That's going to not be a huge deal. Yeah. I would not trade it to one of your neighbors. But that's kind of a bit of analysis before we get into the meat. One thing that we would like to say before we really get started is when it comes to talking about the Necro virus, when it comes to strategy, if you do a quick Google and your old Google bar, you're going to find that there's actually not a lot said out currently. As far as TI4 goes, it's kind of a bit of a mystery. I think the problem is that because their tech game isn't really dependent on what they want, it's hard to really form a strategy around them. So we've kind of narrowed it down here at the beginning. We're going to talk about what will always be true here at the top when it comes to the Necro virus.

The thing about Necro is in our tier list, we rated them situational. We said they were situational and some of that still holds. So the reason this guide is so hard to do is because there are many different types of situations that Necro can run into. So we're not going to go through all of them. And so yeah, we want to start with what Hunter, what are the known factors with the Necro virus? What is not situational? What will never change?

Two major points I want to make before we get into everything is that as we've already said, that flagship is crucial. And we're going to go ahead and say the way that it is crucial is primarily defensively. It may be the best defensive unit in the game. And we're going to couple that point with one thing. Mechatol Rex is always going to be worth victory points. And the reason we want to say that is not to make some, we're not trying to get into some sort of argument that Necro virus is a mechatol Rex race. It isn't. But it can be really daunting to play as Necro virus because sometimes all of the early victory points could be tech focus or you might get a tech focus special or a secret objective. If you get that, that could be daunting because for everybody else that means, oh, I just got to take tech and research whatever I want. And for you, that means you have to fight that many people, that many battles you have to fight. And that can be really daunting. And if a lot of that comes up, that could really wreck your game. So what we want to call to attention to is that if that is happening to you, I think it's time for you to focus on mechatol Rex. And now we're really getting ahead of ourselves. But we wanted to make this point before we get into the nitty

group. Just know that with all things falling apart, you can always go for mechatol. You can just always do that and you can always try to eke out points that way. If everything else fails, go for mechatol. Park your flagship on mechatol

with as many ground forces as possible. And there's no limit to that with the flagship. But now let's do this. Let's go early game. Let's do this how we normally do. We just wanted to make those points at the beginning. Oh, also, let's start. Let's talk about their home system. It's not very good. Yeah.

Okay. It's a four zero four zero. It's fine.

It's not great, but it's whatever. The zero is a little bit obnoxious. Hunter. Early game.

Here's my question. Yeah. Let's do it. Let me up questions. We're building the map. What kind of home system, what kind of home slice does the necro virus want? I would say in this way, they are quite generic in

that really anything will work. What you want to focus on more than a specific slice is who your neighbors are. You want to be next to tech specialty races. What's your ideal neighbor? Probably Joel Maher. Sure. What are some other good ones? That would be great for you. Barony. Barony would be a really good one. Mentak. Mentak would be a really good one. L1Z1 would be a really good one. Anybody that gets either very interesting, good racial tech or Braque. Sorry.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. Almost everybody. If the person is going to go for their racial tech, they are probably someone good to go for it. I guess they will not get a lot of tech. We are going to later suggest they get their dreadnought to upgrade. And necro wants that. You need to...

Essentially, we could talk all day about all the different neighbors you have. Essentially, the point we want to make is that for you, it's more about who you are sitting next to unless you are on pie slice. That doesn't mean pick a bad pie slice. Pick a good one. What factors don't apply to you like tech specialties? Those are useless to

you. I want to drive home that tech specialty point too of really try to surround yourself with pie slices that have a lot of good tech specialties. Because your neighbors are going to have this extra incentive to go for late game tech, which means you are also getting to go for late game tech. So it's like... It's not a crucial thing. I wouldn't sacrifice. I wouldn't take the lowest resource value system if just because it's in between a bunch of technology specialties. But all things even go for the one

that's sandwiched between a bunch of technology specialties. This is a point that I think we're kind of... It might get confusing for you as a listener. There are times that we're going to talk about stifling tech as a necro. But in a long term kind of way, you do want people to research good tech because that's how you get good tech. So sometimes people have made an argument of like, oh, I'm the necro. I want to take the tech specialty planets. That's why nobody can use them. And I think that's a little too long term stifling versus like there are maybe some short term reasons that you're going to want to stifle tech at certain times. But not like the hat. That's too much. So let's talk strategy cards.

So yeah, we placed the map. We didn't really care where we ended up necessarily. What do we need to take round one?

I'm going to say that there's a lot of different ways we could go with this for necro. And I just feel like my favorite is taking tech. Because it stifles tech a little bit out of the gate, which is fine. At the beginning, you're not going to be able to attack many of your neighbors. So you don't really want like Joel Nargitting the tech button and getting to research lots of tech and just kind of running away with it at the beginning because you're not going to have access to it for sure. So I like it in that it makes it where everyone kind of has to make a choice as far as tech goes. And you get leadership basically.

You get a bunch of command counters and

that's always useful. Without automatically giving everyone else an opportunity to

do that. Someone else will probably take leadership, but you at least get the benefits. And honestly, throughout the course of the game, as many times as you can take tech, that's probably going to remain a consistent theme of just like, hey, three command counters for nothing. That's definitely where you will talk about this more later, but you get a better deal out of tech than most people get out of leadership. So what's next? What else? Okay, we didn't get tech. We went

third. Let's get politics. Why? I'll just say at this point, being the speaker as Necrovirus has some interesting ramifications in the agenda phase. It is basically the only way you will ever get any kind of say. And also it takes away

a crucial negotiating chip at the agenda phase table. If we took politics round one, and we're taking the speaker token, is there a setup for round two that we're trying to do? Is there an ideal round two?

You're going to want to lock down either warfare or if you feel like stifling tech even more and keeping that, you're either going to want tech round two as well. Or, well, because you didn't get it round one. And also getting ahead on command counters is very important to the Necrovirus and that is something that is a known quantity with Necrovirus is that you have more ways to get command

counters in anybody. You should never ever ever have a command counter problem. Yeah.

Just never, never. You get three for researching a tech and that happens in all kinds of different situations. There are lots of situations where you can automatically-

I mean, realistically, you can spend a command counter and for resources to then gain. You can net two command counters for four resources. I mean, it's a better deal. It's still a better deal than leadership. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. But the, so the reason that I'm saying you're, you're going to want to take politics round one as your second choice is only if you're looking at taking an early mechatol Rex play. So that's kind of a way you can go with Necrovirus is then you'll take warfare round two and then use that to get to mechatol first. Okay.

So I think in most games you're going to be able to get politics, but let's just kind of run down the list. You don't have to go into a huge detail, but like what are, what's the next few tiers of strategy cards that you would want to

get? I would say leadership could be next just to also get ahead on command counters if you weren't

able to get-

Yeah, tech got taken. Right. tech got taken. You still want the command counters. Trade and diplomacy kind of work out to the same for Necrov. You're not going to be doing a lot of trade, most likely. Well, the meta really works against Necrov as far as trade goes. Diplo is kind of the same thing. It's just like, are you getting those extra resources so that you can build your, you know, more than just a carrier and an extra infantry, which is your opening bill. So why is warfare so low on your list of round one takes? Why don't you want warfare round one? You only start with two infantry. That's essentially why. So you can at best

build more infantry in your home system, take all your adjacent systems. I mean, it's not the worst play in the world, but

you could, I mean, if you're, if you're really wanting to commit to the mechatol thing and round one, sure, maybe, but I don't see, I feel like that is too early of a commitment to the idea because at least when you take politics, you're saying, Hey, I could go for that, but I also still just get my first pick depending on what the public objectives are. That's what I don't like about warfare is you're essentially saying,

I've already decided what my first two rounds are going to be. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So what are the secondary abilities that we need to use our command

counters on? You have a massive need for the secondary of warfare. That's the other reason not to take it. Yes. So you really need to use warfare to build that, to build that carrier and ground forces. The thing is the alternative taking warfare for yourself means that you're not, you're, you're building those infantry and locking them down. And I don't know. I just, I'd rather get them out there. I'd rather get them moving. Yeah.

Yeah. Even if you're going to be able to release that system, you're not getting much benefit versus playing some other strategy card, getting its benefits and then doing the same play that warfare would have allowed you. And also, let's remember

if I recommended tech because it gets you command counters, which allows you to hold on hold. Yeah, to hold for all this. You don't have to send

out your dreadnought with your carrier. You've got a dreadnought, a carrier, and a crew. I think that's another good reason for politics. You might get an action card that lets you delay once. Might be necessary. I mean, that's a low thing. I'm not saying like, yeah, you want politics because you want that action card, but it's like, that can help. It's another way to help. Our first, our top three picks are tech, politics, leadership. All three of those have the capabilities to stall and hold out to do the secondary of warfare.

And that's, and that's a big priority for you. The other secondary you want to look out is for diplomacy, refreshing the planets that you took to allow you to build more when you build off the secondary of warfare. Yeah,

build, build again in your home system before the round is over. You should have the command counters for it. So it's not that crazy to believe that you could

get the carrier and two ground forces out and then later build a dreadnought to keep it home. For sure. For sure. So let's talk opening moves. I say we're going to try and wait for diplomacy to happen. If you can play tech after somebody plays diplomacy, that is kind of ideal. Might not happen. You need to expand, obviously, and you need to build a carrier into infantry. Those are kind of your big. It's

a really basic opening for such a weird race. You have a pretty standard opening idea of what you're trying to

do. I feel like the only argument someone could make, I guess the alternative I could see you going with this is going for warfare because you're trying to get closer to a neighbor to try and get their tech. If you have a neighbor like Joelnar, this might be worth it. It might be worth it to get your dreadnought cruiser and to just send it all out there and get it close enough.

I mean, the sooner you get sariuene tools, the sooner you're going to be able to start pumping out more ground forces, extra resources, stuff like that. So it's worth looking at. So let's talk about that then. The conversation for starting tech for Necro is a completely different conversation, right? I don't get to decide my pathway, but what do I have my eye out for? And this also went down into, depending on how you choose your galaxy, like if you know the races that you're sitting down with, then you'll know what their starting techs are maybe. So, Hunter, what are we looking

for early? Sariuene. Yep. I mean, it's an obvious tech. It's one of the best ones in the game. Gravity drive would be nice. That's one of the great things about taking the tech strategy card is that you also decide when someone research this. So you can flip tech, and this is just kind of a general thing, but you can flip

tech, let someone research something, and then go fight them. Yeah. This is kind of why you said maybe wait for diplomacy to get played, because to a certain extent, depending on what you're wanting to do, yes, you wanted to stall out, keeping from someone from getting two techs, but you do kind of want everyone to get a tech. Round one, which is why you wait for diplomacy to get played. All of a sudden, everyone has all this extra money, maybe, everyone who did the secondary of it, then you play tech so that everyone, you can almost be an open book about that. Hey, guys, I'm going to time tech out so that you can all get tech, because obviously, I want your tech, that's going to never be a question. That's what your goal is. So yeah, I think it's totally fine to let the table know, I can time this out for you if you make it worth my while or whatever. We can work together on

making tech happen for people. Also, one of the things I like about not going for warfare is being able to keep my cruiser back at my home system and possibly ready to pop out. It still moves too. Depending on how your neighbor expands, you could get there. I don't know, I just think it's better to take tech. I think, honestly, I feel like the way we build the strategy card part is assuming that you're not going to go for warfare and we're building all these arguments against it. But I could see someone being like, I like to play it this way. This is just a more conservative, necro play, I think.

I think this is a reaction to the ways we're feeling about all these different strategy cards. They're starting to all feel a bit more nebulous to us. So, everything feels a little bit like an option.