I call these guys the vampire race. The Barony of Letnev is a pretty good race to choose although if I pick this race I will opt to choose again (yeah ok, it is a house rule). Keep your trade goods high and you get a +1 bonus on all combat if you can afford the 2 trade. They also have the ability to have one more ship than supply will allow.

When playing this race the first thing I like to do is build another carrier. Any race that starts with one carrier is limited on the amount of planets you can take over. Although this may not be my first move it is what I would keep i the back of my mind the entire rotation of play. Move your carrier ship out of the home world and take a planet. Save one command counter and one strategy allocation and hold off everything else until the Production card is played then build a carrier and go get another planet.

Plan on using these guys to fight and use command counters to increase your attack over the next guy. You will often find that other players will forget that you can have more ships in a system than your pool allows So keep ships at what your level is and then toss in the extra ship late in the game when the racial ability is forgotten and the advantage is necessary.

Dice to use for this race:

Stone Obsidian Dice

Speckled Granite Dice

Marbleized Charcoal and Red Dice