I have not played this game yet. I have the base game and both expansions. My family will play this game for the first time after my wife is finished with school (6 months from now). I have a couple questions so far, if you don't mind schooling me?

After opening the entire goodies and bagging them. I noticed I had 3 extra home world tiles. I have all the tiles for every race. I just thought it was strange to have 1 extra home world tile for 3 races.

After reading all 3 manuals. I have a question about replacing cards do to re-wording or fixes. Do I swap these cards out forever? So when one expansion says swap out these cards in the base set. Do I just remove the base set cards and bag them up and store them to never use them again?

Thank you for your time and I hope you had a great summer and I hope you have a better winter. Take care.

What home systems do you have duplicates of? I think the only duplicate system I have is a second Mecatal Rex for use in the scenario from Shards of the Empire, all the other hexes are unique, I think. I would be concerned that you somehow got duplicate home systems instead of some regular hexes, but I am not sure how you could check that without having someone go through their entire set and type in every system they have for you to compare.

As for the cards, yes, I believe you straight out replace them. Take the old ones and either throw them away, or if, like probably most people (me included) you are unwilling to do that, put them in a box and let them take up precious shelf space for the rest of your life.

Just checking. Your family is aware of the length and complexity of the game, right? My experience is that this is a massive, epic game that very much requires a certain type of person to enjoy and I wouldn't want you (or your family) having a bad experience with it because someone didn't understand what they were getting themselves in for.

I swapped out the cards. To answer one of your questions, my family is ready for an epic galactic conquest board game.

I do have one thing that concerns me and that is the extra pieces I mentioned. I am going to take an inventory today and email FFG support and find out what is missing.

Thank you for your help.

I might be nominated for a Captain Obvious of the Year-Award for this but...

There should be a list of the components that are supposed to be in each box in the respective manual. But I suppose you've already checked that off...

In regards to the potential duplicate tiles, the only ones I can think of that might seem like "duplicates" are the two home tiles for the Ghosts. I didn't know about TI3 until the expansions were already out, but is it possible any of the original home systems got errata or updates thus leading to the expansions including new tiles with the updated info?

In regards to the potential duplicate tiles, the only ones I can think of that might seem like "duplicates" are the two home tiles for the Ghosts.

I don't own that expansion myself, but I believe the Ghosts do in fact have 2 homeworld tiles. One with their planet(s) that is separated from the board and another that's just a delta wormhole, or something, which connects to the spot any other race's single homeworld would go.

Thank you everyone. My game will be fixed before I play it. With your help and FFG support all will be good.