Karen Messenger
United States
Pittsford
New York
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This is a two player variant for Rheinlander that splits the board in half (rather than playing with ghost players).
The basic game follows the normal set up with the following exceptions:
1. Spilt the board in half - we've been using areas 1-28.
2. Use only cards 1-28, plus the joker.
3. Randomly place 4 churches, 4 castles and 2 of each city value (2, 3, 4).
4. Each player gets 25 knights.
5. Players hold 3 cards, rather than the usual 5.
6. Players get two bastions, rather than the usual 3.
Game play progresses normally with the main exception being a new rule for the archbishop. When a player controlling the archbishop plays a card to convert one of his opponent's knights, the knight is replaced with a neutral colored knight (i.e. one of the 3 unused knight colors). The opposing knight is returned to its owner as before. The archbishop player can also convert a neutral knight to his own color, in the usual manner.
Notes:
Why a half board? To get the right density of knights with 2 players, you'd have to have about 40 each. It's too annoying to use two different colors. We've found that using all 25 knights on about half the board is about right (we've tried 20 each, but that felt like too little -- the games were over prematurely).
Why hold 3 cards instead of 5? Because with 5 cards on a half board, you double the freedom of action. Much of the tension in the game comes from the limitations imposed by your hand. We wanted to preserve that tension.
Why the change to the archbishop rule? We tried a few games with the original rules, but the games were decided early on -- whoever controlled the archbishop would dismember their opponent, who would die a slow death. Not fun. In the multi-player game, people can gang up on the archbishop to balance things out. But in the 2-player game, the archbishop power is simply too great -- it needed to be toned down.
Why 2 bastions instead of 3? Again, in order to maintain the right "bastion density" on a half board, there needs to be half the number of bastions available. In a 3-player game, there are 9 bastions available. So, 4 bastions is about right for a half board.
The game lasts about 30 minutes with our changes, and has become one of our favorite 2-player games.
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Mary Weisbeck
United States
Black Hawk
South Dakota
Even virtual dice hate me!
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I finally got to try this but I made one little change. We used spaces/cards up to 30 so it would include the place where the spaces join back to back. This added one more spot to cover for which I used another church making the total an odd number.
This is a simple, quick variant which doesn't lose the feel of the game. Good work, Chuck.
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Karen Messenger
United States
Pittsford
New York
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Hi Mary,
Thanks for the positive feedback! Glad you enjoyed our 2 player variant. Just wondered if you used our rule for the bishop and if it worked out ok? That's one part of our variant we keep playing around with, trying to find the best way to use the bishops without altering the basic flavor of the game. We also like marking the larger territories with colored cubes (borrowed from Carolus Magnus) - that way people like me who like to have visuals can readily see what the other player has and I can better plan my takeover. 
Karen
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Shaun Mather
United States
Yuma
Arizona
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Sounds like a great conversion. Question I have is that by using the Archbishop, could you potentially have neutral dukes running a Duchy? Seems that could be possible if they outnumbered the other knights...
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Posted Thu Dec 8, 2005 8:22 pm
