While I am no veteran player of Twilight Imperium, from the games I've played I had mixed feelings about several optional rules, such as the Leaders and the Distant Sun tokens.

The Leaders are of widely varied usefulness, and especially the Diplomat, and somewhat the Agent stall the game.

As for distant suns, a firts-turn Radiation as compared to your neighbor's free space dock, can be a crushing occurence.

Do you use them at all, do you sort the Distant Sun tokens into low-risk and high risk?

Do you use all the leaders or none, or do you allow each player to pick one leader to use?

What about shock troops and other stuff that came with the expansion?

No space mines, no facilities and colonies. The rest is in.

I don't sort the DS in risk-piles. Normally, they don't have such a great impact.

Leaders are very, very cool and a must in my eyes. They add so much to the game...

It is one of the variants to separate out the more harmful DS from the less harmful ones.

Option 12 on page 11 of the SE rulebook:

This option keeps all the excitement of Distant Suns
while reducing the risk of early expansion. Follow
these instructions instead of setting up the Domain
counters as normal:
1. Make a pile that includes all of the following
Domain counters. This is known as the “low-risk”
pile:
• Peaceful Annexation
• (2-Quality) Natural Wealth
• Native Intelligence
• (1-Strength) Hostile Locals
• Biohazard
• Hostage Situation
• (1-Strength) Fighter Ambush
• Settlers
2. Place all the other Domain counters in a separate
pile.
3. Randomly place counters from the “low-risk” pile
onto all planets in the outer ring as well as any planets
adjacent to Home World systems.
4. Mix all of the remaining Domain counters together
and randomly

I very much like and use the Leaders as much as possible. Going back to a game without them is not as fun. The Agents should not hold you back. You might have to just throw out a few AC at the person so they use him early so that later in the game the stronger AC will get through. Diplomats will only help for a turn as the next round they are still exhausted and then you invade. The can be a pain sometimes but can be gotten around.

In some games I have had an allliance to stop one player from winning where one player goes in to invade and get the Diplomat exhausted and then another player moves in takes out whatever ships you had and then takes the planet. It is a loss for the first one who has to go in and exhaust the Diplomat but with a team effort you can kill a diplomat right away. Another way is if you use Warfare I and remove the counter you just used to activate and attack and then do it again.

Generals seem to be the least useful and used of the Leaders but can come in handy at times.

I use just about all of the variants including Space Mines and Facilities.

Probing is the one option that while in the game never seems to be used at is wastes a round trying to get through to a planet.

My group has found leaders don't add enough to the game. They add complexity for very little return.

We pretty much always play with distant suns tokens but many people really don't like them because of how random and crippling they can be.

Space mines are nice and make cruisers a bit more powerful but if you want to avoid turtling then you may want to skip them.

We use PsiComas probing with Fighters, so we're cool here.

I have been playing Twilight Imperium since release with regularity and I can say that while I haven't tried every combination of every variant, distant suns and leaders are among the easiest to sort out really. Basicaly it all boils down to, how much time do you have to play. If you are finding the games are running too long for your group, then distant suns and leaders are pretty much the simplest way to speed up the game without affecting the games founding mechanics.

The reason is simple, neither distunt suns or leaders change any mechanics, they simply add to the game in various ways. As for balance, certainly you could argue for or against more or less balance in either case but thats more or less a mute point with Twilight Imperium, as the game itself makes very little effort to be a balanced game. It is, in many ways an 'unfair game' made fair by the actions of the players. I mean the races are certainly not balanced to each other, the system setup is rarely balanced. The list of things that are not balanced is endless, but in my view this is the charm of the game. It is a game in which players are placed in positions, sometimes in an advantage, sometimes at a disadvantage and usually somewhere in the middle. They must use their resources, their cunning and smart tactics and strategy to come out on top and in Twilight Imperium (in my experiance) its very rare that the person with the best starting conditions wins the game. In fact I don't ever recall playing a game of TI3 where I was able to predict based on starting conditions a winner of a game.

I do have one thing to say about distunt suns though, because while leaders stick more or less to the same format of balance (or the lack of) as the rest of the various games mechanics, distunt suns are really based on pure luck. There is no real strategy involved, its basicaly flip a token and hope for the best. To me this ditracts from an otherwise pretty interesting game which always involves a players decesion, add to that the fact that distunt suns extend an already long game and its a pretty easy decesion to learn to play without it. I usually recommend against playing with distunt suns.

I like DS tokens and leaders. More is better. If you don't believe more is better, then why aren't you playing Risk?

I'm not familiar with Psi fighter variant. But if you really hate the DS tokens and want a chance to avoid them you can use his variant (gives a random chance to peek at DS tokens with fighters I assume) or make up your own. Off the top of my head, I would say you get a 10% cumulative chance to peek at a token for every fighter assigned to scouting immediately before invasion, giving you a 100% chance to see what will happen before you go if you bring 10 fighters.

DS is commonly disparaged in the ti3 world.

DS adds more luck and more time. Some folks think the randomness adds to the game.

Leaders don't add alot of time, but I dislike the agent and diplomat as written.

I also am not fond of colonies/facilties and space mines.

Bill

The one thing I like about the leaders is that they give some very vulnerable races a sabotage. For instance if someone signal jams a giant Saar fleet with its space docks they have the agent to stop it once without having to dig for action cards.

Leaders: Hate 'em

The added complexity doesn't seem to manifest itself as better game play. When i play i usually have a couple players who are not frequent players (So if you tire of explaining rules avoid them) but i like to play 6+ people and it becomes too cumbersome and time consuming to use them.

Distant Suns: Love 'em

My group is one who likes the "random" elements of the game. It is true it can cause a sudden shift in the balance of power but usually there are alliances being made and broken on any given turn. So the more powerful tend to have the most tenuous grasp on power because of the threat they pose to their neighbors. I don't find them to be overly powerful and no more random than the systems dealt out, Races chosen, Objectives available, Action cards, political cards, and die rolls!

At this point i've only played a dozen games of TI, but every one has been significantly different and i think that the DS may play a roll in that.

Distant Suns: Haven't tried the expac rules version that reduces the pure randomness, but hate them from the base game. I love that there's a bit of an exploration aspect to it, but the effects are too random and possibly game altering. No go. Will try the more 'balanced' version at some point.

Unfortunately I don't think I've ever played a game of TI that didn't have _one_ new player, so we haven't tried leaders yet.

I love both.

Leaders I think are necessary because they round out the races. For example, most people agree that the Diplomat is very powerful. Most people agree that the Xxcha are not. The fact that they have 2 Diplomats makes them suck less. To not have them the Xxcha are even more unplayable.

Distant suns are a fun because they add an element of surprise to the game. My group always plays with them so it wasn't until a PBeM game that I realized how boring the first rounds of a game are without them. There's no strategy. If by normal rules you just take over the good or bad systems around you. And they are not game-breaking so no player is ever out of the game because of Distant Suns. If it looks like they are, then they probably aren't a very good player.

Could only agree, friend Psyco.

Facilities, Space Mines, DS tokens, Leaders....are games pieces to be played!

The problem with these pieces, is the randomness they inject into the game.

Many players absoultely despise the sheer randomness of these pieces.

You count on taking a certain planet next turn, and then your wily opponant, puts a diplomat and minefield there this turn.

And then your General dies on a radiation DS counter, Your opponent buys up all the refineries and now has a 4 or 5 resource lead on you,.

Pretty hard to Plan your moves when this stuff happens!

We could very easily have a lengthy discussion as to wether or not randomness is or isn't a good thing but it boils down to player preference. I do want to add one thing about distunt suns and the effect of randomness on the game. It seems to me (in my experiance anyway) that no matter how many times I play with distun suns, no matter how random the effect should be, its rarely anything but predictable to me. It never fails, the person who is in the weakest position and needs the most help gets screwed by distunt suns and the person(s) who are already at a highly advantagous situation are boosted by distun sun.

The result is always the same and while I realize that is nothing more then random chance, it is actually for this reason which routinely took place at our games group table that we banned distunt suns from play. The randomness simply wasnt random, it was predictable and it always screwed the people that needed the help and helped the people who needed to be screwed.

BigKahuna you are just having a perception problem. When someone is hurting and they get screwed by distant suns it is much more memorable and noticeable than when a player doing fine gets a bad distant suns token. Likewise when a player with a lead gets a good distant sun token. So looking back on games you remember the lopsided distant suns and forget the ones that had little impact.

With all of that said I prefer playing without distant suns because it makes the game so much faster. I also hate the inconsistent rules differences between fighting distant sun tokens and enemy players.

blarknob said:

There is no question that the effect distunt suns have on the game are a matter of perception (at least in terms of how often they yield good vs. bad effects and stuff like that), but anytime in a game a player gets screwed out of contention by nothing more then random chance despite anything else and is forced to play a 6 hour game knowing his chances for contention disapeared when he flipped over a random token its not a good thing. To me, loosing should result from actions taken by the player that didn't succeed or actions by others that did. Anytime it happens as a result of bad luck, at least to me, it makes the game considerably less desirable, especially when you take the whole scope of gaming into consideration in which there are plenty of great games you can play that do not spoil your chances for victory through random chance.

Given that Twilight Imperium can easily be adjusted (by simply not using distant suns) into a game that does not rely on random chance there seems no logical reason to do otherwise. I mean I understand that some people actually like 'randomness' and as I mentioned before, thats just a preference. I mean I know people who love to play Yatzee, but no matter how you play it, its a game based primarily on luck, not tactics, strategy or anything else. To this effect I say distunt suns turn a game of strategy like Twilight Imperium into something closer to yatzee in which the relevance of skill is diminished in favor of random chance.

Psyco said:

Did you seriously just say that?!

Have you ever seen what happens when a Jol Nar player is stuck with his HS and a 1/2 system for 3 rounds due to Distant Suns? Have you? I bet not.

Distant Suns are a TOTALLY random element that should NEVER have been put in this game. The fact that you said no player is out of the game b/c of them or they are a bad player... Psyco, you are asking for someone to beat the crap outta you there. I think I will introduce Mike to this thread and see what happens...

Oh, and the Jol Nar player I mentioned? He was overrun by the L1z1x in those 3 rounds.

DS Tokens do have one good use. You can use them to shim up a table, etc.

My group really likes DS for some reason, at much distaste from me. So I refuse to play with them unless we use the low risk peripheral DS version.

Unfortunately most of them don't like playing with leaders, but I love leaders. They really do enhance, enrich, and round out the races. All leaders have their place, so once you figure out their place they are all useful. They clutter up the board a little and it's tough to keep track of when you have inexperienced players.

Try having every race just pick ONE leader from their set of 3. It's less to keep track of, which can be a bonus if you're players don't play this very often like mine but you can still get your Admiral or you Diplomat or whatever.

I always play with the Leaders and would not like a game without them. They are a tgreat addition to the game.

I also use Distant Suns whenever I can. Although I add 2 Trade Goods to everyone at the start to help offset some of the nasty ones early on and that seems to work well.

I NEVER play with DS, but if anyone has to, I would suggest using the lowrisk/highrisk setup.

Beren_Erchamion said:

While I agree that Distant Suns are a completetly random element which can have a negative impact on gameplay, I disagree that it doesn't belong in the game. The idea of 'discovery' and 'exploration' is a big part of the sci-fi genre (the so called 3 x's) and this element definitly has a place in Twilight Imperium. While I personaly don't like distant suns because I prefer more serious games, I have met plenty of people who absoultly refuse to play without them as they see the random element as a crucial part to disturb the repetativness (boring) early rounds of the game as well as appropriately setup the atmosphere of the games setting. A point I do concide as Twilight Imperium openning rounds are extremly predictable and quite boring which is why my group usually uses simulated early turns to skip over this rather boring period in the game.

With that said I would also point out that in my experiance distunt suns almost always eliminate a player from contention well before his time as a result of negative draws. This type of 'randomness' I think is what turns most people away (myself included) from distunt suns. One way to get around that if you really want to have that exploration factor of gameplay is to adjust the rules of distunt suns a bit to make the negatives aspects a little more avoidable.

I would suggest changing the probing rules to allow players to probe and land in the same round. This small change eliminates the 'Oh crap' factor of the really bad things and allows a player to plan around what he knows is there. The impact of the distunt suns remains in tact but is considerably less likely to screw a player out of contention completetly.

I also like the 'balanced tokens' rules, this seems to go a long way to ensure that players are going to get some good and some bad in the course of their exploration of the galaxy.

I was thinking of making a change to probing in my next game to make it more viable. right now it just takes a turn away that you could have had the planet when probing.

I was thinking of trying to keep the same meaning of probing that FFG has in their rulebooks but with a small change.

For each Fighter that probes a planet 1 less GF can land in invasion.

This would make it so that if you took 2FF and 4GF with a carrier and went to a 2 planet system you and wanted to probe both you would then only have 2 GF to invade with. This might offset what you do in the case of probing a Biohazard or Radiation token.

Believe it or not, I think Mike was working on modifying the DS Tokens. I will have to see if he ever finished that. I remember he had some really good ideas for those that would use Distant Suns.