Tawnos76 said:

We always play with Leaders and never with Distant Sun.

In the past my gaming group was 6 1/2 hours drive away and we didn't want the game be scrap by those DS

playing only once in a while make those games too precious to let that happen.

My group has played so much we use everything! It adds a few more dimensions to the game I believe. The more..the better. Sure at times your bad luck and an opponents great luck will leave you screaming but that's part of it. War was never fair....

My group INSISTS on using DS tokens. Seriously, there have been a couple games where I forgot to pull them out in time and got dirty looks from people. They do make the game longer, but frankly it's still a long ass game without them, so that's not much of a detractor for us.

Leaders usually get put down on the map, but most of us just leave them on the homeworld and never use them for anything, so they might as well not be there.

Space Mines, Colonies and Factories likewise rarely get used in the game we play, although that's at least partly because we don't use them often (and thus forget them.)

For me it depends on the size of the board. If it is a small board (3 ring) I don't like using them because they can have a big impact. If you hit some bad ones, the other players are close enough to capitalize on your bad situation. Or you could use them and filter out most of the nasty ones.

With a larger board though, I prefer them. As BigKahuna mentioned, I really like the exploration and risk it adds, and if you hit a few real bad ones, hopefully your neighbors are far enough away you can recover without too much trouble.

I'm working on a Distant Suns variant that I think can help the dislikers to tolerate them more, without detracting too much from those who like it as is. You can find the full discussion at this link: www.ti3wiki.org/forum/YaBB.pl

I'm still working out details of the tokens, but essentially, you "take" the tokens and use them kind of like action cards. They are all "beneficial" to the person who takes them, and I wanted them to be ROUGHTLY balanced, though not completely (getting some should still be better than others).

I you feel that the early rounds of the game are boring, you should try a variant where when creating the galaxy you have your Home system in your hand. This means that you could place it anywhere on the map rather than in the standard position.

From this follows that some home systems are closer than others, the best systems are much more in contention and makes the early rounds (and the rest of the game!) much more interesting. The following rules should then also be used:

• You may not place a HS right next to another unless you have no other option
• You don't have to create the galaxy ring by ring, just place each system adjacent to an already place system
• Placing order goes around the table in a circular fashion 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4 rather than 1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1
• No HS may be activated in the first round
• Muaat must start on the outer ring
• Mecatol Custodians must be in play

This variant was developed by PsiComa.

If you want to know more, come check out the wiki forum

I have always liked DS and Leaders. If I had to choose between the two I could let DS go as I like the Leaders in the game.

I do find it boring to play without either and have had my share of early game red DS. You can comback from them and I do not think they detract from the game. This is a matter of opinion with DS as some players will not play a game with them so it depends on the person and the group mostly.

I find Leaders to be a very good variant and like them in every game. I have gotten used to them and even the Agent is not to bad as once he uses his main sacrifice abilty he is off the board.