Any TI fans on these forums?

I've played a whopping 3 turns of the game, but in a highly, highly modified format.

I've got a pair of gaming buddies who really enjoy coming up with house rules for their games. It's just their thing. Homemade Munchkin and Talisman cards, special rules for ridiculous combos (El Pollo Diablo in Munchkin comes to mind... what happens when the Duck on Your Head, Flaming and Monstrous cards all get thrown out together) and the like.

One of these guys is a huge Master of Orion fan and basically took it upon himself to rewrite TI almost from the ground up. It's maybe 70/30 new/old rules. Or so I hear, having never actually played the original.

... And it's pretty good. Really good, actually. I've been meaning to take the lists of hand-written, photocopied and taped-together boards and make a pdf version to spread the love. If I do so, I'll be sure to post notice here.

I've had the core boxed set and the Shattered Empires expansion forever, but so rarely ever get to play. A few weeks back we actually played through an entire game, with an actual winner. It was amazing! It was also our first-ever six-person game.

The more I play it, the more I realize how each race is pretty awesome in its own rights, despite lots of original misconceptions.

Played TI2 all the time, I have TI3 without the expansions. I get to play it about twice a year on average.

It took my group a long time to get used to the expansion in TI3, but once we finally got the hang of the new Strategy Cards, it's hard for us to imagine playing without them.

If I can justify it by playing more, I'll pick it up. I have a lot of new players to the game and learning the expansion without knowing the game could be easier....I hope.

I can't justify buying another one of FFG's BigBox games. I bought the WoW boardgame (horrible) and Starcraft boardgame (seems good), but I think I've played a combined five games of that $160 + tax in games.

However, it does look like a great game.

Maybe I'll bring it to next year's Fear the Con...

Played a couple times before. Getting a group together to Friday night to play. Looking to be 5 players and we're prepared to go until Saturday morning, haha.

That was a seven hour storm of backstabbing and kingmaking.