When you say 14 change requests, was any of it stuff that should've been in the original quote and you just missed it? Real curious where people draw that line, because half the time the client swears it's the same page and I can't tell if they're clueless or just pushing. And does the clause actually stop them, or do they just argue about it after the fact?

Feel for you on that one, nobody wants to learn grain the hard way at a meetup. I do the fold test too, but when the paper is thin I just bend a corner between two fingers and see which way it fights back less, since grain runs along the easy fold. It takes ten seconds a sheet and saves you from getting schooled in front of strangers again.

Wait, did the agenda card itself actually win him the game, or did you all just stop paying attention to what he was doing? Because in my experience the losing player usually can't sneak a win off one agenda unless the rest of the table hands it to him. Twilight Imperium is long but 11 hours with six players is honestly pretty normal, especially if people are new or take forever on their turns. What usually kills those games is not the length, it's everyone getting sloppy with timing windows late at night. So yeah, exhaustion deciding the winner sounds about right, but I'd pin it more on people missing triggers than on the game itself.