I would recommend first edition Asmadi over second edition Iello. Especially at a second-hand bargain-bin price. I own the Deluxe edition, but I still have the first edition with a couple of edits in biro to bring it up to date. My first edition is more portable, and entirely adequate when playing with people who aren’t familiar with the expansions. The Iello edition, on the other hand, pointlessly changes terminology, gets a few rules wrong, and is less readable on the table.
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The Iello one is the one we have. Do you mind expanding on this for my benefit? Particularly the rules part - I’m not bothered about the terminology unless it makes a difference.
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I can’t remember all the details, and I might have inflated the problem in my head, but I remember Fission lacked an important clause to end the dogma effect if nuclear apocalypse occurred. A couple of cards were inadvertently changed too.
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Thanks - that gave me enough google leverage to easily find https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2198275/innovation-asmadi-or-iello, where an alternative version of Benkyo gives more detail. Nice. We’ll take a biro to the appropriate cards.
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Earlier this year I purchased Innovation from amazon.com for 20€ including shipping to Germany. Apparently they increased shipping significantly (possibly Corona-related?), but you might want to keep your eyes open if you are willing to order overseas.
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Posted this in the wrong thread.m
I’m not sure if they will ship internationally, but if someone (@pillbox @yashima?) or anyone else wants me to buy it for them and post it on I’m happy to.
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Boy… right now I’d say brass birmingham (w/iron clays) or brass Lancashire.
There are so many games I really love though…
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But, to quote the thread title, why is it your favourite game? Curious minds want to know 
(Good choice BTW. Love me some Brass)
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I agree with @Whistle_Pig. I’m on fence with Brass Birmingham and am tempted to sell it after 5 plays. Very keen to get it to the table after lockdown.
It is so pretty
Why? Because it’s thinky and thematic. It has trains and boats and beer. It’s brooding and melancholy. It’s industrial and stark. It’s so incredibly satisfying to build and then sell industries for piles of money (iron clay chips) and I love the mechanic of whoever spends the most on a given turn goes last.
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It’s Inis for me.
- Epic with 4, chess-like with 2.
- Multiple victory conditions have you rolling with the punches and changing strategies.
- It’s a different game every time.
- The world is immersive, alien yet recognisable (I grew up near Glastonbury, land of Arthurian legend and cheap incense sticks).
- The Epic tales add my favourite bit of Cosmic Encounter - breaking the game in unpredictable ways.
- And weirdly - I love the ability to simply PASS. Never has passing been such an interesting tactic. I bide my time…and only strike when you don’t have enough action cards to defend yourself mwahahaha…unless you pass too then I’m screwed!
Will always be up for a game.
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Great first post, welcome. I’ve played Inis twice and loved it both times.
First time at 4 did have the problem of it lasting 30 minutes too long while people tried to set up a winning position.
Second time at 5 with We Need a King . I think that turned the game up a notch and made the end game even more tense.
I couldn’t see it being a 2 player game which is why I’ve never tried to buy it (someone in our group owns it), but I’m intrigued now.
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Welcome to the forums, @Aero5tar!
I’ve had Inis on my shelf for over a year now without the opportunity to play it. 
I hope I can get it on the table soon!
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This is going to be the fifth time I’m trying to post about my love of the greatest game ever made (Twilight Imperium 4th Edition), and we’ll see if I scrap it like I have all the other times I’ve attempted to describe it.
See, here’s the thing. Most games tell you what you need to do to win: if you want points, you can do this thing, or this other thing. Maybe you can stop that guy from getting points, maybe you can build an engine to get points faster… but at their core, most games are about mechanics and systems.
TI4 is one of the few games that doesn’t tell you what you need to do to win, it asks you “What kind of player do you want to be today?” It then presents you a viable route to victory that allows you to be that player… and everyone can be the same kind of player or totally different players and they’re all balanced and equally viable*.
TI3 did this in spades, but the cost of that viability was time: a solid 6 player game took between 8-10 hours, which is just too long to keep the threads going. Especially if you get a mid-game thrashing that looks unrecoverable… normally it wasn’t as bad as it looked, but it certainly felt bad. TI4 sacrifices some of the variability (there is no longer a viable “Spy/Assassination” path to victory that I can see, due to the removal of diplomats/assassins… and an “Exploration” victory has been removed due to the removal of the “Distant Worlds” expansion components) in order to cut the game length in half… my 6 player group played it 12 times in 2019, and by the end we had it down to under 5 hours most games (the shortest clocked in under 3). I was able to work a full day on Saturdays, get home by 6, and we could still have an unrushed game in the evening.
It’s also a great opportunity to learn more about your friends. The fundamental dichotomy of game playing is “I play the game in the same way I live my life, as a reflection of the values I hold” versus “I play the game to win at all costs and to do less is a disservice to my opponents and to myself.” TI4 is one of the very few games where both these groups of players can sit at the table and play a really, really good game without too much fear that one side will “ruin” the experience for the other.
It’s magical. The ending is almost always cinematic and climactic, there are swings of power, and the wheeling and dealing can be vicious or friendly within minutes. The meta-game can often be as interesting as the game… and all of this in a short 4-5 hours for the full 6 players… or, even better, a perfectly viable 2-3 hours with 4 players that, while not quite as epic in scope is still amazing.
Now, I admit that I have a weakness for space opera games (I own Eclipse, Eclipse 2nd Ed, Star Trek Ascendancy, Empires of the Void 1 and 2, Space Empires 4X, Forbidden Stars, Dune, Rex, and Cry Havoc), and all of them do something better than TI4… but none of them do as much as TI4 as well as TI4 does it. You want a game that nails the exploration elements of a 4X better? Star Trek Ascendancy in a heartbeat. What about the economic and technological elements of the game? Space Empires is your bag. Combat? Forbidden Stars is a glorious knife-fight in a phone booth, and Cry Havoc has some of the best balanced, most diverse combat I’ve ever played. Diplomacy? Dune or Rex. And so on.
But as a whole? TI4 is a masterclass in design, variability, and both tactical and strategic thinking… in which diplomacy can make or break your empire depending on so many factors! Gah. It’s so good.
It’s not for everyone. 42 pages of rules, lots of exceptions, and if your attention wavers for too long the game can be merciless (plus an encyclopedic knowledge of the types of Action Cards that exist can be a definite advantage).
That stated, we’ve had numerous games where new players (my TI4 group has about 10 players in it, and we rotate through 6 of them each time we play with new players sometimes joining and older players phasing out) have won or come within a hair-breath of winning.
I could ramble for hours about how good it is. What a game.
(*All equally viable except the Winnu, which are the worst and nobody should ever use them but everyone wants to use them at least once to confirm that they are absolutely the worst and nobody should ever use them)
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Well this sounds fantastic. Thank you for the in-depth write up!
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TI remains the holy grail game for me. I need posts like this once in a while to remind me I’ll never quit the dream of owning and tabling it.
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I really need to get my copy to the table again, and somehow manage to set aside 5+ hours of kid-free time to really enjoy it. Our first and only play of this went for about four hours, three-ish of actual play, and then got cut short as one of our kids was having a bad day at therapy. Everyone was enjoying the game though!
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This is fantastic.
I have a group that plays an annual game of Here I Stand/Virgin Queen. We once played both in one day, which was exceptional - but generally once a year for a big 6-player game seems like an achievement. Once a month is astonishing. Having said that, since the start of lockdown we’re on our third online Here I Stand (using the wargameroom implementation), playing 1-3 turns every Saturday night. I’ll be surprised if I ever manage to get to the point of saying that I’ve had enough of super-long 6-player games (Game of Thrones is another that gets an outing about once a year and which is always amazing, especially with the dragons). I haven’t played TI4, but I feel like I know just what you’re talking about.
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Do you have a group of very decisive players, or is it just familiarity with the game that keeps the time down?
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Yes?
We have 1 player who is extremely analysis-paralysis (“AP”) prone, and a few that flirt with it. Most games we all have 1 turn that is critical and takes several minutes for the player to reason through (except me: I am very much a seat-of-the-pantser and rarely give even critical turns their due).
But the familiarity certainly helps. Our first game of TI4 took about 6 hours including setup. These days we’re down in the 4-5 hour range very regularly. A lot of that is a strange sort of trust: for the first few games I would watch as each player built their ships (the most common mistake, still, is building too many pieces of plastic at a starbase… everyone “gets” the finances of shipbuilding pretty quickly, but remembering that you can only build so many things at a spacedock is trickier), and now I just trust that they do it properly. As soon as somebody says “Okay, I’m going to build” we immediately move on to the next player. Even things like knowing which cards function as interrupts, and who can play those interrupts, speeds up the game.
In summation, I wouldn’t say my group is particularly decisive, but familiarity with the game means you can be more confident in the decisions you make and account for the ways you will be screwed-over faster. As a result the group does get more decisive.
Except for Chris. Who is a damned good player, but really struggles with AP because he needs to know the optimal move each turn. I’ve tried to explain that the optimal move is the one done quickly, since so much is always decided diplomatically, but it’s just his playstyle. To each, their own!
(Plus he wins his fair share, so you can’t blame him!)
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