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Variants to make bad games better.
James To My Friends
Netherlands
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Many of us have little changes we would like to make to games. Sometimes it's because the game isn't balanced so it's perceived as unfair. Sometimes it seems like there is too much luck and it's too difficult to think of ways to mitigate it. Sometimes a game is too confrontational and we don't like to lose what we just spent 2 hours building up because we didn't see it coming even though it's written on the box and in the rules. In summary we all want games where nothing bad ever happens. Here I propose some variants to make bad stuff go away.
If you have any other variants then please feel free to add and together we can make the misery go away.
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James To My Friends
Netherlands
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First up is the one we hate the most for being completely luck based.
For players who can't evaluate risk and reward, potential future scenarios, other players needs, differentiate uncertainty and randomness from luck, and can't adapt accordingly I suggest the following. Each player takes a set of 6 tiles and makes their own little island. They are then free to build on their own without the worry of being blocked by another player. The dice provide action points which players choose to allocate to available tiles and the resources they wish to harvest. The limited supply of ports are available to buy during the game and can be placed wherever the player wants around their island. The robber is renamed as The Provost and remains impotent throughout the game.
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James To My Friends
Netherlands
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If you don't like imbalance and don't want to have a challenge then throw out your French deck and buy a second copy of AFAOS. Take the British deck from that copy and throw the rest away, you won't be needing it. Now play with the two players having a British deck each. Wait a minute, that's still not the same for both sides. That's not balanced. Throw the board away. Now divide the cards into types and put them in stacks in the centre of the table. These cards are now available to both players to buy and add to their decks. Much better.
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James To My Friends
Netherlands
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This game is far too confrontational, it might damage your delicate constitution. If it wasn't full of cute fluffy cubes then it might even be considered a war game. So remove the Dominance Cards completely even though you have a full turn to mitigate any affects. Don't use the Competition action, that's silly, having animals compete and resulting in the death of other animals is too ridiculous. Don't use the Regression or Depletion actions either, planning this far ahead is too stressful. Additionally make sure there is at least one adaption per player is available, players unfortunate enough to be last shouldn't miss out.
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James To My Friends
Netherlands
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This fast-moving thrilling ride of an adventure is too luck based to be any fun. So instead, each player starts with some treasure, let's say 100 GP. Each round new tiles are placed face up each with a face up room card. Then 1 tile and card per player is auctioned off. Tiles that are won are then placed on the board. Any rooms containing treasure generate treasure for the player every single turn. Adventures need rations, so after turns 6, 11, 15, 18, 20, and 21 the players must pay for their rations. No idea why, but it seems fun. The first to reach the centre doesn't encounter the dragon, but instead has found the entrance to the King's castle. He is there to greet you and gives you a favourable exchange rate on treasure for Prestige Points. Whoever has the most Prestige Points at the end of the game is seen in a slightly more favourable light by the King.
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James To My Friends
Netherlands
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This game is silly, when prospecting an area for the first time it's completely random as to what is found and this makes the whole game luck based. That's completely unrealistic, in real life when people look somewhere unexplored for the first time they know exactly what they are going to find. Instead every prospected area should start with 1 copper, 1 tin, and 1 water. Each time a player takes an action they can place a copper, water, or tin cube in a prospected area of their choice. This represents stuff magically appearing out of nowhere. Fixed.
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James To My Friends
Netherlands
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This game is far too violent. Instead rename it to Nerfslinger. Each player's character has a cardboard chit representing a foam missile shooting toy gun. The board represents a garden where the players are running around hiding behind the wheelbarrow and trying not to fall into the pond. While you are playing Nerfslinger you can imagine you are a child imagining you are playing cowboys.
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James To My Friends
Netherlands
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Dice rolling can be so unfair we all agree on that. The natural distribution of values can seem so harsh as you remember all those bad rolls you had and forget the average or good ones. So let's get an even distribution of 'rolls' and replace the dice with a deck of cards. Now we have Draw From The Face-Down Deck Through The Ages. Actually even cards can be a bit too much randomness to handle. We should deal the cards out to all the players then pick one and pass the remaining cards to the next player. And so Draft Through The Ages is born.
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8.
Board Game: Dune
[Average Rating:7.63 Overall Rank:91]
James To My Friends
Netherlands
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Making players segregate into factions against each other is so mean. The popular kids will end up just picking on the nerdy kids that always win games. Instead of fighting in factions we should all learn to work together. Make Dune a co-operative game by having all the players in the same faction. The players collectively win when they hold 5 strongholds. It will still be tough and exciting and you all get to enjoy the triumph of winning together.
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9.
Board Game: LCR
[Average Rating:2.60 Overall Rank:7963]
King Ævil
South Euclid
Ohio
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LCR (if I understand the game—have never played it) is played in a circle, or the surface of a 2-dimensional sphere. Instead, figure out how to play it on the surface of an 8-dimensional sphere. (There will be 7 different, mutually orthogonal kinds of "left" and "right".)
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Kai Bettzieche
Germany
Ladenburg
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Invite your hottest friend.
Remove:
- The dice
- The pawns
- The money
- The buildings
- The board
- The cards
- The clothes
Play with what is left.
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11.
Board Game: London
[Average Rating:7.54 Overall Rank:106]
Martin Boisselle
Canada
Quebec
The end begins anew
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Since the first time we played this game, we decided to start the game with 50£ each.
This way, we explore and enjoy the game a lot more.
No more loans and rough times.
Also, poverty cubes are a drag and not really pleasant.
We just stopped playing with them altogether.
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Samo Gosaric
Slovenia
Ljubljana
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How many times your perfect building plans have been ruined by complete nincompoops, who can't figure out what the assassin is for and always end up targeting you, hence putting too much randomness in the game. Also the drafting phase is always a burden with people trying to figure out which character to draw for 5 minutes each (and they end up picking assassin and guess who the target is).
This variant provides for a simple solution of all the game's biggest fault: get rid of character deck altogether. No more randomness, no more chaos, just perfect building game that flows smoothly - draw card or pick two coins, play a building, next.
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13.
Board Game: Titan
[Average Rating:7.08 Overall Rank:335]
Michael Debije
Netherlands
Eindhoven
The Netherlands
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Man it really, really sucks when you have to sit there waiting when you've been eliminated. And all due to random dice, since that's the only thing that determines the winner. Its so annoying when other players remember what's in your stack better than you do.
First, turn all the pieces over: no more memory required.
It seems awfully unfair some creatures better than others, and the battle boards take so long to fight out while everyone watching. Just have the larger stack 'win'. When you win, score a victory point and your opponent gets a recovery point. The main board awfully confusing as to where to go: just move any way you want. Make sure to use a d6 dice deck to even out the move rolls! At the end, whoever gets to the middle with the most 'victory points has won the game, and those with the most recovery points have impressed the Gods and also win.
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Roborally, too, is a pretty pointless game the way its usually played. There are no meaningful decisions, it suffers from a load of randomness and doesn't reward skilled game play at all. I mean, how many times have you carefully programmed your robot just to find out that you mixed up left and right, or that another player's robot unintentionmally crashed in yours? The game is also comes with player elimination and cannot keep up with modern standards of board gaming.
But: It can be helped.
So, here's the solution: First, each player must be granted enough time to thoroughly plot his robot's movement. Don't use the timer! It only favours careless players who speculate on the mistakes of others. Players also need the opportunity to discuss their movement with each other (that benefits everybody since unintended interactions like collisions and such stuff is avoided). Second, the game's main basic design flaw is that all robot race towards one and the same goal! What if all robots started in the middle of the board and raced for an individual goal placed in each corner? That would of course limit the number of players to 4, but would also make the game a lot more managable and structured.
In order to appeal to contemporary standards, game play in general needs to be upgraded with modern elements such as role selection or worker placement. I haven't really thought that through yet, but why not limit resources for movement (electric power, anyone?), or obligatory maintenance actions? A little more depth and complexity won't do any harm, on the contrary.
All in all, I'm sure there is a huge potential hidden in that game. It just needs to be revealed. Hoewever, that way it is - sorry. I can't make friends with it.
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Samo Gosaric
Slovenia
Ljubljana
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TALES OF THE ARABIAN RIGHTS VARIANT
The game has no tension to speak of, this variant fixes that with plenty of drama and heated discussions.
This variant manages to bypass randomness of the game, by giving it in the hands of one player. Choose one person to act as a game master. We'll all that person "Uncle Sam". Uncle Sam is the only one with the right to use the Book of Tales Spins. When a player draws an encounter and decides on a response, no dice a rolled, instead Uncle Sam reads the three relevant paragraphs and decides on a result. All players may bribe Uncle Sam with oil barrel tokens to influence his/her choice. Players get new tokens after each successful city encounter (number of tokens = number on a city).
Uncle Sam may spend oil barrel tokens for the following effects:
40 tokens: nuke a city. the city is deleted from existence and walking though it's former location give the character "glows in the dark" status.
40 tokens: a character is sent to a power location "Island prison". Use prison chart for the character from then on.
Players may spend oil barrels for following:
15 tokens: initiate a revolt. All tokens Uncle Sam gained this turn, are returned to bank.
15 tokens: put your character on fire. Location and characters in that location are out of bounds for Uncle Sam for 3 turns (use tokens). Next turn start with a new character in Baghdad.
25 tokens: start a republic. Use tokens to declare 4 neighbouring cities a republic. Uncle Sam cannot interfere with characters and locations within a republic. Baghdad cannot be part of the republic.
30 tokens: create a Shia republic - same as above, but other players can't enter. Only one Shia republic can be declared during the game.
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Samo Gosaric
Slovenia
Ljubljana
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LOST MANA VARIANT
Avoiding MtG for being a money sink with endless expansions, arcane rules, not the mention the general randomness of the draw. Here's the family frienly Lost Mana variant.
1. Throw away everything but the basic lands.
You'll need 12 of each. prepare each colour by leaving 3 lands blank (with a large mana symbol, or if you use ancient editions, draw a huge mana symbol on them) and draw on the rest numbers 2-10.
2. All cards are shuffled in one deck! No more of that elitism of who has thrown the most money in a deck.
3. Each player draws 6 cards. Yer fancy mulligan rule, does not apply.
4. On a player turn you play one card and draw one card.
5. Each player attempts to make the best mana ritual. As a player begins a ritual he or she suffers mana burn for -20 life (that comes into effect only at the end of the game). A player can than add one or more of the 3 blank colours as mana that function as mana catalyst doubling (one card), tripling or quadrupling the power of the ritual (and mana burn as well). A player can than add numbered cards, starting with simpler evocations (low number) going to more complex ones (You can only play a higher number on top of a lower one).
6. A player may also decide not to play a card into his own rituals, instead placing it on the wizard research desk (This is a friendly game, not that adolescent romp with gory weaponry). A player can choose to draw a card from wizard's desks instead of drawing from a draw pile.
7. When the deck in depleated, the game ends. The person with highest life total (for each ritual = (sum of all evotion numbers in a ritual - 20) * catalyst factor) wins.
The variant teaches that to be a good mage one must calculate well the risks of mana. Magic is all about controlling oneself and ones desires.
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A common problem in this game is that you will take 10 turns or so building up a road or city, and somebody will just come along and take it (or share it without doing their proper share of work).
A simple house rule is to assign points proportionally to the number of tiles contributed to a given feature. For example, if I add 3 tiles to a road, and you add 4 tiles to the same road, then I get 3 points and you get 4 points. You can take cubes from another game (eg. Tigris and Euphrates, which is too broken to bother playing) to track who placed which tile.
We find this makes for much closer games, which is a lot more enjoyable!
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Sometimes, when trying to complete a route, the other player will block you. Some players even block intentionally! This makes the game extremely unfair and unfun. Therefore, we use stations from the Europe version to help make the game more fair. As a bonus, when you have stations, it makes the game more of a "gamer's game",
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Martin Boisselle
Canada
Quebec
The end begins anew
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It's frustrating having your company's stock get stolen right under your nose in the Auction round...
Instead, we each choose a color, get the corresponding company.
The "Auction Action" is replaced by the "Stock Action" where players can only buy their own stock.
Players can now concentrate to build their tracks by themselves!
No more elbowing! No more backstabbing!
Just a nice, clean game.
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Kaja Sadowski
Canada
Vancouver
BC
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The asymmetry and randomness (just look at all those dice...) of this game is simply unbearable. The following changes should be made immediately to bring Claustrophobia in line with acceptable standards for balance and pure strategy:
Both players will start the game with equal numbers of Condemned and Troglodytes. While it is unavoidable that one will have the Redeemer and the other a major Demon, all effort should be made to balance powers exactly between these two principals.
Instead of rolling to determine available actions, players will be available to select from the same communal pool of options; however, once one player chooses an action, it is denied to the other player for the remainder of this round.
The randomness and unsavoury direct conflict of combat also needs to be eliminated. Instead, players will total and compare the attack and defense scores of all of their team's figures on a given tile. The player with the higher number will earn victory points equal to the total number of figures on said tile. Defeated figures will not be removed from the game, but will simply be denied the opportunity to score in this round.
The game will end after a predetermined number of tiles have been drawn, and the player with the highest number of victory points wins.
There, fixed!
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Luis Fernandez
Venezuela
Caracas
Miranda
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Thunderstone (Resident Evil/muchkin)
Instead of being so eurogame, place monster deck face down, when going to the dungeon (kick the door) and reveal the monster and roll a D3 to see the darkness level.
In the setup place 1 more hero deck and 1 more artifact from the random selection for this setting of the game.
You also could go to the town and then kick the door each turn. Is ameritrashing thunderstone, we played several times and was pretty fun because you have to deal with those monsters.
this was a
Marte Dubuc
Venezuela
Araure
idea.
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22.
Board Game: Agricola
[Average Rating:8.25 Overall Rank:2]
Simon Lundström
Sweden
Örbyhus
Now who are these five?
Come, come, all children who love fairy tales.
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This game is just a big Excel spreadsheet to calculate the optimum decisions and lacks excitement and variation. Also, calculating the points when the game is finished takes so long that you can get a decent filler in, not to mention the time it takes for peopel to peruse their cards before the game starts. Instead, the game should start with no cards. When you choose to do an occupation, you draw a random occupation and see what you get and deal with that.
Also, that you can't bake bread when someone else does, just doesn't make sense. If someone else has the position you want, you make an attack roll and the defender makes a defence roll. If you get equal to or higher, you get to place there AND your opponent's piece gets hurt and can't place the next round.
When you don't have enough food, –3 points is for sissies. Your family simply dies.
As counting points is ridiculous, the family with the most booze at the end wins.
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David F
United States
Emeryville
California
Set up a lot of the PBF framework for BSG, Runewars, Small World, The Devil's Castle. PBF in Gears of War, Death Angel, A Game of Thrones. Currently playing Twilight Struggle, Middle-Earth Quest and Eclipse on Vassal.
I'm anal about using the right terms to describe games and have posted an alternative glossary to the inconsistent sprawl in BGG's database and lexicon that is clear, accurate and simple. I care big time about my reviews, ratings and comments.
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The demand tiles completely ruin the game for me! It's absurd that I should only know 1/5 of the information, and not know the exact market demand for all the produced cars. A better representation of the market is to let each player produce as many cars as they want, and sell them all for the same profit. If you make 'em, you should be allowed to sell 'em, and as we know, demand for automobiles in America is infinite.
In other news, I also think that Blackjack is broken. The dealer should only let me play if I know beforehand that I'm going to get 21 exactly.
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David F
United States
Emeryville
California
Set up a lot of the PBF framework for BSG, Runewars, Small World, The Devil's Castle. PBF in Gears of War, Death Angel, A Game of Thrones. Currently playing Twilight Struggle, Middle-Earth Quest and Eclipse on Vassal.
I'm anal about using the right terms to describe games and have posted an alternative glossary to the inconsistent sprawl in BGG's database and lexicon that is clear, accurate and simple. I care big time about my reviews, ratings and comments.
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It's completely broken that the player to the left of the newbie always wins.
I suggest that if you win the game, everybody at the table gets to call the player on your right a n00b for a whole year. This will denigrate and humiliate him, and force him and other n00bs to stop playing the game, improving the experience of Puerto Rico in general as n00bs are forced out and prevented from ever exploring the game further.
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Learn to swim, learn to swim, learn to swim, learn to swim..
United States
Cleveland Heights
Ohio
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Even rabid fans of this game admit it is rule heavy and complex. Some go as far as to say it is bloated with all it's expansions. I have come up with a variant that retains all of the wonder of the game with 1/100th the rules (maybe less, but I'm too lazy to do the math, hence the variant). I retained the rules style to ease existing players into this advanced variant.
1. Setup: Pick a ship counter that looks cool
1.1 Flip counter onto the board like a coin toss, that is your starting position.
1.2 each person gets five shield tokens.
2. Movement: You move by rolling the dice and moving exactly that number of hexes.
2.1 You can make one hex-side turn a turn.
3. Combat: Anytime your ship is pointing at another ship, you fire all your weapons and they lose a shield token.
3.1 Once someone loses all their shield tokens, the next hit they take destroys their ship.
Voila! Can you just imagine the smorgasbord of tactics and strategy required to win this tension packed variant? I probably could, but it takes too much mental effort to think about stuff like that so i'll just take my word for it, as should you!
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I swear this poor design will never get any close to the top 100 in the war game rankings.
