This thread is for feedback and discussion on the proposed v2.0 upgrade.

Andy, one house rule we've made is that you get to draw your new cards at the end, not the start, of your turn. (Of course adjusting the number of cards you start the game with appropriately.) This does change some dynamics a bit at the time when you become the ski-mask player and so forth, but it has a huge advantage: you can now begin your turn with an actual plan and carry out that plan.

With the current rules, the cards you draw often cause you to rethink your plan for your turn, which is time-consuming. All in all the game suffers from too much downtime between turns -- I feel like I could wander off for 10 minutes and not really miss much, which is an undesirable quality in a game!

We also felt like once things go badly for the empires, there is just a cascade effect where one player after another turns terrorist in quick succession until the game ends kind of anticlimactically. Perhaps "winning" as a terrorist should not count as "winning", only "not losing". ie, a neutral result for you, a loss for the empires. But losing as a terrorist is still losing, and if you're an empire you win in the normal way. Arguably the "declaring world peace" thing would also be a neutral result for the empires and a loss for the terrorists.

This is all probably crazy talk, but we need to play the game more to understand it better.

I think I came across a post of yours in a geek list about drawing the cards at the end of your turn. We like it a lot and we've been playing this variation also - it speeds things up a great deal. Thank you - it's one of the best changes we've made I think; simple, but improves the game dramatically.

We've never viewed the 'terrorist' winning as any player winning, so people only try to spoil other peoples win (ONLY after they have 0 chance of winning).

That is awesome. I learned this little tidbit from Reiner Knizia (Battle Line, specifically).

An idea to encourage people to use terrorist camps could be to either A) require terrorists to spend say 2 turns in a camp before a player can put them on the board as if they need training or to have special verteran terrorists that are able to perform stronger and unique attacks. veterans would in this case be trained in camps. of course we would also need to give empires the ability to airstrike these camps if they notice someone training terrorists for such a job.

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your thoughts. In the past we've found it impractical to keep note of game actions across rounds (or even across goes). Maybe it might work in another game, but there's so much going on at any one time in WoT that I don't think that'd work. Nice idea thought - I think you're on the right tracks.

Cheers,
Andrew

Hey,

In a geekmail I mentioned to you that we see the terrorist camps used all the time. You thought that odd. So, at a gaming convention I was at when WoT came up, I asked them about camps too. They play it a lot and also say they see them all the time.

Both the people I play with and that group love to use them as threats. Also, some of the richer players, I've seen buy them up just to keep some of them out of play.

Maybe that's why they card that allows you to read the secret messages is such a waste of time around he. Secret messages tend to be for passing jokes, if there are threats or deals going on, we are normally sure to clearly state (threaten) for all to hear who is going to be attacked if this or that happens.

I do agree about limiting book keeping.

Hi Mike, that's really interesting. I'm wondering if it may even be a cultural thing. You know, us Brits are notoriously reserved and private and might be more into secret back-stabbing, whereas Americans are more upfront about the whole thing.

I like the idea of drawing cards at the end of your turn a lot and will suggest it to our group.

2.0 sounds promising, but as long as it isn't out, I really don't fancy the idea of sticking labels to my cards, even if they're peelable or removable. Could card sleeves be of some help here? Home-made versions (if one can find sleeves of the right size, will have to check that the next time I visit the store) could just have paper slips covering and replacing the old information, but having sleeves with new texts and pictures already printed on them (or otherwise sticked inside them) would be better yet probably not very cheap.

If all the cards were in sleeves, one (hopefully) couldn't tell which card is new - and they'd probably last longer too. As long as there aren't going to be new pieces (which seems to be the case), with some empty spare sleeves one could have a hybrid game that works as both 1.0 and 2.0. Just move the "removed" cards back to empty sleeves and disregard the marks on some oil counters and you have the 1.0 version again.

I don't know if I'm missing something, but once one player is terrorist, any further terrorist players don't really contribute anything more to that side. It's kinda like... "Give me your money, cards, and developments, then get out of here. I've already got this covered."

To at least make the terrorist cause more daunting (and frightful for empire players), terrorists should get 1 extra card for each extra terrorist player. So if there are 2 terrorist players, they get 3 cards total.

I'm a bit confused by the double oil 9... This makes them much more lucrative than 7s. And the indigenous terrorists on 7s in turn makes them even less attractive in comparison. Heck, even the double 4 is better than a 7, statistically. So overall this means more money, which in turn means the game is even more based on luck because an early doubled 4 or doubled 9 can make a huge difference. I would skip the double oil part, personally. Indigenous terrorists, however, is a pretty cool idea.

Terrorists need more ways of getting money. Being able to collect the income that a territory with a cell on it, for example, seems fair since cells are so risky to have anyway. Alternately, make it so when the terrorist player rolls the oil dice, only the terrorist gets oil (just like the oil theft card), except maybe at 1/2 value. Or only works if there are terrorists present in the numbered provinces. Or have more, lowered value random cards in the deck.

Hi Andy,

On the Global Jihad idea:

maybe an I (Islamic couyntry) or a J ("Jeee, wonder what that J means") could be printed on some (10, 15, 20?) of the oil markers in 2.0. When the Global Jihad card is played, it will have effect in all countries that have an oil marker whith an I or J on it.

Kris

Hi guys,

I was thinking about ways to use the Threat Level that the Andys wanted to include, and had the following ideas:

- only have the threat level go up in response to card playing when a card involving Terrorists (of any size or kind of cards) affects a city. or is a Plane Hijack or Political Kidnap. No-one cares if terrorism happens out in those insignificant places...

- Only have the threat level go up when a card is bought from the Terrorist Deck. If WE do the killing, it's all fine. It's just if THEY do the killing that it's bad.

- have the threat level go up when terrorists are put in the terrorists' training camps. I always play with a one-turn limit on terrorists (terrorists MUST spend one turn in the training camp before they get placed on the board), but this can work however. The numbers should be fairly large, eg. for every Cell* in all training camps,the threat level goes up by one. For example, if one player had a Column*, another Column* and a third had five Vengards*, then the threat level would be at least Moderate, and halfway to becoming Substantial. the threat level changes at the end of your turn. The threat level goes down when enough terrorists are placed on the board to reduce the total number of Insurgencies in the training camps.

- In order for this to be effective, there really needs to be a cumulative effect rather than just an effect at Critical level. The no using sea routes at Critical is fine, but if we make it that for every level of threat cards cost 10M less (yes, less), and developments 20M more (so Moderate has cards at 40M, settlements at 60M, Substantial has cards at 30M, settlements at 90M etc), it makes things more interesting. It means that states at a high threat level are more likely to lash out viciously, but are far less likely to do anything constructive.

Hope these ideas help, guys!


*I use the following naming conventions, because I think "cell" for a large terrorist counter is back to front.

Vangard = cell
Column = organisation
Cell = insurgency