This thread's purpose is to retell stories that occurred during gameplay. Quick anecdotes, micro-session reports, etc.
I'll begin:
Last night I had a 3 player game of Xia, where Microdemon-One and the wife were against me. It started with me in the Numerator, loaded with an L1 engine, L1 shield, and L1 blaster.
We started with two asteroid fields and a debris field. I went to explore so I entered the asteroids, rolled a 10 (worst possible roll), and rolled a 1 on my shield roll, taking 9 damage. Microdemon-One, smelling blood in the black ocean of space, moved to me, fired on me, and blew me into dust.
Restating with a new ship, I ended up in the same spawn that I started at, this time with the intention of going to salvage in the debris field, which my wife had done on her turn.
Flew into the asteroids again, safe roll, but as I entered the debris, I rolled poorly and exploded AGAIN. Wife explored, got lucky with the planet she could sell the debris to, and scored her first fame point.
Fast forward, and both of them had 4 points, upgraded ships, upgraded weapons and shields. Me, I blew up so many times due to bad luck and opportunism on the part of my opponents, that I was in the last available L1 ship. I figured the only way to win at this point would be to nail a bunch of exploration tokens and hope for the best.
I rolled big with my L2 engine and floored it, thinking I'd blind jump into the next zone, snatch a token, and do it again.
First blind jump, I found Xia, the titular star, which melted me into hydrogen atoms.
Microdemon one took her turn, harvested, rolled badly, used Easy Tiger's re-roll, and scored a natural 20, winning the game.
Most fun I've had in a while.