We draw numbers (1-8 depending on # of players). Highest number (1) can either choose the speaker token or draw 3 random race cards and pick 1. If you take the speaker, you pick races last, if you take the races first, you pick strategy cards last. We play 6-8 player games so we found this to help balance the highest number and the worse. If you take the speaker, all races will have likely been drawn at least once leaving you with the leftovers.

There's no tremendously satifactory way we've come up with, other than to say we like choosing races with a degree of randomness and not letting people pick whatever they want ( the exception was with the new expansion, since we had 3 people pick one of the new factions, and nobody knew what they did when they picked them.

1. We have either just done completely random, but that led to some unhappiness, so we went to

2. Pick one faction at random. If you don't like it, you get one 'mulligan' but you must accept the second race you choose at random.

#2 has worked out pretty well for us and that's what we've been doing.

In our group, everyone draws 2 races and then selects which of the pair they'd like to use. Occasionally, we'll all just go through the stack and pick out a race that hasn't made it into the rotation in a while, to keep things fresh.

And Ysarril is banned.

We play with pre-set and agreed upon maps meaning that the group has to come to a more-or-less unanimous consensus on approving the map before we start playing.

Next, everyone secretly writes down their 1st Great Race choice, if there are no duplicates, each player receives the Great Race choice they wrote down. For players making duplicate choices, they each draw 3 random choices one at a time (returning the unchosen ones to the "pool" before the next player draws), with the last player getting 4 random draws.

Then we randomly assign Home System locations. The player who gets "Home System 'A' (or "1") is the first speaker and draws the 1st Strategy Card, then we proceed clockwise from there.

Well, we shall see. You obviously feel strongly about them not being powerful, but I'm not going to get into a 'theory' war on the internet about it. I'll say I'm open to considering they are not so great due to number of games I've seen them in. But they've been excellent from what I have seen. I'll admit that it takes someone who knows what they are doing to play them. It isn't a good faction for a person learning the game.

We usually just draw entirely at random, everybody gets what they get. No races are banned.

None of us are overly concerned with nit-picking the mechanical benefits of one race versus another. We don't fuss over the "quality" of starting fleets and stuff like that. We just play the game to have fun (and we usually don't actually finish anyway.)

Edit: I do recognize that the Yssaril are probably the most powerful race in the game, but I don't feel the gap is wide enough to stop using them on that principle. There are enough races to choose from that we don't have to worry about Yssaril being there in every game, spoiling the fun for everyone who isn't them. =P

We pick 2 and choose 1 of those.

After everyone has chosen a race, we randomly distribute the home systems around Mecatol Rex for starting positions.

We then roll a d10 each and highest will be speaker. If 2 or more are tied for highest, reroll among them until one has highest.

Usually we get 2 and chosse one, then rool for speaker - very standard it seems

Then we wanted to try something new

we divided the races into 3 pools, first pool with 3 races, second with 5 or 6 and the rest in the last.

each player would then pick a pool. if they pick pool 1 they get 3 trade goods, pool 2 gives 1 trade good and pool 3 gives 0.

when everyone have chosen a pool we roll to see who gets to pick first. if more people chose the pool, than there are races in it, then the last players to pick move up a pool and pick after the players in that pool, however still gaining the TG's from the pool they joined first.

this rewards players for randomness

we've only actually tried it once - so it might need some tweaks

I take one race token from each race and put it into a bag, shake and each person picks out a token and that's the race they play.

I take all the home systems and shuffle them.

I then deal them to the players until there is not enough to go around.

Each player picks one and discards the rest.

I like the idea of rolling a d10 and giving the speaker token to the last pick and arranging seating order back up the picking chain so that the first race pick gets last strategy card.

The thing I like much better about our system (previously posted above) is that I have played a different race every game (12 total games, well, except I have played Fed of Sol twice), and most of our group wants to try new races each time. Our method more or less ensures that a player who has never played a given race, and wants to try them out, will get the race they have never played.

At least in smaller groups we just choose them. In principle my favorite method, game takes sufficiently long that one shouldn't play something one doesn't actively want. Minor repetition to develop a feel for a race is fine, I may object to more than 3 or so in a row because same cast makes the table feel kinda stale. Personally I currently specifically avoid repeating a race (unless i really misplay/misluck them and want a do-over). Sometimes we even adjust game options used to specific race wishes (recent example: "I want to see fully developed Adv Fighter Naalu on the table for more than a half-turn, lets do Long War".)

For now, races who are practically based on ruining everyone elses fun (and are thus interesting to have at the table occasionally, tiresome to have frequently) like Yssaril or Virus didn't tend to be picked, so we didn't have to adapt the "choosing is fine" method to them.

With new players around, we usually poll them for interests (based on Master of Orion races, gameplay mechanics or setting elements from other games, or whatever source helps) and suggest/assign corresponding races to them. Alternatively, they look through race cards and pick one with the image they find coolest, heh.

Infrequently just did draw 3, choose one, but not recently.

Actually, we have used pretty much all of these, mixed, at the same table before.

The group I play with is all pretty new to the game, so we just pick randomly from the homeworld tiles facedown.

I can imagine going to a "randomly pick one with a mulligan if you don't like the first pick" rule later on as we get more familiar with the different races and their abilities.

I'll be choosing my races based on their rule sets. My plan is to use this alongside a 40k based idea I have, and the races are to be chosen based on who they're rules are closest to.

for example Sol will be 40k Imperial Guard and Naalu will represent Dark Eldar (hight initiative and rather underhanded).

why would you ban the yssaril? If it is because you belive them to be over-powered, the L1ZIX Mindnet is far more powerful. and otherwise i probably can come up with a reason for how any other (except Xxcha) race is just as potent.

Count Jondi said:

The main reason that most people consider Yssaril to be the most powerful race (by a significant margin) is because of their ability to "skip" actions, which allows them to stall until everyone else has passed and then take whatever actions they have remaining when nobody else can react. That combined with their unlimited hand size for action cards (allowing them to stockpile "use as an action" cards that they can later burn in between "skips" on a critical turn) can be really powerful.

It's a subtle effect, but it can be devastating in the hands of a player who knows how to use it. Those who ban the Yssaril obviously feel that this is game breaking. I acknowledge that they are a powerful race, although I've never felt them so powerful that they require being banned.

I'm thinking of trying to give every player 5-6 TG's (or something) fromt he start of the game. they get one race pr default but can buy additional to choose from for 1-2 TG's each.

lets say you just want the one race to choose from, you would get 6 TG's
if you instead want to choose from 4 different races, you don't get any TG's

ofcourse all race sheets should be handed out simultaniously, so you couldnt just buy additional if you didn't get what you wanted the first/second/third time

My friends and I put all the systems in the middle face-down and draw. If we REALLY don't like it, we can mulligan, but you can always mulligan if you've been the race before (there's still a few races that very rarely get into games. Somehow, Muaat I think is in every single game we play). I really like the idea of writing down the one you want to be, and going from there if more than one person wrote the same race down.

As far as the Yssaril discussion goes, I think they were the best race pre-expansions, but you could make a VERY good case Sol takes that spot post-expansions.

We are still experimenting with techniques of how to choose races.

What we've done the last couple times is the following:

1) Everyone has +1 Political Card

2) All homeplanets are facedown on the table

3) Speaker is chosen randomly

4) Everyone, starting with the speaker, chooses 1 system-tile.

5) Those who are not satisfied with their race, may, again in order, pay 1 Political Card to choose a 2nd system tile.

The player may then choose between the too.

6) This goes on until everyone is either satisfied, or noone has PCs anymore (which cannot happen in 6-8 player games)

Players then have to choose from their hand of systemtiles, without revealing their choices.

Then we decide on the mode of galaxy-setup we want to use, but I guess that's a different topic

Alternatively, we skip the extra PC, and just do two rounds of picking. Three only if we're <=5 players and everyone chose races they already played at least once. Since PCs are equivalent to TradeGoods, we rather use PCs for this, since they have much more fun-potential, and are often burnt in the first two turns for economy-boosts anyway. Which is a little sad after all.

Maybe for a new expansion (*coughcough*) it would be interesting to force more PCs to stay in the game by some means.

We're still in a phase where everyone wants to try out everything at least once, and I guess that phase is rather long anyway with over a dozen races

I deal out 3 races to each player, and the two remaining to myself. Once everyone has chosen, I deal out a 3rd one to myself from those not chosen. Then I choose my race.

2.1 Race Selection
Each player has four dierent options of choosing a race. Players who have fewer choices
to select from than others are compensated with Trade Goods according to the following
table.

Option Bonus Trade Goods
Select a specific race 0 TG
Draw 3 random races, select one 2 TG
Draw 2 random races, select one 3 TG
Draw 1 random race 4 TG

The options are chosen secretly and simultaneously. Players who choose a specic race
reveal their choice rst. Then take one control marker from all races that are left and
have the other players randomly draw 1 to 3 markers according to their chosen option.
The draw and race selection is done secretly.
Players now receive Trade Goods according to the table above, but only according to
the dierence between best and worst option. For example, if one player chooses to draw
three races and all other players choose to draw one, then one player receives 0 Bonus
TGs and all others 2 Bonus TGs.
In the rare case, that 2 players choose to pick the same race, roll a die to decide who
gets to play the chosen race. The other player immediately needs to choose another
selection option.

Read about our other Setup rules here

And check out our PBF Forum here .

I had made a Random Race Generator. Every player rolls a d20, and whatever race came up they were that race. On a 18 or 19 or if they rolled a race that someone has already selected, they would Roll Again. Only on a 20 will a player would be allowed to pick their own race. I tried it with the gaming group here, and they liked it a lot.

Personally, I like it when people don't get what they want (me included). It spices up the game when you have to play something you are not comfortable with. I hand out to each player three cards and they have to pick two cards (One they love and one they hate), and discard the third. Then they mix them up, and randomly trade one to a person of their choice. Then with the two cards they now have they can pick which one to play. You just have to hope you didn't give up the one you want and took the one they wanted.

If you can't tell we've been playing this for way too long.

There is no such thing as to play this game too long…

If the Yssaril do come up in a game at random why not use a house rule to hold an emergency "Galactic Council" where all the other players elect another player to "deal with them". Given the nature of the open diplomacy in TI3 the elected player may aid rather than raid the Yssaril player. Could make for an interesting alliance if the whole table turns on the Yssaril and their Galactic Council appointed overseer. 2v4 is much different than 1v5.

IDK, maybe that's too much trouble for you but i just hate the idea of taking anything our of a game, I'd rather find a way to restore balance