Hi Just bought twilight imperium + shattered empires + shards of the throne (fortieth birthday last saturday)

as i'm new to this what are the best variants/optional rules to make standard for every game esp for a group new the game.

which strategy cards are the best to use.

i've had a go solo to get a feel for the basic rules from the base set only. playing it on wed night with my gaming group

I like the shattered empire strategy cards the best. The basic strategy cards have a vp exploit that you are forced to use to not lose the game...it detracts from the game I think.

distant suns is a cool mechanic that makes the early game more interesting and doesn't add too much complexity.

I never play with leaders or the facilities available in se cause too much rules added without alot of gameplay benefit.

I highly recomend the most up to date version of assembly as the new reps make the whole thing much more dynamic and since assembly doesn't always happen that often the mechanic won't bog down too much.

also the preliminary objectives are good fun

These are all opinions so I am sure some will disagree/.

Honestly, I would just start by playing a couple games with the base set alone. TI3 is a BIG game and it has a LOT of rules. Make it easy on yourself and learn the basics first, then add in the other two expansions and go nuts.

Yes, I would even recommend using the basic Strategy Card set. I fully agree with Solitear that there's a flaw in their design and the SE set are much better, but you should see that flaw for yourself so that you know WHY you're avoiding it. Also so that you know what the basic SC cards are in case you decide to "mix and match" some day.

Optional rules I enjoy:

Base game: Distant Suns, Age of Empire, sometimes leaders (though they almost always end up sitting on well-defended planets not doing very much.)

SE: Shock Troops, variant SCs, space mines, sometimes colonies/refineries

Shards: Don't own it yet, but pretty much everything looks sweet. If you DO decide to play a couple of games with just the base set, you might also want to give Fall of the Empire a spin before you mix in the stuff from SE. Apparent FotE requires you to remove all SE material as part of the scenario.

I actually like the Distant Suns option, and looking forward to the Final Frontier option.

I also like the Expanded Technologies.

I like the Sabotage Runs, although it doesn't seem to be a favorite option here.

The Space Mines are almost a must cause without them the Cruisers kinda lose something since all the other units can do something else besides shoot.

thanks guys

I'm really excited to play this game.

My group had an itch, a space gamesized itch... it needed scratching

So it was either this or get back into Star Fleet Battles.

Star Fleet Battles has been in my loft for the last eight years or so, gathering dust. I like'd Star Fleet Battles but i also remember the heavy rules manual and slow plodding game play. I have a spot for SFB but it's not a polished space opera

Since i've had my sights on this game i asked for money for my birthday and wow i got enough to get all three sets.While i understand this is a long game, (short compared to SFB) it looks and feels epic. now i've has a play test i know i love it. Bye Bye SFB hello TI3.

I've incorpoated the SE expansion cards as instructed to inthe rules but i am going to take the advice herein and just play the base set rules with no variants. ok i'll add in the race specific technology cards but thats it.

Now, i do have a couple of questions.

Firstly the imperial 1 card. You all, mostly, say its broken in that it gives 2 victory points to the active player, but doesn't the secondary function give all other players a better advantage that the active player doesn't have? won't people think twice about picking that card because of the fleet build up from the other players?

if it is unbalanced could'nt you just house rule that the card can't be selected untill the third turn or so of the game?

secondly the new SE public stage 1 and stage 2 objectives

the rules say that it's an alternative deck to the base set decks but would it work ok if you just shuffled the new cards with the old and then put the objective card deck together as normal?

thanks guys

I agree with everyone elses points so far.

If im not mistaken the imperial card also reveals objectives..if you never take it the game technically doesn't advance so its basically a wash. Basically for everyobjective that comes out somebody gets 2 victory points and that ends up outperforming the ability of most people to collect victory points.(one a turn and half of them or more are only 1vp). basically the timer for this game are the objective cards not the turns..bureaucracy fixes that..but I agree with a Steve-o to play with them and understand. The extra fleets are good but nothing is more important than victory points..unless the other players use those fleets to sit on the primary players hw.

I always mix public objective cards...it leads to a more dynamic game with a good mix of tech/resource and warfare/expansion based objectives.

off topic: I have oiwned SFB and advanced missions for over a decade and only this year found someone with the patience to play with me....epic fleet fleet battle between the klingons(me) and Gorn (we had fluff worked out as to how that happened) ...I thought I would have an easy time with my c8 but imagine my horror when i'm staring down the barrel of about a dozen plasma torpedoes and I forgot to arm wild weasels ) C8 out on the firs turn I only won because I managed to board and take control of his CL.....that game may be slow and plodding but a good imagination keeps you on the edge of your seat

ok back to TI-3 now

Yeah i have fond memories and good times with SFB. We got to start mid turn speed changes then some players struggled with it. I had the deluxe counters and maps and we really emjoyed it, ive recently seen photos of painted minis on the Geek and they look groovey.

Quite often you won becuse you knew the rules better than your oponent not necessarily because you played better tatics. this wasoften thecase with my gaming group, and i,d drip feed in new sections of the rules each week or couple of weeks and hand out photocopies, but some players just found them hard work.

Federation commander is a simplified version of SFB but caters for bigger battles.

For me now, I'd like a fully immersive game where the rules are easy to teach and remember, where the art and bling draw you in to the theme, setting and athmosphere of the game.

I think TI3 is that game, i'll let you know on wed night how it went

The Thing In The Attic said:

A common mistake for new players to the game is to forget the objective which is to gain victory points and go for something more tangible, like building ships or developping technologies.

We've played over 30 games and every single time, the winner was a player who succeeded with his secret objective. The secret provides 2 VP and is a huge game advantage if you manage to do it.

Now imagine a strategy card that gives the same bonus just for picking it up... The 2 VP Imperial I provide are 1000 times more powerful than any other abiility of strategy cards in the base game. It made it so that a player was literally forced to take the initiative card, just so he can become the speaker and next turn, be the first to pick a strategy card and take imperial.

Those two card therefore turned around the table clockwise from one player to the other, everyone wanting to get a piece of imperial.

It provided two major problems:

1) The player who starts the game with the speaker token (determined randomly) is the first to receive the imperial 2VP... which was a considerable advantage to him.

2) Playing an action card to let you keep a strategy card, or an action card to prevent another player from taking a specific strategy card meant you could more or less insure a win (keep imperial twice in two turns) or prevent a player from ever wining (prevent a player from taking imperial, meaning he lost his turn at taking the card). Missing on a turn for the 2 VP because of an action meant you just lost the game (about 90% of the times) because another player was just lucky to draw that card.

I would agree with others saying you should tackle a few base-game-only games under your belt before going for the expansions. I'd even say not to use some elements of the base games, like the leaders or even the distant suns (the later can be a frustrating experience and you don't want that in your first games). Include elements progressively from there on.

After all, i'm pretty sure you didn't start to play Star Fleet Battles with all the rules all at once.

And no, you can't really house rule not to take it before turn 3. That Imperial card is also responsible for putting the objective cards on the game, meaning the game will have no point for the first three turns. If you want to play with the original strategy cards, use Imperial II that was included in Shattered Empire as a replacement/alternative for Imperial I exactly for the problems i mentionned.

Just thought I'd add this as I don't see this option listed or mentioned. The game actually has a Long War option. What the game should have had in place of that Long War option (if only one option is listed, otherwise just list both a long and short war option).

Short War: 8 VP to win. In case of a tie have a method for determining the winner.

Do they have an option like this already? If not, why not? Seems like a logical thing to put in a game where I constantly hear about the game play length, this option would simply shorten it. If that meant it only takes 5 or 6 hours of play, I don't see why that is a bad thing.

Foreshadow said:

The "long war" option is not really that much longer than the normal war. It usually takes 1 or 2 more turns to play out (adding around an hour of game time).

What happens in a TI3 game is that points are harder to get in the beginning than near the end. Public objectives I cards can be hard to do near the beginning. Later on, they become real easy.

Knowing this, the half point of the game is usually marked by a players who have around 3 VP, and not half the victory points required (5).

Points 6 to 10 are much easier to gain than points 1 to 5.

All this to say that a "short" variant for 8 VP woulodn't be *that* much shorter to play out than a regular game. In my experience, when a player has 8 VP, he's only a maximum of a single turn away from the 10 required.

Usually the turn doesn't even end, the player ganing the remaining points from other methods before public objectives claiming (artifacts, voice of the council, etc.).

I agree to start with the base set of cards. I always teach new players using the base cards, as I think they are much more straightforward than their SE counterparts.

obsidian said:

I, however, teach new players directly with the SE alternate cards.

They are not *that* much more complicated to understand. And it prevents those players from having to re-learn all of them in a future game.

In our game, the only rules we do not play with are the option to let a fighter destroy a War Sun using a Star Wars maneuver... we find that one a little *dumb*.

Also, while we use the Distant Suns option, we don't use the rules for bombarding them to get rid of them. 1st because no one ever used that rule in all our games and 2nd because mechanized units and/or the diplomacy II secondary are much more viable options to get rid or through distant sun tokens than the bombardment.

The leaders, we only play rarelly with them, with very experienced players only. We find they add little for the amount of complexity they bring to the game. It's the only part of the game where we need to have a constant look at the rulebook to make sure we are using them correctly. Too many abilities and too many charts of dice rolls and rules when they get captured in space or on the ground. We find the new mercenaries from Shards provide the same interesting "basic" idea as the leaders, but are better implemented.

deedob said:

Most of them aren't that much more, true, but I think Bureaucracy is. I also should add I use Imperial II and Age of Empires for the first game. Otherwise new players are at a disadvantage in not knowing what objectives may come up.

Even with new players I'll never go back to the dark ages of Imperial I

I'll break with everyone (sorta) and suggest you play the Fall of the Empire scenario presented in Shards of the Throne. It's got a lot of things going for it for a first game:

• It uses the base strategy cards, except for two replacements: one is the Imperial card everyone talks about as being broken, the other is the Political card (because it uses a slight tweak on the politics part of the game).
• Preset map. This is important for your first game as it removes a setup variable and ensures everyone has a decent area to work with.
• No objectives. While objectives are awesome in making this not a wargame, for your first game you're going to be just trying to get a hold of the general mechanics. Once you know how everything works you'll be equipped to make strategic decisions about what objectives to shoot for, but for your first game it's a lot easier to just have one super goal.
• Basic races. No one breaks the game in weird ways.
• Almost no other options. Simplicity is the name of the game here. The game is complex enough on its own and it's better to focus on fewer things right away.

Make sure you go through the goals deck before dealing them out so everyone knows what sorts of things will win the game, but if someone does something sneaky and pulls out a surprise win, you'll still have gotten a good understanding of the basic rules (and learned a sneaky trick!) in the process.

The one goal that doesn't seem to really work is the one that involves handing out all your treaties (the only new mechanic you need to learn beyond the basic rules for the scenario). I'd just remove that from the deck and use the rest. You should also specify that no one can give up their home system to help an ally claim the "Traitor" goal. You might even just skip the Treaties part of the scenario and have everyone work toward their own goal.

I started my new players with base TI3, and in hindsight, it was a mistake. Age of Empire variant is HUGE for new players, since it lets them see what they *should* be doing. Imperial II goes with Age of Empire and is less confusing/stupid than the original Imperial card. We switched to the SE strat cards and the players liked it a lot more, especially Trade II and cheaper Tech. I haven't played Shards yet, so I can't say if any/all of those would be an improvement.

TL;DR: Age of Empire + Imperial II + Shattered Empire strat cards.