The Draft
Timmy was the first to pick and he immediatly went for a slice then it was up to me to pick and i figured taking speaker would be a good move, by the time it would be my turn to pick again speaker would probably be gone and given that Timmy chose a slice I would be able to guarantee I would get to pick both my preferred slice and faction if I picked faction first, which I did.
Having played with Muaat before I knew I needed to have a lot of influence which is why I chose an influence heavy slice even if there was an empty space in the middle, something which my late game mobility would be able to overcome without too much difficulty.
The red skip is nice, but I doubt I'll get a lot of use out of it, since Meer has 4 influence and will be needed to pay for tokens.
The Other factions on the map are (in speaker order)
The Embers of Muaat
The Council of Keleres
Sardakk N'orr
The Ghosts of Creuss
The Nekro Virus
As you can tell most of the planets in my slice are on the right with a lot of empty space between the Nekro player and myself. I hope this might de-incentivize them a little from attacking me too much for tech. I expect them to show up at some point, but Muaat doesn't usually get a lot of usefull tech anyways.
As a consequence of this I will have a lot of plastic near the Keleres player which might scare them but generally Keleres doesn't fight much anyways so nothing to really worry about.
At this point I'm still debating what my best option for startegy card picks are, it will be probably be either warfare, trade or maybe leadership. But that is all open to change once I know my secret objective and the first public objectives are revealed.
Here's a view of the map as a whole
