Eyeballing the 6-player galaxy setup in the learn-to-play book, there seem to be some disparities built in. Anyone try it to see if plays as fairly balanced?

We're getting our first 6-player in this Friday night, wanted to know if it was worth using. (Most of us are experienced TI3 players)

I've played it once one evening from GenCon and it was okay. I think I'll only be using it when trying to introduce the game to new players. Most of the people I play with are experienced TI3 players and they REALLY enjoy the 'building the galaxy' phase of the game because it allows you to gain an advantage in setting up your section of the galaxy. It's very common in the games I've played for people to drop wormholes right next to other people's homeworld. It's always fun to watch two factions to afraid to expand quickly because they HAVE to defend, and it's a couple of fewer people racing you to control the center of the map.

That being said, you don't have as much of that with the pre-built map - so it really just depends on your group.

You can always use the standard set up outlined in the Rules Referance if you don't like the preset maps.

(never mind)

We ended up with 5 for our first game, used the preset map and it honestly worked out great. Not sure how different it would've been with 6 (regarding how the map would be), but we didn't notice any terrible disparities.

My position ended up with only 4 planets nearby, but it didn't feel like the worst thing in the world.

Ultimately, the best part about twilight imperium is that you can and should put pressure on the players who have inherent advantages. I ended up second to MR and held it for few turns. Tied for first before we called it (it was late; we were really just taking it for a test-drive).

So, no complaints so far about that preset map.