Lilolbear

After a half a dozen games or so we found that the Alliance simply wasn’t a threat. There was little to no reason to be afraid of them. The game results of running into the Cruiser was to pay off your warrants ($1000 per), lose contraband / fugitives, and roll for each wanted crew to see if they are removed (1 in 6 chance). Oh yeah, and they bring you to a full stop. *shrug* In comparison to a single crime job, one of which is worth $6k, the penalties are just not a risk. Add crybabys and there is no reason to fear them at all.

In the show the Reavers and the Alliance were forces beyond the crews ability to do more than run / hide from. The house rules that we are experimenting with are designed to fix this.

First of all we bumped up the Alliances tenacity in collecting their due. If you are caught with a warrant on the ship then the Alliance will take its $1k per. If you don’t have the cash then they take all your money and then cargo, that you can’t show is for a legitimate job, at $300 per. If you still aren’t even then they start in on your equipment until you are even or run out of stuff to seize.

The alliance will also be more tenacious in checking up on the crew. Customs inspection cards result in the roll as if the Cruiser showed up. 1 in 6 removing the wanted crew member. And when the Cruiser shows up any wanted crew are forced to jump ship. You still roll for them and on a 1 they are removed from the game. Otherwise they are returned to the discard piles to be re-hired.

These more strict rules on the Alliance mean that having a warrant and running into the alliance can really hurt as opposed to just being inconvenient.

Next we added that any successful illegal job results in a warrant being issued. This is after the job is done so it doesn’t count against the staying solid with a contact rule. Nor does it trigger Niskas “pound of flesh rule”. This means that doing Illegal jobs starts to pile up the Warrants. There becomes a reason to use the bonus you get for being solid with Badger (getting rid of all warrants for the price on one).

The overall result is that you actually start being cautious of the Alliance, especially if you are doing things that are less than legitimate. The payoff for finishing illegal jobs is still significant enough to make doing them more than enticing.

We have found this to be a significant improvement and thematically solid. If anyone tries these out please let me know what you think.

If you can get yourself into a groove where you are getting and playing intrigue cards it will often make the difference between winning and losing. Even those intrigue that don’t appear to make a difference may be an investment or cost an opponent. Even the psychological factor of getting to reallocate your agents can have a demoralizing effect on your opponents.

The best way to insure the effectiveness of any intrigue played is to make sure that there are enough locations on the board that the reallocation of your agents isn’t a waste. So, buy buildings. encourage others to buy buildings. Get those extra allocation spot on the board and then churn through as many intrigue as you can.

As we played this game we found that there were occasions where one player would receive a phenomenal starting set of cards (quests, intrigue, and lord). In order to balance it we play with a passing start. It goes like this:

First, pass the following to each player to view: 2 Lord cards, 3 Quest cards, and 3 Intrigue cards

Second, each player will select 1 quest and 1 Intrigue card from those provided and pass 1 of each to their left and one of each to their right. (in two player games this will be the same person)

Third, each player will select 1 quest and 1 Intrigue card from those passed to them and discard the other.

Fourth, each player will select a lord from their two and discard the other.

Overall we find that this insures that you receive top pick of your initial hand but will not receive a mind blowing combo unless the people you have passing to you are also receiving a good setup. It simply removes some of the starting luck.

Additionally, we typically do a switchback on the player order allowing each player from last to first select one resource as if they had played an agent (i.e. 2 orange, 2 black, one purple, one white, or 4 coin) with no two players getting the same resource. This provides some balance on the player order beyond that single coin.

Combined we have found these house rules to remove a lot of the start game luck and give you a chance to customize your initial direction. The only downside is mixing brand new players with experienced will potentially give the experienced players an even greater edge.