Strengthen Bonds: an async Twilight Imperium podcast BLT

Bluebird joins BLT as a co-host this week to talk about the best strategy cards, enjoying the lore of the game, and why the Argent Flight is the best faction. 
 
1:25 Strategy card discussion
3:30 Tech of the week
7:10 Weird game mode of the week - Bluebird's version
12:00 Async tips of the week
14:24 Weird rules thing of the week
17:15 Various updates

BLT reads a bunch of action card flavor text and asks you to guess which action card it comes from! Anyone know who Connor is? Oh, and he took Mecatol Rex while on an airplane. 
Check out the flavor text quiz here: https://forms.gle/p72GzRumyxDtLjYF6
1:12 On explaining to "normal" people that I have a weird podcast
2:50 Intro to flavor text quiz
4:40 Flavor text time!
9:45 Tech of the week (Assault Cannon) (and… Production Biomes is good?)
13:50 Various updates
 
 
 
 

BLT talks about playing, fast and slow — plus, let's win a silly popularity contest on BGG! 
0:35 - Root for Fin in the SCPT Finals!1:35 - On playing fast and floating windows7:55 - Vote for TI4 in the BGG Geek Madness tournament! (and like a lawnmower or something?)10:28 Weird game mode of the week11:33 Tech of the week (Psychoarchaeology)14:42 Async tips of the week17:00 Various updatesBGG Geek Madness: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/335702/2024-geek-madness-tournament-quarterfinals-elite-e?itemid=10706244#10706244

Rand joins the show to talk about the origin of TI Junkies, the importance of emojis, the joy of playing Nekro, and an idea for building up a TI Junkies-esque story for every async game! (warning: I think I actually got the volume louder finally!)
1:28 Why play async when you get to play TI synchronously so often?
4:07 Why async is better than IRL! 
6:25 The origin of TI Junkies
9:45 Can we record micro-summaries from each player at the end of each round, and then reveal them at the end?
14:45 Rand's infinite money printing scheme
21:35 Do you derp more in async or in live games?
24:30 Shoutout to Zulu's tournament in Seattle
27:20 Tech of the week (Plasma Scoring)
31:04 Various updatesTI Junkies YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TIJunkies

BLT introduces the Tournament 2 finalists and shares some info about each of them, so we know who we're watching! Also a final update on Sigma's leaders  tournament, the first all-Commander game, and BLT hits 100 PoK games played.
1:41 - Intro to Tournament 2 finalists
9:44 - Best thing I saw this week
10:57 - Stats thing of the week (Sigma's leaders tournament: https://challonge.com/ti4lead/standings )
15:40 - Tech of the week (Infantry II)
21:30 - Weird rules thing of the week
23:03 - Various updates
 

BLT discusses the practice of selling the speaker token to the person on your right, with input from pally and OldTom'sBootsandHat. Also, this was recorded before the  last Tournament 2 finalist was determined — more on that next week!
1:45 Selling the speaker token
13:55 Best thing I saw this week (infinite Nekro/Letnev money)
15:58 Random stats thing of the week (randomkiblitzer’s Tech tournament: https://swissonlinetournament.com/Tournament/Rating/2342875ccec149ed849dcf1edc38793f )
19:00 Tech of the week (Dread 2)
21:25 Async tip of the week (bot thread buttons)
24:58 Weird rules thing of the week (Creuss IFF)
26:26 Various updates