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Yes, April Fools - HARD Games Made HARDER for HARDcore Gamers
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E.R. Burgess
United States
Glendora
California
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Lots of BGG users have made terrific lists here on the 'geek talking about how they have made their favorite games easier to play so they can enjoy them with their young ones. I myself have done this to play games with my five year old (Carcassonne without the Farmers, TransAmerica with the cards face up, Die Macher pretty much out of the box), but I've seen few lists that have dealt with the other end of the spectrum - namely, hardcore gamers who have grown tired of the simple rules of most German-style games and seek out something meatier. In other words, attempts to complicate already reasonably complex games that would scare newbies right back to their Sorry! boards and Yahtzee dice. So, I've made this brief list of variants for some classic BGG games that will make for a great night (or series of nights) with your dyed-in-wool, hardcore gamer friends who think Ticket To Ride is for sissies.
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Posted Thu Dec 8, 2005 3:49 am
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E.R. Burgess
United States
Glendora
California
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This is widely perceived to be one of the harder games out there (for strategic purposes, not for the relatively simple but innovative rules). But it’s just not enough for the hardcore gamers in my group, so we’ve added a few extra layers.
First, Leaders are placed diagonal to temples for initial placement (ala Blokus) and Monuments can only be made from rhombus-like shapes, not squares of pieces. Also, a seasonal calendar has been added to allow for Farms to produce double victory points in Fall for harvest (and Markets during that busy holiday season!), Settlements and Temples in Spring (Baby Boom and guilty temple-goers contributing after Mardi Gras).
The variant also has conflicts (Internal, External, Inter-external, Exter-internal) resolve over sixteen rounds with regular cube replenishment, allowing for other players to add forces based on how many fall down the Wallenstein tower (had to borrow that from Wallenstein, natch). Winning a conflict not only allows you to remove the other player’s Leader and Supporters, but you are also allowed to flick (ala Pitchcar) one five victory point piece at the loser’s screen, with hopes of revealing his/her current victory total. If you are successful, all players pass three victory cubes of their choice to the right (if this happens more than once, the next time you pass to the left, then across).
Catastrophes work basically the same way except that you can pay four black victory points to remove one of these tiles. Additionally, you can pay three green and two black to turn a desert tile into a river tile (or four red and one blue to turn a river tile into a desert). You can also bribe the other player’s Leaders to just up and leave the board, although there is a chart for the number of cubes you need to pay to bribe the different leaders based on the player’s chosen symbol (this is said to be balanced, but man, I think being the Pothead sucks!)
There are also alternate rules for the Ark of the Covenant, Doctor Lucky and Evil Secular Despot tokens to move around the board and score different kingdoms – but the group's never warmed to those rules because they just seem silly.
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E.R. Burgess
United States
Glendora
California
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This is already pretty strategically complex but now that people have developed specific strategies, the once mighty PR has become as boring as Chess! Since the occasional intrusion of the plantation draws do little to excite the group any longer (although it is fun throwing them down the Wallenstein Tower to bring out the new selections), we now play the game much as it is designed except for these four very minor changes:
Role Selection: Instead of the tired mechanism of ‘selecting’ roles, we duke it out for the Privilege of each role every turn! How do we do it? Well, for the Settler – we break out a game of Entdecker, play it and the winner gets the Privilege! For the Mayor – Die Macher! For the Trader – Traders of Genoa! For the Builder – Bob the Builder Memory Game! For the Craftsman – Outpost! For the Prospector – Boomtown! For the Captain – Clippers! It does make the game take a wee bit longer but at least you know you earned that Privilege!
Buildings – We’ve added seventy-eight new single space buildings, thirty-nine two stories, twenty three-story ones, and one that takes up the whole building area and instantly ends the game – but good luck buying that puppy!
Island – The whole concept that everyone was building on the same-sized part of the same island was always bothersome to us. Is everyone building on different but identically shaped parts of Puerto Rico? Or if everyone is building on the whole island, how is it that our plantations don’t overlap each other and give us a chance for some wars!?! Rather than study Puerto Rican geography, we’ve created forty-two different islands that you are randomly dealt, with each having different sections which are good for some plantation types and are bad for others (thanks AOM – now we’re stealing one of your ideas back for PR!)
Unionized Colonists – Yeah, we’re a bunch of liberals so you actually have to pay the workers in our variant. Puts a crimp on your money and all but all the VPs in the world can’t make you FEEL that you are doing the right thing!
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3.
Board Game: Tikal
[Average Rating:7.42 Overall Rank:73]
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E.R. Burgess
United States
Glendora
California
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This is a terrific game with a lot to do, but after a few plays, we could only think that there could be so much more to it.
First, all players get 42 AP per turn, with the thousands of new actions we’ve added costing between 1/8 of an AP and 37 AP. Each turn actually is tracked as a development over time, so that while you start with camps, time passes and later in the game, you can build them into condos, mini-malls and McDonald’s. The three hundred page list of actions is nicely indexed so there is minimal Analysis Paralysis – I mean, no more than the regular game, at least.
Temples develop in fractional increments and you can put upgrades on them like broadcasting stations, Crystal Cathedrals, preschools, and bingo parlors.
A nice, new scoring system for the treasures has been added to allow for scoring based on combinations rather than boring old sets (sixteen additional treasure types have been added – but, again, there’s a nice chart to sort it out).
Expedition Workers are more Carcassonne-like in that you can assign different roles to them (each turn/era has forty-seven to seventy-two different roles (like Tribal Brute, Spittoon Cleaner, Prostitute, Sheet Metal Worker, Milkman, Romance Novelist, IT Professional) for you to assign them that are specific to the time period. A separate chart is also available for Expedition Leader assignments (like Politicians, Pimps, Astrophysicists, CFOs, Faith Healers). But have no fear - some helpful gamer put together an easy-to-read series of charts.
Oh, yes, and we have included a great combat system that includes a Rock-Paper-Scissors style initiative system (or, in Tikal parlance “Idol-Temple-Camp”) followed by dropping all of the attacking Workers into the Wallenstein tower (but in this game, the winner is the one who has the least number of workers come out – ha!)
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E.R. Burgess
United States
Glendora
California
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We just play every version of Catan together. It’s basically complex enough when you combine Starfarers, Seafarers, Cities and Knights, and Stone Age together with the basic game expanded to allow for so many numbered hexes that we use a roulette wheel to determine the production role and which of the seventeen different types of Robber Baron goes out (including the Corporate Raider, the Corrupt Politician, the Phony Religious Leader, the Greedy CEO – nicknamed Kenny Boy, and the Tax Collector) – which is determined by throwing all of our specially carved pawns into the Wallenstein tower and the first one out smacks down the selected number. Also, we’ve reincorporated Lowenhertz and Entdecker back into the game – the way it always should have been!
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E.R. Burgess
United States
Glendora
California
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Still in the works but while we love War of the Ring for its incredibly fiddly rules, we feel that the game will benefit by being incorporated with Knizia’s Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation, Lord of the Rings: The Duel, Lord of the Rings: The Search, Lord of the Rings Trivia Game, Lord of the Rings Children’s Game and even those lousy ones named after the individual books/movies.
Plus, that unsophisticated combat system needs something – hmm…I wonder if those minis will fit into the Wallenstein Tower?
Also, since the basic game is too short, we are working on calculations to play it in ‘real time’ so that each turn lasts the amount of time that the actions would REALLY take. We just need to finish plotting how long it takes for each type of troop to cross each country since they are, uh, fictional and all.
It’s actually our goal to finally develop a game based on The Silmarillion, since that’s the REALLY compelling one of the books, not the silly ones that the fat guy that talks funny filmed. Please – like you didn’t see the end of the whole trilogy coming a mile away…
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E.R. Burgess
United States
Glendora
California
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This game is highly underrated on BGG because the hardcore gamer community is slightly embarrassed to admit how much they love it. Privately, it's said to be a favorite of Ruediger Dorn and two years ago at the Gathering of Friends, Alan Moon was openly handing out a long list of variants.
We use some of the Moon variants in our games, along with the variants available on the hidden Pretty Pretty Princess page on Bruno Faiduitti's Ideal Game Library (where it is, oddly enough, paired with Stephenson's Rocket, although he prefers PPP). And, of course, Aldie is said to be a huge fan for reasons obvious to any regular GeekSpeak listener.
The variant we play includes principles for jewelry pricing based on the quantity of each item, with some variants valuing sets at a higher value. A separate set of game cards also includes events like Costume Jewelry Fake, Sale at Tiffany’s, and Unrest at DeBeers. Our favorite variant also provides for a majority holder in each color (colors chosen by the majority color of the gems on the items - be warned that some variants value some pieces at different values) instead of each player having one color. Each player also chooses a role each time (with the player possessing the Crown being ‘the Governess’) and their turn is based on the role they select (Pretty Pretty Princess, Ugly Ugly But Way Rich Princess, Princess Consort, Paris Hilton, Jeweler, Trophy Wife, or QVC Employee). And, of course, the dreaded black ring allows the possessing player to cancel jewelry acquisition for a particular accessory. And if fistfights break out, you simply drop all your jewelry into the Wallenstein tower and sort it out that way. It’s an amazingly kaleidoscopic game – different with every play.
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E.R. Burgess
United States
Glendora
California
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We basically play it as written, except with three Wallenstein boards representing alternate dimensions connected vertically. You can attack directly the other two dimensions for the same location or any immediately adjacent countries. Also, we stack those Wallenstein towers up for a SUPERUBER Tower!
Additionally, you can now build Museums, Bratwurst Huts, Boardgame Stores, and McDonald’s, in your cities too – with varying victory point values awarded for majorities, combinations of majorities, combinations of certain buildings in a single country, building a certain number of certain buildings in certain region – and it is different depending on which dimension you built it in.
But, don’t worry – there’s a handy reference card that my bilingual friend helpfully typed up in German only. Just plug it into Babelfish and you’ll be fine!
Actually, sometimes this still feels too light, and we instead play the game on three combined War in Europe/War in the Pacific boards/dimensions – although the rules for the country production were written by our friend who is into dead languages so the reference cards are in Sumerian, Ubykh, Latin (which he insists is not ‘dead’), Aramaic (making a comeback), and Klingon.
Playing time: 120 to 240 days.
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E.R. Burgess
United States
Glendora
California
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What? You are surprised to see this old, er, 'classic' on the list? Well, save the best for last, I say. I've 'improved' this old clunker by adding some worthwhile game elements to the poster-boy for bad American games.
First, the dice are gone. Kaput. Let the dog eat them (okay, well, don't do that – it’s not good for the dog). Our variant has movement based on an ordering system with each user choosing to move somewhere between 2 and 12 spaces each round. For each space that is benevolent, the player decides if he/she wants it to react to the space or move on. If he/she chooses to react to the space, he/she can do so as long as no other player wants the space. If they do, he must negotiate them not taking the space by offering something (ala Edel, Stein and Reich or perhaps Traders of Genoa) - money, property, utilities, free rent on a future landing – anything in the game, but no outside favors – we hate metagaming! If he/she chooses not to react to the space, one of the other players can choose to react to the space instead. If more than one other player wants the space, they negotiate. Mind you, each player may only react to a single space each player turn. And the less spaces the player moves, the less likely that another player will get a free turn on his turn. Similarly, the current player MUST react to a bad space unless he negotiates…oh you get the idea…
Additionally, Community Chest and Chance cards are now combined into two other decks - one containing the good cards and one containing the bad cards. When a player lands on Community Chest or Chance, he/she draws good cards equal to the number of players and bad cards equal to one less than the number of players. Then, the current player divides the cards into a number of stacks equal to the number of players, allowing the other players to each select one stack to play (think San Marco). Since this makes you go through the cards slightly quicker than normally, sixty-five additional good cards and forty-two additional bad cards have been added to the stack (like Cost of Living Rising - rents go up by 3%, Railroad Derailment - pay $300 if you own one, Slum Lord Accusation - if you own Purple or Light Blue properties, pay lawyers $700 and you must immediately upgrade houses at double-cost). And, of course there are scoring cards in that will score money for the player with the most owned properties on each side of the board.
Railroad ownership is a little more involved, too, since you only get the increased bonuses for multiple railroads if you break out the crayons and build your lines across the board and connect them (ala Empire Builder). Not my favorite part of our variant since the board is getting a bit messed up…
Utilities: The real money’s here! You can raise these rents at any time if you pay a $200 bribe. Or, spend $2000 to buy the presidency and then you can raise it as often as you like!
Free Parking: Yeah, this space still does nothing.
Go to Jail: Since the dice are gone, you cannot roll them to get out. That's okay, just flip the top card in either stack of Community Chest/Chance cards and if Uncle Pennybags has something in either hand, you get out of jail! (ala Bang!).
Luxury Tax and Income Tax goes up as the game progresses. Calculate the total income you have from all properties and you consult the chart to see how much you pay. Passing GO is no longer a standard payout - now it is based on how you did as you rounded the board. Players need to keep track of their earnings and then the person with the least income and the person with the most get $200 payout. Anyone in the middle gets a lower, appropriately rated payment. Our accountant friend came up with this part and he makes each player keep a ledger.
Buildings: In addition to houses and hotels, you can also build other dwellings including condos, townhomes, PUDs, Hostels, Mansions, Asylums, Assisted Living Facilities - all with different rents on the newly expanded Deed cards. Further, you can build other buildings that add to the rent for all of your properties of that color, including Malls, Miniature Golf Courses or a Circle K. You can even build Big-Box retailers to decrease the rent bonus of your neighboring community’s stores while increasing your own! These kinds of buildings are built on the pawn-landing section of your properties and can be purchased in the auction round where a player brings up the building they want and starts a round of open bidding. The buyer must then fit the differently shaped items into a space on the property rectangle (not all buildings are the same - thanks Princes of Florence!) while still leaving space for another player's pawn to land there and pay rent.
This is all well and good but we realize that what we really need is excellent, well-sculpted plastic miniatures of the new pieces – then people will love it even if the game is total crap!
Whew! Oh, and I almost forgot - to determine starting player order - throw the pawns into the Wallenstein tower and see who comes out first! Suddenly the iron and thimble don’t look so bad, eh?
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Posted Sat Apr 9, 2005 6:38 am
What a timely posting! My group is playing E&T tomorrow, and I can't wait to incorporate your excellent suggestions. Thanks!!