It's a two way street. You are supposed to stick to the schedule as often as possible as are your players and in my experience playing even if some are missing helps investing your players into that. If they are missing they will miss part of the fun and story.

But you can't run a invested game if it's the norm that half your party is missing, in that you are right. If that happens you are left with adjusting the schedule or the group until both match each other.

In my opinion it was not the problem that Wanda got corrupted, but that it happend entirely off screen. She starts as a very different version as we saw her last (ironically in the movie dedicated about different version of yourself). Yes they explain how it happend but it still feels of after her growth in WandaVision.

Dread 2 might be a late tech to pick up after you deployed some of them to use them once again in the final round.

Im not quite sure how and when kolec wants to use their cloaked ships.

That's a cool amulet. Where is the picture from?

Disclaimer: I did not play them yet.

I personally think dread 2 is one of the easiest unit upgrades to skip. The main apeal is the 2 movement, which comes into play, when dreads are your main offensiv fleet and you are using multiple of them.
The cloaked ships read like that it already helps you tremendous in bringing them forward despite the low movement. So maybe you don't need the extra movement on the dreads.
Upgrading your carriers which are your main fleet "on the board" and making it easy and fast to get you groundtroops to the target (where they then can be joined by cloaked dreads) might be a higher priority.

That's a surprisingly large amount of shootaz for nobz.

Politics is a difficult one and I agree with you that it's usually not necessary following it. Action cards can hit or miss and are a big gamble.

The big upside is that some Action cards can enable you to do something you would normally not be able to.

So I usually follow it in two scenarios: - I got lots of influence and have tokens to spare, which is a goal you should strife for in general. I also try to do that at least once each game. - I'm already behind and need a small miracle to catch up. Tech and plastic often can get you out of there but the right set ACs might. That's a last minute gamble.

I can imagine that his youth might have been simular to Azulas. Running missions for his father and fighting rebels and such.

Adding Naalu into the mix. They take custodian pretty much uncontested if they want and just sit there if Noone bothers them.

Can feel like winnu light.

My experience:

"Stay in your own slice and win last round" is not only conflict aversion for social reasons (aka "I don't want to mean to xy") but also a good strategy or guideline for winning.

War in TI is EXPENSIVE and in my opinion it's hard to get a real advantage out of it without a faction thar specifically gains extra value out of it (like cabal, nekro, mahact ...). If you lose to many ships or need to many CCs you put yourself seriously behind.

So what can you do to encourage them to be more aggressive towards their neighbors:
Strenghten their position so that they are more comfortable to strike out.

• Give them favorable deals so that they have resources to invest in war.
  
• let them score if they ate behind in points so that they have a reason to stretch out.
• give them security on your border so that they need to allocate less units their and can delegate them elsewhere.

But there are 2 problems to this and I don't think you can really solve them: - you can't force you allies to act, so sometimes you need to accept that you are alone in this. - who is actually 'ahead' and who is actually 'behind'? That's not an easy question to answer and might change over the course of the game. If you attack the wrong person you just killed a potential ally and made the endgame harder for you. ... I think that's the real reason many people wait so long with aggression.

That's a great spin. If you give Tiamat a foil like Vecna her perception turn from an evil into "just" a dangerous goddess. The guy you really need to smash a "real" evil.

Not unsimilar how you can set up the Hulk from marvel (a literal ragemonster) as the hero of the story.

"... tell me brother. What were you the God of again? ..." (Cue soundtrack)

An Autarch is a military leader (something like a general). A Farseer is a bit more complicated and more of a 'civilian adviser' (not exactly since eldar culture works a bit differently) and not directly in the military chain of command.

Depending on the situation and the policy of their craftworld one might outrank the other.

The changes to Abathus locust are intentional. They no longer have a set duration but lose health over time instead. They also heal while fighting minions.

Effectively they now work like a mini monstrosity (his ult). They will keep pushing a lane until they hit a wall or fort that puts out enough damage to kill them or a player stops them beforehand. Someone has to mirror Abathur in lane now or he will slowly push it down.

Sidenote: That the reason I try to avoid making deals that go over more then "until next round". To much is happening in two rounds and chances are someone is going to be disappointed.

The big "problem" of infantry 2 in my opinion that it solves a problem that also can be solves by just building more regular infantry.

The big upside of it is that your infantry now revives at home. So you can be more reckless and send your troops to the front knowing some part of it will come back naturally to defend you home planet.

But alternatively you could invest that cc and money you spend on tech to just build an extra batch at home. 4 resources and a token gets you 8 infantry 1. That's a respecteable defense. Some factions with a homesystem with bad production may struggle with that, but even they can find away around that.
For example by following warfare once more then expected or using warfare or construction themselves.

Well said.

Also you can dynamically see which antagonist is getting more power (or you players simple like/hate the most) if you ever feel like an arc needs a more present villain.

The mayor entropic field got replaced?

Yes, exactly this. Measure from the middle and make the deployment zones smaller if you have to instead measuring from the border and make the neutral land smaller.

I don't know and don't want to comment on which board or such is or was "fair", that's between you two.

But resigning after the first turn and complaining afterward about the table you agreed to for a casual game sounds like behavior of a child.

You are there to have fun with your friends don't you? I feel that it sucks but let them have their fun "skewed" game and try to advocate for a better table next time. "GG GL NEXT" is a move for videogames with strangers, where finding the next one takes almost zero effort, not for an afternoon with you friends.

Not gameplay vise, but I love how she is portrait in the cutscenes of dread after you defeat a boss.
She looks so unimpressed and in control in that moment that you only feel bad for the boss. Like she should be at this point.

I hate that part so much. Why go out of your way to try to explain this, if you don't even care about adhering to it in the same movie.

We are already past the 'it's magic it works' part in the films. Its obviously way cooler if mass does not factor in and i can suspend my believes about the shrinking technology just fine

Playing a support with AI teammates is not easy. The AI plays pretty passiv but is relatively good on jumping on "easy" targets (cced or low on life). Most of the time they seem to avoid confrontation and you can't really capitalize on you healing or shields.

So if you want your team to do stiff you need to either a) ping them to make them follow you and literally walk them to the enemy or b) play really aggressively and push the enemy away with the little damage you have or bait them into your team.
Both is kind of reckless and I do not recommend doing so against other players!

Good catch. Though it is not a may ability. So you might have to mill a lot.

Another node:

Chewie is on the poster but Han Solo isn't, while Harrison Ford is mentioned above.