Peet Smith
Canada
Toronto
Ontario
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It has occurred to me that experienced players might like to be able to bid on artifacts in the first game round and formulate strategies based on this, rather than simply having them assigned randomly. So here is a variant that lets you do that.
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Opening Artifact Bid Variant
Firstly, in the 'Set up Kingdoms' step, assign countries, and deal out starting kingdom and strategy cards. Players start with one less army unit and emissary than normal, and do not receive gold or sorcery tokens yet.
Instead they receive seven "freebie points" with which they can bid on things. You can use gold tokens to indicate this - don't give out starting gold yet. Give each player one of each type of adventure token. They won't keep these; they're just for bidding on artifacts at the start.
During the 'Assign Artifact Cards and Conan Bonus' step, players put one of their adventure tokens in their hand plus however many "freebie points" they wish to bid. Instead of bidding on an artifact a player can bid on the Conan Bonus in this step, in which case he puts a Conan bid token in his hand instead of one of his adventure tokens.
Everyone reveals their tokens and bids at once. Whoever bids the most freebie points in any category gets whichever card they bid on, be it an artifact or the Conan Bonus. The value of the adventure token doesn't matter.
If there is a tie, either player may offer to give his opponent freebie points to 'buy him out' and win the auction. These freebie points must come from those he has remaining, not the amount he just bid. If they have no freebie points then freebie points may be given on 'credit' and this reduces a player's starting gold by one per freebie point. If they fail to reach an agreement within two minutes then neither player will get a card.
After all bids have been resolved, if any player lost a bid to another player, that player may choose a card from the remaining artifact & Conan Bonus cards. If more than one player lost a bid, then the player who bid more freebie points chooses first. If there is a tie it is resolved the same way as ties in the bidding step. After it is all over everyone discards whatever freebie points they bid and returns all the adventure tokens they had to the adventure token pile.
Any remaining freebie points are now converted to gold and may be spent as if it were an age change phase. However, a player may never buy more than two of any one item at this time (i.e. two army units, two emissaries, two kingdom cards, and two strategy cards). Each player may also buy ONE extra sorcery token; for the Stygian and Hyperborean players this costs one gold, but for the Turanian and Aquilonian player it costs two gold.
After everyone has finished buying whatever they want everyone receives three gold, and the Stygian and Hyperborean players receive two sorcery tokens each. This completes the 'Assign Artifact Cards and Conan Bonus' step in the game start cycle, and you may then move on to bidding for Conan and beginning the game.
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While this variant allows players some control over what artifacts they want to start with, it also gives them a chance to customize their starting forces somewhat. You can sacrifice your chance for a good artifact for the chance to have more starting units or cards. Or, if you really want a particular artifact you can sacrifice some of your starting units to get it.
If anyone has the chance to play this variant I'd love to hear how it worked out.
Peet
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