the last two years of people wanting to go to live in person events. These events didn't even exist before and I wasn't even sure they could exist. So I would say that increases by I don't know several hundred percentage points like and has been wildly more successful than I would ever not possible. Here's a little plug we have our next event is coming up in Orlando, Florida, which but factually in looking at where people live that listen to the show Florida is a lower population state. And I thought whenever we booked it that it likely would not sell out and we are over halfway to being sold out for that event. It's March. In fact, I actually think we're we might even be at three quarters now it is I am surprised by how much how how into it people are. So not to say that you know there are a lot of people that are like I really love the online tournament and that will always be an important part of space cats. But you know the big the big two things here are it's not the only part of space cats and the second part is I know people you know sometimes worry about the community itself. This is the strongest community online that I've ever seen for such a specific niche thing and it's a beautiful community and it is growing. Okay. Anyways, that's my little soap box for the week. There was a lot of there's a lot of people that were like I'm that were kind of say go I'm concerned. But also sort of in a in a way that felt a little missing for kind of felt like they were missing me a little bit sort of saying like obviously this isn't working out as good as it used to. Whereas for my perspective I'm like it's never been better like I'm just like I could not see it more differently than you all also at a certain point the online tournament I don't necessarily need it to be a giant thing to be honest wouldn't really mind if it was less popular and it was just 216 players every year that come in we do three rounds and that's the online tournament like at a certain point what is it. What is it that you're looking for as an audience member because I'm just trying to see some good games happen every year that's all I want you know and sometimes the qualifiers are like this is these are too many games we play 216 ish not even we pay we play about a hundred and something some odd games in the first round and then we get to the real stuff is what it feels like to me. But you know every year the process changes and Titans and gets better and more reasonable and easier for me to deal with okay so box over. Are you for team me up for that by the way oh no no problem I feel like the goal of that tournament more than anything is to just get in good games again. Yes, yes, yes, like pre limbs game number one I thought lived up to the billing like even if I hadn't won the game I just had a good time was it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I haven't got a chance to watch it back and I probably will but and it really felt like a really good time to be one of the players in that game and I think that's what most people who enter the tournament are looking for more than anything right because you know. If you play it's funny enough when I play with some of my my close friends who introduced me to the game I they some of them have recently got back into the game and i've been playing a little bit on a pacing with them and. It is such a different game than than what I play with the people online right which isn't to say the either one is is good or bad but it's definitely. You can tell it's it's a different kind of feel to the game and I really like what the tournament brings to the table so I yeah it's great and that to me is the goal more than anything right and I don't really I don't really seek to have there I mean a lot of people will put this on. I'm not the show but like I just love Twilight Imperium i there's not a particular way that I'm like seeking to to sort of privilege above all others the reason I play in the online tournament is that it's manageable for us from administrative perspective but what I'm most jealous of really like I would love honestly I would love to not be me and then get to be in the community and get to go to the intergalacticals that's what I'm jealous of the fact that y'all. The fact that y'all get to do that and participate in that I am so because you know I would be in the finals and that would just be so much fun for me to be at a table like that and have it be filled and get to show bow and like be and just do my thing and that would just be so sick but whatever it's it's I have all this stuff I gotta do hold on hold on hold on. I'm I'm gonna be in Orlando sure sure and I already got a spot so if you really want to play yeah I could probably help you up is that I see the the issue maybe we'll get there someday where where that's doable but you're always going to run into right now you're going to run into this thing of you know yeah maybe I'm not the most important person on on that first day on the check in day it's like what am I doing I don't really do much I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I can't remember for sure if we talked about this on the podcast. I just want to make sure we get it in there on this one. Yeah. So we have to reveal the Finder gardeners. Right. All right. So. So. So when the Finder gardeners were announced. Yes. This is like the secret chat that you and me and and wecker. I think we're all talking about. Wouldn't it be cool. If we started off the year as Finder gardeners and talking about the love of Jonar because like, oh, you know, JJ's a fish guy. And oh, it'll be the year. Jonar, it's great. But secretly the whole time it was always about the deeprod scholar it. Yeah. People just didn't know it until they got revealed much later in like October or whatever it was. Yeah. It was like, you guys feel it was like nobody knew and it was like this whole little secret thing that I'm on the little happy fish people. But I know that I'm the best part is still to come. It was true. It was so good. And I loved it so much. Well, and what that means is someday we can circle back around and do a year of the Jonar because secretly it was a year of deeprod. But we could, we could, you know, because obviously if the show goes for 30 years. And we will, we will eventually have to do, I mean, this is assuming that no new factions are added over the next 25 years. Right. As long as that holds, then we should be fine to just have one year per by you have to add any factions. We'd have to go even further than so that's tough, tough, but it will happen. We'll come back around to the, I mean, that's what we're doing right now because we're doing the ghosts. We're doing the red ghosts, the wormhole agains, but we will do the regular ghost too, you know, the friendly ghosts or whatever we'll call them. But yeah, that's a good point. We had not, I feel like I had mentioned that before in like a rundown, but we haven't mentioned it in an episode proper. Also, you know, this is a, this is a big guide episode. So it's likely to get more hits. But speaking of guides, we got to do it. We got to start the guide. All right. It's deep rock scholar at time. We're going to bear down on these guys. Obviously, this is an introductory guide, like I've been saying for all of the new factions. We reserve the right to come back through and do this. And well, I say reserve the right. We are going to that is the plan. I actually announced last week that after episode 450, we will be beginning a two and a half year long process to go through every single faction. That includes the new factions and revise and publish ultimate deep guides that cover literally everything, but leaving absolutely no stone unturned. But that's not the purpose of this guide. This is an introductory guide just to get you into the deep rock. Let's talk, let's flip the, let's flip the faction sheet. And let's talk a little bit about the lore. The lore of deep rock is I would say very much tied to the overall story. In fact, I would say that these are kind of your good guys for the new story. Tazern, who is the commander character for the University of Jalnar, has essentially jumped ship because he helped develop something called the wave form arbitrator, which is like a great kind of Star Trek sci-fi type weapon slash object, that they developed in order to make it so that the various, I it's not just the ghosts or like other species that are sort of under the mahogged thrall, that they are we're trying to release. And they actually cooked up this weird situation where they lied to the universities of Jalnar. They had the Raul Nell secretly helped them to set up the wave form arbitrator. And they sort of created, cooked up this sort of ambush where the Jalnar attack the mahogged at Ikatania or Ikatina, whatever. However, we want to pronounce it. And they begin working alongside these sort of aquatic, what are they called the key roasts, which are these underwater creatures that they begin working with. And it all becomes this, this, this wild battle where the Crimson are released as result of the battle. And there's chaos and afterwards the universities turn on Tuzern, and they demand his head. And instead of him submitting himself, basically the deep rot scholar at break off from the universities, team up with the key roasts and sort of lay claim to Ikatina and then become their own faction essentially. So they're, you know, they're kind of good guys. We've got also we they sort of are the only reason as far as I can tell that the Raul Nell get involved, I guess. It in the story is that they were booked for the gig. And then they also sort of create the reason for the Crimson to be there. And it's the only major story they're not specifically touching on is like the firmament, which will get to next on the show. But they're the good guys. It's as far as I can tell, this is about as good as you get for a toilet and period of faction, right? Oh, yeah. No, these they're definitely the good people. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, the the highlar or sorry, they are they're all highlar. That's their their race. But they are high. Yeah. The universities, they come off as out of the story a little bit, you know, they're kind of they're stubborn. You know, they're they're not willing to go along with this strategy when obviously, you know, releasing the even though the Crimson ghost end up being kind of, you know, they're sort of sad boys, I would say of a type. They it is ultimately, I think the right thing to do, right? As much as a toilet and period kid to have any sort of moral understanding or you could make any sort of moral judgment on the things happening in a universe. But let's get to the nitty gritty, the real stuff. Let's talk starting units. Let's talk tech. So let's start tech first because they have a really interesting unique approach to starting tech, which could right now be an hour long discussion in and of itself. Their starting technology is during setup research technology twice. So what do we do? I mean, we can get anything as long as it's one tech and then the other, right? Gravity drive can be an excellent one. So there's a lot of lot of flexibility. I think a lot of this comes down to and this is this is where a lot of the in my opinion skill of this faction comes in and it's like understanding where your start is and kind of what your path in the game is going to be. Like a couple of things. If you end up having a slice that's difficult to reach certain planets or certain important planets, certainly starting gravity drive like some of these premium slices that we're talking about in the tournament right now. You're really good stuff is in the equidistant. So gravity driver off the start means that you're going to be able to guarantee you can get to those. Do like the green a lot as well to though, like a couple people have talked about the biosteum start, which is great because that'll give you a way to get your your breakthrough really cheap right again, right depending on if there's like my hot in the game and maybe they can get there first. So like it's not a guaranteed thing. I do like it for a lot of their games and if they have the tech skip nearby. There's also, you know, you're rich enough and you've got a good enough home system that honestly, you can kind of easily round one custodians with this faction for sure. So like there's the world where you could say I want to start blue and I just want to make it my game plan to just done for custodians and like get carrier to just just reach it like you don't you don't have to do anything else is get carrier to you start with your two blues, which is grab drive and you can just reach there you need two dollars you got custodian food done like there. There's their possibilities are great, but I do feel like overall blue and green are the best yellow and red don't tend to offer as much at the start for what I feel that they need. They and we'll get to some of the other reasons why but I feel like overall blue and green is kind of where it's at. Yeah, just to illustrate like kind of specifically what we're saying it's essentially coming down to anti mass slash DET and then gravity drive or I would say what maybe neural motivator for some extra action cards I guess and then bio stems with the whole point of that being if we take a planet that has a text back we use bio stems to refresh the planet. And then in that same window we can spend that text specialty in order to get our breakthrough and we have a bridge spoiler alert our breakthrough is essential absolutely essential I would say yes to our success yeah. And one thing that bothers me honestly about the blue thing although I did of course I went blue whenever whenever I played them I was like well it's got to be because I'm always thinking about custodians but DET is more of a bummer than usual because of our starting units. So let me let me toss out one more thing yes real quick as another idea because of that problem with the starting units one other idea is that you could actually just start with sling relay instead. Right instead of gravity drive and it sounds weird but like if you do D T sling relay you could actually like if you're the tech primary player you can actually really manipulate the way that the tech research happens right because you can stall it you can sling right can go D T explore you can you can hold on to tech until after the breakthrough. And be like okay I'm going to break through who wants to give me gravity drive right because somebody will right because somebody will yeah so I don't I'm getting a little ahead of myself here too but I I just wanted to shout out to sling relay a little bit to because there's there's a reasonable path to doing that as well if you've got a bunch of empties in your slice. No and it makes sense to early on sort of establish here that this is in similar to a Jolnar like strategy episode pretty much every tech is viable so we are going to basically at any point reference so many more tech than we normally would because you are not locked into and what's hilarious is also your neighbor the other players are also not locked into anything resembling a standard tech tempo. That will never be the case for you you're going to have way more opportunities to tech and so therefore tech takes on a new meaning but yeah let's talk about these starting units and why maybe sling relay makes sense so our starting units are one dread one carrier for fighters three infantry one space stock. So it's a little it's kind of it's interesting is technically it's not quite to see for I in the way that we like to see and it lacks a trade ship of any kind which is you know to be honest it's not the biggest deal it's not something that like you're going to really struggle to like solve that problem but it is important to note that you are the tradeiest faction I think of all time more even more so than then a con really you are. So generally speaking you are going to have to you know kind of figure out what that means how do I fix that because I would like to have as many options as possible for early trade partners because as we as we talk about this faction we're just going to be talking about you know specifically that's the way that they will trade with the other players as much as possible also where the home system though pretty straightforward it's a container it's a four resource for influence single planet home system we are a three commodity faction and let's talk of these abilities they are they're quite their whoppers I would say so first up is research team when ground forces are committed if your units on that planet are not already co existing you may choose for your units to coexist so that when ground forces are committed that could be you that could be them it's either way and we did a whole episode already about coexistence but it is easily one of the wildest things added to the game and we just get to do it at will I mean nobody else can do it as easily as we can obviously you can do it on your home system which essentially makes it where slaying deep rot is extremely complicated you can do it on other planets and just remember that coexistence although it doesn't say it here you would have to read the rule book to understand this but coexistence helps you score points it is a way of claiming you have ownership of a planet just for the purpose of scoring enough for any other purpose and there's like a million little interactions and we talked about it two weeks ago please refer to that episode and or either refer to that episode or if you're in the future and we've released a new episode about how coexistence works now because it's been ruled on and changed in a million ways listen to that episode actually do you have anything you want to say specifically about coexistence yeah I think I think it can work multiple different ways with this ability where it can it can it's not just about defending yourself which I think some people look at this ability and see that but sometimes you might take your ships to someone else on purpose just just to literally share the point like there's so many times people talk about like let's do edge systems together right right something like right and so like you can just be like okay I'll just go there yeah and I'll spend the token I'll move the ship but we'll both still score the point right and so like you can take it to them or like you know I actually have a game async where like a ghost player was like I want to come into your space talk planet because it has a tech skip on it and and I need to be able to score tech skips this round it's like yeah no problems come on it just go for it yeah just go for it yeah so there's it's not just about defense it there's definitely a lot of dealing that you can do with this ability yeah actually have an anecdote about coexistence I want to throw in recently I was playing a game and someone wanted to coexist with me on a planet that I controlled and I said exactly what you just said you know oh yeah sure whatever just just come on in and then patty or display used stellar converter all that planet on my planet to destroy it and when they I was like hey why what's up and they were like no I'm just doing that to hurt that part the the deep rot that's coexisting on your planet because they're doing that because I tried to score a secret objective I'm trying to block the secret objective so it's not all just both floaty if somebody's gutted for a so you do have to watch out for that maybe maybe you don't always say yes to the coexistence I don't know let's talk about the rest of abilities the second one this one's kind of annoying actually as far as like explaining it because it's it's like you know most of the things that's referencing are not actually here but it's called ocean bound when your units begin coexisting on a planet gain an ocean card and ready it anytime you have more ocean cards then there are planets that contain your coexisting units discard ocean cards until you do not so along with the deep rot you have these extra components called ocean cards they do look just like planet cards they basically function just like planet cards they are one resource one influence and there's five of them so every time you start a new coexistence you grab one and you just make sure that that number matches although you'll probably get more than five and there's five they're called the deep abyss the brine pool the coral reef the ice shelf and the lost fleet and yeah they they honestly it's five resources of five influence that you just have like kind of packed in there it's honestly kind of an underrated aspect of the economy because we're going to say these guys have make a lot of money and part of it is they have just like five resource and influence that is kind of floating around that will help you honestly I didn't even like realizing that there's five is kind of blowing my mind right now I want to toss in some some note on this one because one of the things about it is like well number one they come in ready which is important yes so like both offensively and defensively is some deal like you can get an extra buck out of this basically and and you can gain the system a little bit really need to because if it it says like let's say you have five and you spend the five you do tech primary or whatever now somebody maybe you maybe you transit two of your units off of of somebody's planets right and you lose two oceans now now you move and you go coexist on some other two planets somewhere you get those oceans back ready right and you can spend them again as if they had just come out yep so you can kind of double spend them that way sometimes it's not something that's going to come up super often but it's definitely a cool interaction and like an extra little boat floaty nugget out there and you know that's kind of the theme here is we have a really great foundation with this faction but there's also all of these little details that are really nice to and there's one I'm going to lose my mind about in just a second but first we should talk about the flagship actually which I would say is can I ask you an important question please please this is the most important question that I'm going to ask you this entire episode and I need you to I need to tell me in order what are the best ocean cards like ranked the artwork from let's let's go worst the best let's go worst the best worst the best here let me let me let me make sure I'm looking at them because I had them pulled up just second ago ocean here we go worst art is I'm going to say the deep abyss actually is my least favorite and not that it's it's not bad but it's just kind of fine and then after that I'm going to go Brian pool because it's just kind of boring not not a lot there and then we kind of get now there's we're kind of in another tier where it's a lot better because we've got like figures and stuff and lots of detail I'm going to say next is the last fleet because I can't quite tell what I'm looking at exactly and it's just like some you know it's just some ruined ruined ships and then I'll say coral reef because it's pretty and it's like trapper keeper stuff and then ice shelf I just think ice shelf is the most interesting we got this like a frozen frozen monster of some kind is literally a crack and I believe of some kind ice shelf is this tier for sure it's great I like Brian pool more than you do I guess but that's that's okay yeah I agree though ice shelf is the best one we'll be taking no other for for promise all right let's let's talk about that flagship though because this thing is this thing is crazy and honestly I didn't think it was that big of a deal until I was actually in game with it but the flagship is called the DWS luminous cost eight combat two on a seven movement one capacity six has sustained damage and here's the text ability this ship can move through systems that contain your units even if other players units are present if it would apply plus one to its move value for each of those systems so it can chain movement through systems basically as long as you have units there in my first research game I built this flagship and at the end of the game was trying to go to sticks to win the game right and I found that I had like plus 11 movement I had so much extra movement to do it I didn't even need to use all of it I just decided to do that just because but yeah it's sick you can do some some really stupid like we talk about purple flagship over in TF the luminous flagship gets to do those kinds of moves really have to set up for it yes it's not a free lunch you do have to set up for it's a late game thing like you know you're not going to be able to do this for a while it is so it's it's probably the best flagship in the game I mean I haven't actually went through and and thought about that real hard but it's so good just like again they get little cookies everywhere y'all so be looking because it's not just there will be like the billboard oh here's what it's got lightweight and bonus movement oh my god so crazy it has capacity six why is the capacity so good why doesn't it at least just have regular flagship capacity but it's actually got extra cap like so crazy like that you can use it like this so real talk I played a number of games where I had I had researched war sons but I was still better off I could afford war sons but I'm still better off to just build the flagship yeah because of what it can do compared to what a war son can do yeah like it's it's that good and the movement again like it if you can work up deals where you're like coexisting in malice or on warm holes that opens up a lot of extra mobility or you know especially like the the ingress egress kind of places right yeah those those kinds of linch pins if you can get into their boy you you can the world is your oyster you can go anywhere it's beautiful yeah you can just sort of stage with a fleet not worry about you know fighters infantry and then just sort of have the flagship come in at the last minute be like all right I've got it and here's here's all of the sort of meat we needed for the grinder and then just sort of make something happen it's it's a playmaker really is what it is and yeah I think I think in because we'll be doing another flagship tournament at some point and I think in the flagship tournament it's going to be a little bit lackluster in the reality of the game I think you're right that it is if it's not the best flagship it's like in that tier with the best available and you know what here's the other thing they kind of have the best mech to the mech is crazy good so the mech I'm in love with this mech I cannot believe how good this mech is okay so the mech is called the in a nautic a nautic I'm not pronouncing that correctly I don't care it's cost to combat six sustained damage production one or some reason it has production one and that blows my mind and is so crazy it also has a text ability the text ability is not I'm is not the point but here it is when another player activates a system if this unit is coexisting you may move it and any of your infantry on its planet to a planet you control in your home system so it can sort of scary back to home which could matter I guess I just that situation has a come up for me but the fact that it has production one is just so ludicrous I like really blows my mind like why why did that happen like why did he get give the I don't know well you get your integrated economy build all your cardboard and then you have your mech to go and build your ship right so you can build your carrier along with your cardboard and you can just keep on zip zip zip and across the galaxy I'll say this I ended up on a lark picking up self assembly routines from someone they were like I was playing and I had the breakthrough I see you're the worst you're the worst guest for this type of talk is it's like you're like yeah I've done that who hasn't done that but I for me I was like oh this is crazy itself assembly routines with this mech was so weird because I got I built one and then every time I built with it I just added another mech and just doing that until I had all four of them out and I was like that was value like real value right there so yeah pretty sick pretty sick up next is the prom note which is called this one's a little bit this one's maybe their their weakest and it's called share knowledge and it reads action place this card face up in your play area and gain one non faction non unit upgrade technology that the deep rock player owns place that technology on this card and then I turned that technology to the deck and this card to the deep rock player at the end of the status phase so you sort of lend a you lend a tech out or the remainder of the face it is at the end of the status phase so they could use that tech to like score an objective obviously the unit upgrade stuff because it's non unit upgrade but yeah you could help somebody score two tech and two colors you could lend out lightweight deflectors to another player if they're trying to help with a win slayer something like that and honestly those are kind of those that's kind of the only ones that spring spring to my mind as far as what you would use this word you have you gotten much use out of this I think it's better so here's the thing you could play a game where you never sell this off to anybody and have a great game because the faction just has so much going on you just done but I've got other stuff going on that is so much going on that you like it's not the front of your mind like you're selling so many other things but like I think it's actually pretty good and people are maybe not not all the way through some of the the ideas of what you can do there's the baseline of you can just make it a cyber nennix where you give someone hyper and they get a token for two bucks Sure, yeah boring boring but fine makes sense but then you get into some of the really cooler ones like let's talk about my hot so my hot to have the breakthrough where they want to go purge a tech so they buy this tech from you oh my god keep it around they're gonna purge it and they get themselves a relic how much would a relic be worth a while would you like to buy a relic? I know that's pretty good right I could see why he's here right people like he got I mean that's just I would never in a million years would that have occurred to me what you just said yeah you get there eventually you get there eventually you know you just got to play him a little more and you know it works for other kind of similar things like divert funding right right yeah yeah yeah just get rid of the tech and go research something else so that just is bonus tech of some other kind right yeah and you could I mean this it makes sense to be like hey so tech is about to pop do you want to research this unit upgrade you can get to yet I'll help you get there you know what I mean like yeah the qualify because that's I'm trying to come up with reasons to sell it early because selling it late obviously you cooked up a great one for selling it late and actually you could sell that early to mahawk um sure early on as mahawk you don't really want to purge your tech you would love to but like and it's not like you start with something that's so so important it's just mahawk only starts with two tech you only get in like a third or fourth you know like you're really going to purge one of those that early into the game I really like the idea of trying to figure out how to sell it you know whenever you're just getting getting started obviously if you start grab drive somebody should want it but you know somebody should want that they got to be and look even at the start of the game it's a stall right like true how how many times it's like oh I really I really need to wait until tech happens so that I can reach whatever important system and like you can be like hey I'll sell you this stall and you can just wait and and oh it's sling relay so it's really two stalls that you're buying from me so you know they're even even early game I think there's a lot of other flexibility it's it's really about trying to get people access to something that they don't really have the ability to do themselves at that stage of the game so like whether it's bios stems to do an extra sling relay stall or maybe they just want to get I mean it's not usually the value of the game so I think it's really one thing I think is really important to be honest with you know I think it's really important to be honest with you so that they would allow me to go in and play overrule on on mechatal first good lord this was my support partner but you know it kind of made sense for both of us because I'm I'm like last in order and I'm making this deal and they're getting flight log where you know they can go and make their shot at it when they're when they're ready later in the round so you know there's there's a lot of things that you can do yeah yeah I think I it's definitely something like as I get more and more use them I think it is is going to or I'm at least going to recognize the opportunities more and I'm sure you'll cook up even weirder stuff than you've already listed but let's talk about that that faction tech they have a kind of a funny thing going on here which is both their faction tech our level one green tech which means you just have to have one green in order to research either these narrowly sure with that is I feel like we've just kind of come so far that it's like yeah whatever I guess this is how works because also even if you made it like hard to research you it wouldn't matter they'd be able to get to it but the first one's called radical advancement at the start of the status phase you may replace one of your non unit upgrade technology with the technology of the same color that has exactly one more prerequisite I'll be honest I haven't found much use for this in the game it's it's kind of neat but you have a lot of other ways to get just more tech you know like the idea of putting some of it back what's the point you you want to know my take on it yes so first first thing you could just start with it if you wanted to because it's it's single green oh you're right yes that's true so you could just be like neural and then radical advancement and then immediately turn neural into something else like bio stems or whatever if if you wanted to do that yeah it can turn itself into hyper sure if you just would rather get more tokens there's all these people to talk about well I'm only going to research garbage text for deep right and I don't want to give them the good stuff well radical advancement says I'll turn it into the good stuff anyway whenever I don't want to please that's true and so yeah so like like one person was like I'm going to do gravity laser system I have zero pds and I'm like good cool done deal next next status phase I turn it into transit diets and I'm a happy little fish you know like that it's it's not like a You must take tech. I do think that you will find uses for it every round where you can be like, it'd be really cool if I turn this whatever value or middle tech into something cooler. Yeah. You'll get good insight about that. Well, and I like the point you're making that it's maybe four people that play with a different meta because whenever we, we're gonna talk about the breakthrough in just a little bit, um, and I think the breakthrough, the way it's getting played is very particular. And you might live in a world where the breakthrough doesn't work the way that it works here. Um, and I think, you know, in a world where people don't play that nice with the breakthrough, yeah, this is like a good way to sort of always get something out of it. It is limited to one, but you don't, yeah, so I mean, that, that is something. I think the difficulty there to, for me, is that if you're going to start with it, then it's going to be this versus bio stems and I just, I don't get that. I don't get that. That is tough. Yeah, that is tough. Yeah. But the other tech is called hydrothermal mining at the start of the status phase, gain one trade good for each ocean card in play. I already told you there are five oceans. So this is worth five trade goods. Once you get them all out there, I mean, that's actually pretty sick. I, I almost picked this up whenever I played just because it's like, yeah, that's just literally getting my money back. I will say that part of the reason why I did not is whatever we talk about the breakthrough, I'll be able to make it clear as to why I believe this. But like, you actually have to spend most of your time whenever you're doing your regular tech, getting tech that is unit upgrades because you can't get unit upgrades with the breakthrough. Sure. So I was not willing to research it. I maybe would have been willing to start with it if I was feeling really spicy, but pretty much once I got into the game, it was like, Oh, okay. Well, when it's regular tech time, I'm not getting the faction tech because I got to get like carrier to and like dread to and stuff like that. But yeah, it's, it's there and it's value. It's, it's real value. Yeah. It's like a round two tech for me. Like, I think round one, you're probably only going to have one, maybe two oceans anyway. So it's like a couple bucks, but like starting around two, it's, it's pretty great. And so for a similar kind of reason, I wouldn't say that it's a high priority that you need to start with the scar. But if you had a scar in your slice, I do think it would be worthwhile to get both of these techs with it. Yeah. That is true. These are good value techs and like theming up, it works out the way that you would like, right? So when you start to the status, you get your radical advancement from the scar and then you can choose to take the radical advancement and upgrade something, whether that's radical advancement itself going to hyper or neural turning into other faction tech. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like there's some cool stuff with scar. Oh, again, not a need to have, but it's, it's cool if the opportunity presents itself. Yeah. I mean, if it's as simple as because the timing window is the same, you know, hydrothermal mining then just becomes, okay, I'm going to use a token to get five trade goods. Like that's a great trade. I'm not saying that at all. Yeah. Yeah. That's super good. Yeah. I didn't obviously, I didn't have that opportunity in my game. Otherwise, I feel like I'd be like, oh, yeah, that's a no brainer. But yeah, that's good. God, you're bringing so much good stuff to this. It makes so much sense. All right. I played a lot of deep, right? Yeah. Yeah. You're like, you're like, you're like into the second year of Thunder's Edge when it comes to deep, right? The way you're talking about this. All right. Let's talk breakthrough time. This is going to be, this is going to be where we might, I don't know, lose some people or, or where the, the sort of space cats aspect of the show might come out a little too much. But the breakthrough is called visionary select. And it is a yellow green synergy, which is the most popular synergy. And it reads action, exhaust this card to allow each other player to spend three trade goods and give you one promise or a note. Each player that does may research a non-faction, non-unit upgrade technology. You also gain each technology researched in this way. And this, I will say, one thing that was that kind of, it didn't blow my mind, but it was just sort of like a, wow, we are just the worst people. Whenever I broadcast the Dallas Intergalactical, which was, I was all excited because I had, I had a copy of Thunder's Edge that had been given to me by a fantasy flight. And I driven it all the way to Dallas, Texas. It had never been played before this copy. And I decided I want a deep rot to be in the game. I want people to see deep rot for the first time. And we got, and one of the players in the finals was a play tester, which to be honest, but I was, I was like, I mean, it was a player I like. It was all very cool. But whatever it was time for this breakthrough to pop the first time, he just sort of witted. It was like, here's how we do this. And the way that we do this is deep rot basically gives. So deep rot gives each player a promise, sorry, note that they can just give back. So just deletes that part of it. You can just, you can just strike through the give you one promise or a note part of the component. We don't do that. Danes said, here's how it works. And we said, nope, doesn't have to work like that. And then we help, we help players spend the three trade goods. We actually chip in and subsidize the three trade goods if they're researching a technology we don't already have. And that's, and we didn't, I, it was the first time showing this off. And we had already corrupted it. It was already over for this component. But yeah, obviously your mileage may vary as far as how you play with this. I think it's, I think it's logical. The boat float. It makes sense to subsidize it. I, in the times that I've played, I, I didn't make anyone give me a promise or a note. And I chipped in sometimes two trade goods if they were getting something that I really liked basically. So I paid top dollar to make sure I was getting plenty of tech. But this, this component is the linchpin of the whole thing. Yes, this, this component more than I feel like breakthroughs were almost made for this to exist. Because then yes, isn't it feel the most breakthrough thing like possible in this game? Yeah, like, like the whole galaxy is just researching tech and learning from the university. It's so flavorful. Like I know that's not why, I mean, that's kind of why the, the component exists. It's just so beautiful. I love it so much. And, and play testing. Yeah. The, the hand back the note part was something we corrupted early on and did all the time. I, I actually tended to be a little less friendly, I guess, and not necessarily always chipping in money unless it was something like super crazy, like X89 that I was getting. Right. Because my, my view on it, you know, if you've got a faction at the table like Hakan or Nomad, like lots of money, always tech hungry, they're just going to do it. Right. And like, there, there are other factions at the table that maybe, maybe don't want to necessarily feed into it, but they see Hakan and Nomad doing it and they're like, well, they're just going to get super powered up. And if I don't join in, I'm going to, I'm going to fall behind the Joneses and it's like this thing where they, they want to participate too. Maybe they won't necessarily all give you different texts, but like, even with that part of it, I'm not super stingy. Like if four of the five players are giving me something new, I'll probably just hand them old back notes anyway. Yeah. I mean, it makes, it makes sense. It, you, you want to, you don't want it to cost too much because getting any tech at all is probably worth it. I mean, like I said, I would never generally recommend self assembly routines. Like I could, like literally, I'm not sure I can even think of a situation outside of this particular situation, like you're playing deep-rot that I would have ever really recommended it as an option. And the fact that a tech like that can really work out well for us just makes me feel like, well, yeah, just like get all of the tech out of the deck. Like have them all in front of you seems like a great way to play, you know, I will talk a little about the order here. So whenever the breakthrough pops, this is like kind of nitty gritty. Obviously, some groups are going to completely ignore this aspect of it. But it can be very important what order things are like as far as if you're respecting the proper order, I should say, to be very annoying about it. Because, you know, let's say it's round one, let's say deep-rot doesn't have gravity drive yet. They're probably going to subsidize whoever says that they're getting gravity drive first, right? So if you're the second person up or the third person up, you might not get in on the subsidy. I would definitely negotiate with people on price. Don't just, you know, don't just give people money for no reason. But yeah, you're going to get a lot of tech this way. And they're going to get a lot of tech this way. And normally I would say there's a risk here, right, of like giving out too much tech and that being some sort of big problem. But for some reason, it doesn't seem to be a problem for these guys. Like they generally come out ahead even, even while they are rising tides, you know what I mean? Like it's because I think at the end, you're just, you're floating so much harder than anyone else possibly could. And it's, it's great. It's incredible. I want to throw in a little nugget here. Jonar. So Jonar, this, this component does say research. Yes. So Jonar has research agreement. Uh-huh. Where they, they could sell the research agreement to Hakan and be like, great, our research integrated. You pay me money. Deeprop gets their tech. We all get tech and, and Hakan put it the bill for all three of us to get the same tech. Yeah. Um, so that's a fun little. And obviously Hakan's got so much money, they can just do another tech of their own anyway, right? So like, that kind of deal can make sense for some tables. And also, because it's research, you know, Necro can just get tokens and just a given note. I don't know that necessarily. It was Necro, but like, yeah, three trade goods for three tokens is a promise or a note is, is an incredible deal, right? That's really good. Oh, man. It's really good. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I also want to point out we're about to talk about the agent and you could use the agent with in conjunction with this. Also, there's a funny thing that happens with the timing between this and tech. Sometimes you're going to want to go before tech pops. Sometimes you're going to want to go after and it comes out unit upgrades, right? Because again, the only way to get unit upgrades is by following tech. So if you, if you, let's say you decided not to start deep blue, like you started with like two green, and I think in that world, you want to pop the breakthrough right away, because you want to try and get your blues so that you can cash it in for carrier two, the greatest and most versatile unit upgrade in the deck. And you would like to get that sooner rather than later, of course. But let's talk leader suite. So first up, we have the agent, Dr. Karina, or Karina, something like that. When another player researches a technology, you may exhaust this card to allow that player to ignore one prerequisite. If they do, you may place one infantry from your reinforcements into coexistence on a non-home planet that they control. So this is very, this is useful for a couple reasons. Obviously it gets them something really nice. It's like a built in deal, right? Like they're going to want to skip something, especially round one. And then you get something, which is that you get an ocean card. So you literally get a buck off of this. And then also, this is the kind of one of my favorite aspects of it, is it will allow you to solve your trade ship problem. You can now trade with that player. So oftentimes what I've seen people do is they will choose who they want to do the like commander swap with because you want to try to do that as soon as possible. And then they use the agent on that player so that then suddenly they can trade with them. And then they do some sort of alliance swap or whatever the trade ends up being. And now that's unlocked because they do have an ocean card in play because they've used the agent, right? Very, very, very cool way to do it. Yeah, I want to spend time on the agent because there's a couple weird things with it. First of all, I haven't actually done this yet. I haven't been able to convince anybody to do it for me yet. But if you sawals in the game, this does say when a player research is so they could use through, they could they could let me get gravity drive off of that, right? And then I use my other tech research to get something else like sling relay. Now why would you so I'll do this? Maybe I give them share knowledge. And then round one, they have access to gravity drive or whatever. So they wouldn't get an ocean, but they would they would it is a thing that you could do at the start of the game, right? It's a weird one. It is very weird. It's very weird. I haven't gotten anybody to do it yet, but it's it's kind of cool. The other thing I want to talk about is like the placement of the unit that you get off of this is very important. And I think this is something that is is for newer players, they'll probably make some mistakes on this. I certainly even now still make mistakes on this sometimes, but like the goal of this agent a lot of times is like, you'll just give it for free or whoever wants it, but you're trying to use it towards getting like closer to some control objective, right? Because like for me, it's if there is no control objective at all and somebody and I'm just making a deal because it's just a trade deal kind of thing. I try to focus on edge system planets next to someone's home system, preferably that have a tech skip. I tend to prefer them to be maybe anomaly systems or you know, whatever might happen to get me closer to four of a kind. If I've got three cultures in my slice and you've got one cultural, especially if it's, yeah, exactly. We're doing that one. So like keeping in mind all those different control objectives that exist and trying to like put your your ocean in one of those kinds of planets, that's that's where I think it's at. At the beginning of the game and in the middle of the game. Yeah, because it's value is highest in like the first two or three rounds. You actually ironically, because of all of the like tech stimulus that you're pumping into the economy, value of this kind of goes down for people eventually. They won't really care because they'll be like, well, I already have a bunch of, I don't need to skip anything. What am I skipping to? You know, I don't need to skip. I already got every prerequisite out there. Yeah. Well, it's all solid now. So it is, but it's funny that you sort of choke out your own ability here. But it's very true what you're saying. Like try to, you know, just just be smart and cognizant of like what what objectives might matter in the future and try to set up for those as much as possible. Because it's just a little free cookie. You know, I'll say this. I have done it based off wanting to be able to not only just trade with that player, but trade with their neighbor as well. So also look at that as a factor. There's like a million different ways you could do this. I would say just try to do it in the way that seems smartest to you at any given moment. But it's commander time and this commander is, I'm going to say probably. So the mech is my sleeper hit my favorite. The breakthrough is obviously the most important. And then this commander is like, I think second to only the crimson commander for how ridiculous it is. I don't know what it was about Thunder's edge and just having commanders that are sort of an economy unto themselves. But the commander is called a L O. The commander is one of those, the, the Kyros, the Kieros, the sort of non highlar part of the deep rock. And the unlock is to have an ocean card in place. Like I said, the agent basically unlocks it. And then this reads when another player, he spends resources to research a technology that player may reduce the cost by one if they do gain one commodity or convert one of your commodities to a trade good. Now obviously just like with the crimson commander, this is a lot better and going to get used a lot more if there's another one. So like putting this out there, I feel like is, you know, it would be good just generally to sell it. But you also just sort of get something for having a buddy who is also going to be accruing commodities. And also I find players, if they know that they can get two discounts, they'll use it. They'll hit it every time. They'll be like, Oh yeah, I want two discounts big time. Because yeah, now tech is so much cheaper. Obviously, just to make sure that people don't get confused, this isn't going to apply to the breakthrough tech, the tech that they're getting through your breakthrough, but it is going to apply to every time they research a tech normally, right? Yeah, anytime you're spending resources, there's a few other small nuances like if they have anachmatic device that costs resources, you can do it there. Yeah. And like reveal prototype that ones spend resources so they can do it there. And I do think you're right in general. So another little nugget out there, if Mahak does in the game, yeah, that's three now. Now we've got three deductions. So, you know, let's make check tech almost free for everybody. It's pretty great. Right. And you can use it too. When you're trading it away, you're actually going to get to use that also when you research tech. So you don't get to use your own, but you get to use somebody else. Get to use somebody else. So yeah, if you're deep-route and Mahak has it and some other player has your alliance, you can spend four resources and double tech yourself. Pretty great. Ridiculous. Yeah. So I mean, you're going to make a lot of money doing this. And also, I mean, you're going to change the way the entire game feels because I mean, you're making tech cheaper for everybody. Everybody's going to buy into this because he wouldn't want to save money. Honestly, it's another crab bucket. We found a million different buckets of crabs in this game. And I would say we found another one, which is, yeah, the entire table could say like, well, we're just going to use the discount. Well, what about when one person does suddenly they're getting tech cheaper and their economy is getting better. So I mean, what's the point? What's the point of us all facing off? Maybe we should just all, you know, dip our beak and just say, okay, we're all, we're all getting rich today, you know? And meanwhile, you know, I don't know who else is in the game, but they're also probably going to be using their economic levers to their benefit. So yeah, I think it's, it's not the best in the game, I would say, but it is, it's up there. And combined with all of our other advantages, we just have so many different ways to make money. It's, it's pretty wild. So yeah, I'd say agent big time good stuff makes sense, commander, even better. And then the hero is a slightly different story, which is good for balance because honestly, we have too many good things. The hero is a bit of a conundrum to me. And hopefully, maybe you can illuminate a little bit. But the hero, of course, is Tazern, our main guy, the commander from the Jolnar who has come over to be the leader of the deep rock, scholar it. The unlock is normal, just three scored objectives, but the ability is action. Purge this card in a non-unit upgrade technology you own or from your deck. You don't even have to own it. I can just be from your deck. Then purge all cards with the same name owned by other players and in other players decks. Then each player that purged a technology they owned, researches another technology. So you take one tech out of the game completely. It's funny that they still get to research though. They still get to get one tech back. But yeah, you purge it all. You basically say, I mean, and as far as options here, like the most obvious would be to go somewhere difficult to go or to just have your flagship and then say, all right, lightweight, that's out of the game. Nobody can use lightweight anymore. Sure. You got to be sure that it's time to turn lightweight off because you're turning it off for you too. I don't know. How do you feel about this one? I think there's a couple of different ones that are the most common choices I see. One choice I've seen reasonably often is anti-mass. Yes. Because if there's like an objective that says, I forget what it's called, but the five anomaly objective, right? If you get out ahead of that and remove anti-mass, you know, nobody else can go into this asteroid fields. They're yours. They might as well be better than supernova. That's at that point because nobody can get into them. That's one thing I've seen. Removing X89 is another one I've seen because if I don't think this happens too often because DeepRot tends to like kind of get X89 anyway. But if for some reason you don't have it and you want to deny it from someone else who does, that pretty much wins ground combat. It is one of the ways that you could actually lose your home system. I've seen gravity drive perched a few times just to make it harder to get around the board. Again, I think you tend to only do that when you're ahead. Right. Right. Or I've seen fleet log get perched. If you're trying to help with the win slay, right? Because if I'm not in a position where fleet logs got a matter for me, I just want to get it out of the way. No, that's a great example because fleet log is almost always only important to the player who is about to win the game. So if that's not you, then let's just get that out of there. Yeah. So all of those are like the denial strategies that I find most common. The other part of this that's pretty cool is because you get to research. Sometimes this is the way that you get that extra unit upgrade that you really need for something that you hadn't planned for. So for example, one of the games I played, I used this to get Cruiser 2, which sounds weird in the late game, but it's like I wanted to make a play for sticks. Right. And my flag should can get there, but I can't get a whole lot of other ships there. So Cruiser 2 was the way where I could be like, okay, well, I had slaying. I had biosteans. I'm just going to spit out two cruisers real fast, get Cruiser 2, and suddenly I have like a fleet of like three or four ships that can actually reach the sticks when they were previously just sitting around in my slice. I don't think that's like super common, but it's definitely an angle or similarly getting like, you know, dread two or something else that you need for some extra mobility. It's an option. Now, you know what? You really made me like it with that last bit with the, because the thing is one thing I worry about any time I'm playing while at Imperium is that I'm going to draw. There are two secret objectives that I think about way too much just because I get scared of them ruining my game. One of them is turn their fleets to dust with PDS, which we don't start with the PDS. So actually, technically there's two aspects of why I would be scared of that. And then the other one is. The, the AFB secret. And that's not, you know, obviously with, with destroyer ones, it's possible to make that play easier, but it's like you're just rolling a bunch of dice on nines. And if you don't have destroyer to, it can just feel like, well, that's kind of a no-go. And I love this as insurance that those are still somewhat feasible. So I like that aspect of it. Or pick up plasma for the moment, or X89, right? Either way. Either way. Yeah. X89 is, I always forget that now that the new X89, which by the way, can we just declare it's a success? Like, yes. We finally, both Majin and X89, those are like working like part of the, of the game now. Like, and it took a long time for us to get to that point. And I just want to say how, how like actually rad that is. I feel like we haven't celebrated that enough on the show. But it is just like super sick that now X89 is frequently a part of the game and relevant. And if, if other people have it, boy, it sucks not to be the one that's, that's got it. Luckily, if you're playing as deep-brought, you did get it, most likely. So there is that. Okay. I feel like we've talked the components for sure. Maybe I want to talk a little bit about like kind of synthesis here as far as like, how do we feel about, you know, the fracture or like bonus points? Obviously, I think because we can start blue and because we have tech figured out, we're a great custodians faction. We're great at, I think, taking mechital wrecks even in the mid game, unless like a super bruise boy like Arburek landed in there and started rooting. I think because of easy access to lightweight and easy access to a good economy, meaning that our flagship is possible to just kind of throw in. I think we've got a great like sticks play. If the fracture came out, we really have checked a lot of boxes as far as how good it is. But let's talk about a relationship, I think, with the strategy cards. Unless you got something you want to throw in before we get into that chunk. No, I think you're right. Bonus points, like, yeah, no, I think that's a very accurate way of putting it. The sticks I find is hard for them overall. Yeah. And I tend to try to go for either custodians or early imperial with them. And plus, you start with so much money relative to other factions that it's not as hard for you to justify an imperial play versus like trade or politics that a lot of other people would take instead. Yeah. It's important to know in relation to sticks that coexist does not allow you to score sticks. The sticks point only goes to the player that gains control of sticks. And whenever you coexist, you're not gaining control. So that can be a little bit confusing. It also does it help with like imperial points. If you're coexisting on mechatal wrecks, that isn't going to help you exhaust imperial to get that special bonus point. Although I will allow you to do stuff like score occupy the seat of the empire. We'll let you do that. It just won't let you do other stuff. But yeah, it's basically got to be something written on an objective card for it to matter at all. But let's talk early game. Let's talk strategy cards. There's some kind of obvious ones here that we've already sort of covered. But I'm wondering also if this is maybe where we get some hot takes in between the two of us. But let's talk about them in order. So I'm going to say it's beginning of the game. We're deep-route. If I'm choosing strategy cards, leadership is going to be a lower priority for me specifically. Because I just see a lot of other important stuff in the queue. We literally only start with two capital ships anyway. So what do we need all these tokens for? But I'm curious if you would disagree with that. I think that's mostly right. I would maybe call it a medium priority only because I think that if you have leadership, your chances of around one custodians go up. Yeah. So tell me about the round one custodians for them. What is that play look like? Yeah. I mean, it mostly comes down to if someone has taken Diplo because the home system we talked about, it's incredible. It's a four or so. Yeah. Four or maybe. You can use it for tech yourself to get the mobility if you need it or the breakthrough didn't provide it. And then your home system, when you're ready, it gets you four of the influence you need already. One other planet almost surely you're going to get the six that you need for custodians. So then it's just about, I'm going to follow, you know, tech, warfare, Diplo. If those all exist in the game, leadership ends up being an easy ticket into getting all the pieces that you need to make that work. And you can stall a little bit with your breakthrough. I'm not going to say it's like an easy thing to do round one custodians, but I think leadership makes it a little easier to follow the strat cards and get them all and line it up. Yeah. To be honest, in this format, I think one thing that's funny about Deepra is we could probably cook this up like a million different ways because you just have a lot of opportunities. Like I wrote that I find diplomacy to be a high priority if you're a later pick because it would allow you to get the breakthrough easy peasy. But if you're the type of player that has just decided that starting with bio stems is just generally better than diplomacy doesn't really matter that much. And what you're describing with leadership would maybe be the better play. The only other aspect about diplomacy I like for the early game is it generally allows you to get your foot in the door or timings when it comes to because people want to time out tech to be time out in a way that that works with diplomacy. So yeah, I don't know. I like to diplomacy is like kind of taking on a new meaning for me in Thunder's Edge, which diplomacy is your like, I want to get my breakthrough card. Sure. And it's just the, you know, overall, but yeah, I was just going to piggyback on the diplomacy pick. If you started with like the double blue path that like you talked about earlier. Yes. That's where diplomacy looks a whole lot better because you can build, you can get the first of all, you can get the carrier to when tech pops off. You can dip blow your home system back to get four of the influence plus one other planet. That is literally what you need for custodians right there. Yeah. So like crazy. Like if you're, if you're starting with blue, dip blow is a lot better. If you're, if you're starting with the green path, you probably don't need it as much. I think that's a good synopsis. Yeah. Yeah. Up next, we got politics. I think that, you know, custodians around one is really cool. But a lot of times you can look at the situation and see that it's not going to happen for anybody else in which case like I'd kind of just rather have politics. I feel like I get a lot more, I feel like I have a lot more options taking the politics path when it comes to taking custodians. But that's also like a pretty hardcore like fundamental belief I have in that to me, because I think round one custodians is very cool. But also means that you had invested a lot of your extra gas into just taking custodians. And as opposed to like, teching or taking advantage of like all of this, you know, myriad of economic advantages that DeepRot has. I honestly kind of just want to coast through the first round and then take it top of round two. But that depends entirely on can you surmise exactly if anybody can can take it round one, which sometimes can be hard to determine, especially because diplomacy being taken by late players normally a big factor in custodians. But yeah, I like to take it round two. I'll take round two just fine, right? Politics is a great pick for the faction. Even if you'd, even if like, let's say you plan for custodians and someone snuck in there, like, you know, Kavirutus got his ghost playing out of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You didn't expect it, right? Because like, you know, some people are just sneaky good at that kind of thing. Right. Even if even if that happens, you have no problem in most games just taking a peer around two and you probably have good enough plastic that you can push to just go for the imperial point round. That's true. That's true. And just score. So like, I love politics for that reason. Also it gives you yet another option for how you're going to unlock the breakthrough. With the action cards, yeah. With the action cards too. So I mean, I love every part of politics. I think it's, I agree. It's a, it's a high pick. I would, I would very strongly consider over most track cards. Yeah. To be honest, in the, in the environment where you're starting double blue, I like it a lot. I think that's maybe like where it shines is that double blue start because remember, if you go double blue start, maybe the, the opportunity cost there is without bio stems. How are you getting the breakthrough? Because with, even though we love our breakthrough, we don't want to throw away our secret objective, it's just kind of generally bad unless you just, I don't know, somehow you just drew only bad secret objectives to start. But like it's, it's the highest cost is to pay one of those secret objectives. So being able to just throw away two action cards, I mean, even if one of them was good, it's like whatever, just, you know, it'll, it'll be fine. Let's talk construction. I like this a bit. I would say this is like medium priority for me. I like the idea of, of shoring up at home without spending the token and structures are great. And, you know, we lack a trade ship. But to be honest, it's not like the biggest, like thing to solve. We have the agent that helps us trade with people, though we have to like wait for tech to pop, which can be annoying. If we started with DET, maybe construction seems like a worthwhile thing to go for. I would say beyond that though, it's kind of, it's maybe kind of middling. It's maybe not really like, because even if you're low, like in the pick order, maybe diplomacy beats it most of the time. Like structures are never bad and we don't have like an alternative way to get structures. We only start with a single space stock at home. So that can be a little bit tricky. But overall, yeah, I would say it's, I would say it's medium to maybe even low priority as far as how I feel about it. What do you think? Yeah, I agree. One of the things I used to say about Jolmar, I, I, well, still love, in fact, love even more now construction for Jolmar. But like, yes, part of the reason I loved it so much for them was because the production capacity problem, but deep rock does not have that problem to solve. They have a very strong or resource home planet. There, I've, I mean, people talk about like, oh, coexistence on the home system is a problem. I've never had a game with deep rock where I had like less than 10 infantry on my home system in the end game. Like, yeah, yeah. And, and like, I'm not exactly when I say like 20 infantry is, is kind of common for me because like, they just build so much stuff. I, I don't think construction is a high priority. It's fine, but probably if you have like that weird PDF secret or something. Yeah. Honestly, I like it if you're, if you're going with sling relay as your second blue instead of gravity drive based off the idea of like, I'm just going to pick up gravity drive off the breakthrough or, you know, whatever. Then I think you, you pretty much get everything you need out of sling relay and it's a stall on top of whatever strategy card you did pick. So like it makes construction feel extremely redundant, I would say. I'll talk about trade trade is I think incredible for us always. It's, I mean, it's always a good thing. I just feel like what I, what I like about trade is it's going to encourage everybody to become adjacent with you, which means to me, the breakthrough tech bath is possibly even more outrageous round one because I will say that is, that is a thing that takes a minute to get going. A lot of the evil that we described as far as the like trading things back and forth, that only works if you're adjacent. You can't just like trade back and forth without, without being neighbors with each other. Like they can give you good because it's a component thing. They can give you a, a, a, a promise or a note, even if you're not adjacent, just because the component is allowing it, but you won't be able to arrange giving it back. You'd have to do it like non binding and that may or may not fly fly in your group. But yeah, I mean, the money is, is good to have, obviously. I'm not even in on. Also, the other thing that's great about trade is that it is another way for us to ensure that we're getting the breakthrough. So like trade, politics, diplomacy, those are the ones that are locking that down. And that's very important to us, right? Yes. Yes. No, that's, that's very true. If you don't, I mean, it's, it's a great pick anyway. And I think most people are probably taking trade first picking a lot of medas anyways. Yes. And, and we're no different. It's still great here. Yeah. Warfare is like a funny one to talk about. I, I feel like following warfare is good for us. Obviously, unless we have sling relay, in which case, like we can probably manage, I guess it depends on like the shape of our slice, because I remember we only have three infantry. Maybe there's a world where taking warfare means that we get to take custodians though. So I guess there is that aspect, but anytime you're talking about a plan like that, that means like taking warfare probably earlier in the round and then depending on someone to take diplomacy at the end, I feel like taking warfare blind is not my favorite option. Um, I don't know. You may have had more success with that kind of play. I think warfare is a pretty low priority. And I mean, even in the quote bad round where you only get to take two systems with your starting ships, like that's still pretty good. That's, yeah. And okay, round one plus you usually end up coexisting somewhere else. So like the chances of you having, you know, an ocean plus three planets worth of values, it's still, it's still usually good enough where you're, you're okay with that for round one. Yeah. It's like, it's kind of a slow roll attitude, but really for me, if it's not locking in the breakthrough, I don't know that it's doing anything for us. Um, except for this next option, which is, which is tech itself, which obviously J.J. You're required by law to choose tech. Otherwise, I give you grumpy, right? I do take it. I mean, unironically, I do take it as deep rock. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, you do get some advantages like, like knowing when tech is going to happen helps you figure out your whole agent into commander relationship, which is important. Like to, like sometimes people stall tech, it can be like, ah, I'm not going to get to make all that, that money also allows you to go ahead and lock in the alliance swap. Like before you're technically, uh, having everyone follow tech, which is when you, where you really make the money, right? Like, because you're sort of doing, well, I guess you, oh, actually, that is kind of weird. You'd have to like lock it in with the player next to you, which would maybe be suboptimal, um, and then go from there. Uh, so I guess, I guess it is kind of, it's kind of a Christmas lead. I guess that I was describing, but, but just knowing when it's going to happen is important. I feel like. So I'm, I'm going to blow your mind here for a sec. You're ready for this. Yes. The tech strategy card is the same as the trade strategy card. Yeah. Yeah, because, because for us, we make money off of both, yeah, and we get tech off of both. The number and types of text that you get are maybe not going to be the same and like the taking the tech yourself, like gives you more control over timing. I absolutely agree. But like, they're basically the same picture. Yeah. And so like, when I take tech or, or I want to have, make sure I have some deal with someone else to like be a lion's partner and then they take it and all that nonsense. But like, that's going to probably end up being an extra three or four dollars, which is pretty close to what you're getting out of trade primary anyway. Yeah, that's fair. Wow. Compared to like your own commodities, refreshing off of trade and that sort of thing, like the value you're getting back from it is not that different. And on the flip side trade, exactly what you said, you can, you can. You can enable people to buy into the breakthrough and you get tech out of it. And so that, in that way, it ends up being basically the same strat card, especially round one. So like, I, I actually like tech, I still agree with your overall ranking of them being like a medium priority to tech tech. Because I do, but I do still want to get those unit upgrades, but like they do, they're more similar than what you think they are at first. That's true. Yeah. And also, so like the, the deep rock commander is very weird because of how much it makes you think about the order of operations. So you really do got to think like like, and I, I, I think I'm doing to take this into my next deep rock game is like evaluate. If you have technology, evaluate that next player in the order first and think about like, is it if it happens to, if they happen to be the right person, then you're going to make more money on that first round. And, and it's only by like a little bit, but it's worth considering because money, there's this, this concept, I feel like we haven't come up with a good name for yet, which is just the idea that like, like yes, money is always important in toilet and perium. The money you make early is more critical to your overall success. So like that first trade good is super important. That last trade good almost doesn't even matter, right? Like that's, that's I think a concept of people here that they're like, Oh, yeah, I get that. I've ended games where I had 20 trade goods. Well, guess what? This trade goes didn't, didn't matter because you hit the game was over anyways. But that first trade good, that's going to get spent. That's going to get used for something and it's going to be important for the outcome of the game. And honestly, the commander just talk about like trade stuff a little bit more. It feels to me like I almost am not even sure that you need to get like something for that alliance. It's sort of like the crimson alliance where it's like, I just want somebody to have this. I don't know how much I care about getting a cookie or having essentially a buddy to like do my, my dirty commodity washing with. We're both going to make it more valuable for each other. You know, maybe, maybe I'm down to a just alliance swap. And even if you're a commander kind of sucks just to be like, well, I mean, we traded something, you know, it's not just free, but I don't think you really need to like care too much about charging for it or even, you know, matching it to a particular alliance. Although if somebody does have a juicy commander, they probably will be hitting you up to be like, hey, it may be it should be me, you know, and they're not wrong. If you're being courted, you should for sure go for it. But I don't know. I think I just care more about this being out there than anything else, right? Yeah. You want somebody to have it most of the time and but that's someone can be you. So a couple more nuances on tech in particular. The order of it definitely matters because of that, not just in the order in the sense of like who can trade with you and get the discounts and all that from the agent, but also if I'm the tech player, I probably want to do my breakthrough first if I can help it. Right. Number one, it gives me more of the prerequisites I need for the unit upgrades, which is kind of the reason that you want to take tech for yourself anyway. But also by doing that, you have the commander unlocked already before you even get to going around the table. So you can sell the agent's part of the breakthrough to unlock the commander. Of course. And maybe even double tech yourself for cheaper, right? Yeah. Which is one of the advantages of taking tech round one in this faction. You can probably afford to do it because you're getting into ocean when you get somebody the agent, right? You got the four resource home system. That's your five bucks to go and double tech. So like yeah. And then, and then when you do that in that order, I give my alliance to my agent partner, whoever that is. Now when tech actually happens, I fill out my three commodities. I now can do the transaction with that alliance partner. And then I can get the rest of my commodities filled. And if you wait until tech is actually played to do that deal, you only get the one trade on your turn. Right. Whereas if you do it early, you can make the full five dollars potentially. Yeah. Yeah. This early game has a lot of like complex. There's a lot of. Yes. There's a lot of like optimization pieces that you can do. They just have so many tools in their well. It's great. Yeah. I'm a big early game guy. Like I love the puzzle of the early game a lot. And this feels like I could be thinking about this for a long time. And there's some day I'm going to have the like platonic ideal game room and be like, oh, that feels good. We got it all. And I'm going to be shooting for that now to be honest. Now that I've realized now that I'm thinking about it in terms of the order and you're right. Having tech and then doing the breakthrough first, that would feel like basically so you have you have tech and you're seven. So like you're after trade, you wait for trade to pop. Right. We have we have to get trade popping. That's right. And people have money. Then you go to them with you get the alliance partner to be even first. Have it be first. I don't know. I don't care. I don't care who it is. I don't think whoever you want to do it with, whoever you want to do it. Whoever's going to get you gravity drive as part of this deal. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to make it sound like don't try to get any extra value. If there's extra value to it, but I know I don't have to say that because the used car salesman out there that are listening to this, they're going to. Okay. I just mean for the regular people, I just don't know that you that you actually care about get to get anything extra out of this. Just choose a buddy and then have them be your buddy. And let me tell you, if you choose me, I'm respecting that body. Ness. I'm going all the way to the end with you because yeah, it's a great, it's a great deal. Yeah. For the other person as well. So how do we talk about tech in general though, like tech path type stuff? We've already talked. I feel like they know what we think as far as the start goes. The start is pretty straightforward. But like, how do we, how do we describe what your tech might look like over the course of the game because it can get so out of whack so quickly? And I feel like I did mention myself assembly routines thing. That's kind of my thing that I wanted to throw in. That's useful. That's going to be a thing. Major is definitely a workable thing for you. And honestly, it's kind of a funny thing of like it can, because the thing is like, yes, you can coexist. You could also just like what JJ was saying earlier, you can also just defend your home system. Y'all like just regular style. And that's pretty good too. Like you don't really. Really good at it. Yeah. It's not so bad. X89, obviously that's in play. What's the integrated economy? That's definitely on the menu. I guess we can talk about transit diodes a little bit because transit diodes is kind of funny. We just want to make sure that you understand that you can't transit diodes to a planet that your coexisting on, but you can transit diodes from a planet that your coexisting on. That's right. That's one right there. Fleet log will probably help you win the game. So you should probably get that at some point. I mean, what besides, it's just kind of like, yeah, get tech. Like all of the tech are in, you know, are on the menu. And so anyone that you've ever heard of is good is relevant to your game, basically, except for, I mean, we're probably not going PDS most of the time. So I can usually worry about that. Yeah. Here, my, my two senses, yes, every tech is on the menu. And a lot of it does depend on what people decide to do with the breakthrough. But my focus is, is like, they kind of feel like overall a blue green faction. Yes. Because you got this great production capacity. You've got, you know, we just talked about starting with either blue or green. One of the things you can do off the start if you want to is you can just get dock two with your breakthrough and double green. And like, right on. And like, you can just start pumping out like a million fighters. So like, I like that. I like that. I don't know what you need to do that, but, but, but you can. It's definitely an option. And like fighter to carry or to dock to, I think, is a realistic, good path for their unit upgrades. And really, what are the unit upgrades that you need for this faction and what's going to work for you there? And I feel like those are kind of the three that I like the most. Infantry to you kind of don't need as much because you're probably going to get X89 anyway. Yeah. The name of infantry to. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's just kind of better than infantry to, honestly. Yeah. Yeah, because it, I mean, it upgrades the max to and like I've already said, in this episode, the max are crazy good. The production one or max, honestly, I was annoyed that people had been screaming about that more because honestly, I had forgotten and then sat down and was like, wait, I have, I have production max like this is, this is ludicrous as far as how helpful this is. It also helps you not need a dread two as much because you can build dreadnoughts on the front line. And so that what's the point of like rushing them out there like, yeah, sure, they're not protected from direct hit, but who cares, get over yourself. It's fine. Yeah. Yeah, it's an incredible kit. I mean, I don't know. They're not really bad at anything in particular. They don't really have a start that's all that complicated as far as like getting over anything. I'll say this, JJ. I actually think we underrated them in the faction tier list and we put them in the top tier. I think somehow we underrated them. So here's my kind of knock against them. I just feel like when you're behind and because you're not always going to be ahead, like they've got a lot going for them, but like if if a saw is racing ahead, you don't have a lot of good ways to outrace them and like get more bonus tempo ahead of them. You don't have like that winu hero type play where you can like catch up from behind and you're okay at win slaying other people, but you're not like, you're going to probably have to take warfare because you don't have like that cheaty thing like Mahakta's where they can just move their fleets around it will. So I feel like they're finishing moves are just just a little bit of a notch below, but like if you if you race ahead and you've got like you're you're in the lead and people are chasing you, they're very good at maintaining that lead. Yeah. Well, I like to play from ahead. That's what I enjoy. And if you're a player that likes to play from ahead and get ahead early and maintain that lead, I think they're extremely potent in in that situation because if you if they let you get away with with taking a lead by the time your real problem, it will be too late because they'll then have to figure out the dreaded deep rot win slay, which is I would say right now I think it's too complicated for most people and that's not a knock against most people. That's that's just because the game is too new at this point for people like you have a good handle on that. So we don't know I mean maybe a year from now deep rot might actually have to kind of sit down a little bit because people get really used to the idea of like, oh, you got to do something about them like kind of win new style, which could be warranted. I don't know. I think it just depends on it's like JJ was saying there's no there's no closer, but like if you get ahead, what are they supposed to do? Sort of like czar, but like better because you have more tempo in the tech and I would say economy department. So you don't go to pieces as easy. Don't don't don't talk about my fish like that. Be nice to my little fish. They're just little little little hippie fish. Just I love them. I love them. JJ, I love them. Don't give me wrong at all. I'm a big fan and I think they are I think they're my favorite of the new factions even though I really like crimson a lot. I think it's all about crimson. It's all about these guys to me. I think they're both two excellent additions to the game. I am definitely not going to feel as strongly about the about deep rot as or sorry, I'm not going to feel I'm not going to feel this way about firmament. I'll tell you that much for sure. Yeah. It's I'm going to be sad. It's like I'm done now with the great homework. Now it's going to be about the sad homework because yeah, these guys are just so good and so fun. And honestly, you know what? I'm going to thank you. I thank you on behalf of the whole community for I'm not saying you obviously you didn't make the deep rot and I'm not trying to elevate you to that level, but it sounds like you really cared about them a lot in play testing. And I think, you know, not every is this fair to say not every faction had that kind of championing. Right? They were all championed by various play testers. Okay. And I think this this one was and I would like to think that deep rot was better for it. Thanks to you play kind of obsessive over them to be honest. I before I even played Thunder Zed, I knew that you were in love with these guys. So. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So without going into specifics, what I can say is as a play tester, a lot of the feedback is this this felt too good. This felt too weak. This let's just keep this the way it is. Those kinds of things. I was a big defender of a lot of stuff for deep rot. Yeah. Absolutely a champion and like, there, there were some ways in which they were maybe a little worse before and I like to think that I like to think that I helped them out. Just you put the thumb on the scale. Just a little bit. Just a little. I would also like to just I'm just going to try something here. We'll see we'll see how people respond to it. You know, people like to do their little bit where they say space cast peace turtles boat float style and blame it all on me. Can we just call it JJ style? Like I feel like it should be your fault. I'm trying to make the case that it doesn't have anything to do with me. It's your fault because I didn't blame me. Go into the play testing and be like, oh, there should be more boat float. It should be incorporated in the game more please. Can we get it? It's just not enough. It's not enough that we do it, you know, attitude wise, I need it codified into the rules. And that's what you did. All right. So when people boat float, that's that's JJ, that's JJ stuff, right? And you know, I think we just figured out, I think we just figured out what the next five star review needs to be five stars. It's all JJ's fault. Yeah, if give us, yeah, you know what? Yeah, that you have to, you have to give us five stars on this one because giving a podcast a good review is the podcast version of boat float. Okay. That's so true. I love it. This show by giving us a five star review on Apple podcast or wherever it is that you listen, if they have review any sort of review functionality, Spotify does. And boat float this podcast back. All right. You have to. All right. The tech that we have, we have basically granted you the tech that we have by telling you all of our thoughts on deep rot. We've we've done around of the breakthrough. This analogy works perfectly, my friend. All right. And I've already given you back your promise. Sorry. No, how about that? I've already given it back. So you're all good. You have shared knowledge on this day. Beautiful. I wonder if Dane Phil said that we never played his the breakthrough right because I've never done it right now as far as what he clearly wanted it to be. Does he feel bad about that? Okay. So story time in preparation for this podcast, I was requested by notorious hooligan, Bam Bam. To try out a different strategy with deep rot in which I didn't give out the alliance. I didn't make any kind of special deal there. And I just was kind of the evil deep rot. Right. And just just be like, I'm not going to go pure boat float. I mean, I still want to get stuff. It's like, Oh, I'll sell you the agent for a buck. Right. I'll I'll let you buy share knowledge. If you really want to have it, right, that kind of angle to it. And let me tell you, it's still worked. It's still worked. Like even even when people like there are some there are definitely a few times where like I got like some some people started like whinslaying me early because they got annoyed with how things were going. But like I still had like a ton of resources and stuff. I couldn't afford like war sons, right, which I tried to like buy war sons off Mewat, that kind of thing. So like it did set me back a little bit, but not enough to where like I had a bad game about it. And like it was still fine. And yeah, I think I think there's an angle where you could say, I'm just going to collect all the promissory notes. And eventually it's like, well, you got your ceasefire left. I'll take that, please. Yeah, I'll take that. I mean, sure, don't you want the tech? You got to have the tech, right? Right, right. So, you know, I think this is the perfect thing to play on you. I think you are the perfect ideal victim for this component or it to be like, give me more promissory notes or you don't get your tech JJ. Yeah. You're given all your at strip poker, just like, all right, I guess I have to, I mean, I got to get the tech, right? I do. So, asking for a friend, what happens if you don't have promissory notes? Yeah, there's space cats nation. It's me, it's Hunter on the eve of the release of this very episode, piping hot episode that's flying right into your feed, into your eardrums. I just got a few things to talk about real quick. So, I'm just going to throw these out here. I got kind of like a busy week. So, it's a whole been busy. It's been a really busy month. Just one last thing I wanted to put out there. If you happen to live in Minneapolis, I know that I've been running this ad for quite a while. But this weekend is my comedy show at the CISFIS Brewing comedy club on February 27th and 28th. Both shows started 8 PM. It's going to be me and some other comedians that are really, really great and it's going to be super fun. It's the first time ever having an experience like that and I'm really excited about it. But also coming up this weekend is a ridiculous number of prelims games. I count four games that are going to be played over the course of this weekend. So if you're interested in watching some Twilight Imperium, this is the weekend to do it. So I got prelims game four is coming up on Friday, February 27th at 1 o'clock, UTC/2 PM central time. I got a streamed by Ellsmith on a Twitch.tv/spacecatspeast hurdles. I got prelims game five. Commentate you have the next day on Saturday, February 28th at 1300 UTC/7 AM central time streamed by somebody. You perhaps I need streamers. I need I need people volunteer to stream that game. So if you're available to do that, please message me instantly DM me right now. If that's something you would be interested in doing, prelims game six is also on sab, sab, sab, sab, sab, do dairy, 28. That one's going to start at 15 o'clock, UTC/9 AM central time. That one's going to be streamed by me on a Donaldson on Twitch.tv/spacecatspeast hurdles. Games seven is also Saturday, February 28th, and that's an hour later, 16 o'clock, UTC/10 AM central streamed by somebody. You need somebody for that game too. So game five and game seven, I need somebody to pop in and take over or those prelims game eight is going to be the next day, Sunday March 1st at 20 o'clock, UTC/2 PM central time. That's going to be streamed by Blasto and midmax. That one's also going to be on Twitch.tv/spacecatspeast hurdles. Glocked to counselors, your poll is out. I think I, I don't know if I said it was supposed to come out last week. I think I just like completely spaced on that. But I have a poll for y'all. Please vote to decide what is the first faction that I will be writing a guide for after all of the Thunder's Edge stuff is done. So my next guide is the firmament. I'm already working on it. I've already done a research game for it. And also, by the way, I won and it was pretty awesome. I guess I'm just like really good at this game or something. But go ahead and vote on which faction is going to be the next one. I'm going to put all the factions that I haven't talked about that are not new Thunder's Edge factions on a list. Just about for the most popular one, the one that you think that it will be best for me to cover next. A zinsters. I'm still working on that newsletter. It's several weeks behind schedule at this point. And I really apologize about that. The world has been weird. I guess the best thing I can say and also I've been incredibly busy. But I came up with something that I kind of want to include. That would be fun as part of the newsletter. It was something I was kind of like holding off for a little bit. But I really want to do my flagship and like mech tournament stuff because it's very important thing to me. I think it's really funny and I think it's something that I haven't got to do it in many years because there hasn't been new content to do it about. So I'm asking you to vote on what flagship or mech. I'm here's what I'm going to say. Place your bets. Okay. I want you to place bets on what you think is going to win in the flagship or mech tournament. And if you're saying, well, Hunter, I don't know exactly the rules of the flagship or mech tournament. That's great. Give me advice on what you think the rules should be. Last time I did this weird sort of mini game where the flagships all got to fill up their capacity with kind of whatever they want. And I tried to respect the rules for each flagship as much as possible. If you don't even know what I'm talking about at all, I just have the flagships like fight each other and in combats. And then we just see like who wins. It's extremely exciting. It's probably the most popular thing we've ever done. And that's if you ask me and know what else. But yeah, I have a little ballot fill out as far as your predictions for how that would go and give me advice on what you think makes a good flagship tournament and mech tournament. I'm also going to do a mech tournament. Although that's really, maybe I should do is one thing. I don't know. I is a mech tournament, even worth it to do. That's a great question. Yensterhood. I'm playing and I'm not streaming. I'm going to play a Twilight's Fall game on Sunday at 10 a.m. Central time. I'm not going to stream it. But I need to play a Twilight's Fall research game. It's actually going to be my last Twilight's Fall research game. And I'm going to be playing as a lurch. Okay. So if you want to play a little bit of Twilight's Fall on Sunday, hit me up. Okay. There we go. I did it. I want to thank my weird bears, Emily Chefsky, R.Y.'s Darryl, Absel Rickym 44, Webby, Dregoth Axton, Cabal of Soul, D. Beck, M. Scott, Coo-Hawk, who lendable by ESQ4, Lucino, Jean Mahak Sorcerer and Skellyman. And I want to thank my warm Holgen's Kraken, Ryan Iangar, Portmandia, cardboard crash course, D.L. Soron, Sergeant Buck, Dunkey, Patty Horseplay, Averis, Crack Goblin, and Urza. Now I would like to thank our Discord moderators and tournament team, Ellsmith West, Westberg, Ellsmith, Wecker, Absel, I am Katie Jasper, the disaster, play the Earth, E.J. Alec and Matt. You could rate this podcast on your podcast app of choice, especially Apple podcasts. It's Spotify. You can check out our website, spacecastbcertals.com for a Patreon Discord Merch information, etc. You can please send of this, this is the period of life stories to [email protected]. I have gotten the five star reviews necessary to do the D.S. base nine episodes. So I will be doing that soon. I am at the beginning of season three of my current rewatch and I'm addicted. It's such a good show. It's the best show. I actually have a guest for it. I'm already figured out and we're going to be recording it very, very soon. So look forward to some bonus content in the feed. I'm not going to have it be like a main episode. That would be crazy. I have bonus episode. I just need to reach out to Patty honestly and just figure out what his avails are. I know he lives in France. So I don't know. It's different. The times are different between here and France. One last little detail here that is actually a pretty big deal. I saved it for last because it sort of came in last minute. I didn't know about this until kind of recently. The steam next best is going on right now, which is the sort of thing they do every year where a bunch of games show off demos of their games to try and be like, Hey, check out this game. In Twilight Imperium Digital actually launched a demo in the lineup. And it's an interesting demo. It's their the combat module or the game. So you basically load up the game and you can simulate combat and you can actually do it multiplayer. I haven't done that yet. I've mostly been interested in testing the AI actually. And it does a lot of things. You get to build a fleet. It gives you some action cards like kind of randomly. And then you just play through some combats and it's pretty robust. It's that I would say the execution as far as the art design is very solid. It's like it's a lot of what you would expect. It's just the they're only adapting base game for now. Obviously, but it's I want to be very supportive of this project. And I think it's very interesting. So I just want to encourage you, the listener, to check it out. It's free. It's a demo. You download it. You check it out. Also wish lists. Twilight Imperium Digital on steam. If you haven't heard of this already, it's it is a true video game adaptation of or digital board game product. I guess what I should describe it of Twilight Imperium. And it's very exciting. I don't know what the timeline is for it at this point, but check out the combat module. It's a really, really cool thing. So I'm very excited about this. And yeah, I would encourage you to download it. I think they also did a live stream where they talked a little more about the development of the game. And it's very cool. It's a really exciting time to be a Twilight Imperium fan. We got a lot of stuff coming right at us. You know what I mean? I'm coming right at us slightly. And that's pretty sick. Anyways, I hope you have a good week. I'll see you next time. I got some more Twilight's fall for you. And then I'm working on that firmware, my God. And that's coming up. And then we're done. We're going to do a review of all the new components. And then we're going to move into the deep, the deep next arc where we just slowly turn away at the entire game one more time. But you know, unless something's added in which case, we'll have to do it again. And then if something is added after that, we'll have to do it again and again. And we'll just see, you know, we'll see how long this takes to finally really get this game described. You know, I thus far it's taken almost nine years, taken eight and a half years. Who knows? It could take, take 20 years. I don't know. I guess it just depends. Anyways, see you later. Bye. Thanks. Make it difficult. Hello, hello. Larger some. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. Thanks for watching. And I'll see you later. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.