by Creamsteak
Race Picks in Order:Rho Indi (gray)
Mechanema (white)
Hydran (blue)
Magellan (magenta)
Magellan (natural)
Human (black)
Human (red/me)
Round 1 - There were no improved hulls on the board so I was a bit loathe to go first, but that was what the Rho Indi player chose. Initial explores for magenta and black were planet poor. Blue found mostly ancients in all directions including a hive. Everyone else had a fairly balanced draw. Immediately alliances formed.
gray/white/blue, magenta/natural, red/black
Rounds 2/3 - Everyone continued to explore or farm ancients. My own attempts at the ancients were the only ones to fail (retreated dreadnaught, lost interceptor). I (red) continued to lose interceptors on every ancient at first. White took a huge lead in terms of money and total planets but did not amass much in materials. Blue was bottled up by white and essentially fought against hive ships that invaded. Magellan coordinated attacks together on a cruiser relatively early.
Rounds 4/5 - White managed to acquire anti-matter, splitter, and point defense. This combined with their starting positron computer and a fusion source was fairly frightening at this stage, the entire alliance stayed on ancients and building extra defenses around the center. There was a great deal of debate going on about how to spend the last couple explores, but the board ended up looking rather blob-like. Gray cut himself off from an ancient cruiser, which surprised me a bit.
Round 6 - The galaxy formed three distinct borders with only the middle shared. Both warp portal hexes drawn were in the black/red quadrant. We attempted to deny the warp portal development, then immediately someone else found a warp portal discovery under an ancient. At the same time, Magellan (magenta/natural) coordinated to take the center.
Round 7 - Well, picture of the board right before combat:
What we have here is the result of a two-front war for the three-player alliance. They chose to take the warp portal on the discovery for the option to invade red/black and then proceeded to move through to pin. Even with three different warp portals in, they were outgunned on the other side. The red fleet that managed to move through the wormhole also accomplished relatively little. The Magellan used a nova bomb to take out the faster interceptors that attacked the middle, then mopped up with a few casualties on both sides. Rho Indi wiped out his own fleet on all fronts. Red/Black both went plasma missile ships and white actually put most of his ships against magellan where they couldn't use their point defense.
Round 8 - Counter attacks through the warp portals took that hex from the three player alliance. They left blue to defend that field, and while he admirably shot down four missile boats before they fired, he was simply crushed by numbers there. Meanwhile magellan looked to be the strongest and were not attacked by black/red while white/gray shored up their defenses.
Round 9 - Final board layout:
The fleet in the middle moved around. Black/Red defended the warp portal and their one bottle-neck to the middle. Only black and blue researched wormhole generators. Gray took the last remaining ancient interceptor. Magellan proceeded into white space and took multiple important systems, but also lost their own when black came through half wormholes. Red was silently defending sides and spent most of the round on influence actions for the small VP gain.
Scores
40 (red/black)
31.5 (natural/magenta)
31 (white/gray/blue)
Black lead the individual score with 45.